John Solomon Era Officially Begins At Washington Times!
(February 8, 2008 -- 12:32 PM EDT // link // )

I'd been waiting for the right moment to declare the John Solomon era officially underway at The Washington Times, and thankfully, that moment has arrived with this lead story today:

Hillary still in bed with '96 scandal

Nearly one in five "HillRaisers," the elite big-money fundraisers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, have ties to the 1990s fundraising scandal that tarnished her husband's presidency by offering Democratic donors sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom and other perks inside the White House.

Forty-nine of the Clintons' Lincoln Bedroom guests are among the 250 HillRaisers listed on Mrs. Clinton's campaign Web page, who have pledged to gather, or "bundle," at least $100,000 in donations. Some have promised to raise $1 million or more for the 2008 campaign, the most costly in U.S. history.

Hillary is "in bed" with a Clinton-era scandal! That must mean that we have another scandal on our hands, right?

Well...that's not really clear. The story never says that this is wrong or that it's any more noteworthy than any other campaign's roster of large contributors. Nor is anyone quoted saying this, either. There's some criticism of the original Lincoln Bedroom affair, which sprays the scent of scandal around a bit. But nobody says Hillary should not take money from these people or is even quoted negatively linking the original story to the present in any way.

The piece does, however, make it vaguely sound like some kind of wrongdoing has occurred. And that's the rub. What you're seeing here yet again is Solomon's undeniably impressive skill at taking available facts and arranging them in such a way that they sound like an investigative scoop. This sort of virtuosity is what WaPo public editor Deborah Howell was referring to when she criticized a previous Solomon special as a "gotcha without the gotcha."

Anyway, the Solomon era is officially underway at WashTimes. This blog would have been remiss if it had let this journalistic milestone pass without raising a glass in celebration.

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Mystery Of The Missing Dowd Snark -- Solved!
(February 7, 2008 -- 7:03 PM EDT // link // )

Updated below.

For a couple of days now some reporters and bloggers have been debating the Mystery of the Missing Dowd Snark. And I've solved the mystery -- sort of.

The whole thing started with Dowd's column yesterday about the Hillary-Obama battle. In the dead tree version, she wrote this cutting line about Obama:

Just like Hollywood starlets, he works out religiously and he can make a three-course meal out of a Nicorette.

This line ticked a lot of people off, and rightly so, because it brought back some bad memories of Dowd and her cohorts feminizing other male Dem presidential candidates (see Edwards, "Breck Girl" John).

But then, mysteriously, the offending line disappeared from the online version of Dowd's column. This prompted some sharp questions here and here as to why this happened. As Digby asked: "Did her editors finally step in and say she'd gone too far? Can we hope for more?"

This question has been debated a bit in some journalistic circles today. And I thought it was an interesting one, not least because as unlikely as it sounded, it's seductive to imagine that someone did gently suggest that it's time to stop with this sort of nonsense. So I checked in with a Times spokesperson, who emailed over this response from Times editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal:

"Maureen revised her column between editions to update it with new information on an election night. Because new material went in, some older material had to come out."

Judging by this answer, no editors did any intervention; this was about space; there was no recognition that this went too far and that it's time to bag this kind of stuff. Oh, well. Still, one has to ask -- was this really cut for space? Is there a space issue on the Internets? Hmmm.

Update: In retrospect, I think I was wrong to raise the question of whether there is a space issue on the Internets. As a number of readers have suggested, Rosenthal did clearly say that she revised it "between editions," meaning print editions. I plead fatigue last night.

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The Tweety Effect Lives! Women's Group Using Chris Matthews' Buffoonery As Fundraising Tool For Hillary
(February 7, 2008 -- 1:29 PM EDT // link // )

Here at TPM we've spent a fair amount of time chronicling the "Tweety Effect" -- that is, the fact that Chris Matthews' less-than-chivalrous on-air treatment of women may have inadvertently been driving women into the Hillary camp.

As you may recall, Matthews got a lot of women -- and men, too -- annoyed when he said of Hillary: "The reason she's a U.S. Senator, the reason she's a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits." He's got a whole history of this sort of thing.

Well, here's some more evidence that the Tweety Effect is alive and well! The feminist group Emily's List just sent out a fundraising appeal on Hillary's behalf. Check out this line:

We've seen how far pundits like Chris Matthews will go to define Hillary on their terms. We've fought back against the gender stereotypes that keep popping up again and again.

