President Barack Obama has been trying to fire up some of his core constituencies as part of his re-election campaign. But our Candidate-in-Chief fell flat recently when he told the Congressional Black Caucus to "stop complainin" and when he whined to a group of Latino journalists about why he hasn't kept his promise of immigration reform. Evidently no one told him that the political strategy of pitting groups of voters against other groups of voters only works the first time unless you have a strong record of actually delivering for those who got you elected.

Continued...

Back in 2008, Candidate Obama literally promised to fundamentally transform the nation. He encouraged groups to believe that they hadn't been well served or even heard by their government and that an Obama administration would make all their dreams come true.

In July 2007 he told a mostly black audience of his commitment to improve life for people in urban America. "Today's economy has made it easier to fall into poverty," he said, "Every American is vulnerable to the insecurities and anxieties of this new economy. And that's why the single most important focus of my economic agenda as president will be to pursue policies that create jobs and make work pay." At the time of that speech, the overall unemployment rate was 4.7% with the rate among African Americans at 8.1%. Today, after almost 3 years of Mr. Obama's economic agenda, those rates are at 9.1% and 16.7% respectively.

In 2008, Candidate Obama promised that if elected he would address comprehensive immigration reform during his first year in office. Over a year ago immigration advocates who meet regularly with White House officials said the Obama administration had still not settled on a course of action. At that time, Deepak Bhargava, executive director of one advocacy group said, "The critical ingredient for whether we get immigration reform done this year will be whether the president has the courage to step forward and lead." He didn't then and still hasn't.

And these are not the only groups of voters who entrusted Candidate Obama with their hopes and dreams and votes only to be rewarded with broken promises, economic misery and continued demands for their support.

Environmentalists have yet to see the promised moment "when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal". The LGBT community is still waiting for the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act which Candidate Obama vowed to support. Jewish voters are trying to reconcile the president's recent UN speech in which he declared that "America's commitment to Israel's security is unshakable" with a speech he made in May proposing that the indefensible 1967 borders be a starting point for Israeli/Palestinian negotiations.

Even what appeared to be a kept promise to one of these core constituencies turned out to be a betrayal of their cause and a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars. In 2008, Candidate Obama promised he'd create green jobs that "pay well and can never be outsourced" by investing taxpayer money. What happened? The president's own Council of Economic Advisors admitted recently that only 225,000 clean energy jobs were either created or saved and cost the taxpayer $355,000 per job.

Of course there is one group to which President Obama has kept his promises. The half billion dollar government loan to the now bankrupt solar energy company Solyndra was restructured by the administration so that private investors (including an Obama fundraiser) moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default. That one special interest group to which he has stayed true? His big political donors.

As for the other groups who fell for the 2008 Obama con, it looks like they won't be as easy to fool the second time around.