Featured Topic: Presidential Race 2008

Today, we leave the environment as our featured topic and move on to Presidential Election 2008. Going into Tuesday's primary, the media speculated as to when the Democratic Party would have its Presidential nominee and what this would mean in the November match-up against the presumed Republican nominee Senator John McCain. With Clinton's win, the race may not be decided for some time.

With a close race, things had deteriorated in negative campaign ads, and a game of gotcha about Obama's ties to Reverend Wright and his statement to supporters in San Francisco that blue collar voters are "bitter" and about Hillary's refuted tale of coming under fire in Bosnia.  The campaigns went negative in campaign ads about lobbyists and the one policy announcement was a piece of Clinton's saber rattling on Iran.

All this probably leaves the Republicans hopeful that either Democrat will emerge as damaged goods come the Convention. Yesterday,McCain senior adviser Mark McKinnon told USA Today reporter David Jackson, "We're for anything that keeps it going."

There has been coverage of McCain on his stance denouncing protectionism and another piece on reaching out to Black voters, but there has also been a piece questioning his "constituent services" in a New York Times story that has Ed Morrisey, who has left Captain's Quarter to write for Hot Air, complaining in "New York Times goes after McCain again, with similar results."

Meanwhile, in "The Whiner Versus the Iron Lady," Pajama Media blogger Rick Moran writes at Rightwing Nuthouse:

McCain, of course, has the same problem Obama has; he sets himself up as a different kind of politician who is above mucking around in the political sewers with special interests while carrying on business as usual when it comes to his "special friends." In the larger scheme of things, this favor for Diamond is hardly a mortal sin. But as an example of campaign hypocrisy? Guilty as charged, Senator.

All of this is leaving many of us tired.  But evidently not the voters in Pennsylvania. As I wrote in my own blog post on the primary, AP reported that 1 in ten had changed their registration so that they could vote in the PA primary. And although some folks may want to get on with (or even past) the November race, turn out in Pennsylvania was high, as noted in the story we've featured today from the Washington Post, "Clinton Takes Pennsylvania:"

An estimated 2 million Democrats voted, nearly triple the number who turned out in the past two presidential primaries in the state.

That post piece links to a slew of other coverage--news analysis, videos, transcripts and a photo gallery. 

My partner in leading our "news hunt" is longtime NewsTrust host Chris Finnie. Chris has already been at work since yesterday and recommends a piece of news analysis from 's Lorraine Woellert, "Bill Clinton `Firing Up' Rural, Small-Town Base Amid Stumbles."

Chris writes,

One of the more interesting analysis I've seen this morning of the Democratic primary--it avoids the usual talking points and looks at the Clinton campaign from a different angle, that of her chief supporter. It does not mention some of the specific gaffes....

Chris also reports a bit from her own experience,

while the author is correct about what a charismatic speaker Bill Clinton can be, that too is slipping at times. Why, I can't say. But, when he spoke at the end of March at the California Democratic Party convention, people were leaving the room--me among them.... Like his wife, he seems to be feeling kind of desperate. She goes on the attack and talks tougher. He loses his temper and gets verbose. At least that's what it looked like from the cheap seats.

Of course there's more than the horse race.We'll be looking to see if the media are covering important issues and policy positions.Will you help us out?

What we're looking for is members who are willing to stand back from any personal politics and write reviews based on journalistic quality.  And please when you're rating other reviews, rate them for helpfulness in judging the journalistic quality of the piece, not whether the piece agrees with your world view. This, of course, does not preclude pointing out bias on the part of the author, as long as the critique is constructive : ) 

The priority might be to look at todays picks and grab those without three reviews and then those with three reviews but lacking a detailed comment. It would be great if you'd link to other stories. If they're already in NewsTrust you can use that link so folks will see the other reviews. We'd also love to have folks, if they wish, submit good stories that we have missed.

Member Roland F. Hirsch already has helped by suggesting sources and host Alan Horn and Barry Grossheim have done their first reviews.  Other hosts have promised to join in soon. We hope you will too. Let's see what quality journalism is out there on Presidential Election 2008.

Comments

[Pat Blochowiak]

I'm concerned that today's top few stories happens to include the exact same story, which I consider unfair to Obama, twice, and with Obama's photo associated, although there is more detail about McCain in that particular story.

I hope that people will pay attention to Steve Weissman's Truthout editorial, Baiting Obama, which discusses some of the techniques being used to attempt to discredit him.

[Beth Wellington]

Thanks, Pat, for your comment. The story to which you refer, "Baiting Obama" makes an interesting parallel with earlier redbaiting, although Clinton has received her share of the same accusations. She, however, can be criticized for encouraging this frenzy. I had to laugh at the Lieberman quote that he would "hesitate to say" Obama is a Marxist. "But he's got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America." Lieberman has moved ever further to right since running as an independent against the winner of the Democratic Party primary CT.'s Senate race. I'd be interested in some sort of political poll which indeed indentified the relative position on the spectrum of Obama, Lieberman and the American public. In looking online, I see that journalist David Sirota made a stab at looking at the polls on several issues back in 2006 here: http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/05/30/joe-lieberman-the-hostile-takeover-of-centrism/