The national press and their inability to grasp local issues has been on display this week and it hasn't been pretty. I am reminded of
Denis Horgan's column from last week as I hear the cable talking heads repeatedly mispronounce Meriden - a metaphor for not doing their homework:
A downside of the end, next week, of Connecticut's primary season is that the local economy will be deprived of the vast expenditure of the visiting wizards who have come in such numbers to analyze the Joe Lieberman primary.
What's that?
Oh, few if any actually came here? Ah, I see. They are, as the saying is, talking through their hats and from far away.
Not every pundit is an airhead. Many understand this was about such diverse topics as local issues, the independent run threatened by a Democrat, Joe's neglect of his roots and his tendency to scold fellow Dems in a partisan atmosphere (giving R's cover in multiple ways) Of course, the war and support for the "radioactive" President (Novak's term) were huge issues.
Ezra, one of those wild-eyed bloggers who does do his homework, quotes Lieberman speaking to Chris Wallace in Nov 2004:
LIEBERMAN: ... In the end, my own feeling is, looking at the polls, but intuiting, based on people I talk to, is that, although Senator Kerry got a lot of votes, 56 million votes, more than any Democratic candidate for president in history, but there's no prizes for second place in American politics.
Let's see how many pundits figure that piece out.
The hot question now to be debated locally (other than Joe's fate and who stands with him) is whether this helps or hurts the CT House races. Both bloggers and the pundits will immediately weigh in , but let's hope they think about what they write, and hopefully from other than "talking through their hats and from far away." The excitement in participating in a real democratic election (small d) is palpable, and voting on the issues brought out 43% the Democratic electorate on a lazy August day - a record turnout (some places like Mansfield topped 50%).
How that helps Republicans is beyond me. It's a second term midterm election, and they're both on the wrong side of the isssues and the wrong side of history. The Democratic challengers, all three of them, are great candidates with reasonable funding and excellent chances. And let me say it again for the brain-dead DC crowd: all politics is local. Now do your homework and start pontificating.
Update [2006-8-9 11:2:41 by DemFromCT]:
*
I defer to a native on phonetics.