Sunday, August 03, 2008

Stark Reminders...

Steve Stark is a proof positive that you can write nothing original or even sensible for years on end and still be hailed as a pundit of the first rank.
In his current Boston Phoenix column Stark notes several "important hurdles" Senator Obama will have to vault in order to win this fall.
These include:

"No candidate in modern times has ever been elected president with a voting record that could be identified as his party's most liberal or conservative, yet in 2007 Obama was designated the former (By the National Journal)".

Let the record show the above quote is stuffed with qualifiers like a Thanksgiving turkey..."could be identified" alone is a howler par excellence.
First off, plent of ultra conservatives have won the US Presidency, Ronald Reagan, the current inhabitant of the White House...they got there by being cleverer than the democrats at the subtle art of concealing their falangism.
Fools like Steve Stark helped by framing a meme that someone who is "too liberal" (a status that conveniently can't be quatified objectively)) can never and should never be president.
And of course lets not forget the curious habit of the National Journal in that every four years they reflexively identify the democratic nominee as "the most liberal" ever.
In fact a scant four years ago, the "most liberal" laurels were crowned atop the noggin of sober plainspoken Senator John Forbes Kerry by the National Journal.
And yet SOMEHOW in the last four years, Barack Obama has surged past the Junior Senator from Massachusetts and become the most liberal nominee since...the last one.
That is how the National Journal works my friends, never mind the fact that no one reads it except pundits desperate for rational sounding nonsense to prop up their own prejudices...which makes them a great source to Steve Stark.
Meanwhile just what the hell did Senator Obama do to become the most liberal ever...come out banging the pots for the Great Leap Forward or some damn thing?
Steve Stark though is silent on this point, the National Journal sez he is a lib-eral and that is bad enough for him.

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