An Inconvenient Resurrection
A story:
Stalin was dead. He lay on a table, face ashen, eyes closed. The Kremlin inner circle was summoned and surrounded his body. At first, there was silence. Then, one after another, his top people began saying things impossible to imagine being expressed during his life. "He was a tyrant." "He betrayed the Soviet people." "A terrible time has finally ended." There were some demurrals: "He was a great man." "I loved him." "No one can fill his shoes." Then, again, silence.
And then Stalin opened his eyes. He had faked his own death in order to test the loyalty of his lieutenants.
I don't know if this story is true or apocryphal, but I'm pretty sure I read it, something like 35 years ago, in a book by Harrison Salisbury, the New York Times' longtime correspondent in Moscow.
No matter what you think about Hillary Clinton, no matter how this campaign turns out, there is undeniable satisfaction in watching the pundit class being forced to eat the words of its premature obituaries. The strategists who were called morons are suddenly geniuses again. The candidate and her husband, who were the subject of such undisguised journalistic venom just 24 hours ago, are suddenly worthy of awe again. The donors who dissed her are wondering whether they can retract with impunity. The White House staffers-in-waiting who danced on her grave are hoping they said nothing incriminating on the record.
In the Stalin story, the Kremlin firing squad was busy all night long.
In the Clinton story, if there were any justice, a number of chattering-class reputations would now be irrecuperable.
But even in an age of Google and YouTube, don't count on it. Some of the very media wizards who declared Hillary dumb and dead are already chiding savants, pundits and gurus for getting it so wrong -- as though they themselves were not the subjects and objects of their own amnesiac scorn.
To switch the metaphor, I wonder whether this humiliating turnabout, played out in real time over a very short period right in front of the American people, could be the MSM's Katrina. Political media, you've done a heckuva job.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
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I agree that the poll numbers were wrong. But why were the same poll numbers so CORRECT for the GOP side? I was stunned. I did not expect the same results as Iowa, but I never saw this coming.
I wish hardball Matthews would be fired .Is he working for Obama. Do we really want tne press campaigning for anyone. Do we really want Iowa to decide who our canidate will be or New hampshire. Why can't we have a primary on the same day in every state.
Iowa giving its vote for Obama to become president was just about as radical a departure from the expected as caucus goers could make.
It has to be said, both NH voters responding to polls, and the major media, jumped on this "Barak is a Wave!" bandwagon, that IN THE BEST AMERICAN TRADITION promised a new world of hope, freedom and liberty divorced from the authortarian autocracy of the Old World. Then of course reality set in, not least of which was the tremendous courage it would take for Barak Obama to ride that wave all the way to the White House.
The media, pundits, and even bloggers keep telling us "what a strong Democratic field" we have, but I never saw it. Edwards is not a career politician and would have lost re-election to senate from NC in 2004 had he run. He is only within the past year or three coming to his modern populism theme, and The Chamber of Commerce, alone, vows to spend over $60 million defeating any "anti-business" candidate. They helped bankroll the defeat of no less than Senate MAJORITY LEADER Tom Daschle in 2002
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Richardson, Biden, and Dodd were never serious threats for the nomination, reflecting America's low approval of the Congress (sub-Cheney, low teens approval ratings!)
Hillary is even more divisive than her husband, and he only drove Right-Wing American to paroxisms of "rapist!" "perjurer!" "murderer!" and "treason!" apopolexy. (In a chatroom I've been part of for years, Wingos are still repeating those accusation
American voters have their work cut out in 2008, and the corporate money that put Bush2 in office will certainly be trying to maintain that agenda. BUT FOR AT LEAST A WEEK, we could DREAM of launching our "free" nation on a foreign and virgin shore once again.
Someone once called the talking heads, so called media, journalist; "nattering naybobs of negativity"!!! Still applies today!
The left-wing purists hate Hillary and the Neo-con fascist corporates hate her. Why this commonality? Hillary (and Bill before her) will govern from the center, which most Americans identify with. A president cannot govern this diverse country from an extreme. We have seen the utter disasters the Neo-con rule has left us. We need a flexible, pragmatic centrist - a technocrat - to be president. I am deathly sick of righteous Neo-cons and perfectionist, politically correct leftists. Obama or Clinton will wipe out whoever the dumbass is the Republicans put up.
