This Ain't '88

NOW, THIS MAKES SENSE, DOESN'T IT, MR. KLEIN?
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So now the press tells candidates when to quit?

by Eric Boehlert (FROM MEDIAMATTERS.ORG)

History continues to unfold on many levels as the protracted Democratic Party primary race marches on, featuring the first woman and the first African-American with a real shot at winning the White House.

Here's another first: the press's unique push to get a competitive White House hopeful to drop out of the race. It's unprecedented.

Looking back through modern U.S. campaigns, there's simply no media model for so many members of the press to try to drive a competitive candidate from the field while the primary season is still unfolding.

Until this election cycle, journalists simply did not consider it to be their job to tell a contender when he or she should stop campaigning. That was always dictated by how much money the campaign still had in the bank, how many votes the candidate was still getting, and what very senior members of the candidate's own party were advising.

In this case, Howard Dean, the head of the Democratic National Committee, said he was "dumbfounded" by public demands for Clinton to drop out last month. (He now wants one of the candidates to quit after the final June 3 primary.) Yet lots of pundits have suggested that in a neck-and-neck campaign in which neither candidate will likely secure the nomination based on pledged delegates, Sen. Hillary Clinton must drop out before all the states have had a chance to vote.

I realize the political debate surrounding the extended Democratic campaign remains a hot one, with people holding passionate opinions about the delegate math involved and what the consequences for the Democratic Party could be. I'm not weighing in on that debate. I'm focusing on how journalists have behaved during this campaign.

And the fact is, the media's get-out-now push is unparalleled. Strong second-place candidates such as Ronald Reagan (1976), Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, and Jerry Brown, all of whom campaigned through the entire primary season, and most of whom took their fights all the way to their party's nominating conventions, were never tagged by the press and told to go home.

"Clinton is being held to a different standard than virtually any other candidate in history," wrote Steven Stark in the Boston Phoenix. "When Clinton is simply doing what everyone else has always done, she's constantly attacked as an obsessed and crazed egomaniac, bent on self-aggrandizement at the expense of her party."

Indeed, even after Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary convincingly last week, she awoke the next morning to read an angry New York Times editorial, "beseeching her to get the hell out of the race," as Howard Kurtz put it at washingtonpost.com. On the Times opinion page that day same, Maureen Dowd actually turned to Dr. Seuss rhymes to make her point: "The time is now. Just go. ... I don't care how."

And across town at the New York Daily News, a bitter Mike Lupica was steamed over the fact that Clinton "won't quit" the race.

Weeks earlier, New York magazine fretted about which senior Democrats would be able to "step in" and "usher Clinton from the race." Or if Clinton, obsessed with her own "long-range self-aggrandizement," would finally figure it out herself.

Meanwhile, Slate.com's snarky Hillary Deathwatch was created to document, day-by-day, the demise of her campaign, complete with a damsel-in-distress cartoon drawing of Clinton atop a sinking ship.

That represented just a fraction of the often offensive get-out-now proclamations that have become a staple of this campaign.

No longer content to be observers of the campaign, journalists now see themselves as active players in the unfolding drama, and they show no hesitation trying to dictate the basics of the contest, like who should run and who should quit. It's as if journalists are auditioning for the role of the old party bosses.

It's a new brand of political commentary that leaves some veteran journalists perplexed. "The idea that it's your job to tell candidates when to get out, and really trying to control the whole process -- putting it in the hands of the journalists or the reporters or the columnists -- I find that to be new and different," Haynes Johnson told me last week. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Johnson has covered more than a dozen presidential campaigns and is currently working on a book about the unfolding 2008 contest.

Johnson says he was astonished to read some early calls in March from the media for Clinton to get out of the race. He was stunned by "the pomposity and the arrogance of it."

Indeed, a very strange leap has been made this year by lots of media commentators who argue against Clinton's candidacy. Rather than simply detailing her deficiencies and accentuating the strengths of her opponent, which political observers have done for generations, time and again we saw pundits take the unprecedented step of announcing not only that voters should not support Clinton, but that she should also quit. She should stop competing.

More often than not, the analysis ends up resembling poorly argued temper tantrums. For instance, The New Republic's Jonathan Chait has written three essays about why Clinton must abandon her race for the White House, each increasingly petulant in tone. (We learned the "rationalizations" for Clinton's "kamikaze campaign" are "wretched.") Last month Chait wrote that Clinton's chance of winning the Democratic nomination this year were closer to Ralph Nader's than they were Barack Obama's or John McCain's. It's a reasonable comparison, if you ignore the nearly 1,600 delegates Clinton has amassed, compared with Nader's zero.

