I knew we were courting disaster when we frontloaded the primary process without pushing the convention date closer to the last primary.
Right now our party is bleeding from a thousand cuts by the mainstream media because we still have a fight on our hands and the candidates are using more and more ugly means to duke it out in the breaking news battle, while McCain is cruising in smooth media waters.
But if Clinton dropped out now and Obama had the field to himself, if we had for all intents and purposes a general election situation what do you think the media will do with all those empty months before the conventions?
I think they would go with the most juicy target. Do you think it will be McCain or Obama?
One would think that McCain would be vulnerable because his positions are so pathetic. His unwavering support of the Iraq war, his cluelessness on the economy, his volatile temperment, his senior moments, these seem such obvious liabilities.
But many of these criticisms are based on policy evaluations which is never the first priority of the media. They know that focusing on policy in election coverage is a surefire way to get people to pick up their remotes to change the channel.
The media wants blood, contraversy, adrenaline, etc. and so does the audience.
Right now Clinton hatred is a reliable ratings winner. If she is out I think Obama and Wright will take over. You could say that McCain's character flaws would be a good thing to focus on but because of his war hero status, it doesn't pay to go too rough on him. Unless someone with a camera catches him lunging at a reporter or heckler, his character will not be questioned.
But back to our wonderful primary season.
Right now there is no primary results to keep the media honest so it's all spin 24/7. So we are parsing candidate surrogate clips, mostly fed to us by the media. Why we keep chomping on the bait thrown out to us by the media circus, I don't know.
The longer this goes on, the worse our party looks, but it's not the fault of our candidates. They both want to be president and their voters fervently want it too. They both are trying to use every advantage and in the process both sometimes go too far and I give each campaign wide latitude in this insane process. I also try to give each candidate supporters amnesty for thoughts and actions during this tumultuous primary.
Many comments here on the role of the Superdelegates in our party. First I think that the rules of the DNC are pretty screwed up. No one knew the particulars because we haven't had a primary election that wasn't pretty much wrapped up by a week after Super Tuesday. Now we learn about Superdelegates and how they can do whatever they want.
First I don't know that anybody can really say that they will vote in a block. It seems that each superdelegate has his or her own history and reasons for voting a particular way. After all we are not the Republican party, we don't obey. The only way they will vote in a block is if something happens that so badly changes the picture of the election that it becomes obvious what has to be done. If that were to happen I bet most Democatic voters would be behind them.
Right now the truth is that we have two candidates, neither one able to win the primary outright. Obama has the advantage right now but neither has any real and lasting momentum. Clinton will not quit unless she stops winning primaries. So that is the main task for Obama, to knock her out.
I am concerned about the negative coverage of our candidates. As a Clinton supporter I am somewhat pleased when Obama gets negative coverage and unhappy when Clinton gets the same. But since I care about putting a Democrat in the White House, I don't want either of them so bloodied that we can't win the election in November.
If I could wave a magic wand I would force both campaigns to STFU and not feed the media beast. I would force the Media to focus on Britney Spears instead.