[From the Columbia Journalism Review]
What’s a Sunday morning show to do when it specializes in political prophecy and the expectation is a foregone conclusion? Bring some players on, ask them routine questions, register their spin, try to trip them up when the spin is ridiculous, and move on.
By all conventional measures, the news is that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is sinking beneath the weight of arithmetic. Senator Chris Dodd, an Obama supporter, came on Meet the Press and said so, and since the arithmetic is on his side, he didn’t present any trip-up potential. Clinton proxy Terry McAuliffe, on the other hand, crammed himself into the absurd position of sticking up for the remote possibility of a game-changing event that could resurrect the expiring Clinton campaign. When he plumped for counting the Michigan votes in a primary where Obama’s name was not on the ballot, all McAuliffe could summon up in support of that argument was to insist that Obama had taken himself off the Michigan ballot. Russert countered with a passage from McAuliffe’s own book insisting that when it comes to the way the party chooses its delegates, “The rules are the rules.”
This is the sort of gotcha moment where Russert’s research staff excels, and McAuliffe must have known it. Russert offered no more than a perfunctory nod in the face of McAuliffe’s feeble prayer—for a bolt from the blue—he offered the pathetic historical precedent of a onetime come-from-behind victory by (surprise!) the Buffalo Bills. Nice try but no cigar.
The other morning “issue” was Clinton’s maladroit remark May 8 about “white Americans.” She referred to an Associated Press poll "that found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." Russert confronted McAuliffe with the thunderous objections from her supporter, Representative Charlie Rangel, and from The New York Times’s Bob Herbert, in the Saturday paper, charging her with arousing white West Virginia voters to see her as their champion and, in effect, to vote their race prejudice. Curiously, thrust into a corner, a possibly ill-briefed McAuliffe scrounged around but scraped up nothing but boilerplate to toss back.
He could have offered a defense to the effect that Clinton garbled her words. It could have been argued—myself, I’d be inclined to argue—that Clinton meant to say two distinct and true things, and erred when she crammed them into a single sentence: first, that she does better than Obama so far among white working-class voters; and second, that working class Americans are “hard-working.” This benign interpretation would hold that she was merely pandering-as-usual, though even so, this sort of constituency-calculating is the sort of thing that a candidate best leave to journalists and academics. It’s her business to present herself as potential president of all the people, not a slicer and dicer of factions. But I can’t believe that she was impugning black voters for not being “hard-working.”
Well, it’s not Russert’s job to untangle a candidate’s garbled syntax. (On the Stephanopoulos show, Harry Reid stumbled around trying to cast a rosier light on her words and then flatly gave up.) If she gaffes it up so badly that her surrogates can’t put out the fire, then maybe she’s not just “TOAST,” as the New York Post screamed last week, but burnt toast.
Intelligent voters have not only seen through them, but actually despise their tactics, and their tactics are now associated with Obama's tactics - spin, spin, spin.
Keep up the good work Tim and Keith.
I once had respect for him, can't stand to watch him now. I feel he has severely damaged his reputation.
I won't forget his biased, twisted displays.
that found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me
Can anyone please explain to me how this in any way says that black middle class people are NOT hard-working. It says nothing about blacks at all.
Her statement doesn't address blacks at all. Blacks aren't voting for Clinton. 90% are voting for Obama, based on HIS race. When is the media going to take a poll to find out waht percent of balcks are voting based on race like they keep doing with white voters?
They did this same thing to Bill Clinton a while back. He said something about Hillary and McCain in a speech. He didn't say anything at all about Obama. But, everyone automatically asserting that Bill had made a negative comment about Obama simply by NOT saying something about him.
This whole campaign has been crazy. You can't say anything about Obama without being called racist. But, if you DON'T say anything about Obama you are still called a racist.
The language is english, and although the use of it may be poor (and even possibly mistaken, although the mistake seems to be made too often to be unintentional), the meaning of the words can not be understood in any other way. If you are losing support among hard working americans, then if you are not losing support in general (which Obama is not) your remaining supporters MUSTconsist of non-hard workers who are omitted from the list, that is, non-whites. LOGIC 101
The reality of Obama's support, is that many blacks did NOT support him initially, in fact Hillary was far ahead of him among blacks early on. However, there is a consequence to pandering to white voters with language that is not new to black voters. States Right's, Crime, Welfare Reform, all represent code words that Black Americans are very familiar with, its all been used 'successfully' before. The fact that you choose to ignore these reality's when Hillary clumsily uses those same tactics, is also not new.
In case it slipped past you, Russert is not black, neither is anyone else referenced in this article. You are the person that injected the word racist into these posts, based upon your selective analysis. Yet, you are unwilling to accept that other readers might see Hillary's comments as racist pandering at its Republican best.
Voters going to Obama is a consequence of Hillary's campaign self destructing, that's all. Now will you give us a dissertation on why white Americans voted for George Bush, was it just because he was white, or are they on drugs?
Please immediately hire standforpeace as the regular Russert Watch writer! In one succinct, cogently argued, paragraph standforpeace has summed up what is wrong with Russert, the mass media, and Todd Gitlan!We need some new voices, across the political spectum, commenting on the revelant issues! Mr. Gitlan has the CJR in which to air his views ; a link to that article, on your site, would have been sufficient. New vioces and risk taking used to be what the Internet represented and the Huffington Post used to lead the way.Thank you, standforpeace, for the very relevant, well written, and argued post.
Hillary and supporters must live their lives to the fullest.
Let your bitterness flow forth and attack those who dare challange the Clintonian Right to the Presidency.
Get that hate out in the open for all to see.
Dont' forget to vote!!!
Only 20 more days of Hillary! .................CLAP, CLAP. POINT, POINT!
This AM, on MSNBC's Joe in the Morning (the anemic replacenet for the former Imus forum, as Joe was thankfully taking a day off, Mika Brzezinski played the Russert Role.
Pat Buchanan and Craig Crawford, both intelligent humans, came forth yet again, hostage of some (my take) underlying bigotry, as Hillary apologists and trashing simple logic with alacrity....and Mika did the Tim thing. Hardly for the first time, just with more Ibsen, Doll's House affect.
It's all pig vomit.
Obama '08/12
That's just adds to the questions of ability to manage, stacked atop the concerns already out there.