In the interest of full disclosure, I am...a newbie to KOS (though I have lurked for a year and a half now), writing my first diary, a Obama supporter, white and college educated. After the last primaries, reading all the insightful diaries about the end of the nominating contest, I wondered how HRC could so completely fail to see the unlikely nature of her bid, and that the ONLY way she could get the nomination was to stage a palace coup among super delegates. I started to consider the echo chamber that the press has created around HRC, and how it is easy to see that she might believe every mirror only reflects her.
It feels like the fourth estate has crossed a line from reporting the news to creating the news. I am antiwar, and I saw painful, hidden examples of this all through the war, continuing even today (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). In this election I feel the mainstream media has been trying to nominate HRC. I know press people will argue with this, and that HRC supporters will claim the exact opposite, that the press was late to be critical of Obama. I believe that the lack of criticism was mainly because the press did not take Obama seriously as a rival to Clinton. I also think that the echoing of various absurd Clinton rationalizations in the media have misinformed the public, and reinforced the resolve of Clinton to carry on. I mean, come on, if everyone is parroting what you say, you come to believe it yourself, just like the emperor's new clothes. Ask yourself...is Clinton's lack of reality any different than that of Lindsey Lohan?
At first I thought that I was just an over invested partisan who wanted my candidate over all others...fair enough. As I said, I also am active locally in an antiwar movement and had only to compare how the press failed in that endeavor, primarily by pushing the same themes from the same failed pundits, and dressing up pundits as "antiwar" to sell the war to an uninformed public. So I soon came to believe that a large majority of the mainstream media was engaging in the nomination process by tirelessly promoting the inevitability theme. If your framework says that Clinton is going to be nominated, then all roads lead to the nomination for Clinton. More importantly, your voice as a member of the mainstream media lets you continuously emphasize to Americans YOUR framework.
My next rationalization was that it was just the press being sensational, the normal Britney Spears watch that elevates any sensation so far beyond any talk of substance it is as if the substance does not even exist. That didn't last very long, mainly because even after winning 11 primaries in a row....the press treated Obama as an upstart, that he had something to prove to Clinton. In what reality does anyone who wins 11 primaries in a row need to prove something to the second place finisher? And yet, when I turned on the TV, or read the paper, although never directly stated, in the background, was what was best said in the movie the Matrix..."that is the sound of ineviability". Only one small problem...along the way, the people who actually got out to vote had, for the most part, another idea of what was going on.
Don't get me wrong. I do not believe this is some conspiracy by journalists, or even their corporate keepers (well...not totally). To use another movie line, I believe the press, a la "the Shawshank Redemption" has been "institutionalized". The Clinton machine is...well...a machine. Bill survived impeachment....He is the comeback kid (which makes me think that somehow Hillary is something that only a stake can take care of). They are invested, formidable, and no way some uppity "boy" from Chicago is going to rain on their parade (and yes, I do believe that there is an inherent undertone that smells of racism in this nomination cycle). Everybody believes in the utter dominance of the Clinton machine. Members of the press can imagine no other possible reality. Except...there is.
What it is is....hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe, that it can be different this time. I hope that Obama is different, that he will live what he says. I surely know that Clinton will be more of the same, and there are too many examples, from both her and her husband, of movement to the right. So I have put my hope this time on the only candidate still running (and the only one who could take on Clinton) who has spoken of imagining a new way of doing things.
After the last primaries, I feel that I am at last seeing signs that the press recognizes the extreme long shot nature of the Clinton effort, and are actually saying it out loud, albeit in a muted form. It has been a long time coming. So let's cut Clinton a (very) little slack. Her long shot would have faded earlier if the press had treated Obama as the serious contender he is. Instead, the press treated Obama as a slightly more suave Kucinich. Let's hold the press to account. Let's recognize that by nominating, and electing Obama, we will not only challenge the conventional wisdom of some party elders, but of the press, and hopefully, of the country. We could use some new thoughts on how to handle the problems that confront us. The old sh** just ain't working.