Weakening?
Joe Klein at Time will doubtless raise even more fury than he usually does over on the hard left with his latest post. He makes a number of points contradicting the analysis today by The Politico which pretty well savaged Obama as unelectable, but Klein's final point shows the real problem here.
A few weeks ago, I surmised that if the two Democratic candidates continued on their downward trajectories, the party could turn to Al Gore. Obama proceeded to have a pretty strong couple of weeks while Clinton had to duck some fairly intense sniper fire. Now, Obama is on his (Achilles) heels…and Democrats can envision his candidacy as the latest installment of the Adlai Stevenson-George McGovern-John Kerry trajectory of high-minded candidates who can't scare up the votes necessary to win. As I said, there are some strong counter-arguments to the Obama Disaster scenario. But is there anyone out there who can argue that these Democratic candidates are getting stronger as this thing proceeds?
I'd point out that the folks who will undoubtedly attack Klein probably believe just that. Personally, I think Obama has really - deeply - wounded himself with his latest gaffe. There are a lot of people who are not at all amused with Obama's condescending dismissal of small town America. Just as there were a lot of people seriously angered by Obama's pastor and his anti-America screeds. The latter was not quite as personal as Obama's disdain for average Americans. The personal slight are harder to get around. The media is generally not letting Obama off the hook on this one, either, despite a few efforts to do so, the actual quote from Obama's own mouth is still being reported.
Which is why Klein will again be treated harshly. He's right.
By Gayle Miller, Monday, 14 April , 2008 @ 12:18 pm
The problem is not "the Adlai Stevenson-George McGovern-John Kerry trajectory of high-minded candidates who can’t scare up the votes necessary to win" but the fact that these selfsame candidates, with the exception of Adlai Stevenson (while I’m including Senator Obama) are all form and zero substance and until the Democrats can actually produce a candidate with some solid credentials that aren’t born in the imagination of the candidate, they are going to have a hard row to hoe. I have a reasonably strong amount of faith in the overall good judgment of the American electorate who, while they may wander off on a tangent and elect a disaster like Jimmy Carter, generally speaking make wise choices. Of course, after Jimmy Carter they really had nowhere to go BUT up!The Dems are constantly busy chasing the latest fad. And common sense is nonexistent among the Dems. I don’t think they even hear the nonsense they spout. They couldn’t possibly hear themselves and still continue to peddle the claptrap coming out of their mouths! Could they?
By martian, Monday, 14 April , 2008 @ 2:22 pm
Sorry, Gayle, not only can they, they do. Unfortunately, the Dems seem to be quite capable of believing "claptrap" even in the face of direct contradictory evidence.