Friday, February 8, 2008
Billary losing??
Listening to the news this morning, I was surprised to hear some so-called pundits saying they thought Obama would win the next few Democratic primaries but that Billary would win a few "important" ones (Texas) and eventually eek out a narrow win. I was so struck by this because they've been so wrong about the two of them. They said American voters wouldn't vote for a black man . . . but Iowa went for him enthusiastically. They said Hillary would be trounced in New Hampshire . . . but she got emotional and won.
This year it seems the pundits have as much ability to predict the outcome of the Democrats' primary season as weathermen have to predict whether it will be sunny or snowy tomorrow.
Perhaps Peggy Noonan knows something, however. In her always calm and engrossing style, today she has an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Can Mrs Clinton Lose? which includes this startling and literate paragraph:
This year it seems the pundits have as much ability to predict the outcome of the Democrats' primary season as weathermen have to predict whether it will be sunny or snowy tomorrow.
Perhaps Peggy Noonan knows something, however. In her always calm and engrossing style, today she has an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Can Mrs Clinton Lose? which includes this startling and literate paragraph:
Political professionals are leery of saying, publicly, that she is losing, because they said it before New Hampshire and turned out to be wrong. Some of them signaled their personal weariness with Clintonism at that time, and fear now, as they report, to look as if they are carrying an agenda. One part of the Clinton mystique maintains: Deep down journalists think she's a political Rasputin who will not be dispatched. Prince Yusupov served him cupcakes laced with cyanide, emptied a revolver, clubbed him, tied him up and threw him in a frozen river. When he floated to the surface they found he'd tried to claw his way from under the ice. That is how reporters see Hillary.I was, first, pleased that it wasn't just inexperienced old me who notes that pundits don't want to acknowledge that Billary is losing. (Besides, who'd want to risk her wrath if they say she'll lose and then she wins - and anyway she'll still be a senator.) As a speechwriter and inner-circle-member of both Reagan and Nixon administrations, Noonan knows whereof she speaks.
Labels: 2008 election, politics, reflections, writing
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