Archive for May, 2008
It’s hard to resist commenting again on the Democratic presidential race, while it’s still relevant.
First, the performance of the traditional mainstream media, once again, deserves a failing grade. The drumbeat of fatalistic gloom leveled against Hillary Clinton has been relentless. I wasn’t sympathetic to her earlier in the campaign but the mainstream media campaign against Hillary does bring out a human reaction in some of us that enough is enough.
There can no doubt about one thing: the mainstream media doesn’t like the Clintons. And many super delegates, many of whom are news junkies like me, watch these media outlets thus creating a heard-like mentality to urge Hillary to drop out of the race.
The Clintons never treated the media like royalty and many of these high-profile broadcast reporters feel they are entitled to such treatment. I admit that I still occasionally watch the mainstream media because it does have influence over people who make important decisions, like the delegates who will select the Democratic nominee for president. The overwhelming majority of pundits selected to provide analysis have delivering the same message for weeks: Hillary can’t win and should get out now. Someone should remind the DNC rule-makers that presidential campaigns are not won during the summer but after Labor Day.
The scrappy, street-fighter image Senator Clinton has carved out for herself is working and seems authentic. In addition to the message of fighting for the working class, she is also fighting against the establishment media.
There is no question that early in the campaign, the Clinton campaign made some inexplicable messaging mistakes such as not communicating a post-partisan message and failing to emphasize the Senator’s reach across the aisle on tough issues (excluding the Iraq war authorization vote). It seems the campaign theorized that if she communicated a message exclusively to core Democrats and largely ignored her opponents this would be the path of least resistance to return to the White House. This strategy misread the mood of the county – just look at the President’s record-low approval ratings for the past 24 months. And it was a strategy of playing not to lose instead or sitting on the lead which partly contributed to the Senator Obama’s rise in the polls.
I have already blogged about the debacle of Michigan and Florida. Changing the date of the presidential primaries is not the voters’ fault and to do anything to devalue and disenfranchise these voters would be inexcusable.
I find it sad and pathetic that some people like Donna Brazille, a DNC rule maker, seem to be willing to throw the Michigan and Florida voters under the bus. It’s particularly ironic for Brazille to brazenly dismiss some 4 million voters given a) she was Al Gore’s Campaign Manager in 2000; and b) She was appointed Chair of the Democratic National Committee’s Voting Rights Institute after the post-election fight over counting all the votes in Florida.
But many things in this campaign have a cruel irony.