Chait also compared Clinton to former presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Biden, suggesting that if Biden could figure out when it was time to quit the race, why can't she?

Searching for candidates who did the right thing and went "gentle into that good night," Chait compared Clinton, whose campaign has secured nearly 14 million votes, to Biden, whose campaign ended abruptly in January after he received roughly 2,000 votes in the Iowa caucuses. That's who Clinton is supposed to emulate when ending her campaign run.

Quick note: I realize the press is not alone here and that scores of liberal bloggers have also loudly made the claim that the Clinton should drop out of the race. But there's a clear difference between the two groups, I think. Lots of liberal bloggers have a strong allegiance to advancing the progressive agenda and feel that to improve the party's chances in the fall, Clinton should give up. That's fair game, and that's part of an internal Democratic Party debate that continues to unfold.

And yes, journalists should report on that internal struggle, quote lots of players, raise all kinds of questions, and commentators should provide in-depth analysis about the ramifications. But what we're seeing this cycle -- and it's unprecedented -- is independent journalists taking it upon themselves to weed the presidential field by demanding one of the remaining candidates simply quit.

And no, this is not part of some larger liberal media conspiracy where the Beltway press is desperate to elect a Democrat and that's why so many journalists are anxious to get Clinton to quit -- because it might help the party's chances in November. The truth is, as The Daily Howler noted last week, the Beltway media's love affair with John McCain only grows deeper and more affectionate with each passing day.

This is more about media arrogance and unleashed elitism.

In the past there was always an assumption among journalists that candidates had earned the right to decide when they should quit. Journalists also respected the fact that candidates represented a sizable portion of the primary voting public and that the candidates owed it to their supporters to fight on, that there was a symbolic significance for the candidates -- and their supporters -- to persevere.

With Clinton, though, the press seems to have almost complete disregard for the 14 million voters who have backed her candidacy, as well as the idea that she is their representative in this race. Instead, they treat her entire campaign as some sort of vanity exercise in which voters do not exist.

And if pundits do acknowledge the Clinton voters, it's often with baffling ignorance, the way Time's Mark Halperin claimed many of Clinton's supporters would be "relieved" and "even delighted" if she dropped out. Really? Delighted? Halperin offered no proof to back up the peculiar notion.

But again, the point here worth stressing from a journalism perspective is that this is all brand new.

Looking back at history, it's hard to find evidence of the same media response to Ronald Reagan's failed 1976 presidential campaign. Taking on President Gerald Ford, Reagan lost more primaries than he won, and Ford won a plurality of the popular vote, but neither man had enough delegates to secure the nomination. So the campaign went to the GOP convention, where Ford prevailed. The bitter battle did nothing to damage Reagan's reputation (in fact, it did quite the opposite), in part because the media did not collectively suggest the candidate was acting selfishly or irrationally. Instead, Reagan walked away with a reputation as a resilient fighter who stood up for his conservative values.

And what about Sen. Ted Kennedy's doomed run in 1980? He trailed President Jimmy Carter by more than 750 delegates at the end of the primary season and insisted on fighting all the way to the convention, where he tried to get committed Carter delegates to switch their allegiance. The press did not spend months during the primary season ridiculing Kennedy, in a deeply personal tone, for remaining in the race.

And what about Gary Hart in 1984? He and Walter Mondale split the season's primaries and caucuses evenly, and neither had the 2,023 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Superdelegates eventually determined the winner. (Sound familiar?) Mondale had many of them locked up even before the campaign season began, so after the final primary between Mondale and Hart was complete, it was obvious that Mondale was going to be the nominee because Hart could not persuade enough superdelegates to change their mind and support him.

When Hart took his crusade all the way to the convention, the media did not form a posse and decide it was their job to get Hart to quit for the good of the party. (And the press certainly didn't form a posse in March to start pushing Hart out of the race.) Nor did the press collectively suggest that Hart had an oversized ego that had turned him into a political monster.

That new media standard has been created exclusively for Hillary Clinton.

And where were the catcalls in 1988 for Jesse Jackson to ditch his quixotic run before all the primary votes had been tallied? He finished with 1,200 delegates, nearly 1,400 behind Michael Dukakis, yet soldiered on all the way to the convention without having a prayer of winning the nomination. There were few if any media drum sections trying to pound him out of the race.

Or Jerry Brown in 1992? He continued his campaign against Bill Clinton through June despite the fact he tallied fewer than 600 delegates. (By contrast, Hillary Clinton has won approximately 1,600 delegates so far.) Brown's attacks at the time were far more personal and bruising than anything we've seen this cycle. As The New York Times reported on June 2, 1992, Brown "put his party on notice that he intends to carry his politics-is-corrupt, Clinton-is-unelectable message to the Democratic National Convention in New York in July, and beyond." Brown also told the Times that voting for Clinton was like buying a ticket on the Titanic.

