The problem with this argument is the the media has played along with the false hope that the race was not decided in by the results of the Texas primary.
The race has been over for over a month, but the media and certain bloggers persisted in a fantasy that Clinton would win 70% of the vote in all the remaining primaries.
That the media is no longer pretending that Clinton has a road to the nomination is a good thing.
Posted by fahey at May 7, 2008 05:24 PMI for one have become very disgusted with the MSM, however I have been suprised to find that Fox tends to give more accurate and fair coverage
Posted by tenacitus at May 7, 2008 05:37 PMfahey,
actually, eric boehlert has written about the simple truth that never before have the media taken it upon themselves to tell a candidate when to quit. not even gary hart, in 1984, who was much farther behind. and clinton's argument wasn't about winning pledged delegates, it was about popular vote.
Posted by at May 7, 2008 05:46 PMTurkana:
You need to watch this video about Obama cheating!!!!!!
Campaign signs inside a polling station is illegal!!!!
Posted by John C. at May 7, 2008 05:53 PMObama's content-free message of postpartisan "change" is music to the ears of media whores like Russert. In the unlikely event that Obama defeats their true love (Maverick John McCain), they can pummel him if he doesn't "compromise" with Republicans.
Either way, you can say goodbye to anything that might unduly upset General Electric. And Obama will be working with Markos on being tranformational, so what will he care? Everybody has to make some sacrifices for the greater good.
Posted by cygnus at May 7, 2008 06:02 PMgary hart, in 1984, who was much farther behind. and clinton's argument wasn't about winning pledged delegates, it was about popular vote.
____________________________
Excatly, Here is Dean in his own words saying that same thing. The delegates don't matter anymore than the popular vote does.
What i don't get is Dean admits here that he allowed IA, NH, NV, and SC to move up their primaries without punishment. He can't have a double-standard. I found this article that proves Dean never investegated these two states. Here's an excerpt from the article:
The DNC is charged, under its rules, to determine whether Democrats in a noncompliant state made a "good faith" effort to abide by the party's electoral calendar. The rules also demand that the DNC's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee conduct "an investigation, including hearings if necessary," into these matters. A DNC spokesman could not point to any real "investigation" the party conducted. All that happened, with Florida for example, was two representatives of the states party made a pitch for leniency immediately before the Rules Committee voted for sanctions.
Posted by John C. at May 7, 2008 06:12 PMDoes fomer Clinton aide Sephanopoulus count as one of your MSM types?
This is what he said today:
"More superdelegates will come out today for Barack Obama -- they will come three, four, five at a time, and this nomination will be locked up."
I think that most of your readers at LC take the MSM with a grain of salt.
I for one will continue to read Kos, Politico, TPM, Andrew Sullivan, Booman, etc as long as I find them intellectually stimulating and their content original.
Posted by tfitznc at May 7, 2008 06:22 PMWhat i don't get is Dean admits here that he allowed IA, NH, NV, and SC to move up their primaries without punishment.
They were moved up in a response to the action taken by Michigan and Florida. They were moved up within the regulations of the party, no rules were broken.
tfitz,
stephanopolous was also the first person on television to mention the possibility of bill clinton being impeached. not exactly in the bag for the clintons. and i'm not surprised you find all those people "intellectually stimulating." enjoy.
Posted by at May 7, 2008 06:25 PMSour grapes? C'mon stop the sniveling, we have a nominee albeit it is not official yet, lets turn our attention towards the real enemy..McCain and the Repubs.
Posted by Upton at May 7, 2008 07:11 PMLook; the big picture here is that if Obama gets the nomination as he is likely to do, this long drawn out primary and Clinton is really the best thing that could have ever happened to his campaign.
She has tested him and drawn out his flaws and given them a good airing and made him tougher.
I admit, I had hoped she would stop at various times. However, if they keep it civil and focused of the rep. mess and Mccain over the next four weeks in my opinion we just come out stronger.
We dominate the news cycles, we raise a lot of money and we cont. to organize in states we would have barely campaigned in in the last election cycle.
Oh yea, we also keep reg. huge new numbers of democrats for November.
I am coming to the opinion that if we keep it civil maybe we should keep it going.
