Yet Another Reason the Media Coverage Annoys Me

The article link I saw on Yahoo regarding the primary this morning? "Clinton win tightens delegate race". She's behind by about 160 delegates. She won around 10 more than he did last night. She cut less than 10 percent of his lead in her last, best shot to make inroads. But the race "tightened"? Sheesh. The Sox have a 10 run lead, but it gets cut to 9 going into the eight innning. Oooooh. The game got tighter all of a sudden. Puh-leeze.

5 comments:

Julie said...

It still irks me that they even speak of "winning" a state. She wins only 55%. Obama wins the other 45%.

If a game ends with a score of 55 - 45, the winning team wins the whole game, not just 55% of it. That's why we call it "winning the GAME." This seems like an easy distinction to me.

It's the media's duty to inform people. They should certainly be able to explain this relatively simple concept; but even if they think it's too boring or complicated, there's no reason they have to keep reporting Democratic primary results in such a misleading way.

Maggie said...

I couldn't even watch MSNBC last night during the coverage, and CNN wasn't much better. They keep harping on "why can't he close the deal?" Maybe because he has this bitchy harpy on his ass, using every Republican smear tactic she can scrape out of the gutter, invoking 9/11, threatening to obliterate Iran, saying McCain's a better presidential candidate than Obama and then complaining that Obama said that even McCain would be better than Bush.

Grrr. Why can't *she* close the deal? Oh, because she's losing? GRRRRRR!

Mike said...

Hillary Clinton must emphasize her perceived chances of winning the nomination because her actual chances of winning the delegate race are now statistically nonexistent.

The self-serving media latches onto her "there's always a chance" attitude and runs with it because that makes a much better story than "Move along, there's nothing to see here, Obama still leads by 157."

All that hot air about Pennsylvania and in the end the results were an "80-71 split with seven delegates still to be allocated."

Before too long her only remaining option will be to advocate ignoring the delegate totals and nominating her anyway. I hope that will be the point when people finally decide her monomania has gone too far. But I doubt it.

JP Burke said...

Good analysis Mike. The problem I see when I watch the weekend talking head shows is that Clinton's people won't outline a path to victory.

Their strategy appears "hang on for as long as possible and hope Obama dies of a heart attack, disqualifying himself."

Hillary Clinton: what is your path to victory? Is it nonexistent, or is it secret because you hope to make some sneaky deal at the convention?

I take her at her word: she's going to fight this the whole way.

I'm peeved, but I think I'd feel even worse at this point if I were a Hillary supporter. What kind of delusion do you have to be holding in your head at this point to think this situation needs to continue through the rest of the spring?

Perhaps someone can correct me: is it not delusion?

Julie said...

I think that if you...

- have been told that your person is "close to winning" (and no one mentions that she's even closer to losing)

- feel that she deserves to win

- watch a lot of "inspiring" movies about blind one-legged kids who hit a home run at the Big Game, etc.

...then it doesn't seem delusional at all to think that this miracle will happen, because you feel that the universe is morally obligated to make it happen somehow.

I think many of her supporters are not delusional, however - they don't expect her to win. They just feel that it is morally wrong or sinful to give up.

Some people seem fundamentally, organically unable to let go of things, even when it's clear that no further benefit is possible, or that the continued fight is doing more harm than good. A more flexible and creative person would have found better ways by now to help the country she supposedly wants to serve.