At the time, Clinton was actually polling in third place nationally, behind President George H.W. Bush and independent candidate Ross Perot, so why wasn't the press in a frenzy demanding that Brown drop out of the race because he was hurting his party's chances in November?

If you look at Reagan and Kennedy and Hart and Jackson and Brown, those men all ran competitive races. But toward the end of the primary season it was clear most of them had no mathematical chance of winning the nomination. (Reagan was the exception.) Yet none of them was told collectively by the press to go home. Nor were they routinely depicted in the media as being self-absorbed.

Today, Clinton does have a chance to win. Yet she has been told by the press to go home and to get over herself.

It's unprecedented.

poh123, The press did that to Mike Huckabee when it became clear he couldn't mathematically win. The press hasn't really done that to Clinton yet,despite the opinon pieces written, because if the superdelegates want to they can put her over the top.

But every day that number gets lower and when she wins and still Obama picks up more superdelegates that she does it shows there is a great reluctance for people to be seen overturning the lead in pledged delegates.

I do think that the Obama campaign has pretty much recognized this is going to go to June and everyone else seems to me to have backed off and recognized it's better for the party for HRC to make this choice at her choosing or for her to run her races and the superdelegates decide in June.

And for the original post: I think the win in LA shows in a bright red district there is a great deal of voter distrust in the Republican party and people are looking to cross over for change; 81% of the country thinks we're on the wrong track. That's not great for John McCain who wants to continue down the path Bush started.

Joe; This campaign is all about flag pins and crazy preachers because you guys in the media have made it so and refuse to admit it and refuse to take responsibility for it.

If Obama wasn't in the race then it would be all about Hillary's pants suits, neck line and laugh. I guess she should be thankful for Obama in that respect.

I'm also sick of the lame excuse you and others are using about their being no difference between Obama and Hillary. There are differences but of course it would require you and the rest of the Swampland reporters to think about what you write. Instead you use excuses like no main differences. As a matter of fact you are filled with excuses. You use McCain's access and foreign policy cred as and excuse not to examine what the guy actually says and to fawn over him.

You use similar excuses when you don't write about the generals and the media, when you don't write about the fraud waste an abuse going on in Iraq, when you don't write about the laws the Bush administration has broken, when you don't write about the flip flopping positions McCain is taking and when you don't write about the fact that most of the time McCain has no idea what he is saying from one moment to the next.

All those issues you mention in your post that you will someday get around to writing about are important now. Yet you still don't write about them. I for one don't look for you to write about them in the general election because the their will be a new shinny trival issue for all of you to get collectively on board with. That's whats really going to happen.

A link will do, poh123.

If it's worth reading, tell us why and link to it. My scroll wheel will thank you for it.

For the record, I like Boehlert, but somehow I wonder if he would be making the same argument if the shoe was on the other foot. And I don't see how Boehlert can avoid discussion the delegate math so easily.

"In sum, just because the primary campaign has been about flag pins and crazy pastors, it doesn't mean that's what we're looking at in the fall."

To be more exact it has been about one crazy pastor, the black one. There has been no coverage of the crazy pastors supporting the press's pet, John McCain, and nothing on the conservative, secretive cult Clinton is a member of.

I guess the MSM is going to stop covering those issues now that it is McCain and Clinton's turn to get the same treatment as Obama.

Two very worthy editorials in the Times address some of the reasons for the non-policy campaign, and the stakes in this campaign. Links below, or they are in the Most Popular list at nytimes.com

Tom Friedman, as usual, is clearer, in a succinct way, than any other columnist about the global picture:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/opinion/04friedman.html?em&ex=1210046400&en=740ad78e29276577&ei=5087%0A

and Frank Rich has written a column on the double standard re: Wright and Hagee that will warm the hearts of most Swamplanders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/opinion/04rich.html?em&ex=1210046400&en=1ab063165842695f&ei=5087%0A

poh, thanks for posting that. The anti-HRC bias in the press has been present from the beginning of her campaign. Even when she was on top and looking like the favorite, the press's disdain for her was clear.

Joe, the very fact that the Repugs are so out of step on the issues means the GE will be very much about personality as far the the rightwing attack dogs are concerned. It doesn't matter if Obaman or McCain truly mean to be civil to one another, their surrogates will not do so.

