Wrong Element
Sentient Onion
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From the Chinese, obviously. Haven't you paid attention to anything they've said to justify their system?
This story has legs
- Thread starter MeeMie
- Start date
From the Chinese, obviously. Haven't you paid attention to anything they've said to justify their system?
Sean
We'll see.
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If he can't c+p it from some wingnut blog, it never happened.
MeeMie
No Spam Here
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That was the New York Post ... and spot on!
What did you think of the quoted article? Good points made? Agree/Disagree?
Didn't bother to read it with an open mind? Thought not.
Pretending that the ideologues of the left and the mainstream media aren't on the same team should really be disputed every chance ... until they're shamed into covering the news objectively.
What did you think of the quoted article? Good points made? Agree/Disagree?
Didn't bother to read it with an open mind? Thought not.
Pretending that the ideologues of the left and the mainstream media aren't on the same team should really be disputed every chance ... until they're shamed into covering the news objectively.
RobDownSouth
No Kings
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U
unregistered
Guest
Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
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Tsk tsk, such and effective rejoinder, attacking a man's mother; the obvious product of a bacterial intellect cultured in a sweltering environment of hate and disrespect for your own.
At least it's not someone's children for a change...
MeeMie
No Spam Here
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- Jun 1, 2005
- Posts
- 7,328
More confirmation about ObamaMedia from the White House Insider:
The Media Elected Obama – Not The American People
The first part of our most recent D.C. Insider interview reflects on just how far the media went to protect and promote Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, including helping secure John McCain as Obama’s Republican opponent.
A look back on how the media acted as a shield to protect then-candidate Obama in 2007 and 2008.
According to Insider, readers must better understand the media’s previous complicity in order to more fully realize what this same media will likely attempt to do in the near future in minimizing the political damage that is soon to be inflicted upon the Obama administration.
Back to 2008…the campaign. You want to talk about the campaign. Why?
Not so much the campaign, but the media’s role. The media – what I saw happen around me with the media. Never seen anything like it before. It was great…at the time it was great. Made all our jobs a helluva lot easier, right? We would literally give the media a script and they would follow it. It would come from on high down to me and all the others who were doing the same thing I was, and then I just passed it along to this reporter or this news producer or whatever and watch them repeat it. They just took it and ran with it over and over again – no questions asked.
You hinted at that in our very first interview. Something along the lines of showing favoritism to certain media – allowing them access to Obama for supportive reporting.
Yeah – yeah that was part of it. But there was more of that at the beginning, the very beginning, and then we didn’t even have to do that anymore. There came a time, I don’t know exactly when, it just kind of evolved I guess, when basically, the media was coming to us saying how can we help? What can we do for you? Not literally saying it, but…you know, the meaning was easy enough to pick up on. I would come into a city – they know I’m with the campaign, and they would literally kiss my ass. I mean kiss my –expletive- ass. It was all very much “what can we do for Obama?” That was all they seemed to care about – helping Barack Obama. I was there 24 or 48 hours ahead of the Senator, or the First Lady, or somebody else high up in the campaign, and literally able to tell these people what to say, how to report on the arrival – I mean create the image from the ground up before any of them had arrived. I have never seen anything like it. Never – no candidate has ever been given such favoritism by the media. Like I said, at the time it was fantastic. I was in the entourage of a –expletive- political god. Looking back now…it was, it was…not right. It wasn’t right. A campaign should not have that kind of…it shouldn’t be that easy. There’s a danger to that. I didn’t want to admit it then, but I sure as hell realize it now.
How do you mean “danger”? What’s the danger?
The danger is that there was almost no media to put this candidate through the lens. No media to ask questions that normally would be asked of anybody running for office. So now we got more and more of us looking back at the last two years asking ourselves, “Who the hell is this guy? What the fuck did we do putting him in the White House?”
And that of course gave Obama a big advantage over McCain?
McCain? The real campaign was never against McCain…
I told you before – getting by McCain…that was never really an issue. It was getting the nomination, it was the fight against Hillary. That was the real battle – that was the real campaign. Once we had the nomination locked in, Obama was going to be the next president. That was what we all felt. The real battle was for the party nomination. And that is where the media was jumping in all the time helping us out…helping us against the Clintons. They worked overtime for us elevating Obama, and pushing down Hillary. The Clintons didn’t deserve that, and it makes me fucking sick I was part of it.
