Overnight commentary: It’s all over
May 7th, 2008 – 12:23 AM by Dennis J. McGrathThe final results from Indiana weren’t even in before bloggers, pundits and others were writing the obituary for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign.
At the Huffington Post, Miles Mogulescu declared that “the task now is for the Democratic party to unite around its presumptive nominee — Barack Obama — and get ready to take on McSame in the fall.”
Also at the Huffington Post, Sam Stein concluded that the exit polls show that Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” may have been effective in Indiana.
“Thirty-six percent of primary voters said that Clinton does not share their values. And yet, among that total, one out of every five (20 percent) nevertheless voted for her in the Indiana election. Moreover, of the 10 percent of Hoosiers who said “neither candidate” shared their values, 75 percent cast their ballots for Clinton.”
Allahpundit at Hot Air said that whatever the outcome in Indiana, it doesn’t matter now:
“As I write this, she’s been nuked in Carolina and is, er, clinging to a bitter four-point lead in Indiana with 82% in. I said this morning that if she got blown out down south then she’d have to pull off a blowout of her own in the midwest to keep the superdelegates jittery about Obama’s Wright baggage. Hasn’t happened.”
Scott VW at Weblog Worth Writing in Las Vegas saw two very different candidates:
“I watched both candidates’ speeches tonight in the wake of a split decision in Indiana and North Carolina. Hillary seemed tired and resigned. In fact, she seemed to be on the verge of conceding. Obama was energized and spoke about the American Dream, an important theme of his. My wife was skeptical, though, reminding me that Obama might just be telling people what they want to hear. She’s right, of course. I think his campaign has been an honest, principled one so far, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t playing for votes. I hope he can maintain his principles in the face of what will be an onslaught in coming weeks.”
The view from Oklahoma in The McCarville Report was that this was the beginning of the end for Clinton:
“What is clear in the results is that Clinton’s momentum is ended; she needed a solid Indiana win and a close race in North Carolina and she got neither. Obama’s North Carolina win erased Clinton’s early Pennsylvania win and his better-than-expected finish in Indiana makes any argument Clinton makes about electability just so much talk.”
5 Responses to "Overnight commentary: It’s all over"
As a long time Democrat, I believe we need an effective change for the better in the White House. Senator Obama simply doesn’t have the experience, intelligence and ability to lead our country domestically and repair the damage done to America’s reputation on the world stage. Senator Clinton is clearly the only democratic candidate who does have what it takes to lead our country at this crucial time in our history. All Obama has to offer is hubris, and we’ve seen what 8 years of Bush’s hubris has done to our country. Obama is too naive to know that you cannot be an effective leader just by espousing ideals and having a good speech writer. I would rather see our country led by McCain than Obama. I wish all the Barack supporters could see through his glitz and glamour. It’s almost scary; the Manchurian Candidate comes to mind when I think of Obama. Slick. Packaged. A disaster waiting to happen. If Senator Obama gets the nomination from the Democratic party delegates, I’ll volunteer for and vote for McCain. He’ll be a helluva lot better than Obama. Both would be a distant second to a President Clinton. Senator Clinton is the only candidate fully capable to lead our country out of the mess we’re in domestically and internationally.
Al,
Interesting. Can you give me an example of how you think Hillary would help us domestically.
I’d ask about the international reference, but I’m pretty certain you would say, “bring the troops home.”
Al,
I am not trying to start a fight, but isn’t it kinda hypocritical to call yourself a long time Democrat and then speak in favor of a non-democratic way of choosing the next Democratic candidate? Shouldn’t Obama be allowed to run if he plays by the rules he is supposed to and wins the nomination fairly?
