So here is the latest Bold Prediction, inspired by a late night and little caffeine - Obama is about to endure a media backlash.
Why a bursting of his media bubble? Well, they (alright, "they") have finally admitted what was obvious in this Harvard study last fall and to Bill Clinton at Dartmouth - as some NBC talent put it, "it's hard to stay objective covering this guy".
However, while the press was non-objectively giving Obama a shoulder ride around New Hampshire, Hillary surprised and embarrassed the media and the experts by sneaking to victory.
So, having been caught out as having been both non-objective and wrong, what will the monolithic MSM do next? We look for the MSM to engage in the customary self-recrimination, reflect on the manner in which they failed to inform the public, and devote themselves henceforth to doing a better job of presenting Obama fairly, i.e., more negatively.
Well that may happen among the media that still considers itself objective and to have the "standards" and "ethics" Helen Thomas claims it to have. But what about the media which has fallen "in love" with Obama?
Anyway, there are some hints that Maguire's prediction is already coming to be. This morning on MSNBC:
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Nora, it's Mika. You know the Clinton campaign noticed what happened in Iowa, and New Hampshire, of course, was fairly close. So I guess the question is are you ready for the scrutiny that's to come? It's a long road ahead. And you would think the Clinton campaign will ratchet up the scrutiny on your experience and whether or not you were truly prepared to be president. Are you prepared for the tough road ahead?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, Mika, I mean, keep in mind, you know, we've been undergoing scrutiny since i announced in february. I mean, it's not as if you guys in the press have given me a pass. That's the real fairy tale is I think bill clinton suggesting somehow that we've been just taking a cake walk here. As I recall, all through the summer, there were questions about experience, people were asking me questions about my policies, on meeting with foreign leaders, or my policies on Pakistan. They've been, you know, pushing this agenda hard. And the fact is I think the american people are making a pretty good assessment. They think that I am ready for the White House, but they also think that there are some strong candidates in this race. They're trying to sort through who can best deliver on change. The playing field has shifted in our direction. You notice all the candidates out there are talking in our terms, and we just have to make sure that we are clear about who's best equipped to bring about change. But i promise you this, though, Mika. I come from Chicago politics. We're accustomed to rough and tumble. I don't expect this to be a cake walk.
You ain't seen nothing yet, Mr. Obama.
You see, this is all about the Clinton campaign casting about for a way to effectively fight Obama. So one of the obvious ways is to chastise the media for not doing its job of "vetting" Obama and get some of them ("some" is plenty) banging away at the guy. Then couple the media attack with another concerted effort (like a 527 "Swift Boat" effort) outside the campaign which will keep the pot boiling and feed that wing of the media banging away at Obama and you have the best of all political worlds (with the Clintons 'tsk, tsking' about Obama's plight and telling all how they can empathize and commiserate, but this is all part of "the process").
What I think the Clintons will want in the "reshaping" of Obama’s image will be for no one being able to say they want to see him as Hillary’s running mate. From the Clinton perspective, they do the talking about other Democrats, other Democrats don’t do the talking about the Clintons. Obama has clearly crossed the imaginary line by showing a little too much strut during his surge while having a little too much to say about Hillary. Now he has to be ruined, probably for things a third as bad as Bill Clinton used to do before lunch.
Obama maintained his cool last night, but it is a catastrophe for any candidate to have what was essentially a 12 point lead in the polls collapse overnight. That’s why that Martin Luther King oration he gave struck me as way overwrought. He should have come out low key and determined, not attempting to spin a triumph out of a total collapse of the expected result.
Please, his Democrat opponent in the senate primary was beating the snot out of him until very soon before the voting it got leaked that he’d had a domestic abuse charged filed during his divorce.
And then the leaked Divorce stuff during the actual election (and then running against Keyes, who was pathetic).
He’s not run anything tougher than a true local election, and if you think those were TOUGH for him in Chicago, need I remind you where the dead voted, and who they voted for back in the day?
He hasn’t seen "rough and tumble". At least hillary ran against actual oponents...
After the Iowa caucuses, Chris Matthews claimed that the Obama vote was a repudiation of Bush. So does that mean NH was an affirmation of Bush? I’m just wondering, because Matthews didn’t seem interested in floating that theory last night.
A serious, no-gushing-allowed examination of Obama is way overdue. Obama has some explaining to do about his "black liberation" church and Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., his "spiritual mentor" who is a fellow traveler with Louis Farrakhan. This is the worst of Sixties radical politics continuing to haunt us.
If Obama wants to be a Malcolm X gadfly in our society with a deeper commitment to blacks, Africa, and the international community, fine, but he has no business anywhere near the Big Chair, where he would have to look out for the interests of Americans, all of us, including those that his church considers to be the captors of the black race.
I know I posted this quote from Obama’s church in an earlier thread, but it’s worth looking at again. There is something deeply wrong here.
Disavowal of the Pursuit of "Middleclassness"
Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must keep the captive ignorant educationally, but trained sufficiently well to serve the system. Also, the captors must be able to identify the "talented tenth" of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.
Those so identified as separated from the rest of the people by:
Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.
Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.
Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of "we" and "they" instead of "us"…
The reason Keyes was available to run against Obama is, if I recall correctly, because the voters of his home state of Maryland, where he actually lived before being drafted as the designated Republican carpet bagger for Illinois, wouldn’t vote for him.