Was it really that overt? The media was really working that hard for Obama against Hillary Clinton?
Oh yeah – hell yes they were. I’ll give you a perfect example – one of the first things that was done on a national scale to set the tone. Do you remember the story – it was very early on in the campaign…back in 2007. Early summer I believe. Late spring? Anyways, do you remember being told that Barack Obama was being given Secret Service protection? This was far earlier than any candidate before – it was at the very beginning of the primary campaign. Remember those stories?
Somewhat. You sure it was 2007? I thought it was later than that. Or toward the end of 2007. Either way, what is the importance of that?
The fact you go and ask that question says a lot about how people just don’t see what is right in front of their face when it comes to politics – how politics really work. There’s the story, and there’s the story behind the story.
Just ask yourself why the Obama campaign would want Secret Service protection so early – or more importantly, why would they want to make it so public that he was getting Secret Service protection so early? Why have that information plastered all over the media? Why do that?
Yes you do know – just think about it! Why have a bunch of news stories crank up the fact that this candidate is getting Secret Service protection earlier than any other candidate before them? What is the motivation behind that?
To protect the candidate…
No, that is not, or that wasn’t the primary motivation. Do you know where the request for that originated? Do you know how Obama got that protection so early? And do you recall what the reason being reported in the media was for that protection? If you don’t know I bet you sure as hell can guess.
Threats were made against him? Against Obama?
Yes – that is what was reported. There were very general claims of threats from “possible” white supremacist groups or something like that. These claims came from Democrat Senators – a handful of them anyway, but they were originally given the story by us – the Obama campaign. That’s what wasn’t reported of course… And all of a sudden, we have story after story saying how this little known candidate from Chicago needs Secret Service protection far earlier than any candidate has been given such protection before. Now what do those stories do for that candidate? Why would a campaign blare it to the entire –expletive- world they are getting Secret Service protection? What is the real motivation? I mean, if you are getting enhanced protection, why be so public about it? Because that story alone set the tone for the rest of the campaign. It really did. It was an absolute genius move, as well as being disgustingly dishonest – came right from Plouffe I believe. The threats to Obama were a creation by Plouffe, and the campaign was very proud of itself over that one. It put all the other candidates into a corner. It guilted the voters – or a lot of them anyways. Enough of them to make a big difference. It made Barack Obama the legacy candidate – the guy who could be the first Black president – if some crazy racists didn’t go and try and harm him first. From that time on, Obama was elevated as something more unique and special vs all of the other candidates. Send out a story about Obama needing Secret Service protection, and America feels terrible over that. We gotta do something about this, right? Why that’s just a terrible thing, right? So what can we do about it? Well, I’m gonna elect that man president, that’s what. I’m not a racist. Not me. I’m gonna help elect the first Black president because I’m a good person. Who doesn’t want to be a good person? All you gotta do is elect Barack Obama president.
That seems an awfully simplistic description of the American voter.
The best campaigns often are the most simple. Americans get simple. We fucking thrive on simple, right? And I’m here to tell you, as a candidate, I don’t know many more who have been more simple than Barack Obama. Hope – Change – and don’t forget I’m the nice Black guy. That was about it – and it worked. Man did it work.
Think about it – how does a candidate sit in a racist church for 20 years, he’s got a pastor screaming about the evils of America, and this candidate walks away from it almost unscathed and marches right on in to the White House? That fucking does not happen without a media willing to pound everyone over the head with the race card. How dare anyone challenge Obama on the Reverend Wright thing. Why would you want to bring that up – why you must be racist. Oh, how terrible for you! (laughs) And the campaign didn’t even need to work for that one I’m told. That story was happily given to them. The media was already scrambling to make Obama THE candidate.
Very early on when I arrived there was already an established “McCain the campaign” operation underway inside the Obama team. And our number one tool for that was the media. We quietly let the media know we favored having to run against Senator McCain if we won the nomination. And you gotta remember that at this time, McCain was barely hanging on as a candidate for the Republican nomination. If he was to win that nomination, he was going to need a lot of help, namely from the media.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/readers/2010/11/29/mccaintryingtocatchobama9y3fur_1.jpg
Hold on – you’re telling me that the Obama campaign worked to help John McCain win the Republican nomination? Am I understanding you correctly here? Because that is astounding – and I’ve never been told that by anyone before.
