I love these moments. Tomorrow, the whole course of history will shift in some unknown direction, and having nothing better to do, the talking keyboards are filled with hysteria — some, literally, if you’ve read Taylor Marsh, or TalkLeft’s Jeralyn, or The Democratic Daily‘s Pamela Leavey.
And, as madness is not easily categorized, I’ll make no attempt here. Madness and the chronicling of madness:
Exhibit A: Doug Wiegel at Reason Magazine (libertarians) –
Republicans for Hillary: The Anecdotal Evidence Builds
David Weigel | March 3, 2008, 1:11pm… “One thing we’re hearing that we really didn’t expect is people going and voting in the Democratic primary for Hillary Clinton,” Markum said. “They come up to me and they say McCain can beat Hillary, but he can’t beat Obama. It’s fueled by guys like Rush Limbaugh, by Ann Coulter, who’re telling them to keep Hillary in this race, and that trickles down to Republicans going into those voting booths who can’t vote in our election. These were some voters we were counting on, so that’s thrown a bit of a kink in our extrapolations.”
Mind you, I heard the same thing in Wisconsin, where Republican crossover voters went 72-28 for Obama over Clinton. If the numbers diverge more than 5 or 10 points in Texas, I’d be pretty shocked. But it might be a function of Republicans becoming less a’feared of Clinton because of Obama’s wins. I think that will change, again, when Clinton’s “kitchen sink” attacks save her and give her Texas-Ohio victories tomorrow.*
To recap: Ron Paul might be re-elected to Congress because Republican voters are voting for Hillary Clinton to increase the chance of John McCain being elected president. Here, have some aspirin.
* Obama clearly thinks Texas is his best chance for a win, as he’s holding his election night party in San Antonio. But I have the sense he peaked last week and Clinton will narrowly win.
Exhibit B: Ben Smith (of Politico) pulls a story, literally, out of his ass –
I wrote in December about a mysterious pro-Clinton, anti-Obama website called HillaryIs44, a site that floated sharply negative information about Obama long before the word “Rezko” passed the lips of Clinton and her campaign, and that has been the subject of many months of speculation among reporters, bloggers, and campaign staffers.
Now, two sources have identified the site’s creator: A New York political activist named Alex Rodriguez, pictured above.
I called Rodriguez yesterday.
“How do you know?” he asked.
I made the case to him that he might as well tell me his story.
He said he’d think about it, and hasn’t called back.
[...]
However, there’s some suggestion that some close to the [Hillary Clinton] campaign were at least aware of his existence.
When I learned of his identity, I emailed Tracy Sefl, a Clinton consultant who is perhaps best known as the campaign’s liaison to Drudge, and whom reporters and insiders have long speculated — without evidence — was behind the site. She was amused to learn that I’d finally linked someone to the site.
“I know very little about this. But I have been tremendously flattered by your opinion of my Web skills and assumptions about my free time,” she emailed.
But she did seem, at least, to know Rodriguez’s name.
I’d asked her if she knew “Alex.” She then made a joke about the Yankee third baseman, also named Alex Rodriguez. But I hadn’t supplied the full name of subject of my story, so I asked how she knew his last name.
“I don’t know him. I just heard his name somewhere,” she said, denying again any role in the site. “I haven’t sent this person anything, ever.”
Wow. That’s innuendo and frippery, ain’t it? Some website is maybe connected to the Hillary Clinton campaign? Would that mean, perhaps, that she’s engaged in Rovian tactics of whisper campaigns and the like? No! (Actually, I have no idea what the Smith column is supposed to prove, other than Smith will write anything to meet his deadline.)
Exhibit C: Mark Ambinder at the Atlantic, whose nutty title ALONE marks him for inclusion herein:
Existential Realities Of The Democratic Race
03 Mar 2008 05:49 pmQ. What does “win” mean?
A. The winner of the Democratic nomination is not the person who wins the most states, not the person who wins the most votes, is not the person who gives the best speeches… it’s the person who wins 2024 (25? — we’re not sure yet) delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Q. Can Hillary Clinton win the nomination?
A. Maybe.
Q. Can you be more specific? Is it mathematically possible for her to win the nomination?
A. Yes.
Q. Is it likely that she will win the nomination?
A. Based on the math alone and a reasonable projection of external events, no.
Which is basically filling space without actually saying anything, added to the conceit of interviewing HIMSELF! Aaargh. “Existential” without Camus or Beckett. Just as pretentious and ‘impressive’ vocabulary? Gurk!
Exhibit D: A2M from Greg Sargent @ The Horse’s Mouth:
It’s Not About “Toughness.” It’s About “Fairness.”
March 3, 2008 — 3:49 PM ESTBoth Glenn Greenwald and Digby today weighed in on the question of whether the media’s been harsher on Hillary than on Obama — and they both answered with a resounding Yes.
But both of them also add a crucial dimension to the discussion that’s been absent thus far: The key point that media “toughness” is a vapid, almost meaningless term that doesn’t get at the core problem here.
Greenwald, for his part, says that he agrees that Hillary “has borne the far greater brunt of media hatred and hostility over the last year.” He adds that when media figures “start talking about how they have to subject Obama to `scrutiny,’ too, they don’t mean that they’re going to re-evaluate the trashy, vapid coverage they applied to Clinton and start examining his record, his positions, his views, etc.” Instead, he predicts, they’ll do the same to Obama that they did to Hillary.
Meanwhile, Digby, in an email to Greenwald, writes: “It’s a fact that Clinton has received much harsher treatment than Obama.” She suggests that media people will reach exactly the wrong conclusion about their own failings: “Instead of reevaluating their bias against Clinton and examining their sexism in general, they are now going to rectify matters by going after Obama on a bunch of irrelevant, superficial stuff to `make up’ for their transgressions.”