For the remainder of this dem race, let there be three small concessions from the media both near and far..
a) do not ever under any circumstances use the words “presumptive nominee” since the person in question is either the nominee or isn’t. No reason to give the over under..
b) similarly, avoid the near continual use of the word “vetted”. That is one word forever married to the arrogant mindset of the Sunday morning political hacks..
finally c) let us no longer play along with the Star’s pretense that they print the same number of hatchet jobs on Obama as on Clinton. One such bloody piece appeared on Saturday and if anyone is so bored, go back all the way to last year and see how Obama avoids such poison. In any event, the Star loves the image of it’s neutrality, so just play along. They don’t need any more lost revenue…
One reason Clinton got dumped on from the beg. of this campaign was that the media not only (honestly) reported on the views of a somewhat disabled nation (with giddy students and blacks and “happy to be idealistic again” whites (with lotsa $$ of course) leading the way. But that same media also created the story of the rise of Obama, an unknown preacher from the Midwest, at the same time as the fall of Clinton, by far the more rounded candidate.
So, let me explain by looking at why papers will not be around in 10 years, papers other than USA today…
With the public craving flashy visuals over lifeless print, newspapers everywhere are scrambling to increase or not further lose readership in order to retain their advertisers, the life blood of any private media outlet. Looking at the Star as just one example of this reveals a scramble at the top with editors and staff being shuffled like substitutions in a T-ball game in order to come up with the hottest team. And perhaps nowhere is the effort to hook and hold the public more pronounced than in the evolution of the opinion pages, those pages traditionally read least in any paper by this once literate culture now on the decline. Where once these pages were filled with rich, varied and complex insight, now the printed word bursts, kept deliberately short for easier consumption, seem dummied down in an attempt to attract the “American Idol” crowd who by their numbers, it is hoped, will continue to attract advertisers searching for the best return on their funds. So, as it stands now, at least to a person who does read these pages, one third of the letters printed on any given day seem to be truly excellent, one third are not nearly as good yet have simply made the cut on that particular day, and one third seem to be nothing more than short paragraphs meant to fill out the page, palatable stuff, easily read, not very taxing.
Possibly as a reaction to these intense economic stressors, the once prized opinion pages now seem to be staffed by those far different to those I’ve known in similar positions in smaller, free or college papers. I realize this comparison is not fair by any means, since these smaller papers need not to the same degree appease or represent the publisher’s or advertiser’s interests. Nonetheless, I feel something more interesting and revealing is at work here. That is, having worked both on college and small ad supported private papers and also after that often as a therapist in years gone by, I sensed a quite uncomfortable atmosphere in some of the offices, often but not always, where many staffers seemed edgy when having to directly deal with the public in any personal sense, seeing that public as threatening in some way. I’ll try to explain this later. For now, let me say while working with a variety of positions and people, white or blue collar, I have rarely seen a similar kind of fear or uncertainty concerning the evaluation of their jobs, and an insecurity, as I saw it as when dealing with newspaper staff. I talked at many times with my co-workers and feel this fear or uncertainty stems directly from a rarely discussed suspicion that virtually any educated and relatively intellectual person could do their job. This leads to an observation I have long held, that because of this high paced anxiety, such workers, to protect themselves from what they see as outside or administrative threats, armor themselves with long memories and even thinner skins, and by never forgetting any slight, real or imagined. I do believe this they know already.
This is not to say that it is easy to sift and winnow through so many bad and good letters per day. It is only to say, from the perspective of someone who has done these letter evaluations on smaller papers, that it is not all that difficult either. So, one way that large papers such as the Star deal with the suffocating influx of letters is to insist writers submit their letters in what psychologists call a concrete specific which is quite a paradox for a paper that wants to maintain readership to insist on this quite boring style. Yet, this insistence on such a small number of easily digested concrete word whines is made more the farce by ed. columnists who in their own works turn around and write in a far more interesting abstract random style, the style in which actual human beings do communicate.
So, what happens to insulated editorial or letters staff people who find comfort and anonymity huddling incestuously from the real world storms in their concrete halls ? Easy. What happens to a dog crossing the path of any harried, overworked person particularly he or she who feels others with fresher talents may someday steal away their grandfathered job ? What happens to that dog? Simple. He gets the boot. Gets the boot from those younger and brighter than he. Meaning, of course, you can fool a fool, any of Obama’s armies that is, but there are many other who saw what the Star did, and personally I would lament it’s demise. Not now…