Eric in Austin
Posted by ericl at May 7, 2008 07:18 PMeric,
agreed. the turnout has been very exciting to watch. and as joan walsh has said, it's much better that all these potentially harmful stories come out now, rather than in october.
Posted by Turkana at May 7, 2008 07:22 PMAs a LONG time married man, I want to tell some of you guys who can't believe the female version of "reality" about this campaign. Believe me, your "reality" and theirs is different. Your "facts" and their "perceptions" are like speaking a different language. Beating them into submission with "logic and evidence" is counterproductive. We see the world through a different lens. Sometimes it is better to just listen.
Posted by Don Beal at May 7, 2008 07:29 PMThe corporate media has been relentless in its shivving of Obama the past several weeks, and still Hillary couldn't touch him. This bodes well for November, as the corporate media will do everything it can to help McCain. Obama is tougher than he looks. And he's had consistently high likability ratings, the same of which cannot be said about Hillary.
Of the remaining candidates, Obama was the correct choice for November. Also, and this is no small thing, the party killing mentality and methods of the Penns and McAuliffes of the world will no longer control the Democratic party. That alone is reason enough to celebrate Obama's nomination.
Posted by BMF at May 7, 2008 07:38 PMTurkana,
My precious, why do you torture yourself over the MSM? Don't turn it on, don't watch! TV is shit!
This whole campaign is shit, as if anyone believes we'll actually have an election in November.
Love, Filomena
Posted by Filomena Gurtiz at May 7, 2008 07:43 PMIt's true that Paul Wellstone could not run successfully for president, but that's much less of a problem that it appears to be. Apart from the two candidates and Kucinich, we didn't have a lefty in the running. Yet some of the 12, I believe this was the number, candidate could have done a lot of good. Such a candidate could push for universal health care, withdraw from Iraq, strengthen the unions, etc.
That is not everything you and me want, but it is a huge progress. Sadly, our alleged nominee will do none of these things.
Posted by Koshembos at May 7, 2008 07:52 PMI haven't paid much attention to the opinions of the MSM for decades. This year they were a month and a half late in noticing that Obama had won the nomination. I don't know why anyone should pay attention to them.
Posted by Bob In Pacifica at May 7, 2008 07:55 PMYou are truly living in a dream world if you think the worst has come out about Obama. Fox is saving the best for last.
Some of the stuff is hopefully just garbage, but it's out there and it will come out in the general.
i understand it is necessary for blog posters to genuflect in the direction of the web goddess, digby,
but
good as she sometimes is,
this comment of her's was hasty and foolish:
[ Look, I have the same analysis of the outcome of the elections in Indiana and North Carolina that most people have this morning. Clinton's best argument --- which was essentially that the voters were taking a second look at Obama and showing some buyers remorse --- didn't pan out last night.]
digby is full of it!
what happened last night in north carolina was what has happened over and over again in states with very high proportions of black democratic voters,
obama is their guy and they voted for him 90%+.
if you want to stretch your thinking, rather than feast on received wisdom,
read this:
by jeralyn merritt at www.talkleft.com
"why did obama do worse in north carolina than in virgina"
which cites a post by "twinmom" at MyDD.
and always remember,
what you read or hear in the corporate media,
and, increasingly,
the weblog media,
is 99.5% useless bullshit-
always!!!!
Posted by orionATL at May 7, 2008 08:46 PM"Yet some of the 12, I believe this was the number, candidate could have done a lot of good. Such a candidate could push for universal health care, withdraw from Iraq, strengthen the unions, etc."
Koshembos, his name was John Edwards.
Sorry, this should be in an Open Thread, but right now it is difficult to talk about issues other than the race for the nomination.
The WH and Congress must be soooo very happy that we are looking the other way, totally engaged in
fighting over the Democratic nominee.
Iraq war funding Supp-date: May 7, 2008
The House is going to take up the Iraq war funding supplemental tomorrow. Using the never-enacted fiscal year 2008 Military Construction-Veterans Administration Appropriations bill (HR 2642) as a vehicle or shell, House Democrats will offer the following three amendments:
http://theiraqinsider.blogspot.com/2008/05/iraq-war-funding-supp-date-may-7-2008.html
According to news reports, Congress will have a series of separate votes. There'll be one vote on whether to give the president $162 billion to fund the war through next year—with no strings attached. That's a huge amount to spend on keeping troops in Iraq, especially at a time when peoples' houses are being foreclosed and unemployment is going up at home.
