Media support may do Obama more harm than good

[fpb]

I think it is not arguable that the media, not only in America but across the world, are very favourable to Senator Obama. I am beginning to wonder whether this really does him any good - in fact, if I were him, I would actually ask for less reverential coverage.

It is not only a matter of the reaction of opponents. Republicans expect it. By this time, the partisanship of the press and TV networks has gone past being a Republican talking point and become a joke. No Republican alive expects anything other than open or disguised hostility from the New York and Los Angeles Times or from CNN or ABC. Certainly, when such things come they rub salt into open wounds, remind many Republicans where their real opponents are, and strengthen a corporate spirit that depends in some parts from feeling persecuted. But these things are expected, and I imagine that both Obama and his supporters in the media discount them.

What they should consider is the effect they will have on the half of the Democratic Party that voted for Hillary Clinton. At the time when Hillary declared her campaign closed, I visited her website to see how her people felt about it. I have never seen anything like it, not in eight years online. It was, to begin with, the most enormous comments thread I ever saw - hundreds, maybe thousands - I lost count after a while - of people, practically all women, screaming their views online. And they were literally all of one mind. Now you know that that is something that practically never happens on the net. However much agreement there may be on a thread, sooner or later some contrary person appears and makes him/herself felt. It may be trolling, it may be sheer contrarianism, or it may be a principled objection to the views expressed; but a large comments thread never, in my experience, goes by without some contradiction. Not this one, though. Hundreds upon hundreds of response, all of one mind, indeed all of one tone: rage, loathing for Obama's people (a frequent topic was the quality of supporter that Obama drew, with horror stories of assault, sexism, car keyings, threats, insults, campaign materials destroyed, fraudulent behaviour), absolute refusal to do anything for him. The word that summed up the mood of thousands of Hillary supporters was: "NEVER!"

The inter-Democrat fight has been more divisive at the ground level, at the level of individual party supporters, than either the candidates or the media realized. This story took place too low for the media radar to pick it: the hatred between Obama and Clinton activists was about events too small, too local, perhaps too petty, for Washington DC journalists, concerned with debates and large-scale polls, to notice. But it happened. Hillary's supporters already carried a considerable sense of aggravation. As one of them said in an article I read somewhere, "Don't you know how it always happens, ladies? You spent most of your adult life working. You are at the heart of your office. You have made yourself the most competent person there. You confidently expect, and everyone agrees you deserve, promotion. And then in comes the handsome young Harvard graduate with his nice tie and his nice jacket, tall and neat with a 32-teeth smile, and charms the boss and gets your job. And everyone tells you that you have to grin and bear it - for the good of the company." Well grounded or not, this is a common enough feeling among professional women to resonate with hundreds of thousands of them. Every pro-Obama article in every newspaper in the country, however well grounded its reasoning, sounded to them exactly like those office whispers - "for the good of the company", for the good of the party. That is why hundreds of thousands of Hillary supporters completely shut their minds to the coming defeat, to the obvious mistakes of their candidate, to any evidence of fact. They had already placed the media, like Republicans, in the enemy camp, and simply did not believe them.

To this you have to add the culture-clash element. The average Hillary supporter, especially their female core, is older and more poised than the average Obama activist. They are women who have spent maybe twenty years working in office or business environment, learning, if they did not already have them, manners and a certain kind of calming routine in dealing with colleagues and competitors. Work environments cannot and do not cope with screaming matches and aggressive certainty of any sort. The kind of attitude that seems natural to the Kos Kidz, simple assurance that they are in the right and that they are the generation that will change the world - and therefore what they do is right and whoever opposes them needs to be steamrollered for the good of the planet - are, to them, incomprehensible and repulsive. Personal encounters have often been, not only bruising, but disgusting to them on a deeply personal level. They have felt treated, not as possible colleagues, but as scum. There is a sense of personal as well as group abuse there which is hard enough to make a man forget, let alone a woman. Mind you: I do not say that the Hillary supporters are guiltless and that Obamans do not have anything on their own side to complain about. What I am trying to set out is a purely subjective attitude that is widespread among the supporters of the losing candidate, and that stands like a wall between them and any effort to recruit them for the victor's next campaign.

And that being the case, I feel that many Hillary supporters, especially the core, the activists and party members, will be, if anything, further infuriated by the constant and uncritical pro-Obama tone of the media. The world the media describe will simply not be the one they experienced. Their grievance, far from being appeased, will be further hardened. And on election day, they may well decide to take their vengeance.

Comments

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Obama has worked one miracle-
he's made me fond of Hillary.

[tibba.livejournal.com]

What will that vengeance look like, though? I know nothing about US politics and I'm just jumping in.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

NOt doing any political work for Obama and sitting on their hands at the time of the election, I imagine.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

I wonder, however, if the right-wing bias of Fox news and much of the talk-radio industry in the USA will galvanise those Democratic supporters of Hilary Clinton who have been driven away.

A small dose of Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly and most 'liberals' would be out on the campaign trail again.

I hope you have something good planned for your birthday Fabio!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Those are features of the landscape - like the liberal bias of most networks, which has the same effect on Republicans. The anger of the Hllary-ites is something new, in my view.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

I don't know. McCain complaining about media bias has this won't-fly quality about it: he's been a darling of the US national media for at least a decade and everyone knows it. Just the other night, the "CBS Evening News" edited out a major blunder in a televised interview, making him look better than he was. In general they have been very uncritical of his claims (although that is slowly starting to change, as his claims grow rather more ourageous).

