(via Jim Newell at Salon)
Asked and answered, as the expression goes. Hillary had an unobjectionable, if thoroughly anodyne, response to the DREAMers: We should elect more Democrats. It’s not the answer they were looking for, and it’s not the answer the media wanted (because it’s hard to twist into either disrespect or slavish agreement with the current President), but it’s not like she dropped her burger and ran away choking, either.
I think Dave Weigel has the best take I’ve seen:
… The reader may be surprised to learn that Clinton did not reveal her 2016 plans to a reporter on a ropeline. Nor to the other reporter who asked. Actually, it appeared as though Clinton was following the plan of every other 2016 candidate—pacing herself before the midterms, making a decision after them. It’s almost unheard of to announce a presidential run before the previous cycle’s midterms are over, and the only guy who’s broken that recently was Mike Gravel, who did not become the nominee…
The Hillary 2016 campaign is a minor problem for Democrats. They are generally ready to nominate her. Some of them want a progressive challenge that moves her to the left, or at least keeps her honest. Far, far fewer believe that the party needs a savior, because it already tossed her aside for one of those.
Hillary 2016 is a far bigger problem for the media, which simultaneously is ready right now to cover her like a nominee—200 reporters!—and yet so palpably bored with how she talks, and runs.
The media needs eyeballs, in order to sell advertising. The Media Villagers need entertainment, and it’s worth their sinecures to be caught watching — or mocking — the simple pleasures of the True Heartlander (reality tv and YouTube), so they want the political equivalent of a bear to bait or a bull to lance. It’s gonna be a long slog to 2016.
And yet: We do need to elect more Democrats!
Mustang Bobby
So they will find every nit they can possibly pick: clothing, hairstyle, glasses, and yet another breathless scoop on a dead-end trail to the Real Truth about Benghazi!. It will be, to paraphrase Woody Allen, like being eaten to death by squirrels.
samiam
Says the blogger looking for bears to bait and bulls to lance. You are no different than the media you try so hard to make fun of. Except that they make a more lucrative living at it.
Amir Khalid
@samiam:
Always nice to see you too, Derf.
Hillary herself hasn’t decided if she’ll run, that’s plain. It’s too soon for her to declare anyway, and she’ll call everyone over when she does have a candidacy (or not) to declare.
But the Republican war on Democratic attempts to govern has become a dog-bites-man story by now. It’s not just that political reporters lack the policy knowledge to cover governing; it’s also that editors reckon stories about governing are dull and don’t appeal to readers. So the media keeps chasing the horse-race story of the season, “Is Hillary running in 2016?”. One can only endure it with a sigh.
SRW1
@samiam:
Lemme guess: your comment provided about as much relieve from pressure to ya as the fart that escaped from the other end when you shook you fist after you hit the ‘submit’ button, amirite?
Comrade Jake
The corollary to this is the Halperin effect, wherein Mark Halperin actively roots for whatever candidate he thinks will make for the best Triple Trouble* Game Change 2016 campaign book.
*I have no idea what inane title he will pick for his next book.
Tommy
On one hand I don’t want Hillary to run. Not liberal enough for me. On the other I do want her to run, if for no other reason then a big middle finger to the far right. Say what you will about the lady but she has stood strong and tall under the savage from the far right. Oh and she has a sense of humor it seems.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/22/hillary-clinton-sunglasses-necklace-mike-hammer_n_1619177.html
I don’t ever see myself behind the women 24×7. But if she runs I will grin and make like I am happy about it. Just as I have done in every campaign since I walked door to door in Louisiana for a guy named Jerry Brown in 1992. My party never puts up the liberals I want to vote for. Campaign for. I’ve gotten used to that.
tybee
similarly, i’ll vote for her as she will be better than any of the clowns the repubs will run but i will wish we had a more leftist candidate. one votes for the candidate one has….
Baud
Anodyne to us, maybe. Not to the both-sides-do-it, no-difference-between-the-parties crowd. I expect this to be ignored so that message doesn’t get out.
Comrade Jake
I’d love a more leftist candidate too, but we don’t have one *who can also get elected*. That’s the rub.
Sherparick
I would have been a bit more specific. Defeat Steve King, Defeat Jodi Ernst. Until right-wing Republicans are held accountable for their racism, theocracy, and just crazy talk you won’t get immigration reform. What do you think will happen to your civil rights if their is Crazy Republican Senate to go with the Crazy Republican House and a Crazy Republican Supreme Court? I also tell my Environmental Friends the same thing when they bemoan the President and the Senate Democrats. You need to do the same thing the NRA does. Collect the scalps of your enemies, not kneecap your potential allies.
cleek
@Amir Khalid:
oh come on. she’s been running for a year now. she’s been doing everything everyone always does before they announce. just because she has to pretend to be coy doesn’t mean we have to believe it.
