Last night Barack Obama decisively moved to clinch the nomination as Democratic candidate for president. It was a game-changer for the pundits, who finally realized that it will be Obama vs. McCain in November. Even Der Spiegel’s Gabor Steingart, one of Obama’s biggest detractors in Germany, now admits the truth:
Mit ihrer Niederlage in North Carolina und dem knappen Ergebnis in Indiana ist das Rennen für sie gelaufen. Wenn nicht noch ein Wunder geschieht, ist Barack Obama der Kandidat seiner Partei. Sein Vorsprung ist knapp, aber uneinholbar.Hillary Clinton II. ist weit gegangen. Es wird Zeit, dass sie den Rückweg antritt. (With her loss in N. Caroline and the slim margin of victory in Indiana, the race is over for her. Barring a miracle, Barack Obama is his party’s candidate. His lead is small but insurmountable. Hillary Clinton has come a long way. It is time that she back out.)
This is the same Gabor Steingart who has been writing for months that there was no substance to the candidacy of Barack Obama, he had too much bagage, his pastor was a crazy radical, he didn’t wear a flag lapel pin, etc. After Obama’s huge Iowa caucus victory in January it was Gabor Steingart who told German readers that Obama’s campaign was a fairy tale that was doomed to failure:
Kinder lieben Märchen, weil sich in dieser Erzählform das Wunderbare und die Wirklichkeit vermischen. Das vor Urzeiten Erlebte, von Generation zu Generation weitererzählt und verfremdet, wärmt die kleinen Seelen. Die Leidenschaft für das Märchenhafte bleibt auch im Alter erhalten. Eines der modernen Märchen heißt "Iowa". (Children love fairy tales, because in this form of narrative the miraculous is mixed up with reality. Experiences of our ancestors are passed along from generation to generation and warm the spirits of small children. The passion for fairy tales lives on even for adults. One of the modern fairy tales is "Iowa".)
But, as it turns out, it was Steingart himself who was living in a neoconservative fairy tale. The reality is that Americans are hungry for change, and they have found an inspiriational leader in Senator Barack Obama.
