envelopeEmail to a friend

Media Views

Newsweek: Obama’s No-Brainer on Education (7/21/08) by Jonathan Alter

Echoing Matt Miller at the Wall Street Journal, Alter calls for Barack Obama to move to the right:

All the criticism of Obama's moving to the center is misguided. General elections are won among moderate swing voters, many of whom would respond well to a Democratic candidate willing to show he can slip the ideological stranglehold of a retrograde liberal interest group.

Somehow Republican candidates have managed to win elections without showing that they can slip the ideological strangleholds of retrograde conservative interest groups--but apparently this option is not available to Democratic candidates. Alter specifies that Obama should specifically push to the right on education policy by taking on the "paleolithic" teachers' unions: "He should tell the unions they must change their focus from job security and the protection of ineffective teachers to higher pay and true accountability for performance—or face extinction." It's not clear what would lie behind this threat to exterminate teachers' unions, but it is clear that making such a threat would alienate one of the main fonts of grassroots energy in the Democratic coalition--akin to a Republican candidate turning on the NRA or evangelical churches. Why do so many pundits offer Obama advice that would seem likely to torpedo his campaign? It's like Harold Ford (also in Newsweek saying that Obama should have gone bowling again and again to show he wasn't a quitter. Or Juan Williams' Wall Street Journal advice (6/6/08) that "admit to sins of using race for political expediency--by knowingly buying into divisive, mean messages being delivered from the pulpit." Now there's a winning slogan.

[More Media Views]

FAIR does not endorse every opinion expressed or vouch for facts presented here, except by ourselves. Send link suggestions to jnaureckas@fair.org.