Narratives Part 2: Distractions

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings and the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, one of the things we can see most clearly is just how irritated the Left becomes when real-world events cross-cut The Narrative.

Before the above events, the Obama regime and its media handmaidens strove to make The Narrative all about Sandy Hook and gun control. The significance of that decision reaches back to the last stage of the 2012 presidential campaign, when Obama decided that gun control would become one of the signature issues for his second term. But for a leftist in high federal office, it's not enough that he, personally, has adopted a particular issue as his precious pet. The rest of the country must be bombarded with his preferred message, the newspapers filled with it and the airwaves saturated with it, such that no matter which way a private citizen might turn, that one subject will be staring him in the face. The tactic has a Biblical feel: just keep knocking, and eventually the guy inside will give you what you want, if only so you'll go away and he can go back to sleep.

In this regard, Obama and his fellow travelers had two problems even before reality intruded on them:

• The public didn't (and doesn't) regard gun control as particularly important in the larger context;
• It was clear from the outset that no gun control bill, however cleverly designed, would have prevented Adam Lanza from getting his hands on his mother's firepower.

Needless to say, they didn't let that stop them. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D, CA), Joe Manchin (D, WV), and others continually harped on the 20 juvenile victims of Lanza's murder spree, associating their bills with Sandy Hook as if they would indeed have thwarted the insane young man. Obama cited several statistics -- all of them entirely false-to-fact -- about how "the American people" want stricter gun control, and were being denied their desires because of "NRA lies." The falsity of such claims didn't slow them at all.

Then came April 15 and the Boston Marathon bombings.

A couple of pols made half-hearted attempts to associate the bombings with a need for stricter gun control, but these were soon shuffled shamefacedly offstage. It was obvious that there was no connection; it was just as obvious that the gun-controllers were angered by the sudden demotion of their pet cause to "inside the paper." Obama's tirade in reaction to the defeat of his lieutenants' bills in the Senate said more about him personally than about anything else. It certainly didn't reflect on Americans' attachment to the right to keep and bear arms.

Another fatuous attempt to scavenge some political hay from the bombings was evident in the repeated statements by both politicians and media figures that, given the date, they might have been the work of "anti-government extremists" or "right-wing tax protesters." There was no substantiation for such claims, but just as when Michael Bloomberg attempted to associate the failed Times Square bombing with opposition to ObamaCare, they were determined not to let that stop them.

The West, Texas disaster has certainly reduced the Left's thunder, though it's done so by implication: though the tragedy has claimed an unknown number of lives and injured at least 150 persons, Obama and his minions have had virtually nothing to say about it. Small wonder there: it's completely outside The Narrative. It deflects the public's attention from the Left's preferred subjects. Worse, it offers no handle by which to use it for political purposes. But in this we see a continuation of the Obamunist pattern: The Won will only involve himself in those developments where he foresees personal or political gain.

As usual, the more one looks, the more ironies one sees. The defeat of all the gun control proposals has dealt a strong blow to Obama's political muscle. His party is beginning to sidle away from him, somewhat more obviously and quickly than is the usual case with a second-term president in the period before the mid-term elections. The Democrat senators who have associated themselves with any of the gun control bills have taken similar blows; the worst of them have gone to the loudest complainers. The Republican senators who favored any of the bills must now look to their flanks; the probability has increased that they'll need to defend themselves against primary challengers when they stand for re-election.

Beyond all that, we have Nancy Pelosi's insistence that "we'll be back," and what it means for the Democrats' prospects in the House of Representatives in 2014. Were Obama's claims about popular support for more gun control factual, Pelosi's defiance of the defeats might be harmless or better. But since the American public appears moderately staunch in upholding the right to keep and bear arms free of further state or federal intrusion, Pelosi's insistence that the issue will be revisited could cost the Democrats further seats in the lower chamber.

As always, we shall see. But in one respect, we have already seen: When real-world events deflect Americans' attention from The Narrative, the Left loses political clout -- and to the extent that defeat makes their high-profile spokesmen act out, they lose credibility and respect, as well.