Then, there will be separate votes on measures to redeploy our troops and hold the Bush administration accountable for their actions during the war—measures that could ban torture, hold contractors accountable, and prevent President Bush from committing our troops to a permanent presence in Iraq.
Posted by Judith at May 7, 2008 09:07 PM
On point as always. I love reading Digby and love reading your posts, Turkana.
I have a special place in my heart for "shrillosphere" but really your best contribution to the debate has been to point out "The Great Divergence."
Posted by Joelarama at May 7, 2008 09:12 PMSorry Turkana, I meant to put the war funding under 'Utter Insanity.'
Posted by Judith at May 7, 2008 09:13 PMLawrence O'Donnell is saying that Clinton will drop out by June 15th.
"A senior campaign official and Clinton confidante has told me that there will be a Democratic nominee by June 15. He could not bring himself to say the words "Hillary will drop out by June 15," but that is clearly what he meant. I kept saying, "So, Hillary will drop out by June 15," and he kept saying, "We will have a nominee by June 15." He stressed what a reasonable person Hillary is."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/hillary-will-drop-out-by_b_100625.html
Posted by Judith at May 7, 2008 09:29 PMThis year I have actually decided that I like Andrew Sullivan. In his Iraq-war-supporting phase I would not have liked him, but he actually has morals and the grab-bag, post-a-quarter-of-an-hour quality of the blog is endearing.
That said, 1) it is encouraging that David Brooks and Bill Kristol are still universally acknowledged to be scum, and 2) the FDL/Open Left/Greenwald axis never fell for this kind of thing. Any additional credibility they get attacking the media is well earned.
60 years! I have a sense of occasion now that it is finally here.
Posted by 4jkb4ia at May 7, 2008 09:59 PMUpton: "C'mon stop the sniveling, we have a nominee albeit it is not official yet ..."
IMHO, the self-absorbed Democratic Party establishment that holds court inside the Beltway is the living, breathing embodiment of the "Peter Principle." They could not have done a better job of ensuring that our party would be saddled with a weak nominee who dutifully represents their interests rather than ours, than if they had orchestrated the re-nomination of John Kerry.
Posted by Donald from Hawaii at May 7, 2008 11:19 PMI have one quibble with digby's analysis.
Although she states that she has no problem with political junkies sitting around saying the race is over and exhorting Clinton to drop out...she does have a problem with the definitiveness that Timmeh and his millionaire breathren in the msm proclaim it as over and do it as such
Um....couldn't timmeh and some of the others she's referring to in the msm doing it also be considered a political junkies....so she kind of blunts her point imo.
Just sayin...but I get what she is getting at and agree with the main giste, she's trying to say the media and "respected journalists" *cough* should not be an arbiter of such things and should remain neutral.
And turkana, you're point is even better.
Posted by emal at May 8, 2008 03:53 AMTimmeh takes his orders from the corporation that owns him.
Posted by Judith at May 8, 2008 05:13 AMI agree with Digby, but it should be crystal clear that America doesn't want another dynastic reign.
It's over Billary...go home now
Posted by at May 8, 2008 08:10 AMIt is done, but how dare the MSM media have an opinion on this. This is an internal family issue, the Repubs and MSM shouldn't be coopted our process.
Posted by allansfca at May 8, 2008 08:23 AMWait a minute. When Russert and media were talking about pastor White and criticizing Obama for not putting distance between him and his pastor from the very beginning, why was there no such reaction from Turkana and other folks? Why is all this sensitivity when the media talks about Hillary?
Posted by suresh at May 8, 2008 08:44 AMBut how will those who have spent the past six months citing Russert and Dowd and Drudge and Politico and Sullivan and their ilk ever again have the credibility to criticize these blights on the body politic,
Who cares? The first thing to go in this primary was credibility of the major blogs. The days of reality based community are over. The A listers have decided to speak for the blogosphere and what they say is "we aren't going to replace the rightwing media with a reality based leftwing media, we're gonna be the same as them, fuck reality." And it worked, didn't it? How many of them are you seeing on tv? Olberman is now a part of dKos, just like Drudge is to Fox "news." That was the plan all along, what "crashing the gates" was all about. There's no fame or money in media critique - the big brass ring is media consultant, or even better, political pundit. New boss/old boss, you get the picture?
