Wag the Election II: Democratic Primary Meltdown

McCamy Taylor

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Wed May-21-08 11:05 PM
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Wag the Election II: Democratic Primary Meltdown

. I. OLBERMANN: Rachel, we‘re going to have to interrupt you

In their coverage of the Iowa Caucus, we can already see the script that the cast of players at General Electric’s number one propaganda outlet, MSNBC will be following this election season.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22505399/

MATTHEWS:Rachel, and then Howard, I want you, and Pat, and, of course, Gene Robinson, all of you from your different perspectives, what is it about America that here we are in 2008, finally picking an African-American with a real shot to be president of the United States, and a woman just got a very bad night in Iowa?

To which Maddow replies

MADDOW: I think that you’re calling this a really bad night for Hillary too early. I think that we need to see how close it’s going to be. And if ultimately the results are a three-way tie or look close to it, or Barack Obama wins tightly, that’s a story. I think it matters.
I don’t see this as a huge rejection of Hillary if she doesn’t come in with a big win, honestly. I know you see it differently.

Fasten your seatbelts. We are in for a bumpy ride. This is the way it will be from here on out. Chris Matthews will be the number one dirty trickster playing the kind of divide and conquer games that Pat Buchanan and CREEP immortalized back in 1972---you know, split the Democrats along various demographic lines, like Blacks against whites, working class against college educated, old against young, North against South—in order to handicap the eventual nominee. Rachel Maddow will play the voice of reason. And all too often you will hear someone at MSNBC say something like:

OLBERMANN: Rachel, we‘re going to have to interrupt you.

Because she has been the only regular on the network who 1) has a clue and 2) is not part of the conspiracy to divide and conquer the Democrats.

From now on all my floaty hearts go to Rachel Maddow.
:loveya: :loveya: :loveya:

From the night of the New Hampshire Primary:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22574559/

On the subject of Hillary Clinton’s tears, which every major news outlet covered as her “Ed Muskie” moment.

MADDOW: I think there is a double standard. I think it‘s being covered because the media has this schadenfreude, this excitement in Hillary Clinton—anything bad happening to the Clintons, particularly anything bad happening to Hillary Clinton. And so that‘s covered as if it‘s news-worthy on its face, but the double standard, the way it‘s not covered when other candidates do it, shows that it‘s just a Hillary-specific thing.

MATTHEWS: A hard charge there, Pat Buchanan. This is schadenfreude, a joy to everyone else‘s tragedy, a nice long German word to explain that. The media is sadistic, a shorter Latinate word. Do you think the media and other political colleagues are sadistic toward Hillary Clinton and her plight?

PAT BUCHANAN, MSNBC ANALYST: I do think some media, Chris, are gleeful at what is happening to the Clintons and Hillary Clinton. I think the reason they covered this is because it is newsworthy. Hillary Clinton, contrary to what I heard earlier, has been the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. She looked like the sure thing, the next president of the United States.
And if you see someone in that moment, like Ed Muskie when he was supposed to win the nomination in ‘72, break up in front of the “Union Leader,” that is a major news story, and this was representative, I think - hold it—of a break really in Hillary‘s spirit that suggested she‘s going to lose and may lose the nomination.

Now, if I have a beef with Maddow, it is that she did not jump right in at this point and remind Pat Buchanan of why Ed Muskie broke down in tears back in 1972.

http://www.woodstockjournal.com/elections.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/stories/buchananmemo.htm

No one on that set should have allowed the Lord of Lies to get away with citing Muskie and not called him to account for his part in that shameful political campaign full of dirty tricks. Ed Muskie is precisely why the politics of personal destruction is so bad for America---and yet, Buchanan was reminding all of the older people at the table of how effective it was at causing trouble and throwing elections towards Republicans and denying voters their chance to choose from among the candidates.

Later in the evening, Maddow says something that the MSNBC pundits do not want to hear:

MADDOW: Pat, I will tell you that on the influential press on the left Web site, talkingpointsmemo today, do you want to know who they‘re blaming for women voters breaking for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama? Who they‘re blaming for this late showing for Hillary Clinton? They‘re blaming Chris Matthews. People are citing particularly Chris not only for his own views but also for as a symbol of what the mainstream media has done to Hillary Clinton.

That is when KO interrupts her.

