Letters to the Editor
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The discredited pundit class
I hate to use yet another sports analogy but it describes our pundit class so perfectly I can't resist. Last night watching Klein's fellow pundits repeat the same tired canards about the primary, I couldn't help but think of washed up announcers from the 80s the first time Joe Montana led the 49ers to the Super Bowl. Here was a new-fangled passing game that no one had ever seen before, the 49ers were rolling opponents and yet the announcers kept talking about how they HAD TO HAVE a ground game to win it all. They went on to win title after title with their West coast offense. Obama, the pundits all say, just HAS TO EARN the hard-working white votes over; in fact he is crumblign withotu their help. Obama came out of nowhere to win more votes than any primary candidate ever, beat an anointed candidate with a former prez as spokesman, brought millions of new voters to the ranks, developed new-fangled ways of reaching those voters and their pocketbooks, operated a groundbreaking new strategy for winning the nomination, and ALL the pundits can talk about is he can't get the lower class white vote. You would think at this point in the election they might give him and his campaign managers some credit for knowing what they are doing and that maybe their strategy for the general election is just as solid. The point is that pundits like Klein or Buchanan or Friedman just keep coming back with the same old bromides about elections (they were wrong about Wright having an effect), foreign affairs (wrong too many times to list), domestic policy (everything from the debt crisis to Katrina)and they are being proven WRONG time and time again. Yet nobody except for GG is pointing out the little emperors have no clothes.