But it's not going to stop just because we want it to. The only way Hillary can talk to voters unfiltered is if she has enough money to deliver her message of change straight to the grassroots.

So great. Matthews' buffoonery is now helping raise money for Hillary's candidacy! It'll be interesting to track how much this appeal brings in. I'll keep you posted on that.

Meanwhile, here's the Matthews vid that got the latest round of anti-Matthews criticism off the ground...

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Obsessive, Unhinged Punditry
(February 6, 2008 -- 8:02 PM EDT // link // )

Paul Krugman, commenting on this post below pointing to WaPo writer Eugene Robinson's faulty prediction that Super Tuesday would prove a "repudiation" of Bill Clinton, sums up exactly what's wrong with this sort of stuff:

Attempts by pundits to make Super Tuesday into a referendum on Bill Clinton failed. People seem to have voted based on what they thought of the candidates. How novel!

The key word there is "attempts." I was arguing with a friend about this whole Bill question, and he pointed out that there are legit questions to be asked about Bill's role in a Hillary presidency. Totally agreed. The issue here is one of degree -- the trouble with much of this punditry about Bill is the obsessive and unhinged quality it takes on at times.

For instance, WaPo's Richard Cohen endorsed Obama yesterday, and rather than say a single syllable about why he thinks Obama would make a good president, he submits ... Bill Clinton as one of his primary reasons driving this all-important choice. Meanwhile, Robinson predicted that the votes cast by millions of people across the country with all sorts of divergent interests and motives would be all about repudiating ... someone who isn't in the race.

As Krugman says, what we're really seeing here is attempts by opinion-makers to make the race all about Bill. There's nothing wrong with asking questions -- or even worrying -- about what role Bill would play in a Hillary administration. The problem here is this desire for the race to be all about him, even though the voters keep rejecting this view of things. It's a warped view of the race and it warps the dialog in a big way. And there's no sign that it's going to stop anytime soon.

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Is Obama Being Hurt By MSNBC And His Other Media Worshippers?
(February 6, 2008 -- 4:40 PM EDT // link // )

In light of last night's results, it's time to ask that question.

In the days before the voting yesterday an extraordinary amount of good press rained down on Barack Obama. And no network has done more to push absurdly over-the-top story-lines favorable to Obama than MSNBC has.

The network took the lead in pumping the Ted Kennedy endorsement into an event of truly cosmic significance. Chris Matthews repeatedly hailed Obama as a kind of cross between Jesus, JFK, and Muhammad Ali. One commentator after another predicted that Bill Clinton's antics would mortally wound Hillary's candidacy. In a perfect set-up to the pratfall that followed, The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson went on MSNBC and flatly predicted that last night's results would be a "repudiation of Bill Clinton." Like, not.

Obviously such good press has its advantages. But there's a very clear downside, too. What was a solid night for Obama in many ways ended up falling way short of the hype that had been built up around it. As Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford aptly put it, this actually hurts Obama:

The chattering crowd's frenzy for this man only raises expectations that he cannot meet. As a result, what was otherwise not too shabby a night for Obama on Super Tuesday came across like a public relations defeat because so much more had been expected.

Indeed. As Crawford points out, last night Tom Brokaw went on MSNBC and chastised his colleagues for getting so far ahead of themselves. “Once again,” Brokaw intoned, “in all of our conventional and collective wisdom, we were wrong.” Taylor Marsh rightly noted that Brokaw was "babysitting" his MSNBC colleagues.

Indeed, is it an overstatement to say that the real loser last night was MSNBC? It's easy to read last night's results as basically a repudiation of the network. And not just because so many of the network's predictions proved a bust. The results repudiated the style of punditry that MSNBC traffics in, perhaps more so than any other network this cycle -- the constant speculation, the borderline-pathological obsession with Bill Clinton, the embarrassing Obama worship, the refusal to let the voters have their say.

What will make MSNBC -- and like-minded colleagues -- stop with this stuff? At this point, multiple journalistic worthies have pleaded for sanity. Brokaw did this just last night. And The Politico's John Harris and Jim VandeHei -- two highly-respected journalists -- recently published a long mea culpa about political coverage, concluding that the "answer to excesses and hype in political journalism" is to "respect the voters. That means waiting to find out what they really think."

Nobody is listening to these people, though. So here's a thought. Maybe the MSNBC folks and others like them can be induced to stop this sort of stuff for Obama's sake?