Rachel Maddow is not the only women to question the good old boys of MSNBC that night. After Eugene Robinson gets the others convinced that New Hampshire voters were racially biased and the exit polls were messed up from the so called Bradley effect, the editor of The Nation Katrina Vanden Heuvel points out the obvious---what even MSNBC’s own polls have shown them.

VANDEN HEUVEL: But I mean, I think it was the women breaking for Hillary which played such a huge role in her victory.

The guys want none of this. By next morning, Tweety will be spouting his infamous “Methinks Paleface speaks with forked tongue” line that will have divided Democrats along racial lines. Obama supporters will be convinced that New Hampshire Democrats are racists. Because hell! Why accept a perfectly sensible answer when you can come up with one designed to divide and conquer the opposition party?

And lookie, lookie! Here comes the old master of divide and conquer himself, Pat Buchanan to declare that the Democratic Party is irrevocably divided and conquered as of early January based upon one caucus and one primary.

PAT BUCHANAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Chris, I think the important thing that we ought to look at is not what the candidates did but what the people of New Hampshire said. In the final three days, what they said, I think, is we‘re tired of Hillary Clinton being beaten up as she is by the other Democrats and by the press, and we don‘t want the media telling us who our Messiah is going to be.
And older folks above 40, and women especially, came out and rescued Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now, this has great portent, I think, for the future, because Barack Obama, he got the young people and he got the educated, the ones with the PHD.s. Now when this goes to South Carolina, Chris, I think what is going to happen is Barack Obama may very well win that and do very well among African-Americans, and the Democratic party will break down into a youth, African-Americans and educated against the Humphrey coalition, sort of McGovern versus Humphrey, working class women, elderly with Hillary.
And this looks like really the paradigm going forward for the Democratic nomination.
Snip
BUCHANAN: OK, look, that does not invalidate the breakdown that is coming, it seems to me, which is the women in the Democratic party, those over 40, certainly those over 50, are not going to have the candidate of youth and the candidate of the African-Americans imposed upon them. That‘s what New Hampshire said. And now you go to South Carolina and it‘s going to be looked at in that I think paradigm.
When that happens, I think there‘s real potential for a very savage split in the Democratic party along the lines of ’72.

I'll bet that he sees potential. The old rat bastard. And MSNBC's a rat bastard, too, allowing the mastermind of Nixon’s dirty tricks to sit on television and tell all the nation’s Republicans “this is how the Democrats can be defeated, we divide them up just like we did in 1972”. That is the very best kind of free publicity that RNC oppo could ask for. Hell, they might as well say “Every Republican with a computer get on line and start posting flamebait.”

Only one person on the set at MSNBC dares to call bullshit on this bullshit:

MADDOW: I think that the savage split right now is still on the Republican side, where it‘s impossible to forecast what‘s going to happen. It‘s impossible to find a candidate that a big important section of the Republican king makers don‘t hate.
On the Democratic side, again, I‘ve got to dissent from the chorus here, and say, if you look at the last year of polling in New Hampshire, it was Hillary Clinton way ahead the whole time, until the last two percent of that graph, when Barack Obama picked up. We‘re pretending like this is a huge, massive, historic upset; he didn‘t pull off his last-minute upset of her. That‘s all that it means.
I‘m not sure the Democratic sac right here is all that rent. I think the Republicans are still a lot more divided here.

MATTHEWS: We‘re going to have leave on that point. Rachel Maddow

I guess Maddow’s contrarian talk did not sit well with some people, because I miss her in Nevada, South Carolina and she finally shows up in Florida, where she makes the faux pas of mentioning that John McCain resorts to attacking his political opponents just like a normal politician.

MADDOW: We talked a little bit earlier about the ways that McCain attacked Romney. We talked a lot about him attacking him on Iraq. But McCain really went after Romney on his economic record. We all think Romney, rich guy, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into Romney invulnerable on the economy. The third worst job creation record in the country as governor of Massachusetts. McCain hit him with that over and over again.

O’DONNELL: We’re going to have more with our panel, but I’ll throw it back to Keith and Chris. (Laser beam eyes being directed at Maddow are implied. No one, and I mean no one is allowed to suggest that McCain would ever do anything besides campaign in an entirely positive and upbeat manner.)