I wonder if the Hilary campaign is going to adopt a teary-eyed session in every primary from here on out to show how human she really is. I chalk Hilary's victory to the media with the continuous video stream of the "teary-eyed" Hilary, beat down and exhausted by the grueling campaigning and then being ganged up upon by Obama and Edwards (how dare they - two bullying men on a poor, exhausted woman). And this is the type of strength and fortitude we want as our future president - I think not. Is she going to breakdown and cry when the leaders of other nations gang up on her because of US policy or something else.
Besides Obama and Hilary both won 9 delegates in New Hampshire; it's the number of delegates that count not the popular vote when it comes to electing a president.
I like Edwards best, but I like Clinton over Obama. Even so, I smell a rat. I think there should be a recount of the paper ballots.
The polls perfectly predicted all of the candidates except Clinton and Obama.
The many polls were correct.
Diebold made them wrong.
Noone is going to remember the pollsters got it wrong, they will just change the subject from yesterdays breathless "Obama is a vote for change."
Face it, there are a thousand news hours to fill everyday and only 15 minutes of actual news. That is why they created pundits, polls and Brittney to fill in gaps. Primaries are perfect fodder because all they have to do is accost a passerbye for their opinion, and there you have it, 15 minutes of "news." It's all just the news d'jour until the next terrorist act, plague, natural disaster occurs. War doesn't seem to be news anymore, we used to get daily battle and fatality reports from Iraq, now I have to google the latest figures.
The American public doesn't care who was wrong, they just want to be entertained. It isn't news, it's product.
I am so glad that Hillary taking NH showed that the people in this country still rule the vote and not the corporate republican MSM...I am so glad they got that great big kick in the ass.
Thanks be to the WISDOM of N H who want the Clinton era back again---with interest rates for SAFE CD's paying 7% ---people SAVING money---the stock market HIGH ENOUGH to crow about--GOOD JOBS--- and the world even liked the USA
THINK back to those days and what would be without the republicans spending 50 million dollars to investigate Bill's personal affair
I agree that it is quite a pleasant experience to see the Punditocracy consume their own feet. Love it love it love it and hope to see a LOT more "eating it" in the future. While I am not a Clinton supporter and had actually hoped for Obama and Edwards to come out ahead of her in NH, I am nonetheless pleased to see the pontificating predictors get it so very VERY wrong. Now we just need a few John Edwards wins to make the pontificating predictors in the "traditional media" AND in the Obama and Clinton campaign really shut the hell up and let the voters decide without any attempts to FORCE a narrative.
Watching Hillary make a comeback is like watching the 1993 Buffalo Bills make their big comeback against the Houston Oilers. While it was dramatic and exciting, you knew they were going to get blown out in the Super Bowl again, which they did to the Dallas Cowboys.
It was John Edwards who said in his speech last night that only two states, accounting for a very small percentage of the U.S.electo
Only 3 percentage points separated Obama and Clinton last night, only a few thousand votes.
The way I see it, nothing has been decided by anyone but the "objective" press.
Hillary's speech was a bit nauseating to watch.
Obama and Edwards both spoke with more feeling and eloquence.
We're not anywhere near the end, and nothing is yet decided.
I was just so entertaining to see Chris Matthews, who after Iowa said "we are seeing the first election of the 21st century" and fawning over Obama while sneering at Hillary, with a look of shock on his face as he watched Hillary win in New Hampshire. I like Obama, though his speechs are wearing thin, how many time can you repeat "we need to come together" before you put some meat on the bones? I actually liked Hillary's speech better because she talked about the economy and foreclosures. Even Dick Morris last night (after saying she'd make a bad president) said she took more punches that any candidate has and still came back. I love her resolve, love her warmth, and love her smile. Barak doesn't smile when he speaks. Just seems like the Hillary haters have a pavlovian response to her because they've been brainwashed by the media. Well I don't believe the MSM's narrative about her. I believe: "She's a good hearted woman in love with a good timin' man."
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