Just look at how ugly so many Obama supporters are to HRC. I no longer go to Dailykos anymore because the nasty posts were so frequent. So, this is the kind of "new politics" Obama has inspired in his admirers? What a joke. Obviously there are lovely Obama supporters out there but Obama has made "changing the tone in Washington" a central theme of his run for POTUS. Obviously many of his supporters didn't get the memo and are quite happy to roll around in the much, as the guy who posted the doctored Micky Kantor vid showed.

By the time Obama gets to the WH, I expect the bitterness between hardcore Repugs and Dems to be stronger than ever.

Thanks for posting Kathy. I read both and posted Frank's astute observances in another thread yesterday.

I just wish the reporters here and other places would read it and reflect on their own behavior. After all they have the power to stop this kind of crap from becoming an issue for any candidate. But they don't. The way they develop group think makes me believe they all get together in the mornings and as a group decide how much of a disservice they can be to America for the day.

On "Meet the Press" Sunday, Obama said: "It's not the language we need right now, and I think it's language reflective of George Bush. We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber rattling and tough talk and in the meantime have made a series strategic decisions that have actually strengthened Iran."

He also suggested Clinton's comments were politically motivated.

"Senator Clinton during the course of the campaign has said we shouldn't speculate about Iran, we've got to be cautious when we're running for president, she scolded me on a couple of occasions on this issue, yet a few days before an election, she's willing to use that language," he said.

Clinton, asked on ABC's "This Week" about Obama's criticism, said she had no regrets about her comment.

"Why would I have any regrets? I'm asked a question about what I would do if Iran attacked our ally, a country that many of us have a great deal of, you know, connection with and feeling for, for all kinds of reasons. And, yes, we would have massive retaliation against Iran," Clinton said.

"I don't think they will do that, but I sure want to make it abundantly clear to them that they would face a tremendous cost if they did such a thing," she said.

Go Hillary!!! Go!! Put Obama and his wacked out band of FAR LEFT LIBERAL EXTREMISTS in their place once and for all.

Rev Wright / Obama '08, WRONG for AMERICA!!!!!!!!

One other difference is that the Democrats fielded a strong field of candidates this time around, rather than the Seven Dwarfs.

Herblock dubbed it the Wimp vs the Shrimp, and gave Bush a purse.

And McCain is a much weaker candidate than Bush, much less experienced, prepared or knowledgeable. And also, it looks like, less willing to have his image manipulated. Just as willing to use Atwater tactics, though.

Wafflegate continues (see the second from the bottom paragraph):

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5idFy6SJtDVzoKQHkHRsFTWJ8-xOQD90ESE000

Yes Clinton deserves praise for saying she will obliterate 68 million innocent people. It puts her vote for the illegal invasion of Iraq into perspective.

"The way they develop group think makes me believe they all get together in the mornings and as a group decide how much of a disservice they can be to America for the day."

But you'd never come to that conclusion if you listened to reporters' actual remarks about how media coverage and agenda-setting in this campaign season just sort of happens--it's all just deterministic, and topics just magically appear in the ether. And reporters have absolutely no role in disseminating those topics.

Witness Joe Klein:

"So why are we getting all this frantic low-information signaling and skeezy character assassination in the Democratic primary? Because that's what happens in an election where there are no huge policy differences between the combatants--it turns on character, personality and trivia. "

Why are we getting this type of coverage? How does it happen?--the reporter wonders...

It is a mystery!

One thing to notice about that AP story above, the amount of policy information about the candidates in that story is zilch. Goose egg. Nada.

Not that the policy differences between the two candidates are at all consequential to the future of the country or anything.

(Referring to the AP story I linked to at 12:17...)

Jay - I do think McCain is a weak candidate, and that those weaknesses will inevitably show up in the GE. But "much less experienced, prepared or knowledgeable" than Bush? You astonish me. Do you mean McCain is less experience, prepared, or knowledgeable than Bush was in 2000? How is that even possible?

I think McCain's greatest strength is that he has a manner of speaking disdainfully that brooks no disagreement with him, and suggests that anybody who does is a fool. This has been very effective against reporters, and his opponents in debates.

Wrong Bush, Kathy. I was talking about the 1988 Bush pere. He really had spent his life mostly in public service, and was very well qualified from his stint at the CIA and the UN to handle international affairs, as he demonstrated when he put together the Gulf War coalition, creating an international repudiation of Saddam's invasion, and saving the US a boatload of money.

Jay. Right. forgot we were talking 1988.

Jay and GySgt213:

thanks for dropping the R. from my name. Somebody must have already taken "kathy" when I signed up, but she doesn't seem to be commenting these days, and the "R" sounds so formal. I've been meaning to suggest this to folks, but it will catch on eventually if a couple of you do.

