Thursday, October 04, 2007

Obama's flameout

Last Spring things looked great for Barack Obama. He not only raised a lot of campaign money, the number of people donating implied that he had deeper support than Hillary. Polls showed Hillary ahead but he was close behind.c Also important, he came out better in match ups against potential Republicans. Hillary has strong voter negatives. All he needed was for Hillary to stumble and he would be in the White House.

Even the questions about him being "black enough" seemed to exist just to convince whites that he wasn't "too black".

But it is Obama who has stumbled. He had falled much further back in the polls. His fundraising is falling way behind Hillary.

A couple of weeks ago I pointed out his proposal for reworking the Income Tax. While some candidates can ride a major proposal into the White House, it is a danger sign when an established candidate suddenly starts coming up with major proposals. It is a sign that his support is failing and is desperate attract attention.

That brings us to Obama's proposal for a world-wide elimination of nuclear weapons. Every nation with nukes would destroy them but retain enough technical knowledge to re-arm if needed.

I have a one-word answer for why this will not work - smallpox.

Smallpox was eliminated world-wide as a contagious disease in the 1970s but the USA and the USSR kept small supplies in their biological weapons labs. In the 1980s it was proposed that these should also be destroyed but they never were. Neither side trusted the other. Both were sure that the other side would cheat and hold back a sample.

The same will be true with nuclear weapons. Most countries will not disarm because they don't trust the other side to disarm.

Obama should know that. Either he is playing to the extreme anti-war wing of the party or he is dangerously naive. Either way, this probably disqualifies him as a vice-presidential candidate as well as a presidential candidate.

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