II. BUCHANAN: You’ve got to say it’s gotten pretty much, I think, down to an Obama/Hillary race. The night of the Iowa Primary when the Democratic winners were Obama, Edwards, Clinton in that order.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22505399/

Oh yes, General Electric was one of the first to declare that John Edwards’ upset victory over Hillary Clinton in Iowa meant that his campaign was finished, just it is declared that Huckabee’s win in Iowa meant that John McCain would be the Republican nominee. We all remember that Olbermann tried to give Edwards equal time. But, when the pundits on election night have declared your campaign over, you do not get the expected infusion of cash. When they downplay the significance of your win, you get no momentum. When they call it a two man race between Obama and Clinton, that is what it becomes in the eyes of the voting public.

And if you say that Clinton is a dirty trickster, then she is a dirty trickster:

RUSSERT: How does she pivot off of this Democratic unity speech, as you accurately described it, Keith, before New Hampshire?Does she go negative on Barack Obama?Does she really try to separate herself and go after him in a very hard way?
WILLIAMS: Yes.

III. MATTHEWS: A Confected Reality From the New Hampshire primary coverage.

On to New Hampshire. Though the cast talks about the excitement generated by Obama, they seem preoccupied by Clinton. They really want to see Clinton lose. You can sense blood lust in the air. Chris Matthews calls in Tom Delay for an expert opinion on whether or not the Clintons are playing by the rules and only Keith Olbermann finds this hard to swallow. Andrea Mitchell says of the Clintons “They are too arrogant”. All this time, everyone has assumed that Clinton was going to lose. When the first results come in, Matthews is the first to change his tune and remember that New Hampshire “likes” the Clintons. And then Tweety does something that he does a lot. He tells a story. He spins a yarn in vivid colors, so bright and pretty that you would swear that it is real.

MATTHEWS: This is a basketball game tonight. Meaning it will be decided in the last couple of minutes before the buzzer. Couple seconds. This looks like we‘re going to get a result tonight. It‘s going to be clear. Someone‘s going to win. I wouldn‘t put it past the Clintons if it looked like it was moving toward a victory for Barack to pull a quick press conference while it is still vague and say it‘s too early to tell. Go to bed with some sort of vague victory statement. I‘ll know throughout this evening what their game plan is because it will be there.
But it seems to me there is a good chance they will try to move preemptively, , claim some sort of tie, if this thing‘s moving as the Hanover vote comes in towards Obama. It will be interesting to watch the gamesmanship tonight. They have pulled this before. Declaring comebacks when they‘ve lost by eight, having been ahead by 20. They are quite able to try to create a new confected reality.

Matthews is a con artist. He knows that reality is nothing more than what we think sounds realistic or plausible. Provide enough details. Swear you have seen it yourself. Let a hint of outrage creep into your voice and everyone will just know that you are telling the truth. Tweety is the one who knows all about making confected reality. Like the confected reality in which he always knew that there were no WMDs, even when he was helping MSNBC lead the march to war.

Even though their own exit polls are telling them that late deciders and women have tilted the vote towards Clinton, when Eugene Robinson suggests

ROBINSON: Well, I‘ll tell you what some people will suspect. Here you have polls, you know, the day before the primary showing Obama way ahead. And he finishes, you know, 15 points lower than that. A lot of people will suspect a “Bradley effect.”

The cast of MSNBC rushes to embrace the theory, because it is what they have been seeking all along, a way to interject race into the race.

SCARBOROUGH: Wait, wait, wait, but are you really saying right now that the people of New Hampshire may have—I won‘t say, be racist, but are you saying that they did not want to go in that booth and vote for a black man?

Pay attention what Joe just did. He said “I won’t say” And then he said racist . This is a very old rhetorical trick that works only when speaking. Olbermann did the same thing recently when he said he didn’t want to call the Clinton campaign a Ponzi scheme. Dudes and dudettes, when someone is talking to you, especially when they are talking to you from a platform that endows them with authority---from a news desk or a political podium and they say something like “I wouldn’t want to call my opponent a child buggering flag burning dog murdering faggot” the ear hears “mumble mumble mumble child buggering flag burning dog murdering faggot !!!!. And then, Joe pours oil on the fire by redefining the word racist .
Now, if someone pulls up the transcript, the offender can protest, “But I said I didn’t want to say it!” That might work for an idiot who has never been on television or radio before. It does not excuse a veteran.

Robinson and the editor from the Nation try to object, but the Good Old Boys are on a roll now that will end with Matthews offending everyone with “Methinks Paleface Speaks with forked tongue” by the next morning. You know who has a forked tongue? The devil. He likes to tell lies in order to cause trouble, just like Chris Matthews. Within a few days, the experts will conclude that women concerned about reproductive rights tipped Clinton over the edge, but by then, the damage will have been done.
MSNBC has uttered the word racist in conjunction with New Hampshire and the Hillary Clinton voters. Thanks for nothing, Joe Scarborough. I hope you got a nice fat bonus from General Electric.

