They Pay For this Kind of "Analysis"?

Steve Kraske and Dave Helling needed to team up to produce the ludicrous "analysis" that the Kansas City Star recently published, posted and presumably paid for. In it, they claim that the "hard part" for the Democrats may be piecing the party back together after the primary season.

I wish I had been there to see the article get written. Was it written over the course of a tequila shot drinking contest, with the winner getting to eat the worm and the loser being made to list his name first? That would be kind of funny to watch.

Or did they write it while grilling wieners in an enclosed space, not realizing that the carbon monoxide was slowing their brain activity to a snail's pace? I would have rescued them.

Regardless of the circumstances, it takes a special kind of opacity to worry about the Democrats on the day that Obama clinched the nomination. After a primary season that saw record numbers of democrats, including millions of new voters, come to the polls to vote for their favored brand of CHANGE, the Democratic party has never been stronger.

From the beginning, the overwhelming majority of democrats have voiced the opinion that either Obama or Clinton would be great, regardless of which one they were supporting. While an occasional few have fallen to the intoxication of partisanship, they are not representative of a trend, or even of their more sober sides. Give them a week or two to calm down, and they will be fine. (Mr. Martin, were you really fearing a heart attack while watching a rules committee? That's not normal, and a specialist of some sort should be consulted.)

Because expressions of anger between the Clinton and Obama sides were apparently so hard to find, these two journalists were forced to resort to quotations of anger toward - journalists! They quote Mike Sanders:

“I firmly believe that Hillary Clinton was held (by the media) to a different standard than every other presidential candidate who ran in this cycle,” said Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders. “Not just Barack Obama, not just John McCain, but every other candidate.”

Helling and Kraske are weakly attempting to portray Sanders' dissatisfaction with how badly journalists did their job as some kind of dissatisfaction with his fellow Democrats. I suggest that they ask Mr. Sanders if he will be voting for Senator Obama in a match against McCain, and I promise that the answer will be a strong "yes".

The fact of the matter is that the dissension among the Democrats is nothing compared to that among the Republicans. Of course, in the heat of the moment, a few petulant Clinton supporters are going to overstate their disappointment in seeing their candidate fall short, but nobody who supports Hillary's progressive agenda and Democratic values is going to fail to see those same qualities in Barack Obama.

Within a couple weeks, Obama will be riding high atop a surge of enthusiastic Democrats eager to bring change to our country. I hope Kraske and Helling invite me to observe whatever collaboration they dream up then. It appears they may need adult supervision.

(I enjoy making fun of Kraske and Helling, because I'm frankly jealous they get paid decent money to produce such mediocre foolish verbiage a couple times a week, while I produce high-quality foolish verbiage almost every day, for free. I know, deep in my heart, that the only thing separating me from the professional pundits is a j-school degree and a willingness to really dive down deep into the murky depths of obtuseness and emerge with pearls like the article discussed here.)