Exactly right. The key question here isn’t, or shouldn’t be, whether the press has been “equally tough” on both candidates. Rather, the question is whether the press has been equally fair to them. The question is whether both candidates have been treated with similar measures of professionalism, judiciousness, even sanity.
And the simple truth is that they haven’t….
Wait. I thought that “media bias” was a meme that only petulant Dick Nixon and his latter-day GOP followers got to pull. It’s SUPPOSED to end with “Well, you won’t have BLANK BLANKETY to kick around anymore …”*
[* In an attempt to revive his political fortunes, [Nixon] ran for governor in 1962. A bruising primary against a candidate favored by the Republican right wing split the party, and in November, Nixon lost again. So frustrated was he by the perceived bias against him by the press, that he rebuked the press for their coverage on the morning after his loss and ended, famously, by saying, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” — u-s-history.com EMPHASIS added.]
I’d HEARD it was pretty much discredited in Democratic circles, but I suppose that I was mistaken. Poor Hillary. The evil press is beating up on her just like it used to beat up on Richard Nixon. (It’s them Secular Humanists, I bet!)
Exhibit E(eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!): Taylor Marsh:
Media Bias, Hillary Clinton and Foreign Policy
It’s been independently proven that there is indeed media bias against Clinton. But another media reality is a campaign killer, especially heading into the general election. So if the traditional media won’t cover you fairly on foreign policy, you simply have to create your own narrative on national security. That’s what Clinton and her team have done since Friday.
Walter H. Shorenstein has put out a memo on the media bias against Clinton (that I’ve seen and read), which is damning in its conclusive finality. But nothing registered more intensely with me than this one fact revealed within Shorenstein’s memo:
Foreign Policy Bias Against Clinton
When it comes to foreign policy coverage–perhaps the most important issue in the coming general election–the media monitoring group, Media Tenor, found that there was not a single positive story about Hillary Clinton and foreign policy in the month of February.
How is the the first viable female running for commander in chief supposed to combat this type of coverage? You provide the narrative yourself, which is what the “3 O’clock” ad was about, but also the cascade of flag officers all giving testimonials for Clinton….
Gee. How come she doesn’t note that Shorenstein is an official Hillary supporter and is glad to speak on her “behalf”? That’s “independent” proof? How about Bill? Clearly whatever HE says is “independent proof,” right? The AP on March 1:
DALLAS (AP) — The founder of a prestigious institute on media and politics added his voice Saturday to the chorus of complaint over perceived press bias in favor of Democrat Barack Obama.
Walter Shorenstein, a prominent San Francisco-based real estate developer, Democratic fundraiser and longtime supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, penned a memo to Democratic party “superdelegates” and other activists criticizing media coverage of the presidential campaign. [...]
“I am absolutely outraged with the media coverage of the presidential campaign,” Shorenstein wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press. “This is the most important election in my long lifetime, and to quote one of my favorite movies, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!’”
He was quoting the 1976 movie “Network,” in which a mentally disturbed television news anchor played by Peter Finch went on the air and implored viewers to rebel against gimmicks staged by network news executives.
Gee. Where was all this high dudgeon when John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich were LITERALLY ignored out of the campaign?
Funny how Shorenstein sees the bias that shows his candidate in the best light. Not a word about the shit-storm of trivialities being shotgunned at Obama.
Taylor Marsh concludes:
But in the end, covering the candidates is about giving all sides to the story, including on foreign policy matters. When the guys get covered, with McCain out pacing Obama in coverage, but the one woman in the race does not get covered at all, the deck is clearly stacked in the men’s favor. If you don’t want to call it sexism, fine, but the facts are still the facts.
Really?
OK. Then I’m to take it that this is the message on Hillary that voters should take into the voting booths with them tomorrow:
1. If you vote for Barack Obama, your children will be killed in their sleep.
And,
2. They’re picking on Hillary Clinton because she’s a girl.
Got it? Now vote.
Oh. Wait a second. I almost forgot….
Exhibit F: How committed are we to democracy?
From The News Hour (PBS), quoting Mark Siegel, a friend and confidante of Benazir Bhutto’s for 25 years — who completed a book WITH her a week before her assassination — on WHY she had returned to Pakistan KNOWING that her life was in jeopardy:
[Benazir Bhutto] long ago decided that her greatest service in life was not to herself, not to her husband, not to her children, even, but, rather, to democracy and to the people of Pakistan.
Hillary Clinton, a month ago:
Senator Hillary Clinton sent a blistering letter today to the head of NBC, which suspended one of its reporters Friday for comments he made about Chelsea Clinton. [...] she wrote, “I became Chelsea’s mother long before I ran for any office and I will always be a mom first and a public official second.”
Give me a woman candidate with the commitment to her nation that Benazir Bhutto had, and I’ll vote for her.
Courage.
=============
UPDATE; 7:26 PM, PST: This is what comes, one surmises, of being a former Goldwater Girl.
CNN: Limbaugh urges listeners to vote for Clinton — (CNN) – As Hillary Clinton battles to keep her presidential bid alive, she may be getting help from an unlikely source: conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. — Limbaugh has been actively urging his Texas listeners to cross over and vote …
And one piece of wonderful news (savor it while ye may) astroturf spokeserpent and KSFO radio rightie hatemeistress Melanie Morgan was canned at KSFO today. Huzzah! And if you go to the SourceWatch page on MM, you’ll see the first two blogs listed at the bottom of the page are my “How Green Was My Talking Point” post on MAF and MM and their phony sockpuppet astroturf pose as an antimatter version of MoveOn.org.campaign to promote the war in Iraq.