AxelFoley
@Sherparick:
This. So very much, this.
debbie
How long until Hillary’s “I’m back!” is plastered all over GOP ads?
Michael Bersin
We were there. Been covering the steak fry annually since 2007 (well, we missed 2008 – other things going on) and we knew this was going to be a media zoo similar to 2007. It’s a 250 mile drive to Indianola from west central Missouri – we know the good rest stops. Because of the “media demand” and an 8:00 a.m. preset for riser space we left at 3:30 in the morning. Got to Indianola in good time, got our riser space and cameras set, then hung around outside the entry waiting to pick up our credentials. We ran into Charles P. Pierce, did the gushing fans thing, took pictures. He’s approachable, good humored and he tells hysterically funny stories. Yeah, Mark Halperin was there. I could have dropped my camera on his head from my spot on the back row of the main press riser. He had staked out a space at a table behind the riser.
The steak grilling photo op was hysterical (in all meanings). We ended up getting crammed against a temporary fence in the media scrum waiting for an hour and a half to be let through two fenced off areas. I traded quips with a photographer for Norwegian Business Daily (I kid you not) for an hour and a half. At one point he pointed to the first and second pen areas and said, “Is the first for sorting, and the second for neutering?”
Steak fry civilians gathered from across the balloon field to watch the show. They got one. When the fence gates were opened most of the media ran like a spooked herd. I would like to point out that I retained my dignity and walked. That large number of observers watching us enjoyed an extended laugh at the spectacle. That was noticed in the media scrum.
I managed to get some good stills (close to 4000) including a sequence at the opening of Hillary’s speech when she stated,”I’m back!”:
Hillary Clinton at the Harkin Steak Fry: “I’m back!”
Spectacle and conventional wisdom aside, there were at least 7000 people at the event, most very supportive of Hillary, and not all were from Iowa – there’s a large demographic that is, to steal the phrase, ready. And they’re armed for bear.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Michael Bersin: Thanks for the report!
Cheers,
Scott.
Anybodybuther2016
It doesn’t matter what she does or doesn’t do that women will never be president of this country. I’m back!
C.V. Danes
We indeed do need to elect more Democrats, but they need to be liberal Democrats, not the likes of Rahm Emanuel and others from the hippie punching wing.
EZSmirkzz
I think, ultimately, that the media suffers the same foibles of human nature as the rest of us. They aren’t going to go out of their way looking for more work to do, and the political rut has become so ingrained that the ‘gotcha’ comment is the only safe reporting that they can do without running into the access problem, because politicians suffer the same foibles of human nature as the rest of us, they don’t like to be challenged, and they don’t like to be criticized.
That being said, the herd mentality of the coverage of a steak fry is a little hard to take when other very serious stories, such as the war on Terra part redux, or the Cold War II, go under reported because the media elites are too damned lazy to do any research, or apparently learn from it if they do, and follow the herd in advocating for policies that are not only not in the national security interests of the United States, but in fact counter to them.
I tend to have a great deal of respect for the work of many journalists, but as any blogger knows, a hippopotumus hide and keyboard should go hand in hand. But the wages of the sins of war are too important to be left in the hands of stenographers that are too fking lazy to do their jobs.
As for Clinton, I would imagine she will get into it, but why would she spill the beans as decorum dictates, before the midterms? She might do the D’s more good than harm if she were to announce now, but if they get clobbered she would want to be able to distance herself from that in 2016.
I think she will be far more immune to influences from the left than Obama was, and even so, the influence of the left will end after the convention and nomination process, just as it did with Obama. That is just a fact of life until the left starts taking over the precinct and state party infrastructure, which means getting off their asses and doing more work. (See paragraph 1)
In general I think the left or liberals or progressives, as you prefer, need to reassert our basic optimism for our nation, our goals and aspirations, and the notion that we the people are the government of the United States, and that as such, together, we can build a more inclusive, democratic and just society. In doing so, I’m not saying we should avoid snark, snark is good. I’m just saying we should take care to avoid verbal defecations that are the hallmark of conservative pundits and commentators.
gian
@cleek:
the tv coverage of the steak fry had a ready for Hillary table passing out literature.
she’s running.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Anybodybuther2016:
More’s the pity.