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No One Will Listen To John Harris And Jim VandeHei
(February 5, 2008 -- 11:07 PM EDT // link // )

Why won't anyone at The Washington Post listen to former Post reporters John Harris and Jim VandeHei? The other day, the duo, who are now at The Politico, made an extraordinarily sane suggestion as to how we can all improve political coverage. They wrote:

As far as what’s bad, there is generally one good answer to excesses and hype in political journalism: Respect the voters. That means waiting to find out what they really think.

Yes! Let the voters decide what they think! Very good idea. But alas, no one at The Post will listen to them.

The other day, Post columnist David Broder ignored their advice. And tonight, Post writer Eugene Robinson went on MSNBC, before anyone had any sense of what the Super Tuesday results would be, saying that the results would constitute a big "repudiation" of Bill Clinton:

EUGENE ROBINSON: Hillary Clinton emerges from this evening on her own, basically. because having Bill Clinton at her side is not working.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's really hurting her.

ROBINSON: It’s hurting her. I think this will end up -- this evening will end up being a repudiation of Bill Clinton.

Will it? I guess we'll find out. Hasn't happened yet.

I don't understand this. Harris and VandeHei are among the most respected in the business. Why won't anyone -- their former colleagues, no less -- listen to them?

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WaPo's Richard Cohen: Today, I'm Casting My Vote -- Against Bill Clinton
(February 5, 2008 -- 1:02 PM EDT // link // )

One thing that's good about the fact that the voting is upon us is that it's forcing pundits to come clean about what's been driving their commentary about the Clintons for so long. Case in point: Richard Cohen in The Washington Post today.

Before, Cohen and David Broder and other pundits had the option of concealing their disdain for Bill by couching it in predictions about how the American public, as opposed to them, would ultimately judge Bill a liability to Hillary's candidacy. But in his column today, Cohen endorses Obama, which forces him to reveal what he actually thinks. And he writes:

The fact is that as a politician, Hillary Clinton is a creature of her husband...He remains, as Wordsworth might put it, too much with us. He was a good president with bad associations -- beginning with Jim McDougal of Whitewater fame and ending with Marc Rich of pardon infamy. Bill Clinton has a tropism for the faintly corrupt, and his wife has more than a tropism for him. He would stalk her presidency as he has her campaign, and when she vows that she alone would rule the White House, she is talking personnel, not marriage. It ain't the same.

So I vote, as I must, for Obama and against Hillary.

And there you have it: A top columnist at the second most influential broadsheet in the country is basing his choice between Hillary and Obama largely on ... Bill! And the man isn't even running for President. Cohen is so put off by the thought of the mere presence of Bill anywhere near the White House again that he has let this specter determine his choice between two other highly accomplished adults for the post of leader of the free world.

Making this even more striking, Cohen doesn't have a single word of praise for Obama anywhere in the column explaining his choice at this rather critical juncture in our history. Instead, this is all about Bill. Oh, sure, Cohen does murmur some criticism of Hillary's war vote, too, but since Cohen also supported the war, this can't have impacted him all that much.

Make no mistake: This is all about Bill. Cohen is casting his vote today -- against Bill Clinton. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, really.

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Media Weeps With Joy Over Hillary's Latest "Tears" Moment
(February 5, 2008 -- 9:42 AM EDT // link // )

Updated below.

Newsday reporter Glenn Thrush, a good friend of mine, deftly captures in one sentence the ridiculousness of the media's response to Hillary's new teary emotional moment yesterday:

Clinton's eyes -- red from a cold -- welled up, and she wiped them as reporters craned to record a possible tear that never dropped.

They craned to record the tear? Well, that's understandable, of course. No journalist could afford to miss such big political news, particularly on the eve of the voting that could decide the next President. That would be a firing offense.

All snark aside, perhaps we should be thankful. To my knowledge the three major networks didn't all lead with The Tear last night, as they did the last time Hillary publicly experienced an emotion that caused her eyes to water for approximately two seconds.

Meanwhile, assorted pundits wept hot tears of joy at having been granted another chance to seize on a trivial and ultimately meaningless moment to insinuate that Hillary's inner Lady Macbeth was on display yet again. Predictably, the Hardball gang obsessed over the moment, with Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson telling Chris Matthews that Hillary's tears are caused by "an impending primary. It just breaks her down."

Wow. Really, how did we get to this point? How did our discourse sink to such levels of absurdity and self parody? What happened?