In sum, just because the primary campaign has been about flag pins and crazy pastors, it doesn't mean that's what we're looking at in the fall.

Try reading Halperin every day for a week and you will see that you're wrong. Of course the general election will be about flag pins and arugula, in the sense that this is what your cohorts will be blabbing about on Meet the Press. That's a given.

There is a possibility that the voters will ignore this. That's the best we can hope for.

HRC using GOP talking points again, this time on "elite opinion":

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/15427.html

Come on. These days even David Frum knows better:

http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.27234/pub_detail.asp

"So why are we getting all this frantic low-information signaling and skeezy character assassination in the Democratic primary? Because that's what happens in an election where there are no huge policy differences between the combatants--it turns on character, personality and trivia. "

Funny when pundits sit around wondering how we got here, there always seems to be a piece missing though....can't quite put my finger on it. Is there some conduit between the government, it's policies and our leaders, and the American people? You know if we could establish what that conduit is and how it works perhaps we could make strides in improving the national discourse. Then again, I have a college degree, so what the hell do I know...except how to destroy America w/ uppity, hoidy toidy ideas that uses them big words n' such.

If Romney, Giuliani, or Thompson were the nominee, Joe's post would be absolutely right. But McCain is widely perceived as being a maverick who doesn't agree with his party on global warming, spending, bad military management, and immigration. (The media doesn't exactly fight against this perception) So there is a very real risk that a lot of voters will think that voting for McCain is voting for change.

And the whole 1988 thing is a bit of a strawman argument. It's possible to do a lot better than Dukakis and still lose, like Kerry did. And that's what I both expect and fear will happen, assuming Obama gets the nomination. Also, things were very bad in 2004. It's true that "the war on terror" is not so new anymore, and the economy and Iraq are even worse. But it's also true that McCain is not Bush.

Anyway, it's a little depressing to see how different the perception of electability has become over the course of this campaign. Last year we all thought (or at least I did) that both Obama and Clinton would be able to win in an election as tough as 2004's. Now the argument is "Don't worry, it's not as bad as 1988!"

PBS has been promoting it's American Experience doc on 41. One of the ads for it has Jim Baker looking into the camera and saying "No one asks me why we didn't go to Badgad anymore".

McCain's whole campaign is based on the cult of personality; his advisors give him stuff to say but he keeps mangling the words because there is a disconnect between his brain and the script he's supposed to perform from.

Hopefully Obama will morph the "Change" slogan to be solely about tangible policy and drop the message making people get along better in Washington.

The 1980 election based on ennui? Are you out of your freakin'mind?

Habla hostages in Iran? Carter trapped in the Rose Garden?

Really, Joe, you need to go back and review what the headlines of the day were and who was controlling the news cycles back then.

Get lucid.

Just to give you a real fee for what was going on, maybe youwant to review who Time's Man of the Year was...the Ayahtollah Khomeini.

Ennui my ass.

Christ, are you so lazy, Joe that you can't even review the archives of your own magazine?

Posted by poh123 | May 4, 2008 11:25 AM

You should reduce this to four paragraphs and a link, as you are in violation of copyright law, and Time Swampland blog should moderate you as such, and warn you on this, as it puts them in something of the same position as well.

The importance of Eric's work, and the need to get his work in the pubic view, does not ameliorate your responsibility to behave in accordance with copyright law, not to mention your obligation to have respect for the writer's work.

jayack - you're confusing your cartoonists. It was Pat Oliphant who drew Bush the Elder with a purse.

argh. Now I gotta check.

Yes, thank you.

The cover of my collection:

Bush sitting in a pink overstuffed armchair, lace head and arm protectors, pink wallpaper with an NRA Lifer plaque. He's wearing a skirt, lacy blouse, a cameo around his neck and a shawl with fuzzy pink slipper on his feet. Pot of tea by his side, purse on the floor next to the chair.

His lap is full of puppies, five of them. He looks out of the window in the curved wall (could be the oval office) onto a scene of American urban violence and says:

"What those people need is a puppy!"

Depressing to leaf through actually. Same issues. Same shallow campaign, although this one's looking up lately, what with McCain feeling the need to describe his "policies." That shouldn't last long.

It doesn't just "happen." It takes both a campaign willing to stick to the low road and a press willing to let her get away with it.

I'd like to hope you're right that the sleaze and misdirection won't continue into the general, but the trash coverage of the primaries gives us no cause for hope.

I'd like to hope you're right that the sleaze and misdirection won't continue into the general

You haven't seen sleaze and misdirection.