Wednesday, January 30, 2008

kuhm-plis-i-tee

Jay Newton-Small has been covering the horse-race aspects of the Edwards campaign for Time magazine, and in her latest article Why Edwards Never Caught On she writes this:
But even Edwards' boundless optimism and energy has his limits, and today he admitted what all the pundits and politicos have been saying for the past month: the Democratic contest is a two-person race, and Edwards is not one of them.


She left out a few words:
But even Edwards' boundless optimism and energy has his limits, and today he admitted what all the pundits and politicos have been saying for the past month: the Democratic contest is a two-person race, and we're doing our best to ensure that Edwards is not one of them.


She's written a whole string of articles [in no particular order]
  • Has John Edwards' Moment Arrived?
  • A Second-Place 'Victory' for Edwards?
  • Edwards Fights To Stay Relevant
  • South Carolina: No Haven For Edwards
  • Huckabee Surges, Edwards Fades

It's not quite the hatchet job that was done on Al Gore, but with press like that, you're better off without coverage.

2 comments:

Steve Bates said...

A. J. Liebling's old saying comes to mind: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Our national press and media operate at the behest of "those who own one" (or two, or a dozen); they have their own agendas, and those agendas require scripting every political contest. Edwards was IMHO largely a victim of that scripting.

Anonymous said...

He pretty much was without coverage because his campaign didn't correspond to the "script" that the media had written at the beginning of the campaign.

The media decided it wanted Clinton vs. Obama and McCain vs. Romney at the start and did everything possible to enforce that narrative.