We've heard a lot about arcane Democratic Party rules this primary season, so much esoterica about punishing swing states, credentials committees, and wild apportionment. But I'd never heard the most important rule of all in the DNC playbook: you know, the one that proclaims the race is over when Tim Russert declares.
Tuesday night, Russert sang his high-pitched tune of grinning closure, clearing his manly throat and firmly calling the primary finished - and Senator Barack Obama the winner. Wrote Digby:
It reminds me of the halcyon days for Democrats in November 2000, when Russert used his little marking board to show us "the math" and declare that Gore needed to bow out for the good of the country. Good times.
Now, the race may indeed be in its final stages (though I believe there are scenarios that could see this through to the convention) and Senator Hillary Clinton did not get her hoped-for, longshot double shotgun blast Tuesday night, but listening to the media's big shove - Hillary must go! - that's now in its fourth or fifth iteration, I was reminded of the words of the prescient Peter Daou, Hillary's Internet director. Must've been a year ago when Peter told me - and I paraphrase - the media primary is the primary.
Consider: Obama's lead is only slightly more than it was before last night, though it now gets the modifier "commanding" routinely dropped before it by the media hounds - history-blind fools who can't recall Teddy Kennedy taking it all the way to the convention trailing by 750 delegates. Tracy Russo, who suffered through hours of MSNBC the other night (I watched Joba Chamberlain blow one to the Indians instead), detected the same strong whiff of sexism that has suffused major media coverage of Clinton for a year.
I wonder what we’ll see when we have time to remove ourselves from the daily grind of this campaign and look back at the way in which the media influenced this election and our public discourse around the candidates. Will it be as obvious then, as it is to me now, how entrenched and acceptable the misogyny spewed daily has become? Will we be able to look back and say that there was something quite unnatural about the level of hatred so many had for Hillary Clinton? Will we ever be able to understand why?
Tracy's post was spot on and she correctly identified one of this long campaign's historic legacies. Over in his lair, Lance Mannion contemplated the political junkie's dream of a real convention - before dismissing it, because clearly the media won't allow it to transpire:
A floor fight would make great theater but lousy television. What would look like democracy in all its glory in action to political junkies like me would look to most normal people like a great big sleep-depriving mess. And the convention is not going to be covered on TV by the likes of Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley, who would have enjoyed the fun and been careful and smart about explaining what was going on down there on the floor and backstage. It's going to be covered by Tim Russert and Brian Williams and Charles Gibson and the gasbags from Fox News and MSNBC, all of whom will gleefully tell us how bad all this looks and how it shows the Democrats at their divided, divisive, disorganized, discombobulated, indecisive, internecine worst.