That is EXACTLY what I am telling you. The Obama campaign wanted to run against John McCain. If we managed to get past Hillary, he was the candidate we felt most confident running against. We figured we could beat anyone the Republicans sent against us, but McCain was certainly our first choice. Absolutely.
And you – the Obama campaign, actually helped John McCain to get the Republican nomination?
Yes. We were a bit nervous about Romney, then maybe Giuliani – his campaign team proved to be a complete joke…but McCain? We had no fear of John McCain. None. He was a guarantee candidate if we won the nomination.
Hillary was our priority… so much money was spent defeating her – after that we knew we most likely were gonna win it all – but McCain was our just-in-case option. The sure thing scenario. And it was copied during the midterms. The Harry Reid campaign did the exact same thing we did. I watched it from a distance, but I knew exactly what they were up to. Lamb is a very quick study.
How? How did the Obama camp help John McCain be the Republican nominee?
Well let me refresh your memory here. Toward the end of…2008, no – 2007, McCain’s campaign was in the fucking toilet, right? And Romney was shaping up to be the frontrunner going into 2008. That had the higher ups in the Obama camp very concerned. If we got by Hillary, then the only guy who might challenge us money-wise would be Romney. He had some bucks, he had inroads with the large donor Republicans. The contradiction between him and Obama was not stark enough. Romney was by far the bigger threat – much more so than McCain…
Romney came off polished, confident. Even a little slick. That was too much like our candidate – Obama, right? There wouldn’t be enough of a visual contradiction. Besides Obama being Black of course, but if you stood McCain next to Obama, well…now you got a real visual contradiction, right? The mannerisms, the kinda odd way he speaks – he’s horrible in debates… all of that made for a much stronger visual advantage for Obama. We didn’t want Romney up there by Obama – we really-really wanted it to be McCain. It was told to me by someone who was around those decisions as they were hatched. He was on board with it, thought it was brilliant. He shared it with me and I agreed, it was brilliant. And ultimately we pulled it off. We – the Obama campaign, got McCain the Republican nomination.
You’re saying the Obama campaign was more responsible for McCain getting the Republican nomination than McCain himself was?
We certainly helped – we helped a lot. You could say we were as responsible and I would have no problem agreeing with that. Yeah, that sounds ‘bout right.
Like I was saying, go back to the last months of 2007. McCain is barely hanging on. He’s got no money, staff are leaving him. The guy is in big trouble. Normally the media would be writing the guy off, right? They would be piling on him left and right - or simply ignoring him altogether. But they didn’t do that, did they? Romney is winning the straw polls, racking up party endorsements, normally that kind of momentum cannot be overcome. In this case, it was.
Very specific pro-McCain stories were being given to various media figures, emphasizing McCain as this guy who wasn’t giving up – the underdog candidate going against the big money machine of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. Do you remember any of those stories? Well they were all over the media for about a month or two heading into New Hampshire. Right? Look at how tough John McCain is; he never gives up, etc. Those stories, at least the idea of them, originated from the Barack Obama campaign. We were the ones who pushed the media to report them. It was done very under the radar of course, but it was absolutely done by us – saw it going on first hand.
Right before I was sent out to go do the preliminary work on another campaign stop in…Florida I believe, maybe it was Tennessee -tough to keep track… I was given an outline of approved questions or focus points to be given to the media for the Senator’s arrival. These outlines were given to all of us who were doing what I was doing, everything was covered to the letter – several of us racing all over the country by this time. Anyways, I get there and have a quick sit down with one of the local network affiliates – news producer, or assistant producer. I start going over the information on the list, and she interrupts me and says, “Oh, we got those already. Don’t worry, we are ready to go, and we got the McCain information too. We’ll do what we can.”
Now let that sink in kid. Roll that around for a bit.
Here I am, supposed to be part of the advance team for the Obama campaign doing what all campaigns do in trying to get the media on their side, and somebody has already gotten to them? Somebody has already given them the list as well as the “McCain information”? And this local news producer is all in – ready to go for the Obama people without any hesitation. She was thrilled to be helping us out.
