(2007-12-14) Taibbi Obama Surge

Matt Taibbi on the Barack Obama surge. It's now so bad that a poll last month found that fifty-six percent of all likely voters agreed with the phrase that the presidential race is "annoying and a waste of time" - a shocking number, given that it excludes the forty to fifty percent of Americans who already don't vote in presidential races. (Political Disengagement)

Obama has raised $80 million, and it would be a grievous mistake to describe his candidacy as a grass-roots affair, particularly when he counts among his bundlers many of the lobbyists and political-finance pros who buttress the Clinton run... Worse still, Obama's financial backing is reflected in some of his Senate votes and campaign positions, including most notably his support for expanding NAFTA to Peru, limiting the ability of injured workers and consumers to sue for damages, and pouring federal funds into E85 corn-based Ethanol, an alternative fuel for which the market is dominated by the Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland Company. More than once I heard Obama give stirring speeches, only to mar them with plugs for ethanol.

In what may turn out to be the final cruel irony in a career full of them, Hillary Clinton, at the climactic moment of her political life, now sees herself transformed into a symbol of the corrupt Status Quo... In a stunning Zogby poll whose (Nov26) release coincided with Obama's recent charge to the top, a survey of prospective voters showed that Hillary would lose to all the top five Republicans in the election, while either Obama or John Edwards would defeat or tie every single one.