I don't want to make it a theme on this blog to react to horrors committed by columnists in the Guardian - it is my paper of choice after all - but this one today was a shocker:
Writing about the US election, Gary Younge sees the prospect of Bush getting re-elected and asks what should we think of the US electorate if this happens. He doesn't want to call them stupid (that's nice of him) but clearly he thinks there can be no good case for actually choosing Bush. So if he wins it must be down to - wait for it : "a lack of much of an electoral alternative", because Kerry also supported the war in the Senate, and he likens the choice between Bush and Kerry to that between Chirac and Le Pen in the last round of the French Presidential election.
I would just ask him why Kerry won the Democratic nomination ? It seems obvious that it was because he was seen as the candidate most likely to win the election, and that if a strident anti-war candidate like Dean had been chosen there was a strong fear that he wouldn't have had a chance of winning against Bush. And this was a political calculation based on a more comprehensive understanding of the US electorate than Gary Younge's.
How can a key commentator for the Guardian on these elections be so crass in his analysis, and only 4 weeks away from the election? Thank god for blogs so we can easily read sensible stuff !
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