The Restoration

You don't have to be a historian to notice a nasty monarchist streak creeping into American politics. Kennedies, Bushes, and now Clintons, each with their enthusiastic partisans. The unsophisticated, so I suspect, cling to monarchy out an attachment to a real or imagined past, and some sheep-like devotion to a leader symbol.

Watching James Carville, Lanny Davis and Terry McCauliffe slime their way across the tube the other day, I felt sure that I saw something more sinister at work: the naked lust for power. Of course that's the kind of creatures they are - you can't really blame a snake for being slithering or a cockroach for scuttling in the dark.

I really expected much better from Paul Krugman, though, but I surely didn't get it. I have often proclaimed him the best of columnists, but his offering today is both shallow and dishonest. His latest attempt to help resurrect Lady Voldemort offers this:

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.

Nice strawman, Paul. Your candidate is widely disliked in most of the country, tainted by scandal, and has run an incompetent campaign, thus frittering away seeming inevitability, so it's a good time to attack the other candidate for not being Moses and Alexander the Great in one body.

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.

Most polls tend to show him doing rather better against McCain than Hillary. Hillary has raised, and spent, over $100 million. Obama has done even better, but his financial advantage was significant in exactly one State, Pennsylvania, where all the demographics were stacked against him, and where Hillary can count herself a native.

But how negative has the Clinton campaign been, really?

Hillary: Obama isn't a Muslim, as far as I know. That's slimy, Prof Krugman, and you know it.

Let me offer an alternative suggestion: maybe his transformational campaign isn’t winning over working-class voters because transformation isn’t what they’re looking for.

So what is it that the Prof thinks sixty plus, poorly educated white voters are missing from Obama? The problem is, you see, that Obama simply isn't wonkish enough.

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.

Well let me mention an alternative of my own, one that, unlike Prof Krugman's, is actually supported by the polling data: race. The Clinton's are a bit too cute to play the race card personally, but their surrogates are all over, talking about suicide pacts, subjecting Obama to religious tests no other candidate faced, and broadly hinting that an African American can't win.

Krugman saves his two most dishonest paragraphs for last:

But the message that Democrats are ready to continue and build on a grand tradition doesn’t mesh well with claims to be bringing a “new politics” and rhetoric that places blame for our current state equally on both parties.

And unless Democrats can get past this self-inflicted state of confusion, there’s a very good chance that they’ll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this fall.

I have never heard Obama blame "our current state equally on both parties." I wonder where Krugman thinks he heard this? Of course it is true that Bill Clinton's reckless personal behavior played a huge role in delivering us into the hands of George Bush.

If the Democrats do lose, how much of the blame will be deserved by Hillary's dishonesty and rule or ruin tactics? I would guess plenty.