Joobo the King of Wisdom

The London Times Figures Out the Downercrats: They are Both Losers

The Times of London allowed this startling article to appear in their paper today. It concludes why the Downercrats cannot win this election - because both presidential candidates are losers.

Obama and Clinton: two cynical losers

How do they do it? How do the Democrats manage to squander repeatedly and with such ease the chance of a lifetime? What inverse alchemy have they created that turns the gold bullion of electoral opportunity into the base metal of political oblivion?

Eight years of George Bush, an unpopular war and a recession have handed the Democrats their best chance, not merely of winning their first presidential election in 12 years, but of achieving a rare, once-in-a- generation transformational shift in American politics.

Four fifths of the American public think the country is on the wrong track. The President wallows in the highest disapproval ratings since polling began. The Republican Party has spent most of a decade bungling almost everything it touches, abandoning its principles and sinking into a mire of corruption, hypocrisy and incompetence.

And here we are, six months from a presidential election, and it is the Democrats once again who seem to be staring defeat in the face. It's like a soccer match in which one team keeps conceding a penalty in the final minutes only to watch as the opponents repeatedly boot the penalty kick high into the stands.

Now, we argue with Baker's reasoning, but, that aside, listen to the following:

Hillary Clinton's solid victory in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday has condemned the party to many more weeks of strife and sinking public esteem. There's a popular view among Democrats and the media establishment that the reason for the party's current disarray is that it just happens to have two most extraordinary candidates: talented, attractive, and in their gender and race, excitingly new. But there's an alternative explanation, which I suspect the voters have grasped rather better than their necromancers in the media. Both are losers.

The longer the Democratic race goes on, the more obvious it appears that each is deeply, perhaps ineradicably flawed.

Until about a month ago Barack Obama had done a brilliant job of presenting himself as a transcendent figure, the mixed-race candidate with bipartisan appeal who promised to heal the historic and modern rifts in American life.

But the mask has slipped. Under pressure in a Democratic primary, Mr Obama has sounded just like any other tax-raising, government-loving Democratic politician. Worse, he has revealed himself to be a member of that special subset of the party's liberal elite - a well-educated man with a serious superiority complex.

His worst moment of the campaign was when he was caught telling liberal sophisticates about his anthropological observations on the campaign trail. In the misery of their daily lives, he said, the hicks out there in the sticks cling to religion and guns and the other irrational necessities of the unenlightened life. His wife had earlier told voters that they should be grateful that someone of his protean talents had deigned to come among them and be their president.

The events of the last month have also revealed another side of Mr Obama that threatens to undermine his whole message. He is a cynic. He tells the mavens of San Francisco one thing and the great unwashed of Pennsylvania another. In defending his long relationship with the Rev Jeremiah Wright, he shopped his own grandmother, comparing the reverend's views (God Damn America! The US deliberately spread Aids among the black population) to his grandmother's occasionally expressed fears about the potential of being the victim of crime at the hands of an African-American.

This is the main reason why, as April comes to an end, it looks more and more likely that John McCain will be the next President.