Now, here is something that would fly under the radar if you did not know what was going on in the rest of the campaign world, Check out what GOP boot licker Tim Russert has to say before New Hampshire is called for Clinton.

RUSSERT: But it‘s a long way off. The Clinton people insist they have money. They insist they‘re going on. They‘re going to retool the campaign, try to reframe the issues.
I think Bill Clinton‘s been the most aggressive in trying to make the point about rolling the dice, or risky, or a fairy tale. I expect to hear a lot more of that in the coming days.

Russert must have a crystal ball. Or access to Obama campaign oppo. This is January 8. The night before, Olbermann made history as the first anchor in the U.S. (I believe) to repeat Ben Smith of Politico’s misquote of Clinton’s remarks in which she compared herself to experienced LBJ and Obama to inexperienced JFK mangling it to suggest that she maligned Dr. King in an attempt at political suicide. In a few more days, January 12, the Huffington Post will reveal that something called “The Race Memo” had been given to their reporters by someone claiming to be with the Obama camp. In the intervening days, people like Rep. James Clyburn, Bob Herbert of the NYT, Donna Brazile and CBS will (possibly innocently) repeat bogus charges contained within the “Race Memo” before the Obama Camp disavows the Memo. Despite efforts of the Obama Camp to put a lid on the Memo, NBC and MSNBC will then go to extraordinary lengths to publicize the bogus charges contained within that memo---in direct opposition to the Obama Camp. Late the next week, Rep. Clyburn will broker a peace deal between the Obama camp and the Clintons, however by this point the apology that Obama will issue does little to ease Bill Clinton’s anger at having been labeled a racist throughout the press. The battle is on.

And I suspect that people at General Electric, knowing of Bill Clinton’s temper, set up the two camps for the war of words which they fought in South Carolina by seizing upon the “Race Memo” which they knew to contain factual errors and using it as the basis for news stories anyway so that the Clintons would blame the Obamas.

Ask yourself, if professional journalists use oppo from one campaign without fact checking it, whose fault is it? The first campaign’s? Or the professional journalists? Since the target campaign will almost certainly respond within hours (that is why Ben Smith corrected his Politico article so quickly) if the MSM did not correct their story for a week, even with Media Matters and other watch dog sites and the targeted campaign telling them that they had it wrong, that means that they wanted to publicize the distorted version.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5692877

In the above journal, I analyze the corporate media organizations which did features based upon the “Race Memo” constellation of stories. The only two empires which did multiple stories were the New York Times, which did their work early on, before the Huffington Post printed the “Race Memo” and the General Electric media empire, which did its work after the Memo’s publication. What difference does this make? The New York Times may have been attempting to highlight legitimate concerns about race. When the existence of the Memo was revealed, the Obama camp disavowed it and its inaccuracies became clear, the NYTs dropped the subject. General Electric, on the other hand, saw this as the perfect time to take the story to the big time, where everyone, including the Clintons would see the anti-Clinton stories as originating from within the Obama camp. General Electric was out to split the Party in half with a chainsaw.

Thank you, Tim Russert, for having such a big, fat mouth. Do you have any people that you want to reject?

IV. RUSSERT: Absolutely. Everyone is trying to game the table. Night of the Nevada primary

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22786061/

What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. Jan. 19. Operation call Bill Clinton a bigot and blame it on Barack Obama has been a big success.

SCARBOROUGH: And, Peggy, it is getting very personal, especially between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Clinton won the Nevada Caucuses, thanks to the votes of women and Latinos. Does this mean that her campaign is moving forward? No.

HOWARD FINEMAN, NEWSWEEK: Yes, Hillary won but I think it’s civil war, is what this means. I think this thing between Obama and Clinton is going to go on a long time. It’s going to tear the Democratic Party apart and one of the big challenges for whoever wins the nomination is putting the party back together. That’s always the case, but it’s going to be more of the case this time than any time in a generation.

Excuse me, but at this point the Democrats had been through one primary and two caucuses and the good old boys at MSNBC were exulting in the fact that the Democratic Primary was going to go on forever and it was going to tear the party apart ???? How the hell did they know? Unless they had skipped to the end of the screenplay that someone had written for them.

