Oh media, whom do you love?
Earlier in the day I wrote about the end of the Obama-media love affair. I blamed it on his sub-par debate performance and post-debate cry-babying by his campaign and supporters. A few hours later FishbowlNYC linked to a story in the Huff Post: Media Jump Ship From Obama To Clinton. Here’s Thomas Edsall’s intro:
In a blink of an eye, the media has jumped ship from the Obama campaign and become a crucial Clinton ally, pressing just the message — that Obama is a likely loser in the general election — that Hillary and her allies have been promoting for the past six weeks.
The new tenor of media coverage is visible almost everywhere, from Politico, Time and The New Republic to The Washington Post and The New York Times.
For Hillary, the shift is a potential lifesaver as she struggles to keep her head above water; without it, she would, metaphorically, drown.
Until now, she, her husband, and her campaign aides have been trying, with little success, to make the case that Obama has potentially fatal flaws. For the first time, reporters working for magazines, newspapers and web sites have abruptly decided that she might well be right, and the results for Obama have been brutal…
Edsall goes on to cite stories by John Judis in TNR, Joe Klein in Time, Mike Allen at Politic etc…But Edsall doesn’t explore why this turn has come.
So did the media fall for Hillary or fall out with Obama? I say the latter. After 16 years of press beef, Hillary didn’t prove overnight a lovable character.
My theory: The ABC debate, the first after 7 weeks of bad news from Camp Barrack (pastorgate, bittergate, Ayersgate), showed Obama at his worst—stumbling, mumbling, arrogant—and when his camp blamed ABC’s questions for his confused performance, he cooked his own goose. The media said, Wait a second, you had the crazy America-hating pastor, you said whites are clingy, and you defended being friendly with a guy who bombed the Pentagon.
The media didn’t “create” these controversies—politics did. As the relationship between society and people, politics is entirely man-made. Thus electability is no less “created” than democracy, republics, and society itself.
If Camp Clinton and the GOP helped push the electability issue to the media, Obama could easily reset the course by, say, staking his candidacy on his original opposition to the Iraq war. He could speak frankly about America’s moral responsibility to the Iraqi people. Maybe he could even get on a plane and meet with Iraqi refugees.
Obama has a moment of opportunity. The GOP, Hillary, and the media are questioning his ability to lead. Let’s see how he reacts.
TAGS: debate, election, GOP, HBO, Hillary, Iraq, New York, New York Times, obama, Politics, war
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
April 27th, 2008 at 2:48 am
i would love to see barack kickin’ it with iraqi refugees. and i’d love to see either candidate address the refugee crisis and what they plan to do i about it.
also, do you think the media’s fickle heart is really just calculated machinery?
also, ray, you should really read hedda gabler.