Jonah Goldberg is a hack

Barrack Obama is pretty good at saying very little while continuing to win state after state. He doesn't really address specific policy because he's doesn't have to. Instead of tacking to the left, as would be expected, he continues on with his cult of personality, which works just fine for him. Jonah Goldberg doesn't seem to like this. He takes Obama to task for his rhetorical flourishes, implying that (gasp!) political speech during an election cycle doesn't resemble the grit of everyday American life:

"It seems that Barack Obama can win blacks and that he can win whites; where he has trouble, electorally speaking, is winning blacks and whites," and that in "in states that actually 'look like America,' he tends to get beaten by Hillary Clinton."

This is, of course, bullcorn. Obama gets 35% of the Latino population and roughly 45% of the white males, but his support among Latinos rises when the population has a low amount of foreign-born immigrants, as noted here in the Daily Kos. In states like New Mexico, Obama got half the Latino vote. Not dominant, obviously, but not anemic.

So despite breaking even with US-born Latinos and white males, Goldberg tries to paint Obama as another ivory-tower phony pol who wins over rural whites (who does that sound like? Nixon thru Bush II?) which would be understandable if Goldberg has had a history of positioning himself as a political realist concerned with the ins and outs of political theatre and framing opposing candidates.

But he isn't. He's a "principles" guy, meaning that anytime conservative candidates or movements fall out of favor, it's because conservativism is more concerned with "principles." "We're not trying to win, we're sticking to our guns." This is a good way to spin "we're too far to the right and people are sick of us getting a hard-on from our dreams of a security state." If you're a principles and ideas guy, why write a framing article about a Democratic candidate that fails under the most cursory scrutiny? Liberals (or progressives) have had a hard time recovering from their brush back in '94 and have often come off as pretty opportunistic in their climb back up the hill, but they haven't tried to deny it as stridently and self-righteously as guys like Will and Goldberg have.