***********************************************

Update: Obviously, the "what happened" is intended as a lament, not as a literal question. The answer to that question as I understand it is -- I hope -- the daily subject of this humble blog.

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Another Poll Shows That Bill Hasn't Hurt Hillary Among Dem Primary Voters
(February 4, 2008 -- 10:37 AM EDT // link // )

Yesterday I noted that contrary to the narrative selected by many reporters, pundits and commentators, a new Pew poll had some numbers suggesting that Bill hadn't hurt Hillary among Dem primary voters nationally. Now along comes another poll that finds this even more clearly.

Before looking at the numbers, let's remember that in the days after the racial dust-ups involving Bill, the claim that Bill had jumped the shark and damaged Hillary in her battle with Obama was repeated so often that it morphed from speculation into absolute fact in the mouths of many pundits.

Now, in addition to yesterday's Pew poll, we have the new CBS/New York Times poll, which asks Dem primary voters the following:

Does Bill Clinton's involvement in Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign make you more likely to support Hillary Clinton, less likely, or doesn't it make a difference to you?

More likely 18%

Less likely 12%

No difference 70%

This is pretty clear, isn't it? Seventy percent say he makes "no difference." What's more, if you compare these numbers to the last New York Times polling on the question, it becomes even more clear cut. In January 13% said Bill made them "less likely" to support Hillary. Now that number is actually down one point.

A caveat: The number of voters who said Bill makes them "more likely" to support her has dropped significantly, from 39% in January to 18% now. What this suggests is that all the bad press has perhaps made Bill less of an asset than he was before. That's certainly noteworthy. But all those respondents have gone over into the "indifferent" column. So these numbers clearly contradict the tsunami of punditry telling us that his latest escapades are hurting her among Dems.

A couple other points. First, these numbers are principally concerned with Dem primary voters. It's perfectly possible that all the bad press that's hit Bill could hurt Hillary among independents and Republicans, as these polls both suggest. But the general election is nine months away. Right now I'm talking about all the punditry insisting that Bill has hurt Hillary against Obama -- meaning among Dems.

And on this score, one more eye-opening number. Central to much commentary about this stuff is the notion that Bill's recent antics have "reminded" voters that Bill will have an outsize role in a Hillary presidency. But guess what? Dem primary voters just aren't listening to this "reminder," according to the Times poll:

If Hillary Clinton becomes President, do you think Bill Clinton will have too much influence, to little influence, or about the right amount of influence on the decisions Hillary Clinton makes as President?

Too much influence 22%

Too little influence 6%

About the right amount 65%

Why won't Chris Matthews and David Broder talk about these numbers?

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Memo To Pundits: New Poll Finds That Number Of Dems Who Like Idea Of Bill Back In White House Hasn't Budged
(February 3, 2008 -- 12:35 PM EDT // link // )

Hmmm. It'll be interesting indeed to see if these new poll numbers get any play from all the pundits who said that Bill recent escapades have created a liability for Hillary against Obama.

A new Pew poll was relesed today, and it's the first survey I've seen that deals with these questions since the racial dust-ups prompted pundits and commentators to assert that -- finally, definitely, really this time, no really -- Bill is dragging Hillary's candidacy down.

The poll asked respondents whether they "like or dislike the idea of Bill Clinton back in the White House." Guess what percentage of Dems said they "like" this idea?

Sixty eight percent -- exactly the same percentage that answered this way back in October of 2007. The number of Dems who said they "dislike" this idea is now at 12% -- a statistically insignificant two points higher than October 2007. The poll also finds that Bill's "favorability rating also has not slipped from where it stood in late December."

Even more interesting, despite the roar of commentary denouncing Bill for playing the race card, the poll also finds that Bill's favorability rating among blacks has remained stable at 79%.

Now, because this blog strives to be as fair-minded as possible, it also bears noting that the percentage of voters in general who dislike the idea of Bill returning -- as opposed to just Dems -- has in fact gone up by a single digit margin. More independents say they're uncomfortable with this prospect, the poll says. So one could point to these numbers and say that perhaps Bill's antics could damage Hillary in a general election. This could be problematic.

But as for whether Bill is hurting Hillary against Obama, as multiple pundits have been asserting, there's simply no evidence yet that this is happening. Is it possible that this is what's going on? Anything's possible. But Bill's numbers remain stable among Dems, which seems like a decent enough indicator, to say the least.

Sorry.

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