Now multiply that example by a thousand and you got what was going on during the presidential campaign that year. I have never seen anything like it. I hope to not see anything like that again. It’s no exaggeration when I say the media elected Barack Obama – not the American people.
I can agree with part of that – the media certainly was pushing for Obama. They still are.
Pushing? No, they were pushing for John McCain to be the nominee because that’s what the Obama people were asking for. As for Obama, by the time 2008 rolls around, most in the media considered themselves a critical part of the Obama campaign. That is not a joke or an exaggeration – that is a fact.
There was only one moment in that entire campaign that we thought we might actually lose. One time that we thought the media might turn on us – might break away with their own story against Obama. They didn’t though. They stuck by us – they stamped that story down for us almost as quickly as it came out.
What was that – what was the story?
I mentioned it already…Wright – the Reverend Wright story. That whole clusterfucking church that Obama went to for what…30 years? No – 20 years?
What other candidate gets away with a story like that in a primary race? There was no “ he said she said” crap with that story – everyone could hear and see what that guy was saying! Here is this pastor of this church who is screaming down America, a guy who Obama calls his spiritual guide or mentor or whatever, who rips on America after 9-11…I mean how in hell does a candidate survive that? It just doesn’t happen. No way. Impossible, right? Obama was done. It was over. He finally got burned on something. You just don’t recover from something like that. That’s what we all thought. Oh fuck it’s fucking over!
A distant second on the concern scale for the campaign was Palin. That one spooked us a bit – but not like the Wright fiasco. We really thought it was over right there – but Obama survived it. Not because of him, or the campaign, but because the media provided cover through the whole thing. In the end, the media said it was not a story, and pushed Obama to the finish line. No way a candidate should have survived that. No fucking way.
The Reverend Wright thing was a big story though – the media did report on it. It was all over the news.
Did they? I’d be happy to tell you how some of that went down. Reluctantly planted with the spin already in place. No they weren’t. Not nearly as much as they should have been – any other candidate, they would have been. That’s not news right there – you know that, right. C’mon, admit it, the media should have destroyed Obama’s campaign right there. We all thought they would. We should have been done. The campaign was over – should have been over. It wasn’t though. Hell, they turned that whole fiasco into a fucking positive for Obama! It was unbelievable! We had media people rushing in to help out, to define the issue as a “learning experience”! Now just think on that one for a second – a learning experience? What we learned was that our candidate had been sitting in a Chicago church for 20 odd years listening to a man scream out against the United States. I’m sorry, but that candidate should never recover from that – but this one did.
And another thing – the “McCain the campaign” tactic that worked so well in 2008 – don’t think the Obama people aren’t gonna try the same damn thing in 2012. They are already working it up right now – you can count on that. They will try again to pick who Obama runs against in 2012, and the Republicans are just stupid enough to let them get away with it again…
The Media Elected Obama – Not The American People
The first part of our most recent D.C. Insider interview reflects on just how far the media went to protect and promote Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, including helping secure John McCain as Obama’s Republican opponent.
A look back on how the media acted as a shield to protect then-candidate Obama in 2007 and 2008.
According to Insider, readers must better understand the media’s previous complicity in order to more fully realize what this same media will likely attempt to do in the near future in minimizing the political damage that is soon to be inflicted upon the Obama administration.
Back to 2008…the campaign. You want to talk about the campaign. Why?
Not so much the campaign, but the media’s role. The media – what I saw happen around me with the media. Never seen anything like it before. It was great…at the time it was great. Made all our jobs a helluva lot easier, right? We would literally give the media a script and they would follow it. It would come from on high down to me and all the others who were doing the same thing I was, and then I just passed it along to this reporter or this news producer or whatever and watch them repeat it. They just took it and ran with it over and over again – no questions asked.
You hinted at that in our very first interview. Something along the lines of showing favoritism to certain media – allowing them access to Obama for supportive reporting.
