Earlier this month, the mainstream media spent hundreds of hours showering us, the electorate, with a very simple meme. Over the Fourth of July weekend, Hillary Clinton was going to bring in the big dog, Bill Clinton, to help her win over Iowa voters, and Bill Clinton was going to REALLY help Hillary gain support in Iowa.
Oh, the column inches spent pushing the expected bubba bounce! Oh, the breathless TV reports which promoted the anticipated bubba bounce! Here it is folks...the bubba bounce is coming. The only question remaining? How big a bounce will she get with the voters?
You can imagine, then, the surprise of all of us, all of us that is still covered in the residue from the "bubba bounce" media shower, when the latest poll from Iowa came out on Thursday. In this, the first "post- Bill" appearance poll from Iowa, the bubba bounce was nowhere to be found! Shocking!
But it got even worse than this. Not only had the bubba bounce failed to appear, but in point of fact, Hillary Clinton actually LOST support in Iowa, dropping 6 percentage points.
Whoa! We were misled by 180 degrees!
And, because a widespread media assumption had just been shown to be erroneous, the mea culpas were everywhere reported by the mainstream media. Sorry America! Sorry about that one. That assumption we drilled into your heads a few weeks ago? Kind of like weapons of mass destruction a few years back...uhm...well...we were wrong. So, for every story we had suggesting the bubba bounce, we now had a commensurate number of stories, an equal number of stories, explaining the opposite fact: folks, there is a bubba BUST effect.
Of course, back to reality, the mainstream media has not published a commensurate number of stories on a bubba bust effect. Instead, we have essentially total media silence, which means the old "accepted meme" still resides unmolested, inside people's heads. And I think this is quite revealing. Our mainstream media is truly a lazy, herd bound pack, a pack which has lost its ethical and moral balance.
Yes Virginia, the mainstream media is biased, and yes, they tend to favor certain candidates, and yes, they tend to dislike others. And yes, when the mainstream media makes mistakes, those mistakes are not owned up to with a commensurate amount of time and column inches. Admitting mistakes, while truthful, is not profitable. You lose viewership. You lose credibility. So it is rarely if ever done.
Stephen Colbert had something to say about this state of affairs at the Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, DC awhile back, but those comments...hmmm...well...the one I have in mind is not age appropriate at this time Virginia.
So...I am curious to ask those who actually watched the Bill Clinton Iowa appearances in their entirety (rather than read about them through the media filter) to weigh in on why his appearances actually caused a drop in support for Hillary Clinton in Iowa.
FWIW, I saw a few of them in their entirety, and I had the sense that they would hurt Hillary Clinton's standing in Iowa. The charisma contrast was not helpful to Hillary Clinton. Yipes. It also did not help that Bill appeared to be bored (or was bored?) when listening to Hillary speak.
And when Bill uttered the line about "if I were not married to her..." at every stop...well...let's just say that the Clinton campaign made a big mistake allowing him to use that line at every stop. (Yes, Virginia, Bill Clinton makes plenty of mistakes too.)
IMHO, far too many people might respond to that line with an internal thought: darn right he should no longer be married to her...because she should have left him after the first, second or third acts of marital infidelity. That line conjured up unpleasant memories, and the Clinton campaign made a big mistake allowing it to be repeated.
So...why do you think Hillary Clinton actually lost support in Iowa after bringing in Bill?
And do you think there is even a ghost of a chance that the mainstream media will report the "bubba bust" with the same amount of gusto they reported their anticipated "bubba bounce?"