Last night, John McCain and Barack Obama attended a forum on national service, and several users commented on this already.
McCain had the misfortune to make the following statement:
Listen, mayors have the toughest job, I think, in America. It's easy for me to go to Washington and, frankly, be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have.
This is an astoundingly poorly constructed quote. Used cleverly, it could bloody McCain up quite a bit. So why isn't it getting any play?
(more after the jump)
Oftentimes, we blame our candidates for not getting this stuff out there in a timely fashion. We assume they're just playing for the high road. But this time, it's not that the Obama camps isn't pushing the issue. They are, and they are trying to push it hard.
But, as Steve Benen, at the Washington Monthly notes:
Before you say, "The Obama campaign isn't pushing this aggressively," realize that the Obama campaign held a conference call this morning, with Dick Durbin and Rahm Emanuel, precisely to push this story as hard as they could.
And yet, this probably isn't going anywhere. Joe Scarborough said this week that the media will talk about "whatever the McCain campaign wants us to talk about." NBC News Washington bureau chief Mark Whitaker praised the McCain campaign for its ability to "drive the news cycle day after day."
I get the feeling there's a media decoder ring, and the Obama campaign doesn't have one.
Damn skippy. Now this could easily turn into a bitchfest. Let's not make it that. I've managed to drive stories onto the news before in the past, by using an all-out blog bomb. Others have too. So can we pimp this story a bit? Pimp it till it hurts? See if we can get the story mentioned by KO. That's a start. Call, write, email, fax.
We can beat the media brain annihilation machine if we push hard enough. Remember NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE US.