Yeah – yeah that was part of it. But there was more of that at the beginning, the very beginning, and then we didn’t even have to do that anymore. There came a time, I don’t know exactly when, it just kind of evolved I guess, when basically, the media was coming to us saying how can we help? What can we do for you? Not literally saying it, but…you know, the meaning was easy enough to pick up on. I would come into a city – they know I’m with the campaign, and they would literally kiss my ass. I mean kiss my –expletive- ass. It was all very much “what can we do for Obama?” That was all they seemed to care about – helping Barack Obama. I was there 24 or 48 hours ahead of the Senator, or the First Lady, or somebody else high up in the campaign, and literally able to tell these people what to say, how to report on the arrival – I mean create the image from the ground up before any of them had arrived. I have never seen anything like it. Never – no candidate has ever been given such favoritism by the media. Like I said, at the time it was fantastic. I was in the entourage of a –expletive- political god. Looking back now…it was, it was…not right. It wasn’t right. A campaign should not have that kind of…it shouldn’t be that easy. There’s a danger to that. I didn’t want to admit it then, but I sure as hell realize it now.
How do you mean “danger”? What’s the danger?
The danger is that there was almost no media to put this candidate through the lens. No media to ask questions that normally would be asked of anybody running for office. So now we got more and more of us looking back at the last two years asking ourselves, “Who the hell is this guy? What the fuck did we do putting him in the White House?”
And that of course gave Obama a big advantage over McCain?
McCain? The real campaign was never against McCain…
I told you before – getting by McCain…that was never really an issue. It was getting the nomination, it was the fight against Hillary. That was the real battle – that was the real campaign. Once we had the nomination locked in, Obama was going to be the next president. That was what we all felt. The real battle was for the party nomination. And that is where the media was jumping in all the time helping us out…helping us against the Clintons. They worked overtime for us elevating Obama, and pushing down Hillary. The Clintons didn’t deserve that, and it makes me fucking sick I was part of it.
Was it really that overt? The media was really working that hard for Obama against Hillary Clinton?
Oh yeah – hell yes they were. I’ll give you a perfect example – one of the first things that was done on a national scale to set the tone. Do you remember the story – it was very early on in the campaign…back in 2007. Early summer I believe. Late spring? Anyways, do you remember being told that Barack Obama was being given Secret Service protection? This was far earlier than any candidate before – it was at the very beginning of the primary campaign. Remember those stories?
Somewhat. You sure it was 2007? I thought it was later than that. Or toward the end of 2007. Either way, what is the importance of that?
The fact you go and ask that question says a lot about how people just don’t see what is right in front of their face when it comes to politics – how politics really work. There’s the story, and there’s the story behind the story.
Just ask yourself why the Obama campaign would want Secret Service protection so early – or more importantly, why would they want to make it so public that he was getting Secret Service protection so early? Why have that information plastered all over the media? Why do that?
Yes you do know – just think about it! Why have a bunch of news stories crank up the fact that this candidate is getting Secret Service protection earlier than any other candidate before them? What is the motivation behind that?
To protect the candidate…
No, that is not, or that wasn’t the primary motivation. Do you know where the request for that originated? Do you know how Obama got that protection so early? And do you recall what the reason being reported in the media was for that protection? If you don’t know I bet you sure as hell can guess.
Threats were made against him? Against Obama?
Yes – that is what was reported. There were very general claims of threats from “possible” white supremacist groups or something like that. These claims came from Democrat Senators – a handful of them anyway, but they were originally given the story by us – the Obama campaign. That’s what wasn’t reported of course… And all of a sudden, we have story after story saying how this little known candidate from Chicago needs Secret Service protection far earlier than any candidate has been given such protection before. Now what do those stories do for that candidate? Why would a campaign blare it to the entire –expletive- world they are getting Secret Service protection? What is the real motivation? I mean, if you are getting enhanced protection, why be so public about it? Because that story alone set the tone for the rest of the campaign. It really did. It was an absolute genius move, as well as being disgustingly dishonest – came right from Plouffe I believe. The threats to Obama were a creation by Plouffe, and the campaign was very proud of itself over that one. It put all the other candidates into a corner. It guilted the voters – or a lot of them anyways. Enough of them to make a big difference. It made Barack Obama the legacy candidate – the guy who could be the first Black president – if some crazy racists didn’t go and try and harm him first. From that time on, Obama was elevated as something more unique and special vs all of the other candidates. Send out a story about Obama needing Secret Service protection, and America feels terrible over that. We gotta do something about this, right? Why that’s just a terrible thing, right? So what can we do about it? Well, I’m gonna elect that man president, that’s what. I’m not a racist. Not me. I’m gonna help elect the first Black president because I’m a good person. Who doesn’t want to be a good person? All you gotta do is elect Barack Obama president.
