2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

i think hillary's political skills here have been really strong in this past cycle ... im impressed with how the narrative really has kind of turned in her favor

er, this is how these things usually go. Hils has got fuck all to do with it.

the political press, awakening to its responsibilities, starts to look at minutiae a little closely, and thus the "turn-around narrative" kicks off.

the media is afraid of pissing off the public and therefore follows polls. the campaign has moved to states in which she leads or is tied in the polls. ergo, the coverage is friendlier to her.

"starts"

"a little"

xpost

yea, i think a big part of it has been the media-favors-obama narrative. with that as the underlying theme, it's facilitated a decent amount of press scrutiny on obama.

i'm also amazed at how little attention the delegate math gets in the media, when that is fundamentally what matters. there's been relatively little attention paid to the fact that even if hillary has a big night, it won't change the delegate count.

yeah right dudes i hate to sound like Daria Hand here but you cant have it both ways; either shes a sleazy manipulator or she's not, but its not "this is just the way the press works" when shes just used strikethrough on sleazy

i'm also amazed at how little attention the delegate math gets in the media, when that is fundamentally what matters. there's been relatively little attention paid to the fact that even if hillary has a big night, it won't change the delegate count.

-- Mark Clemente, Tuesday, March 4, 2008 10:48 AM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

but thats also because neither one of the candidates are going to reach the total needed to win

hillary has done a good job of projecting the public confidence of a winner despite the fact that shes clearly fighting uphill here and i think she deserves credit for that

did anyone see her 'hello' to The View? Halperin linked to it. if she'd been doing stuff like that throughout the campaign i think she'd be in a better place right now

"uphill"

yuks

but you cant have it both ways; either shes a sleazy manipulator or she's not, but its not "this is just the way the press works

i don't like hillary but i'm not one to totally side with the "hillary is a supreme manipulative evil sorceress" crowd. i think you're pretty accurate about her political skills this past week, she's really shaped the media narratives lately in a big way. and like i said, the "media is against us" theme is a big part of that. when she first pulled that out, i thought it was a stupid, self-pitying move, but i think it ended up getting a lot of traction

well it has the benefit of being true!

how so -- bcz they show her being uttterly phony too often?

xpost - yea but i think it's a bit more complicated than that, there are a lot of things about her and her campaign that the media has given a free pass on

She's attempting to manipulate a natural tendency of the press and the press is falling for it, even though they know it's manipulation. The Clintons have always cried foul! And sometimes they're right, which is why the press responds to it.

This is just politics and Obama's doing it too, of course, just to a different set of tendencies. Meanwhile, McCain's getting way better treatment from the press than either of them. Hopefully this will give Obama the traction to tell the press they've been going too easy on McCain in the GE.

well it has the benefit of being true!

-- Tracer Hand, Tuesday, March 4, 2008 10:53 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

oh really? how did pushing questions about rezko obama answered over a year ago help make things 'fair' - they're not pushing her on releasing her tax docs

sorry man i dont buy the victimization thing. she started out with a huge advantage, she was the presumed nominee, and the press acted as such. obama's poll numbers jumping in january wasn't due to favorable press coverage

hillary has done a good job of projecting the public confidence of a winner despite the fact that shes clearly fighting uphill here and i think she deserves credit for that

Yea, the 3 am phone call scare ads are the mark of a real winner and are not transparently desperate.

they are to us but to the dem voter? i think she's solidified her competitiveness

Hitchens: I'm amazed that campaigns use slogans instead of substance.

It's unfortunate for Obama that Rez trial started yesterday; that is the real reason Obama has to answer the questions again, annoying as this must be for his campaign. Hillary bringing it up again might make the electorate bored of/resolved about the issue by the time McCain becomes a factor for Candidate Obama, so possible blessing in the long run if he does well tonight.

deej in the last two months, two broadcasters have actually publicly apologized for making insulting personal remarks about hillary! one of them resigned!

helping to contribute to a fake narrative about how persecuted she is

I think no matter what the headlines are tomorrow the strategy of sitting back and taking double-digit losses week after week in order to win a couple of states by narrow margins (states you were ahead in by double digit margins just a few weeks ago) is ultimately a losing one.

