Perhaps the Democratic establishment was too quick to kneel before Obama? Victor Davis Hanson dicsusses:
The primary season ended with a narrow Obama victory — and a wounded, but supposedly wiser, Democratic candidate.
Not quite. Without evidence, he unwisely has claimed his opponents (“they”) will play the race card against poor him. In contrast, on the hot-button issue of racial reparations, he recently played to cheering minority audiences by cryptically suggesting that the government must “not just . . . offer words, but offer deeds.” He later clarified that he didn’t mean cash grants, but his initial words were awfully vague.
Second, many are beginning to notice how a Saint Obama talks down to them. We American yokels can’t speak French or Spanish. We eat too much. Our cars are too big, our houses either overheated or overcooled. And we don’t even put enough air in our car tires. In contrast, a lean, hip Obama promises to still the rising seas and cool down the planet, assuring adoring Germans that he is a citizen of the world.
Third, Obama knows that all doctrinaire liberals must tack rightward in the general election. But due to his inexperience, he’s doing it in far clumsier fashion than any triangulating candidate in memory. Do we know — does Obama even know? — what he really feels about drilling off our coasts, tapping the strategic petroleum reserve, NAFTA, faith-based initiatives, campaign financing, the FISA surveillance laws, town-hall debates with McCain, Iran, the surge, timetables for Iraq pullouts, gun control, or capital punishment?…
…In a tough year like this, Democrats could probably have defeated Republican John McCain with a flawed, but seasoned candidate like Hillary Clinton. But long-suffering liberals convinced their party to go with a messiah rather than a dependable nominee — and thereby they probably will get neither.
The kook left was for Obama because Obama was pure as the wind driven snow on the left’s main 2008 issue: Iraq. But Obama secured the nomination on the strength of party elites (ie, the “superdelegates”) rushing over to his side towards the end of the primary season. Without the superdelegates, Obama is substantially short of a nominating majority and had the superdelegates held off, the Democrats would be looking towards a brokered convention. The powers of the Democratic party decided that it was too risky to not nominate Obama and, at any rate, that they already had the White House in the bag, so no worries (the fundamental reason for Obama? Down ballot. Democratic powers were fearful that failure to nominate Obama would weaken Democratic House candidates among black voters, perhaps even turning the House back over to the GOP for weakness in black Democratic turnout).
But it seems to have turned out otherwise – McCain is running neck and neck with Obama and given that GOPers traditionally poll weaker the further out you get from the election, there is every reason to expect that – at minimum – it will be a long night on November 4th…and, of course, there is in this closeness the strong prospect of McCain winning. The basic theory is still good for the Democrats – Obama ensures a massive African American turnout, but other than that the whole game plan for 2008 is proving wrong for the Democrats. It wasn’t supposed to be like this – Obama was supposed to cruise to victory and bring in 20 more House Democrats and maybe as many as 10 Senators. The Liberal Dawn was supposed to happen…but now we might have a liberal nightmare of President McCain and a revitalised House GOP which, even if not the majority, controls the terms of debate in the House.
It has been, indeed, a long and strange election year – and it may well get stranger. Keep this in mind – while Obama is still the inside favorite to win, there is a better chance of a McCain landslide than an Obama landslide (though, of course, the chances of any landslide are pretty small).
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