MSNBC has it all tonight. They have perennial Clinton basher Peggy Noonan on board doing what she does best. Tucker Carlson mentions robo-calls that use Obama’s full name and says Clinton must have done it. KO rains on his parade and says that anyone—even the GOP could have done it. They insinuate that Bill Clinton has personally manned polling places to keep Obama voters from participating. Once again they have Eugene Robinson leading the others into the treacherous waters of racial politics:

EUGENE ROBINSON, THE WASHINGTON POST: There are charges and countercharges of irregularities in the voting and muscle being applied. You know, I’m not sure I quite buy Howard’s Antietam theory, but I do think, look, here is one thing to watch. She won big among the Latino voters. Obama won equally big among African-American voters. I think it would really get out of hand if the Democratic parties saw those two big constituencies at odds.

Holy racial divide, Batman! I do not need to consult any Irish odds makers to know that MSNBC is going to run with this one.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, could it be that there are some number of Latino voters who are hesitant to vote for a black candidate on the Democratic side? I don’t know the answer. You could interpret the results today that way. But if that’s true, the last thing that party or any party wants is key demographics pitted against one another.

Note that Robinson did not say anything about Latinos not voting for Blacks. Carlson did. However, any Latinos watching the show could be forgiven for getting the impression that Robinson started the conversation that ended up characterization Latinos as being a bunch of ignorant bigots. Way to divide and conquer, Tucker.

It gets worse.In violation of the treaty which guest Rep. James Clyburn helped broker between the Obama and the Clinton camp over the unfortunate “Race Memo” look at what the pranksters at MSNBC do.

MATTHEWS: Was there any evidence available to anyone that the Clintons were strategic enough to figure that they could start a fight for who is the best for the black community given through all the history and LBJ and Martin Luther King and all the rest of that fight of the last week or so, that that would help them in a non-black voting?

RUSSERT: Well, that’s an important question, Chris. I asked Barack Obama in the debate that we had in Nevada where he thought it was an intentional effort to marginalize him as the black candidate. When Hillary Clinton first made her comments about Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson, it was the kind of comment that came to her, talking about picking the president and the importance of being a president.
But after that, there were several attempts by her spokespeople and others to really reinforce that. And also to talk about Barack Obama and the whole drug use and a lot of caricatures of a black candidate. So you have to keep watching this very carefully because what emerges from this in terms of voting by ethnicity or race is terribly important as to who is going to win on Super Tuesday.

Russert is trying to sell the Race Memo in its new form, that written up by Pat Buchanan in “Ghettoizing Barack” a piece of divide and conquer oppo which he penned for his own right wing magazine.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/219
In the journal above there is a link to Buchanan’s January 2008 article in which he accuses the Clintons on interjecting race into the race in order to marginalize Obama. There is also a link to an article Buchanan wrote in April, 2008 in which he cites the exact same evidence to prove that Obama interjected race into the race to smear the Clintons. What does all this prove? That you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time---and that Pat Buchanan is still the master when it comes to political dirty tricks.

The irony is that Rep. James Clyburn is just about to be the guest on MSNBC. Now, he is the one who brokered the truce between the Clintons and the Obamas after he made some accusations in the New York Times that turned out to be based upon false information. His major complaints to the NYT were about a distorted version of Hillary Clinton’s JFK-LBJ remark (one that substituted MLK for JFK) and the misconstrued Bill Clinton remark about the thought of a Black president being a “fairy tale”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/us/politics/11clyburn.html?ex=1357794000&en=2fe657eca309a1ff&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

When Tim Russert refers back to the now many times debunked Hillary disrespected MLK story and to criticisms of Obama by surrogates, he would seem to be implying to Clinton supporters who might be watching that Rep. James Clyburn has been telling tales back stage---even though Clyburn promised a truce. Why would Russert do that? To make Clyburn look like a liar and a dirty trickster? To divide and conquer the Party and increase the level of animosity between the two camps?

One more bit of back story. Though Clinton clearly won Nevada, MSNBC has been claiming that the Obama camp has been claiming all night that they might actually get one more delegate than Clinton when the delegates are apportioned and that delegates count more than votes. This has lead Keith Olbermann, who has never bothered to conceal his Obama bias, despite MSNBC’s policy about not endorsing candidates, to repeatedly ask who the real winner of Nevada’s Democratic caucus is, Clinton or Obama. So, when Rep. James Clyburn appears.

