2/25 Richard Cohen

Clinton can’t win, she’s not a gifted politician and she should step down.

 2/25 Eugene Robinson

Obama’s success has done much to positively alter black stereotypes.

 2/25 E.J. Dionne Jr.

McCain’s sex life is not the issue. The real issue is that he touts campaign finance reform, yet he is surrounded by lobbyist influences.

 2/25 Wrap:

Pundits seem pretty eager to scribble the writing on the wall. This Cohen blather is similar to Novak’s screed from yesterday (somehow I doubt that these guys give the Dems advice out of the kindness and goodness). Last I checked, Clinton and Obama are running pretty close in Ohio and Texas. Though—like most people—I think Obama will take this thing, I find Hillary’s pre-ousting perplexing. Check this Cohen quote: “Should she go negative? Should she be upbeat and positive? Here’s my answer: Stop campaigning.”

All this time, I thought these dudes loved the horserace. Once we caught some serious O-mentum, the narrative of Hillary’s demise became a fixation. Oh, and we have another instance of the entitled Hillary trope: “Back in 1999, she entered the New York Senate race in the manner of Marie Antoinette entering France—to be ultimately crowned queen.”

Dowd also depicts Hillary as a petulant queen. Ya know, she’s quite different from those other hard-working senators. Instead of crafting important legislation, Hillary sits on a gold leaf bed, lazily regarding her surrounding finery, while fanning herself into oblivion. Not that the dikey ice queen needs to be cooled. Such vacuous Dowdian sentiments seem to inform Clinton coverage.

 Look, I’m not one to shill for Hill. I find her domestic policy to be pretty solid, and her foreign policy votes to be somewhat worrisome. I just don’t get the consistent animosity from the Op-Ed pages. Since I began this project (ironically on Valentine’s day, which says quite a bit about my social life at this point), there hasn’t been a single positive column regarding the woman’s policy positions. Granted she’s been losing. But still, are we really going to let media outlets reduce presidential races to substance less personality contests? Well, yes we are, we do, and we have for quite some time. Right now, I’m picturing a beaming Hillary Clinton hoisting “Clinton defeats Washington press corps!” frontpage.

2/25 Robert Novak

Hillary’s doomed but protracted campaigning hurts the party. Who will tell her to just quit?

2/25 (Untitled)

McCain went from a reasonable position on the Bush tax cuts, to G.O.P base appeasing  extremism. 

2/25 Wrap

Novhack mentions that unnamned Clinton insiders (apparently only working spies need be named) have described Obama as “a latter day George McGovern.” This prompted me to search for a former-day Novak comparison. Well, Benedict Arnold did suffer a lengthy delirium until succumbing to the gout. So Bob’s a little like B.A. with more delirium and less gout. But this doesn’t account for Novak’s damn near cartoonish misanthropy. Is Bob then a latter-day Grinch? A latter-day Mr. Burns? Let’s hope Novhack doesn’t destroy Christmas, or block out the sun for his immediate financial gain.

I was shocked by the audacity of honesty in the untitled McCain piece. Are we moving into an age of reason? Somewhere Willy Kristol is writing another “Let’s bomb every country until the Middle East agrees with itself” column, Bob Novak is wiretapping conversations with figments of his imagination, and Maureen Dowd is reading deeply into a politician’s hair style modification. I’m convinced that idiocy is in its last throes!

2/24 George F. Will

Will thinks that McCain should offset his weaknesses with a VP choice, and GFW explores the various possibilities.

 2/24 (Unnamed)

 Obama is an unknown quantity to voters. What kind of president would he be?

 2/24 Wrap

  The beginning of the untitled editorial: “The National Journal magazine recently ranked Barack Obama as the most liberal senator in 2007 — an assessment that is subject to legitimate quibbling but will no doubt be featured by Republicans if Mr. Obama wins the Democratic nomination for president.”

  Ah yes, THE National Journal rankings. The best part of this lead is “an assessment that is subject to legitimate quibbling but will no doubt be featured by Republicans if Mr. Obama wins the Democratic nomination for president.”

  The translation: This is a scurrilous pseudo attack that we’re more than happy to fuel on our Op-Ed pages!  I’m not really covering NYT inanity (and there is an ocean of it), but William Kristol’s 2/25 swipe at Obama was particularly ridiculous.  At what point will we stop talking about Michelle Obama’s perfectly defensible comment?  That the “gaff” constitutes “news” is reason enough lose one’s patriotic pride. For the millionth time in my adult life, Kristol’s manipulative gossipy idiocy annoys me.  And his dad used to be a Communist, so therefore I have questions regarding, you know, Bill’s patriotism.

2/23 Colbert I. King

Hillary Clinton underestimated Obama’s ability to draw black votes. Now, she is condescendingly crediting his skin color for this ability.

 2/23 Wrap

 Notice this quote: “The Clintons are constitutionally unable to accept the possibility that he (Obama) could be viewed more favorably or thought to be more capable of uniting and leading the country than Hillary.”

 Many pundits are blaming a Clintonesque arrogance for Hillary’s fall in the polls. Is this so? I have no clue, but this smacks of that old pundit obsession with personality attributions. Gore and Kerry lose due to effeteness, Dean due to weirdness, and now Clinton is felled by entitledness. Though the pundits are obsessed with horserace politics (as opposed to what politics impacts the lives of people), the main pontificators seem to seize upon the simplest and most subjective of answers. 

2/22 E.J. Dionne Jr.

Obama and Hillary are borrowing campaign tropes from the late Sen. Paul Wellstone.

2/22 Wrap:

I suppose we’ll have to wait a day for vacuous debate analysis. 

2/21 George F. Will

Hillary thinks her campaign failure unfair. She is not as qualified as she thinks, and her justifications for the supposed unfairness (Barack’s caucus success, her “experience”) are silly.

 2/21 David Broder

Hillary complains about Barack’s caucus advantage, states that the superdelegates should be free agents, and wants Florida and Michigan counted. Hillary is right about the superdelegates but wrong on the other two preferences.

 2/21 Wrap

Today we see the “aggrieved, entitled Hillary” trope. I’m not sure where it came from, but many seem to project poor character traits onto Mrs. Clinton. When she loses and attacks her opponent, this seems to get categorized as petulant, overly sensitive whining. Thankfully, we have an army of pundits to point out her power madness, her coldness, and her egocentric motivations. Otherwise, we might have to actually choose or reject her based on (gasp!) policy decisions. I am reminded of Slate Magazine’s comparison of Hillary Clinton to Tracy Flick of “Election.” In a way, I think that’s all a majority of pundits want us to know about Hillary. She is a caricature of soulless ambition, and not a principled defender of the middle and lower classes. 

2/19 E.J. Dionne Jr.

Democrats must challenge McCain’s assertion that Islamic extremism is the greatest challenge of our century.

2/19 Eugene Robinson

McCain is stuck supporting unpopular policy in a frustrated country.

 2/19 Wrap:

Wow, two somewhat sane editorials pertaining to the prez race? In the WaPo? Really? Somewhere Broder is spinning in his grave. Somewhere, George F. Will is coming up with a crappy baseball analogy to make sense of this. Somewhere, Bob Novack is lobbying for a Dionne Jr. wiretapping…