On invented media stories and the Obama-Clinton "rift"

by: Jay Stevens

Tue Sep 02, 2008 at 14:51:02 PM MST

The biggest story of the DNC was the supposed Obama-Clinton rift. What would happen during the roll call? gleefully mulled the punditocracy, would there be a split Convention, a power play by disgruntled Clinton backers? Of course, no such rift was manifestly evident if you were actually at the Convention. Yes, Hillary Clinton supporters thought the best candidate was speaking on Tuesday night. Yes, tears were shed, applause bittersweet from many quarters. And certainly after Clinton's speech, maybe the best of her career, with her strong endorsement of Obama and passionate advocacy for women's issues, maybe a few of us had some mild regrets. But there was no rebellion manifest. Nobody was going to cause trouble. And there was no trouble.

On Thursday night, I got a peek into why the traditional media talking heads were so removed from the real stories of the Convention -- like Sirota's take on the Convention setting possible "building blocks for change," say -- and focused on wild speculative nonexistent plots. That was the night Obama spoke in Invesco field, and, because of my credentials, I was pretty much allowed to roam free. I ended up meeting New West's Jill Kuraitis in the elevator, and we rode up to the Press Box to find a place to plug in and file our stories.

We found the biggest media celebrities from the most influential media corporations enclosed in a quiet glass box litterally hundreds of feet above the spectacle.

I can imagine them, chatting with each other on what they think the biggest stories of the politics and the Convention are, free from the noise and distraction of the actual Convention. And those media folks who did wander down went as celebrities, not journalists. There was Ted Koppel in the basement snapping pics with his admirers. There was Joe Scarborough on the floor of Invesco field, one blonde woman under each arm, grinning foolishly for cameras.  

STOP the presses! This election isn't about the Clintons after all. It isn't about the Acropolis columns erected at Invesco Field. It isn't about who is Paris Hilton and who is Hanoi Hilton. (Though it may yet be about who is Sarah Palin.) After a weeklong orgy of inane manufactured melodrama labeled "convention coverage" on television, Barack Obama descended in classic deus ex machina fashion - yes, that's Greek too - to set the record straight. America is in too much trouble, he said, to indulge in "a big election about small things."

Or, as Rich puts it, "the disconnect between the reality of this campaign and how it is perceived and presented by the mainstream media is now a major part of the year's story."

At the Democratic convention, as during primary season, almost every oversold plotline was wrong. Those Hillary dead-enders - played on TV by a fringe posse of women roaming Denver in search of camera time - would re-enact Chicago 1968. With Hillary's tacit approval, the roll call would devolve into a classic Democratic civil war. Sulky Bill would wreak havoc once center stage.

On TV, each of these hot-air balloons was inflated nonstop right up to the moment they were punctured by reality, at which point the assembled bloviators once more expressed shock, shock at the unexpected denouement. They hadn't been so surprised since they discovered that Obama was not too black to get white votes, not too white to win black votes, and not too inexperienced to thwart the inevitable triumph of the incomparably well-organized and well-financed Clinton machine.

No doubt. One of these days, I've got to put together my own analysis of the Clinton-Obama "rift" and why it never materialized. After all, I went to a county and state convention among Clinton delegates, and was there at the National Convention. I met the Clinton supporters. I know the Clinton supporters. I rode the bus with Clinton supporters, stay in the hotel with Clinton supporters, and sat down next to Clinton supporters on the floor of the Convention.

There was no rift.

Sure, there's some lingering animosity among some of the most hard-core Clinton-ites, but as Rich points out, Democratic support for Barack Obama is higher in 2008 than it was for Kerry in '04 or Gore in '00. There's always lingering animosity. There are always dissidents. You can't reach 'em all.

Which brings us to Sarah Palin. Rich:

The latest good luck for the Democrats is that the McCain campaign was just as bamboozled as the press by the false Hillary narrative. McCain was obviously itching to choose his pal Joe Lieberman as his running mate. A onetime Democrat who breaks with the G.O.P. by supporting abortion rights might have rebooted his lost maverick cred more forcefully than Palin, who is cracking this particular glass ceiling nearly a quarter-century after the Democrats got there first. Lieberman might have even been of some use in roiling the Obama-Hillary-Bill juggernaut that will now storm through South Florida.

The main reason McCain knuckled under to the religious right by picking Palin is that he actually believes there's a large army of embittered Hillary loyalists who will vote for a hard-line conservative simply because she's a woman. That's what happens when you listen to the TV news echo chamber. Not only is the whole premise ludicrous, but it is every bit as sexist as the crude joke McCain notoriously told about Janet Reno, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

Great points. A Lieberman choice would have probably appealed to independents -- the folks the two candidates are fighting over. Instead, Sarah Palin excites the conservative base. But as a side effect -- and with the late spate of ugly publicity surrounding the un-vetted VP -- she'll probably drive away quite a few folks repulsed by her social conservative extremism.

Rich's point -- and mine, too, I suppose -- is that Obama's ahead of the curve. He's understands the use of media and organization the way few people do. Talking heads matter less now than they did in 2004 (when YouTube didn't exist). Again, Rich:

The Obama campaign has long been on board those digital locomotives. Its ability to tell its story under the radar of the mainstream press in part accounts for why the Obama surge has been so often underestimated. Even now we're uncertain of its size. The extraordinary TV viewership for Obama on Thursday night, larger than the Olympics opening ceremony, this year's Oscars or any "American Idol" finale, may only be a count of the horses. The Obama campaign's full reach online - for viewers as well as fund-raising and organizational networking - remains unknown.
None of this, any more than the success of Obama's acceptance speech, guarantees a Democratic victory. But what it does ensure is that all bets are off when it comes to predicting this race's outcome.

Despite our repeated attempts to see this election through the prism of those of recent and not-so-recent memory, it keeps defying the templates. Last week's convention couldn't be turned into a replay of the 1960s no matter how hard the press tried to sell the die-hard Hillary supporters as reincarnations of past rebel factions, from the Dixiecrats to the antiwar left. Far from being a descendant of 1968, the 2008 Democratic gathering was the first in memory that actually kept promptly to its schedule and avoided ludicrous P.C. pandering to every constituency.

Man, this guy needs a blog. Oh, wait, he's got a good-payin' gig...

Okay, that's the impression I'm getting, too: a damn wide gap between what I'm experiencing, and what I'm seeing and hearing from the punditocracy.