KO: Who won Nevada?
CLYBURN: That’s kind of interesting. I suspect that you have to give degree dance credence to popular votes. No question about that. But I think this whole thing is kind of complicated a little bit because as you know, you are showing, mostly what I have seen all the votes for the Republicans and this proportional thing on the Democrats side.
And then we have got this other problem with 13-12 in favor of Obama when it comes to delegates. So I think that you get somewhat of a split decision coming into South Carolina. And so I don’t see where anybody gets a real bump coming out of Nevada because of that.

This gives Scarborough the excuse he was looking for to say later

SCARBOROUGH: Right. But he—this interview, he just talked about hey, wait a second, look at those delegates, it sounded like he was doing some bidding for Obama.

Clyburn is on the record as staying neutral and no doubt this was one of the conditions which the Clintons insisted upon when they agreed not to go public with their complaints about the irregularities contained within the “Race Memo.” Now, if you were Bill Clinton and you agreed not to correct the public record in exchange for James Clyburn giving up his right to endorse a candidate, how would you feel if MSNBC just announced that Clyburn had endorsed Obama---and that he has been repeating the lies from the “Race Memo” (even though cooler heads know that this is the kind of trick that Pat Buchanan used all the time in 1972 to drive wedges between the different Democratic candidates)? You would be about ready to explode.

The preparation of dirty tricks by one democrat against another democrat---that was how Nixon prevailed in 1972. That is the kind of stuff that I believe General Electric has been up to. And we are not even to South Carolina yet.

V. CLYBURN: I think racial politics were, in fact, injected in this campaign in the way that was a little bit unnerving to me.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22882219/

Oops. Now we are. And the big story tonight is how ugly can we make it? Nora O’Donnell starts out with polls showing that over half of voters think that Obama got ugly and three quarters of voters (of all races) think that Clinton got ugly. But because three quarters of Black voters also think that Clinton attacked unfairly, that also means that Clinton “played the race card” since in the world according to General Electric Black folks only care about one issue and that is about being Black.

Did Nora O’Donnell get her job because she has a degree in accessorizing?

Tim Russert continues the “Ghettoizing Barack” narrative from last time.

RUSSERT: Well, there is no doubt about it. You know, South Carolina was scheduled this early in the primary season because the Democratic Party wanted to have a state that had a considerable number of African-American voters. Barack Obama had done well with white voters in Iowa, white voters in New Hampshire. Race wasn’t much of an issue.
Suddenly, it exploded down here. Obama supporters thinking that it was Bill and Hillary Clinton who were trying to, quote, “blacken Barack Obama,” in the words of Professor Ron Walters. It was Barack Obama who went on the “TODAY” show this morning and said in the beginning of the campaign I wasn’t black enough.

Joe Scarborough adds to the fun:

SCARBOROUGH: Right. They looked disoriented. When you start saying Martin Luther King wasn’t responsible for the Civil Rights Act, you’re disoriented.

No, Joe, when you say that Clinton said that Dr. King was not responsible for the Civil Rights Act, they call that distortion .
http://mediamatters.org/items/200801120003
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/12267

But hey, what is a little distortion among friends? This night is not even about either of the two Democratic candidates. This night is all about Bill Clinton. The clip of him totally losing it and making the Jesse Jackson comment gets played and discussed over and over. Joe Trippi comes on screaming bloody murder about some robo-calls he claims that Clinton ordered. I wonder what Trippi would say if Clinton came on screaming bloody murder about the people claiming to be Edwards and Obama representatives who have been telling political bloggers in South Carolina about her lesbian affair, the one that Michael Mustow wrote about in the Village Voice . I will bet that Trippi would say that people can pretend to be from a Democratic campaign when they are not….

Rep. James Clyburn makes one of the funniest comments of the night.

CLYBURN: I think racial politics were, in fact, injected in this campaign in the way that was a little bit unnerving to me.

I am sure that they were. See his New York Times interview link above.

Second funniest statement, from Tim Russert:

TIM RUSSERT, NBC CORRESPONDENT: When Hillary Clinton came back with her stunning victory in New Hampshire, we all said, this is big.

Actually, that was one of the things I noticed. Here we had the first woman winning her first major party primary in a US presidential election and the guys and gals at MSNBC did not even notice. They did not talk about what a historic event it was on the night of the New Hampshire primary. They did not congratulate Clinton. Instead, the spent the night calling the voters of New Hampshire racists for selecting the wrong Democratic candidate and making the exit pollsters look dumb.

