Wednesday, July 30, 2008

SOME GUYS HAVE ALL THE LUCK

Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist and a self-styled Messiah and a Nazi and a commie and a phony-progressive centrist and an elitist and a sexist and an egomaniac and a flip-flopper and an empty suit and a priss and a gaffe machine and a flag hater and a troop hater and a hater of rural and working-class white people and is full of hubris.

Oh, and according to Jack Shafer of Slate, nothing negative ever sticks to him.

...What's unique about Obama and his candidacy is that almost none of the stuff the press throws at him sticks. Nor is the press alone in its inability to stick him. Hillary Clinton hurled rocks, knives, and acid at her rival even before the primaries (see this Jake Tapper piece from ABC News) and later upped the ante in desperation. She claimed that he was unprepared to serve as commander in chief and accused him of insulting gun owners and the religiously faithful. The eleventh-hour tactics may have won Clinton votes, but they failed to undermine Obama.

You could call Obama the Teflon-coated candidate, but this would miss the fact that his slickness goes all the way to the core. What has gone unexplored until now is this: How did Barack Obama achieve superslipperiness without becoming greasy?....


Yup, nothing sticks to Obama -- you can read Shafer if you want his thesis about why that's the case. I'll just point out that we know Shafer is right because Obama has a 98-point lead in the polls even though he's running an uninspiring campaign against the most brilliant Republican campaign operation of our generation at a time when the incumbent Republican president is overwhelmingly popular and voters just want more of the same. If it weren't for the Teflon, Obama would be in a tight race!

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