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They look at polls like everyone else, and when te polls had Dean in New Hampshire running at as much as 30 points ahead of the distant second, Kerry, Dean was their baby.
GO back to the same period in 1999 when Bradley was as further ahead than Gore than Dean was ahead of Kerry, 39 points, and the same thing was going on. Bradley was everywhere in every form of media, was the media darling. When Gore started slaughtering him, the media started slaghtering Bradley. Its just the way these guys are, they just seem to be insecure and want to be loved or something. Consider back last year before Bush went into Iraq, when Terry Moran was caught without being aware that he was on mike stating that, "President Dummy" is getting ready to come out. How often do you hear the media calling the President, "President Dummy" out in the open on the air. Bush was popular, the war, and supporting it was popular, the anti-war protests barely got mentioned on the news, any of it, and I sit most nightw watching all of the networks, with the closed captioning on, while having my shortwave tuned to the B.B.C. or Deutshe Welle to see which stations come near to providing a balanced news picture, and for the most part, only A.B.C. and Peter Jennings ever come close to reporting the same items that I am hearing on the beeb.
The media is just going to cover what is news, and to be honest Dena is no longer really news. His campaign is no longer news. As a matter of fact, in todays world anything older than 6 months is ancient history, so while Dean was able to bring himself up to national status by starting to campign in Iowa two years ago, he faced the danger of spouting a message that was very old to Iowans when he faced the caucuses. As the media, and the other candidates started bringing up Deans actual record as Governor, and the disconnection between what he did as Governor, and what he is saying as candidate, and having to explain the "What I meant when I said that Newt Gingrich and slowing the growth of Medicare was" became more widely known, Dean was going to have to account for those inconsistancies. His message was old news, his record as governor and his statements as governor become New News, and that is simply the case of it. THe local media does not focus on the candidates as thoroughly months before the caucus or primary as it does a week or two before the caucuses. Again, Deans error. What strikes me as totally unbeleivable is that Dean, who easily has the most conservative record as Governor, has run a campaign far, far to the left of anything he has ev er actually done while in office, While Joe Lieberman, who is far more liberal than Dean, has run as an arch conservative, which he aint. Dean needed to do this to gain a base outside of the mainstream, yet he has gained a base that is relatively so far to the left, and in fact, a base of youg supporters who have done a good job of irratating the average voter in places like Iowa, that the media in Iowa pointed out on the night of the caucus, that for Dean to do well, he was going to have to keep the 3500 supporters hesent in to shore him up due to his falling polling numbers, from angering and annoying undecided, or people who were leaning towards other candidates but not totally sure of who they would support to support Dean. I have done a lot of phone banking to Iowa both before and since the caucus to see what people thought and one thing that stood out is that a lot of people started avoiding anything that looked orange in the last days of the campaign leading to the caucus. I know that this interpretation will get arguments, but you see it here on DU as well. with a lot of people claiming that they dont support Deean simply because of what they perceive as the excessive fervor of his supporters, who again for the most part seem to be young, and rather highly enthusiatic in their support of Dean and opposition of anyone else. These supporters may consist of the majority of Deans support, but they are the most highly visible, attacking the media whenever they reported anything negative about Dean, however true it might have been (after all he did say that Medicare was one of the worse federal programs ever conceived, and reporting it is not out of line). The members of the fourth estate are as human as the rest of us and likely to use their positions to get hit back at a candidate, or those who hsve abused them in that candidates name.
Which is also why you see Kerry, Edwards and even Lieberman getting newspaper endorsements, while Dean has picked up few, if any of those, and Deans recent comments about the media getting a life simply will not win him kudos among them. Dean was satisified to use the media when it suited him, but attacked when they began to report a less than shining picture of him, and his campaign. Not very wise. And I do not anticipate that they will do much to now paint him as the person running from behind, the long shot, as he had his shot, and to be honest, I think he blew it.
He should rather, ride out the criticism with a cool head, as Kerry and other do, and explain himself after counting to ten. A newspaper endorsement is worth the endorsement of dozens of ex presidents and ex presidential candidates, as in general, they know their readership, and their readership tends to pay attention to them, as they have a daily, if indirect relationship.
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