Then, Russert says something very unfunny, something that should have given every Obama supporter who ever thought that MSNBC was behind their candidate pause.

RUSSERT: How will Barack Obama be perceived? As the candidate who can put together a coalition or the black candidate taking on white and Latino voters?

Pat Buchanan walks everyone through the “Ghettoizing Barack” theory again---Obama is now just the representative of Blacks and elite liberals, because Clinton has stolen Whites and Latinos (with her laser beam eyes, I guess) and this is how she will win votes in Super Tuesday. God, that woman is such a cheater.

CARLSON: This is one reason. Remember a few months ago Obama wasn’t black enough. Well, the Clintons made him black enough to make Hispanics which are up for grabs, four to one for her.

Ignore the fact that it was the Obama camp that distributed the “Race Memo” and General Electric which has continued to flog that dead horse even after the Obama camp has tried desperately to retract it. The Clintons did not paint anyone as anything. The corporate media painted the Clintons as bigots and the Obamas as divisive and the Democratic Party as broken.

VI. -----

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22919148/

Finally Florida, the Democratic Primary that is not a primary. If any Democrats watched that night, they got to hear the cast from MSNBC laugh at Florida for bothering to vote. They heard Clinton accused of being a cheater---even though the vote does not count. Matthews called it a “phony event”.

Finally, after all this abuse of Florida by people who are obviously rooting for Obama and McCain, Craig Crawford comes on and warns that if the Democrats do not clean up their act and start treating Florida the way that Clinton is treating the state, Florida is going to turn into a Republican state for good. Sorry, Crawford, I think the guys at MSNBC are way ahead of you on that one.

VII. N. O’DONNELL: Latinos may not want to vote for an African American. Pre Super Tuesday Election coverage.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23011406/

General Electric just has to get a little last minute race baiting in there, before the all important California vote. Oh, and David Schuster wants you to know that a good mother would not let her daughter campaign for her. Either Matthews or Pat Buchanan must have figured out right away what a winning combo Hillary-Chelsea is in drawing in the Catholic vote. Too bad Schuster flubbed that little assignment. They should have give it to a pro.

Some nice things are said about Barack Obama this evening---which sort of underscores the fact that during most of these election nights all of the attention has been on praising John McCain to the sky and ripping Bill and Hillary Clinton to shreds. About the most that Obama has been able to look forward to is coverage of his speeches and some glowing words about what a fine orator he is, how inspiring his words are, what a great change candidate, unifier or political leader he is compared to Clinton. No one ever talks about issues.

Tonight we hear that the press just loves Obama. They love his story.

ABRAMS: The media is going to love the Barack Obama story. The media loves the Barack Obama. I think this is going to be the tale we’re going to hear. If Clinton wins by a little bit, throughout the country, we’re still going to hear about the Barack Obama comeback.

They love all the money he raises. You know, his box office.

O’DONNELL: Go ahead, Keli. I mean, I just wanted to bring up what was the dynamics of this campaign. And you know, we know Barack Obama is drawing crowds of tens of thousand of people. His campaign has announced they raised $32 million in January. And Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton chairman, just told Tim Russert on MSNBC today that they raised $13.5 million in January. That is a staggering difference.

And, as Chris Matthews will say in the next election atrocity on Super Tuesday, they love the way he talks .

Using these criteria, Oprah Winfrey would make a better candidate for president. She makes more money, draws more people, has a better story and has had a talk show forever. This is what is known as damning with praise. A portion of the audience says “Sounds like a superstar.” Another portion of the audience says “What are they trying to sell us? A president or a TV star?” No wonder Obama is having trouble with the older Democrats.

Final Point

Keith Olbermann raised a stink when Clinton appeared on Fox. He was strangely quiet when Obama did the same thing. However, until this country gets a full fledged fully independent public broadcast station on par with the NHK or BBC, candidates would probably be well advised to court a variety of news stations, because you never know which one is waiting to stab you in the back. Judging by what MSNBC got up to in the months before Super Tuesday, I would guess that their goal is to weaken the Democrats by dividing them along ethnic, racial, gender, age and socio-economic grounds---just as Pat Buchanan did for Nixon back in 1972---so that John McCain will be able to beat the nominee in the General Election, ensuring General Electric lots of nuclear energy opportunities in a neighborhood near you.