Dave Weigel wants to know which hack pundit will draw a parallel between Adrian Fenty's (predicted) loss in the Washington, D.C. mayoral primary and the political travails of President Obama:
My question: Who'll be the first pundit to discuss Fenty's defeat as a sign of things to come for Barack Obama? Fenty endorsed Obama in 2008, and the two men have been outwardly friendly with one another, and among the reasons he's expected to lose are arrogance and some misplaced spending. Voila: Instant comparison! ...
So where does the first "Fenty = Obama" post-mortem come from? Election-watcher Michael Barone? Racial politics guru Pat Buchanan? A commentator at PJTV? Some obscure blogger linked by Instapundit?
The answer is: me! In fact the parallels have been bouncing around in my head for a few weeks. Fenty, like Obama, has pursued an aggressive reform agenda that has produced rapid, impressive policy results, while devoting little attention to managing the optics of his administration. He's gotten little credit for his accomplishments and generated a massive backlash from the opposition, some of which has come in the form of infuriating the majority racial group. In Obama's case, the economic crisis is the primary driver of his struggles. In Fenty's, the crisis -- which is minuscule in the upper-Northwest areas where he runs strong but a deep depression in the poorer areas where he's getting slaughtered -- is a smaller but still contributing factor.
Obviously, important differences exist. But the general arc of the two has some pretty significant similarities.