There has been a lot of web chatter against the idea of "Hillary '08" lately. You can read Arianna or Molly Ivins or Josh Marshall on why Hillary '08 is a bad idea. This diary is a little different. This is about explaining why the media is trying to force her on us. Everywhere you look on the TV dial we are told how she is the one. But there is, as always, an agenda at work. The media has been so eager to tell us that she is inevitable, the prohibitive front runner, a done deal. Why? Read the rest...
The answer can be summed up in two words: John McCain. You see, this is really about building Hillary up so John McCain can take her down later. The MSM loves McCain and wants to see him win the GOP nomination. But McCain is loathed in many corners of the right wing nutosphere. What the MSM has figured out is that if they build Hillary up into this supposedly formidable figure then the wingnuts in the GOP might lower their objections to McCain just enough to allow him to get the nomination. Don't buy it for a second. Hillary can't win an electoral college victory. Do the math. But the MSM will never say this on air. Instead they want to propel the fiction that she could actually win a general election, or at least make it fuzzy enough that people will actually start believing it. This is a kabuki dance, a game of media manipulation that will shift once they get what they want--McCain astride the stage as MSM hero, a new war president with good visuals. Don't let it happen.
Many of us admire and support Hillary as Senator, but we will not stand by and have this choice shoved down our throats. The race, contrary to the CW, is wide open. The more the media tries to call it a done deal, the more we will reject this outcome--they just don't know it yet.
I also want to add that this feeling of resentment that is building over how this choice is being big-footed by the media and the DC establishment consultants cuts across ideological lines. I have heard the same sentiment from centrist Democrats as well as progressives, from pro-Iraq war hawks and anti-Iraq war activists, from pro-choice people to religious and social moderates within the party. So don't try to label us. We are Democrats, and we will make our own choices, thank you...