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The balance act

Limbaugh likes to say on his radio program, that he IS balance for the liberal press. And in many ways, he’s quite right. So an interesting angle on this shows up today in an article by John Harris and Jim Vandiehei at The Politico: [1]

My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate.

Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance?

Where indeed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining.

That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans — some of whom are showing up in distressingly inappropriate places — who are doing the whining.

The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.

Yes, indeed. Of course when do they start complaining? As with complaints and hatred spewed at Limbaugh,their whining and hatred only shows up when actual balance happens.

There are many indications, both historical and current, that the press in general leans left. The polling of pressrooms around the county perhaps being of greater import than their output. But the complaints of those outside the press about the supposedly right-wing media, which are totally laughable at the off, take on a downright hilarious tenor when the complaints involve an argument between two Democrat candidates.

in the end, I tend to doubt that the overt bias being shown by the press in this case is going to affect the outcome of the Democratic nomination all that much. Let’s face it, the campaign that Hillary Clinton has been running isn’t worth much. If the organizational skill, and clearness of thought being put into this campaign is what a Hillary Clinton White House would look like, I fear for the nation should she ever attain that office.

As it stands, however, I rather doubt she’s going to…. but as the authors point out, that does not mean that it is not going to affect the general election. While I have serious doubts about whether or not the Democratic Party is going to be able to fall in behind one candidate or the other about there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of issue as to whether or not the press is going to be able fall in behind one candidate or the other. With the glaring exception of the other night, it has been nothing more than a cheerleading section For Obama, as regards the race between them and Hillary Clinton.

There are several indications of this, not least of which the idea that the press has been yawning, whenever the subject of Obama’s ‘warm’ relationships with William Ayers and Bernadette Dohm, and the not-so Reverand Wrght shows up.

And while it’s true that John McCain has been getting warm treatment from the liberal press, I fully expect that one treatment and once the Democrats barn dance in Denver is done. there has been much in the way of vindication. The last year or so that the relationship between John McCain and the liberal press is less than genuine and fairly brittle. my take is that the gloves are going to come off, following Denver. At which point I think I can fairly well guarantee that all the complaints about the media being biased against Barrack Obama, will be forgotten… the blance of left vs Right in the press being reset the way Liberals want it balanced… in their favor.