Letters to the Editor
Gwool
Published Letters: 353 Editor's Choice: 40
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I think you are missing something, Glenn
[Read the article: Chris Matthews is right ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hillary's crying Jag was but 18 hours before the polls. It was therefore impossible for this to be picked up by the tracking data.
She won by about 6,000 votes. She also had a much better machine than Obama. Obama also played to a younger crowd, and with everyone sensing she was dead in the water, I suspect a lot of that younger crowd opted to stay home and roll a fatty and watch cartoons rather than deal with the hassle of getting out to vote. There hasn't been one successful candidate who was able to parlay youth support into votes except for Eugene McCarthy, and he was only able to do that given there was a draft and the young boomers had skin in the game.
Political junkie that I am, I went up to a radio station broadcasting live during the day to live the election vicariously while waxing nostalgic about 1980. This thing wasn't called by anyone. It seems to have been a groundswell of support in the day in 24/7 instantaneous media coverage that had segments of the population (women, primarily) turn on a dime.
So what is the solution? If McCain/Feingold limits speech under the first amendment, how could we impose a poll data black out so many days before the primary?
The press thinks of itself as smarter than the rest of us. It is truly the fourth estate run amok. Blame it on Woodward and Bernstein opening up pandora's box by bringing down a presidency over a third rate break in. It broke once and for all the sense of respect the press held for the officials they covered.
I had a poly-sci professor blame it on the GI bill, saying before the press were usually ink stained high school grades who worked their way up the system, and now they were as educated as those they covered.
The velocity of information flows has drastically increased thanks (or no thanks) to the internet. There's no time to ponder as pundits bang on blogs seconds after events take place rather than sitting down and THINKING about what they are observing on our behalf. Clinton cries the afternoon before the polls open, and it is broadcast 24/7 thereafter. It was the dominate news story of the day while pundits ruminated over what was going to happen as a result of it.
Women took it as picking on the girl in part and others saw the crying jag as signs the woman was human, which was the big concern about her all along as she gets called cold, calculating, bitchy, and everything else.
The parallels to Reagan in 1980 astound me. The rap on him was being a detached reader of cue cards for his operators. Seizing the microphone in Nashua against my guy as I sat in the stands, he proved he was his own man and had a temper of sorts.
Reagan had lost to Bush in Iowa in an upset. Clinton lost to Obama in Iowa in an upset. Reagan reorganized his campaign staff and was deemed dead in the water. Hillary added an advisor and speculation was Carville was going to crawl out from under the bridge and troll the murky waters of partisan attack politics. Reagan dominated the news cycle from that saturday until the tuesday election and pulled an upset. Clinton dominated it for 18 hours and pulled an upset.
The only difference there is time. And the velocity of information flows between now and 1980 allows that occur in a much more compressed time frame today.
Reagan went on to steam roll Bush, with him dropping out after New Jersey in May after a late February primary. It's all been moved up, so Hillary could end this thing at the beginning of February.
Bush looked weak on that NH stage. Hell, he looked like a deer staring at an oncoming Peterbilt. Obama didn't necessarily do anything wrong, so maybe the parallel will not continue throughout the cycle.
But losing like that will sap the energy out of that campaign. Ring up a couple quick losses and the campaign bus can take on a gallows humor as it did on the Bush bus post NH.
History seems to be repeating itself Glenn, with the only difference being the time compression our instant electronic media provides to the process.
I am not so sure it is a good thing, and America has a real hard on when it comes to protecting the rights of the fourth estate, so it is not going to change.
Sadly, it is what it is.
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Another Anonymous Tough Guy
[Read the article: Illustrative New Hampshire snippets]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"You know you were a Bush staffer. Beyond that, you obviously don't know shit from shinola. That we all can see."
Don't you have some dog shit you can light on fire before ringing a doorbell and running away?
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PC Run Amok
[Read the article: "Shuck and jive"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you criticize Hillary you are misogynist, if you criticize Obama you are racist. At least Obama is smart enough to dismiss these notions. Joe Biden was thrown to the wolves for having the temerity to compliment the man on being clean cut and articulate,
Cuomo may be a bozo, but NO ONE is going to be so stupid as to use shuck and jive in the same sentence with a black person's name.
I like Obama's style. I may not vote for him, but I do like his style, and would be very interested in any efforts he might make to end partisan cheapshotting in DC. I am waiting for him to reject some ridiculous policy item espoused by the black "poverty pimp" leadership of Sharpton and Jackson and be labelled an Uncle Tom, or an Oreo, or worse. That's got to be just around the corner, right?