That seems an awfully simplistic description of the American voter.
The best campaigns often are the most simple. Americans get simple. We fucking thrive on simple, right? And I’m here to tell you, as a candidate, I don’t know many more who have been more simple than Barack Obama. Hope – Change – and don’t forget I’m the nice Black guy. That was about it – and it worked. Man did it work.
Think about it – how does a candidate sit in a racist church for 20 years, he’s got a pastor screaming about the evils of America, and this candidate walks away from it almost unscathed and marches right on in to the White House? That fucking does not happen without a media willing to pound everyone over the head with the race card. How dare anyone challenge Obama on the Reverend Wright thing. Why would you want to bring that up – why you must be racist. Oh, how terrible for you! (laughs) And the campaign didn’t even need to work for that one I’m told. That story was happily given to them. The media was already scrambling to make Obama THE candidate.
Very early on when I arrived there was already an established “McCain the campaign” operation underway inside the Obama team. And our number one tool for that was the media. We quietly let the media know we favored having to run against Senator McCain if we won the nomination. And you gotta remember that at this time, McCain was barely hanging on as a candidate for the Republican nomination. If he was to win that nomination, he was going to need a lot of help, namely from the media.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/readers/2010/11/29/mccaintryingtocatchobama9y3fur_1.jpg
Hold on – you’re telling me that the Obama campaign worked to help John McCain win the Republican nomination? Am I understanding you correctly here? Because that is astounding – and I’ve never been told that by anyone before.
That is EXACTLY what I am telling you. The Obama campaign wanted to run against John McCain. If we managed to get past Hillary, he was the candidate we felt most confident running against. We figured we could beat anyone the Republicans sent against us, but McCain was certainly our first choice. Absolutely.
And you – the Obama campaign, actually helped John McCain to get the Republican nomination?
Yes. We were a bit nervous about Romney, then maybe Giuliani – his campaign team proved to be a complete joke…but McCain? We had no fear of John McCain. None. He was a guarantee candidate if we won the nomination.
Hillary was our priority… so much money was spent defeating her – after that we knew we most likely were gonna win it all – but McCain was our just-in-case option. The sure thing scenario. And it was copied during the midterms. The Harry Reid campaign did the exact same thing we did. I watched it from a distance, but I knew exactly what they were up to. Lamb is a very quick study.
How? How did the Obama camp help John McCain be the Republican nominee?
Well let me refresh your memory here. Toward the end of…2008, no – 2007, McCain’s campaign was in the fucking toilet, right? And Romney was shaping up to be the frontrunner going into 2008. That had the higher ups in the Obama camp very concerned. If we got by Hillary, then the only guy who might challenge us money-wise would be Romney. He had some bucks, he had inroads with the large donor Republicans. The contradiction between him and Obama was not stark enough. Romney was by far the bigger threat – much more so than McCain…
Romney came off polished, confident. Even a little slick. That was too much like our candidate – Obama, right? There wouldn’t be enough of a visual contradiction. Besides Obama being Black of course, but if you stood McCain next to Obama, well…now you got a real visual contradiction, right? The mannerisms, the kinda odd way he speaks – he’s horrible in debates… all of that made for a much stronger visual advantage for Obama. We didn’t want Romney up there by Obama – we really-really wanted it to be McCain. It was told to me by someone who was around those decisions as they were hatched. He was on board with it, thought it was brilliant. He shared it with me and I agreed, it was brilliant. And ultimately we pulled it off. We – the Obama campaign, got McCain the Republican nomination.
You’re saying the Obama campaign was more responsible for McCain getting the Republican nomination than McCain himself was?
We certainly helped – we helped a lot. You could say we were as responsible and I would have no problem agreeing with that. Yeah, that sounds ‘bout right.
Like I was saying, go back to the last months of 2007. McCain is barely hanging on. He’s got no money, staff are leaving him. The guy is in big trouble. Normally the media would be writing the guy off, right? They would be piling on him left and right - or simply ignoring him altogether. But they didn’t do that, did they? Romney is winning the straw polls, racking up party endorsements, normally that kind of momentum cannot be overcome. In this case, it was.