There's a school of thought that the long Democratic campaign set the party up for a strong showing in the general election: widespread registration of Democrats in states that don't usually get the party's full attention. I don't have any numbers handy, and they'd probably be pre-spun anyway.

But, in the long run, I think any self-identifying Democrat will look at recent history and certain predictable elements in the future (like the aging liberal justices on the Supreme Court) and decide that this is too important an election to sit out.

[edited for splleing]

two cents from the south

[affablestranger.livejournal.com]

In my neck of the woods, rural South Carolina and dominantly (i.e 90%) Democrat, isn't near that picture. The chief demographic where I live is middle- and upper middle-aged women, and the split is almost 60/40 black/white. The picture here is not favorable to Obama. Recent surveys by the local and regional press place a weird shift to support of - of all people - John McCain, and the reason for it is predominantly "experience." My grandmother, a Yellow Dog Democrat since the '30s, calls Obama "nothing more than a rock star" and a flash in the pan. She and much of her bridge club in light of Hillary's not being the nominee are contemplating votes for McCain or to sit the election out, seeing as how the "hipsters" (as my grandmother calls them) hijacked the party.

Obama has a lot to fear from the Democratic old guard. They may not be wild at all about the war or the economy or our perceived standing in the world, but they do tend to think that older and wiser is a more prudent course in these times than youthful exuberance and ambition. Many of them recall what the Baby Boomers promised and aren't very happy with how that turned out (in their eyes.)

Re: two cents from the south

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

Well, it's possible that your range of acquaintance represents how voters are feeling generally. Also possibly not, of course.

I don't think South Carolina has gone Democratic in a Presidential election in more than 30 years, so my first guess is that the sample is far from typical.

.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

A study conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University - neither of them sources with any conservative pedigree - found that 69% of Obama’s coverage in the primaries was favorable, compared to 43% for McCain. And when the primaries stopped, things did not change: the same source Pew/Shorenstein, claims that between June 9 (when Obama secured the nomination) and July 13, Obama dominated news reports decisively compared to McCain.

Other, admittedly more partisan, sources, tell the same story. In The New York Times alone, of the 90 Obama stories running between June 4 and July 5, 40 were positive and only 13 negative, as noted by NewsBusters’ Times Watch. In contrast, only 9 of the 57 McCain stories appearing during the same period were positive, while 24 were negative. Journalists even favor Obama when it comes to campaign contributions – by a remarkable 20-to-1 margin, according to an analysis in Investors’ Business Daily.

[super-pan.livejournal.com]

With how you've put it here, I can really understand the anger these hardcore Hillary supporters feel. And in a way they are not wrong. And I can imagine at this point how sick they are of seeing Barack Obama's face. But I hope they won't let their voting be guided by vengeance, because it would be against their own interests.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

Would it? Being taken for granted is hardly in their interests; politicians tend to focus on whoever needs to be wooed. Consider how resources go to swinging electorates.

[super-pan.livejournal.com]

I think Barack Obama would probably better represent the concerns of the average female supporter of Hillary Clinton than would John McCain.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

represent - to whom?

When you elect a leader, you don't just get one person - you get an entire political machine, the vast majority of which you never see. Although the electorate can't judge the machine, it can influence it, as the machine desperately wants to remain in power. And the way to do that is to be willing to jump ship if you are ignored.

[super-pan.livejournal.com]

"When you elect a leader, you don't just get one person - you get an entire political machine, the vast majority of which you never see. Although the electorate can't judge the machine, it can influence it, as the machine desperately wants to remain in power." This I mostly agree with.


"And the way to do that is to be willing to jump ship if you are ignored."
This I really don't agree with. The average woman who supported Hillary Clinton cares about certain issues in particular. Let's use health care as an example. There is not too much difference between the positions espoused by Clinton and the positions espoused by Barack Obama on this issue. John McCain's position would probably not be agreeable to the supporter of Clinton. So if Clinton's supporter voted for McCain, or did not vote at all, than she would be voting against her own interest. And what would be the purpose of this? To punish Barack Obama for running for President? He certainly had the right to do so. To punish his supporters for supporting him instead of Hillary? And how is Barack Obama ignoring this particular constituency anyway? It would be as if I, an Obama supporter, had decided to vote for McCain if Clinton had won the candidacy. What good would it do me? All I would get out of it is a crappy President I never wanted in the first place.

All that being said, everybody's vote is their own, to do with as they see best.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

One of the other factors in this election is that McCain is, or at least was, among the most 'liberal' of Republicans. I seem to recall Anne Coulter, of all people, saying on Hannity and Colmes that she would rather vote for Hilary than John McCain. But then she was distracted by the presence of Alan Colmes and started flirting with him again.

That fact, (McCain's moderate past, not Anne Coulter's flirting) may well mean that Democrats disillusioned with Obama will find it easier to 'cross the house', and vote for a Republican in this election. And, like the elephant in the room that nobody mentions, is there a possibility that race will have an impact on results?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I doubt it. And if it does, it will be favourable to Obama, and that for two reasons: one, the lingering guilt feeling at the back of many Americans' minds will make them the more willing to elect a presentable mixed-race candidate; and two, Obama has distanced himself from the old-style activists (or "race hucksters", as Republicans call them) by emphasizing individual responsibility among blacks and the need to reconstruct the black family and society, rather than blaming everything on the past. That is why - as it turned out to everyone's surprise - Jesse Jackson turned out to violently hate him.