I went easy on Matt Bai in my earlier post. Jon Bernstein does not. Here’s a choice passage:
bq. It seems that Bai has heard of Jimmy Carter. That’s good! Now, my assignment for Matt Bai: go back and read about Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign. And then try to argue that Barack Obama, backed by Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy (and established party insiders such as David Axelrod and David Plouffe) was anything like Carter in ’76. What you’re going to find is that “thirty years ago” was the era of the upstart, not now. Citing Jimmy Carter to make a point that thirty years ago “you needed a party infrastructure to make a serious run for higher office” is like citing Spiro Agnew to make the point that at forty years ago, only seriously accomplished politicians with a deserved reputation for personal integrity were considered for the Vice Presidency.
The whole post is highly recommended.