Photo credits: Associated Press
Scanning major news outlets on the Web this morning, I found the usual biased news coverage and to-be-expected opinion pieces dissecting the Clinton campaign and declaring Hillary Clinton’s drive for the presidency over.
The Washington Post’s Dan Balz in his analysis of the Clinton strategy blames Clinton’s recent losses on ceding the caucuses to Obama; Howard Kurtz chimes in with a tongue-in-cheek prediction of a media rush to judgment from the primary to the general election with Obama versus McCain.
Over At the New York Times, the Caucus manages to sneak in speculation about how Obama and McCain might address spending in the general election.
The Huffington Post has moved beyond declaring the Democratic primary over; the gloating over Obama’s nomination at the blogosphere’s leading supermarket tabloid, has been excessive even for the Hillary-hating Arianna and her minions.
What I haven’t found in today’s opinion and news coverage is acknowledgement of the media’s role as kingmaker in the 2008 primary season that Sean Wilentz and Julian E. Zelizer so effectively describe in an article titled No Way to Pick a President appearing in last Sunday’s Washington Post.
Wilentz and Zelizer begin by pointing out the flaws in our system of state primaries and caucuses:
“Something is seriously wrong with the way we pick our presidential candidates. But experts and pundits, caught up in the horse races, have been slow to point out the obvious -- or come to accept our badly flawed system as immutable fact. This is no way to choose a president.
The authors continue with a history of our official process for selecting presidential candidates going back as far as 1952 when the Democrats chose Adlai Stevenson over Estes Kefauver and bring us up to date with the present patchwork system they point out has some “grave problems,” for example:
"Open" primaries and caucuses (in which anyone can vote, not just registered party members) let voters from the other party cause all sorts of mischief. A Republican convinced that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is too divisive to win in the fall could vote for her in some Democratic contests in the spring, hoping to saddle the Democrats with a losing nominee. Or, as Sen. Barack Obama's campaign did in Nevada, a candidate can openly appeal for votes from people outside his or her party in order to stop a rival. The winners are outsiders hoping to game the system; the losers are rank-and-file party members whose choices count less.”
After detailed analysis of today’s severely flawed process, Wilentz and Zelizer describe how Democrats and Republicans have ceded power to the news media “now driven by national outlets that prefer sensationalism, scandal and sound bites to substance, nuance and balance.”
The Washington Post’s Dan Balz in his analysis of the Clinton strategy blames Clinton’s recent losses on ceding the caucuses to Obama; Howard Kurtz chimes in with a tongue-in-cheek prediction of a media rush to judgment from the primary to the general election with Obama versus McCain.
Over At the New York Times, the Caucus manages to sneak in speculation about how Obama and McCain might address spending in the general election.
The Huffington Post has moved beyond declaring the Democratic primary over; the gloating over Obama’s nomination at the blogosphere’s leading supermarket tabloid, has been excessive even for the Hillary-hating Arianna and her minions.
What I haven’t found in today’s opinion and news coverage is acknowledgement of the media’s role as kingmaker in the 2008 primary season that Sean Wilentz and Julian E. Zelizer so effectively describe in an article titled No Way to Pick a President appearing in last Sunday’s Washington Post.
Wilentz and Zelizer begin by pointing out the flaws in our system of state primaries and caucuses:
“Something is seriously wrong with the way we pick our presidential candidates. But experts and pundits, caught up in the horse races, have been slow to point out the obvious -- or come to accept our badly flawed system as immutable fact. This is no way to choose a president.
The authors continue with a history of our official process for selecting presidential candidates going back as far as 1952 when the Democrats chose Adlai Stevenson over Estes Kefauver and bring us up to date with the present patchwork system they point out has some “grave problems,” for example:
"Open" primaries and caucuses (in which anyone can vote, not just registered party members) let voters from the other party cause all sorts of mischief. A Republican convinced that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is too divisive to win in the fall could vote for her in some Democratic contests in the spring, hoping to saddle the Democrats with a losing nominee. Or, as Sen. Barack Obama's campaign did in Nevada, a candidate can openly appeal for votes from people outside his or her party in order to stop a rival. The winners are outsiders hoping to game the system; the losers are rank-and-file party members whose choices count less.”
After detailed analysis of today’s severely flawed process, Wilentz and Zelizer describe how Democrats and Republicans have ceded power to the news media “now driven by national outlets that prefer sensationalism, scandal and sound bites to substance, nuance and balance.”
"Take back America" has cropped up from time to time as a slogan in the 2008 campaign. I suggest it's time for Americans to take back the power to select our party candidates. We can begin by getting behind Hillary Clinton today; she's easily the best qualified candidate for the presidency.
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