Broder Shows His Colors Early

by Steve Soto

Broder's at it again, with a column against Obama that demonstrates a desire to fluff McCain at the expense of reality and facts in his own paper.

There is nothing revelatory in Broder's expected attack against Obama here. Broder is a water carrier for the Beltway elites and the hacks that make their living off the current GOP/corporate stranglehold over this country. Of course Broder is unhappy that Obama won't debate McCain by McCain's rules. Of course Broder is unhappy that Obama refuses to be boxed into a broken fundraising system that up until recently advantaged GOP charlatans who talk of general election public financing while going around the limits to support "independent actors" who savaged unilaterally disarmed Democrats.

Here are a couple of dandies from the Dean of the Beltway:

McCain benefits from a long-established reputation as a man who says what he believes. His shifts in position that have occurred in this campaign seem not to have damaged that aura.

This statement is undermined by the findings in the most recent poll by Broder’s own paper, out in the last few days. McCain has in fact suffered from his flip-flops away from past independence into Bush Stepford Cultism. Fifty-seven (57) percent of the public thinks McCain will continue Bush’s policies rather than be the maverick or independent that Broder still imagines him to be. And for all of Broder’s infatuation with the McCain of lore, he never addresses why it is that almost half of those polled (49%) now say that McCain would do too little to represent the interests of middle class America, but 40% believe he would do too much for Corporate America.

But it's also the case that the multiple joint town meetings McCain proposed would be a real service to the public and that suspending the dollar chase for the duration of the campaign, as McCain but not Obama will do, would be a major step toward establishing the credibility of the election process.

“Establishing the credibility of the election process?” You’ve been a creature of this broken system for decades, and helped it along. You’ve held Democrats and Republicans to a different standard. And now, it’s now Barack Obama’s responsibility to play by your broken rules that have ensured corporate/GOP control over the machinery of government, while you get a pass?

Mr. Broder, who do you think bears responsibility for the fact that only 14% of the country in your paper’s own poll thinks the country is on the right track? Who bears responsibility for why 84% of the public feels the country is on the wrong track, the highest number on record? You do Mr. Broder; you and all the bipartisan members of your Beltway crowd that have tut-tutted your way through this country’s downward spiral these last eight years into a disaster capitalism economy so detached from Main Street America that 84% reject you and your crowd. And you've been there yourself, cheering along George W. Bush. But now it’s Barack Obama who is responsible for establishing the credibility of an election process you broke?