Is a Win a Win?

April 24, 2008

One thing I would not like to do is add more hot air to this Democratic presidential primary. This causes great conflict because I'm probably gonna do it.

I watch a lot of television these days. So, apparently does a political junkie friend of my who lives in Alabama (and not the one in Pennsylvania between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) and emailed me this last week:

Never a fan of the 24-hour-news stations I find myself watching them since I chose my candidate and am fascinated by the election. Not only the television but my Google home page gives me thousands of choices of news articles from all over the world. What fascinates me the most now is to watch some of the pundits on the different television shows telling me what someone said in a debate or a speech that I heard and according to what I heard I didn't hear the same thing. I think that the American public has gotten sick of the media and by that I mean the ones that analyze information that we are allowed to hear for ourselves and twist things with sound bytes passing from news show to news show. Jon Stewart of The Daily Show has done a wonderful job of showing how this works. Not too long ago I told a friend that it seemed to me that the media is having a bit of a meltdown. Many of them are overpaid, and I think that the fact that they are celebraties of a sort by having millions of people recognise them by their saturation on daily television that their egos are so swollen that they take themselves a lot more seriously than they should. Watching the ABC debate I found myself reacting with fury watching the two moderators with their shameful behavior. Apparently I am not alone. Since that night I have watched the 24 hour stations as well as ABC and I honestly don't think that any of them realize that along with people being sick of politics as usual, people are sick of the quality of those reporting the politics.

Well, yeah. They shred every comment and dissect every statistic yet still don't seem to know how to find the news in a story. In Pennsylvania, three weeks ago it was predicted that Hillary Clinton would win by as much as 24 percentage points. It was always known that she was likely to win that primary. So to squeeze "news" out of it, the statistic guys on the cable channels began setting the bar lower as the polls indicated Obama was closing the gap. She might win in single-digits only; that they could say was a "lose." Her camp said "A win is a win." Then they began whining about how much money Obama was spending in the state -- as if they wouldn't have, had they had the money. It has been clear for months that Sen. Clinton is going to stay in the race as long as she's standing. She's not a team player (unless it's Team Clinton) and she doesn't want Obama to win the Presidency now or ever, because if she loses this time she will try again in four years, God help us.

She did win Pennsylvania, but not by double digits, unless you consider 9.2 as 10. The story is that Obama narrowed that gap between them considerably.

Republican talking heads just love the way she plays the game, and they want her to win so much they can taste it, because she is so like them, and because they know she's not as good at it as they are and that she would ultimately lose the Presidency to any Republican.

But in case I didn't make that clear, I do think she's good at it. Damn good. Just not as good. Whether I think this is the best our country can do is beside the point. It's the old boys' game, and they make the rules -- and they make the winners. For now.