Sorry, as Hitchens goes these days that's pretty good, and he's not amazed, he's heaving a sight at the dumbassery of it. Also he gets points for opening w/ the great Albert Brooks lines.

As for "We Are the People We Have Been Waiting For" (in which case, one can only suppose that now that we have arrived, we can all go home)

(btw, elmo, Obama apparently borrowed it from the hopis after Maria Shriver did)

yeah deej, they humiliated themselves in public because they just have this indefinable urge to help out hillary clinton

tracer I think that's an argument against Hill's case--O'Reilly used the term "lynch mob" in reference to Obama and he's still sitting pretty.

yeah no one is humiliating themselves in public smearing obama, no sir

like I said above, Obama's done the same shit, or Obama supporters have--they pushed the narrative that the press is pro-Hillary because after 11 straight losses they still haven't counted her out, and then a lot more "hillary is done" stories started appearing.

how about this pro-hillary column from a pulitzer-prize winning nytimes regular:

Has Hillary truly changed, and grown from her mistakes? Has she learned to be less stubborn and imperious and secretive and vindictive and entitled? Or has she merely learned to mask her off-putting and self-sabotaging qualities better? If elected, would the old Hillary pop up, dragging us back to the dysfunctional Clinton kingdom?

you all maybe be taking this "media narrative" angle a liiiiiiittle too far

should we start posting Krugman columns?

agian?

I don't mind her making the argument, I mind people thinking there's some sort of factual basis behind it. It's a campaign tactic. The press' favoritism is mood swingy.

Eppy show me the Krugman column -- or any media comment anywhere -- that lays into Obama's personality or character (i.e. says things like "imperious" and "secretive" and "dysfunctional") and i'll give that to you

uh "cult of personality"? like accusing him of being Stalin?

C-

i'm genuinely surprised that Hillary being a favorite media punching bag for years is even a controversial notion!

uh "cult of personality"? like accusing him of being Stalin?

That's not a criticism of his personality though - it's a criticism of how some people react to him.

i'm genuinely surprised that Hillary being a favorite media punching bag for years is even a controversial notion!

-- Tracer Hand, Tuesday, March 4, 2008 11:31 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

im surprised that you would argue this isn't in many ways her own fault!

Eppy show me the Krugman column -- or any media comment anywhere -- that lays into Obama's personality or character (i.e. says things like "imperious" and "secretive" and "dysfunctional") and i'll give that to you

-- Tracer Hand, Tuesday, March 4, 2008 11:26 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

maybe thats because he's, you know, likeable?

I think the idea that the media's treatment of Clinton had nothing to do with real-world conditions is similarly ludicrous though.

Again, last year the media actually declared her the nominee.

at some point you need to stop and take a look at why candidates are coming off a certain way, and realize that just because media framing is part of it doesn't mean that framing mall art is going to make it into the mona lisa

and immediately savaged her for being "imperious" and acting as if she were "entitled" to the nomination

guys seriously, have you been living on earth for the past 15 years??

I do believe there's something weird a few of our colleagues have. They tend to be Roman Catholics, actually. People like Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd. They've had it in for Bill and Hillary Clinton since Monica Lewinsky. They feel that the Clintons are trying to put one over on us all the time.

-- Jeff Bercovici, March 3, 2008

(that sounds mean and i dont think hillary is the political equivalent of 'mall art' but regardless we're not electing media frames and the idea that everyone's been looking at obama and saying 'what a pretty frame' is absurd) xxp

So like the bad stuff about Obama the media should have been covering is a secret meeting with Canada? For real?

let me get this straight guys. you're saying that when journalists are unfair to hillary clinton -- for instance, micro-analyzing an off-hand comment ("baking cookies"), or inventing scandals that end up being completely untrue (whitewater) -- this is her fault?

I'm saying that the media has been unfair to Hillary, but this does not mean that there are things they should be doing with Obama that they are not doing.

a non-secret meeting which the canadian consulate in chicago (via a right wing canadian politician) asked goolsbee (independent of and without the knowledge of obama's campaign) to clarify obama's position on trade and goolsbee reiterated obama's stances while specifying that obama was talking about what direction he wanted to go, not specific articulations of policy