I think the media uses the same rule of thumb I've heard given to people seeking promotions - You 'dress' for the job you want to have, rather than the one you've got. The media has a tendency to pick who they think looks most like them - or, the them they want to be. Given the state of media personalities, it's a sure fire recipe for dumbing the whole process down.

It is ever so much easier to have two candidates from each party to compare and contrast. A nice little 4-square matrix. I sincerely doubt that most of the media could handle a matrix much larger than that. And, because they can't, their readers/viewing audience isn't required to stretch any further than the media asks them to. Some things really shouldn't be subjected to KISS (keep it simple, stupid).

While it is reasonable to distill a thing down to its essence, I loathe the way the media jumps the gun, picks its favorites for the 4-square, and ignores everything and everyone else. And, yes, the first criteria for their picks sorts on establishment sentiments. It's nearly the same bias social psychologists reveal in ethnicity, race, and gender studies.

One more reason I spend less than an hour a month on traditional mainstream media. A pox on 'em.

Paul, Huckabee and Edwards will be heard -- are being heard -- and when the dust settles a year from now, people will look back and marvel that everything which looked so predictable in 2004 turned out to be anything but.

Don't stop there! Keep going. Expand, please.

But, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...

Matthew Yglesias

Holbrooke's Secret Plan |19 Dec 2007 10:52 am

I apologize for the extreme length of this post, but the determination of various people to mislead the public about their pre-war stances on Iraq seems to me to require Greenwald-esque post lengths to try to document. ...

William Timberman. Thanks. That's sort of the direction I thought you were going, but didn't want to assume. I have a boatload of concerns about the sustainability of our current political-economic direction. I think Krugman, et al are thinking more 1970s type recession than 1930s, but I'm not so sure. I've been following closely Krugman, and others wrt the Big Shitpile (TM belongs to Atrios). That is one enormous mess. One various factions are trying very hard to minimize. For now, all anyone has been able to do is move that shitpile around. I suspect the final solution will be to haul out one gigantic manure spreader, and each of us will get a coating of it. I worry about the degree of economic instability it will generate when the dimensions of it are fully understood. Will this be the one that capsizes the boat?

AnnieW re 2nd/3rd tier candidates. The media's not interested? In many ways I think the press shapes the story to create the 2nd and 3rd tier, and then decides who will populate those tiers. I think the press DEFINES the tiers, and ASSIGNS the candidates.

I think the cat's finally out of the bag. Glenn has a super-secret plan to eviscerate every candidate on both on the Right and the Left to so thoroughly discourage his readers that they ALL stay home and fail to vote in '08. It's a sneaky, diabolical scheme by which he and Joan Walsh take over the US and sell it to Saudi Arabia.

Dogmatic prisim = ego investment due to projecting onto the candidate that which you really, really, really want to see.

Obviously, it's time for me to exit stage left. Have a good evenin' all.