Offered without comment:
All of this might make some sense if McCain didn’t have this ridiculously cozy relationship with the press that’s been solid as a rock for more than a decade. He is going to be terribly difficult to redefine. It will take everything they have to do it. And if they don’t do it, he could very well win this thing even if he is as old as Methuselah and has the campaign style of a pet rock.I was talking to a staunchly liberal friend of mine over the week-end who told me that he really didn’t worry about the primary because if the party is damaged and McCain wins, it will probably be ok. The reason: he’s not stupid like Bush or crazy like Cheney. After I picked up my brains from the floor and put them back in my head, still reeling from the explosion, I tried to explain how that was wrong. It was pulling teeth and I don’t think I succeeded. He just likes the guy and doesn’t believe he’s really capable of being as bad as Bush because he “thinks for himself” and isn’t a GOP lackey.
The Democrats had better get themselves together. The Republicans picked the only candidate in the entire country who could elicit that kind of praise from my pal and others like him. He’s the only one who could possibly win, and win he may very well do if just let this congenial image continue without challenge.
Front page
I voted in the GOP Primary, for Romney
And this is why. I distinctly remember a Democratic mother, who I greatly respect, describing McCain as “cool” in 2000. His media coverage hasn’t changed one bit in the interim.
This is the same press that gave us the War on Gore and they’re eager for another GOP coronation. Prepare yourself for 7 months of a McCain-as-frontrunner narrative.
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
This is why I don't drink the STFU
Before this campaign, the public was moving toward understanding how Reaganism was destroying the country.
A leading Dem candidate (hint: it’s the one who doesn’t think there’s a vast rightwing conspiracy) moved the discourse toward the Beltway-approved bipartisanship frame, instead of where it belongs: “holy fucking shit, conservatism has fucked up our country!”
By substituting a ____ of personality and less agitating framing, we’re now stuck entertaining notions like a “dream ticket” that includes Mike Bloomberg.
Low-information voters remain low-information voters, and they get to choose between two “centrist” media darlings… with the real issues long-since abandoned along with the real frames.
Through this mutually accepted framing, no one notices that one of those “centrists” keeps repeating “I am a conservative,” or recognizes that for the threat that it is.
ppl are really underestimating how powerful &
attractive the media myths about him have made him—and every attack from ppl like Limbaugh and others on the right just make him more appealing to more in the middle.
I have a friend like Digby's--and there's no arguing with him
Very scary. Something about the POW reality and Maverick myth.
Talking about Supreme Court Justices got me nowhere with him.