Very specific pro-McCain stories were being given to various media figures, emphasizing McCain as this guy who wasn’t giving up – the underdog candidate going against the big money machine of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. Do you remember any of those stories? Well they were all over the media for about a month or two heading into New Hampshire. Right? Look at how tough John McCain is; he never gives up, etc. Those stories, at least the idea of them, originated from the Barack Obama campaign. We were the ones who pushed the media to report them. It was done very under the radar of course, but it was absolutely done by us – saw it going on first hand.
Right before I was sent out to go do the preliminary work on another campaign stop in…Florida I believe, maybe it was Tennessee -tough to keep track… I was given an outline of approved questions or focus points to be given to the media for the Senator’s arrival. These outlines were given to all of us who were doing what I was doing, everything was covered to the letter – several of us racing all over the country by this time. Anyways, I get there and have a quick sit down with one of the local network affiliates – news producer, or assistant producer. I start going over the information on the list, and she interrupts me and says, “Oh, we got those already. Don’t worry, we are ready to go, and we got the McCain information too. We’ll do what we can.”
Now let that sink in kid. Roll that around for a bit.
Here I am, supposed to be part of the advance team for the Obama campaign doing what all campaigns do in trying to get the media on their side, and somebody has already gotten to them? Somebody has already given them the list as well as the “McCain information”? And this local news producer is all in – ready to go for the Obama people without any hesitation. She was thrilled to be helping us out.
Now multiply that example by a thousand and you got what was going on during the presidential campaign that year. I have never seen anything like it. I hope to not see anything like that again. It’s no exaggeration when I say the media elected Barack Obama – not the American people.
I can agree with part of that – the media certainly was pushing for Obama. They still are.
Pushing? No, they were pushing for John McCain to be the nominee because that’s what the Obama people were asking for. As for Obama, by the time 2008 rolls around, most in the media considered themselves a critical part of the Obama campaign. That is not a joke or an exaggeration – that is a fact.
There was only one moment in that entire campaign that we thought we might actually lose. One time that we thought the media might turn on us – might break away with their own story against Obama. They didn’t though. They stuck by us – they stamped that story down for us almost as quickly as it came out.
What was that – what was the story?
I mentioned it already…Wright – the Reverend Wright story. That whole clusterfucking church that Obama went to for what…30 years? No – 20 years?
What other candidate gets away with a story like that in a primary race? There was no “ he said she said” crap with that story – everyone could hear and see what that guy was saying! Here is this pastor of this church who is screaming down America, a guy who Obama calls his spiritual guide or mentor or whatever, who rips on America after 9-11…I mean how in hell does a candidate survive that? It just doesn’t happen. No way. Impossible, right? Obama was done. It was over. He finally got burned on something. You just don’t recover from something like that. That’s what we all thought. Oh fuck it’s fucking over!
A distant second on the concern scale for the campaign was Palin. That one spooked us a bit – but not like the Wright fiasco. We really thought it was over right there – but Obama survived it. Not because of him, or the campaign, but because the media provided cover through the whole thing. In the end, the media said it was not a story, and pushed Obama to the finish line. No way a candidate should have survived that. No fucking way.
The Reverend Wright thing was a big story though – the media did report on it. It was all over the news.
Did they? I’d be happy to tell you how some of that went down. Reluctantly planted with the spin already in place. No they weren’t. Not nearly as much as they should have been – any other candidate, they would have been. That’s not news right there – you know that, right. C’mon, admit it, the media should have destroyed Obama’s campaign right there. We all thought they would. We should have been done. The campaign was over – should have been over. It wasn’t though. Hell, they turned that whole fiasco into a fucking positive for Obama! It was unbelievable! We had media people rushing in to help out, to define the issue as a “learning experience”! Now just think on that one for a second – a learning experience? What we learned was that our candidate had been sitting in a Chicago church for 20 odd years listening to a man scream out against the United States. I’m sorry, but that candidate should never recover from that – but this one did.
And another thing – the “McCain the campaign” tactic that worked so well in 2008 – don’t think the Obama people aren’t gonna try the same damn thing in 2012. They are already working it up right now – you can count on that. They will try again to pick who Obama runs against in 2012, and the Republicans are just stupid enough to let them get away with it again…
