Obama: Pulpit or Hot Seat?
So writes Paul Krugman in the New York Times ... "After Barack Obama’s defeat in Pennsylvania, David Axelrod, his campaign manager, brushed it off: “' Nothing has changed tonight in the basic physics of this race.'
"This wasn’t the way things were supposed to play out.Mr. Obama was supposed to be a transformational figure, with an almost magical ability to transcend partisan differences and unify the nation. Once voters got to know him — and once he had eliminated Hillary Clinton’s initial financial and organizational advantage — he was supposed to sweep easily to the nomination, then march on to a huge victory in November.
Well, now he has an overwhelming money advantage and the support of much of the Democratic establishment — yet he still can’t seem to win over large blocs of Democratic voters, especially among the white working class.
As a result, he keeps losing big states. And general election polls suggest that he might well lose to John McCain.
What’s gone wrong?
According
to many Obama supporters, it’s all Hillary’s fault. If she hadn’t
launched all those vile, negative attacks on their hero — if she had
just gone away — his aura would be intact, and his mission of unifying
America still on track ...
From the beginning, I wondered
what Mr. Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his talk of a new politics and
declarations that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” (waiting for
to do what, exactly?) would mean to families troubled by lagging wages,
insecure jobs and fear of losing health coverage.
The answer, from Ohio and Pennsylvania, seems pretty clear: not much. Mrs. Clinton has been able to stay in the race, against heavy odds, largely because her no-nonsense style, her obvious interest in the wonkish details of policy, resonate with many voters in a way that Mr. Obama’s eloquence does not ..."
Read the rest ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/opinion/25krugman.html?ex=1209787200&en=3e278a9d7fc63637&ei=5070&emc=eta1Positively,
Carolan
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