Posted by iamcoyote at May 8, 2008 09:10 AMHere's the thing, just because Hilary couldn't "touch" Obama, due to various MSM silliness, doesn't mean McCain will have the same problem. Remember, the MSM likes McCain and loathes all things Clinton.
Because there are no facts, there is no truth, Just data to be manipulated
Don Henley-The Garden of Allah
Posted by Radix at May 8, 2008 09:20 AMSuresh,
Had Obama not distanced himself, he would have had no chance of winning those tepid red states he needs to win to become President, even Obama recognized this.
Because there are no facts, there is no truth, Just data to be manipulated
Don Henley-The Garden of Allah
Posted by Radix at May 8, 2008 09:35 AMI agree with Digby, but it should be crystal clear that America doesn't want another dynastic reign.It's over Billary...go home now
You do realize that Obama is only leading the popular vote by 2.5%, right? Given this number I think your statement is a little foolish.
Because there are no facts, there is no truth
Just data to be manipulated
Because there are no facts, there is no truth, Just data to be manipulated
Don Henley-The Garden of Allah
Posted by Radix at May 8, 2008 09:40 AMOdd that you quote Digby, Turkana.
Her comments section is full of Obama supporters who are calling any Hillary supporters "racist inbreds."
Why would anyone rational want to descend into that kind of trash?
Posted by Mary at May 8, 2008 09:41 AMRadix, you do realize that Hillary hasn't the chance of a snowball in hell of legitimately obtaining the nomination? Do the math.
It's been over for two months now. It's time to bury the corpse.
Posted by at May 8, 2008 10:06 AMPeople have real problems, like no jobs, no health care, soaring costs of mere survival, no housing; foreclosures, high energy costs; failing schools, pushed closer to failure because of NCLB; a constitution that has been all but eviscerated; a congress poised to dispose of the 4th amendment.
Do you seriously think anyone but the shrieking 25% of wingnut knuckle draggers gives a shit about lapel pins and black preachers?
It's sad to think that discourse in America has deteriorated to "Survivor" levels, but alas, that's been happening for decades now.
Posted by at May 8, 2008 10:09 AMall the talk since may 7 about obama's great victory and his certain coronation as the democratic nominee is nothing more than very loud, very extensive, pre-emptive p.r.
how truly precarious obama's lead over clinton is,
is indicated by the numbers below
and by his campaign managers' decision to announce an obama "victory" on may 31
and by efforts by the obama team to preempt any challlneges clinto might make on florida, michigan, or the texas caucuses
as "extra-legal".
from www.diversityj.com
2008 democratic primary election results (updated may 7, 2008)
total popular vote with florida and michigan counted in:
obama 16.401 million
clinton 16.313 million
difference ~90,000 votes
obama's lead as a percent of toyal votes cast:
0.28% (that's less than 1%)
total poular vote with florida and michigan omitted:
obama 15.824 million
clinton 15.113 million
obama's lead as a percent of total votes cast:
2.26%
the obama team and the corporate and web media who support them are trying to paint an extremely close race, where obama's entire lead is a function of his being the favorite son of black democrats,
into a resounding, inevitiable victory.
more smoke and mirrors from the obama team.
this is essentially a tie with another florida-style nightmare of illegitimcay looming.
Posted by orionATL at May 8, 2008 10:59 AMThe only way I can make any sense of this tedious spendathon drama is to conclude that H is in fact waiting around for O to be eliminated by some outraged crackerboy in somewhat the same fashion that George Wallace was made to sit down (permanently). Maybe encouraging such an event would be too strong, but perhaps not given the obvious negative animus of the C team. I did not expect this degree of unstylishness from the Cs. They have raised Magic Thinking to a higher artform.
Posted by anon at May 8, 2008 12:15 PMOrion:
It's time to let go.
Eric in Austin
Posted by ericl at May 8, 2008 01:57 PMof course, eric
so you can join all those other little narcissists chanting
"we are the ones we have been waiting for".
and the nation is left with
an intolerably inexperienced egotist as our next president.
Posted by orionATL at May 8, 2008 03:51 PM