Tuesday, May 06, 2008

HORSERACE

The Media Effort to Push Out Hillary Starts Tomorrow?

One of my sources hasn't heard any good or reliable exit poll numbers, but offers this grist for the rumor-mill: The closeted and not-so-closeted Obama fans in the mainstream media (Jen Rubin spots them here, here and here) are tired of covering a negative Democrat-against-Democrat race. They've been working more or less nonstop since January. They're ready to declare the race over and move on to their first love, which is trashing Republicans. Thus, if Obama wins North Carolina by any sort of margin (a very safe bet), they're going to tout that as the decisive decision in this primary and do everything possible to drive Hillary Clinton out of the race. Serious goalpost moving will go on in the coming days, hoping that the superdelegates, the public, voters in upcoming states, and other media go along with the argument that "the race is over, let's move on to the general."

UPDATE: In a strange confirmation, Jamal Simmons, an Obama backer doing analysis on CNN, insists that "winning North Carolina is a huge win for Barack Obama. A huuuuge win." (It's fair, since they have Hillary backer Paul Begala doing analysis as well.)

Although Bill Bennett agrees as well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: CNN called North Carolina for Obama. 

05/06 06:45 PMShare