More Stupidity From Gabor Steingart

Der Spiegel augments its cover story on John McCain this week with some commentary from my favorite neocon-wannabe journalist Gabor Steingart. For months I have been following Steingart's awful reporting on Barack Obama's campaign, starting with his piece on Obama's first great win at the Iowa Caucuses in January. Steingart interpreted that great victory as a sure sign that Obama's candidacy was doomed for failure.  Ever since Iowa, Steingart has been predicting failure for Barack Obama, even as Steingart cozies up to Rupert Murdoch to join the right-wing extremist commentators at the Wall Street Journal.

Now that Barack Obama has clinched his party's nomination, Steingart predicts that Obama will fail again in the general election. You see, Steingart knows that Obama has divided the Democratic Party: Democrats Divided by an Obama-Shaped Wedge (auf Deutsch).  But while other observers see the party divided into the Clintonistas and the Obama supporters, Steingart knows that there are in fact THREE factions:

As if the enmity between Clinton and Obama weren't already enough, the past few weeks have witnessed the formation of a third group of Democrats. This group's profile is a bit harder to define and they aren't led by one spokesperson. Nevertheless, this is the group that might very well come to dominate the mood of the convention. These are the Doubters.

[...]Obama fever has only spread to a part of the Democratic Party, the majority of the US media -- and two thirds of Germans. The election, though, will be won exactly where America is most American -- where people drive big cars, carry weapons, consider the death penalty to be indispensable. And where at the entrance to the supermarket there is a sign reading "We support our troops."

This is silly analysis coming from someone who has rarely ventured outside the Beltway around Washington DC.  What does Gabor Steingart know about working class Americans?  Here's an invitation:  come with me this October to canvass for Barack Obama in the trailer parks of New Hampshire. You might be surprised, Herr Steingart, at what people who "drive big cars, carry weapons, etc." really are thinking these days.

Comments

[Hattie]

I'm worried about the white vote, especially since I believe that the Republicans are going to appeal to anti-affirmative action sentiment.
When you talk to those folks in New Hampshire you might find that they are very anti affirmative action.