As PUMAs we want nothign more than to see Barack Obama’s campaign implode and for him to loose the election in November. We’ve wanted this ever since he and his posse in the DNC hijacked the nomination from Hillary.
Well, it seems our wishes are slowly and steadily being answered. Howard Fineman writing for MSNBC.com analyzed the likely cause of Obama’s political demise , and his conclusions are not that far off from ours:
Here are a few excerpts:
After traveling with him [Obama] on the trail, watching him in Denver and talking to Democratic operatives and insiders, here’s my list of his errant shots:
Declining to take federal financing for the general election
This mistake is two-pronged. Obama stands accused of flip-flopping on the matter, saying in 2007 that he’d accept those funds and the cash limits that come along with it. In relying solely on private money, Obama appears to have ceded some higher ground to McCain, who, with his public funding, appears slightly more immune to interest groups. On a more practical level, Obama will have to leave the campaign trail more often to headline fundraising events. He’ll likely spend more time than he should in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles and less than he needs in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Detroit.
Declining McCain’s offer to hold ten town hall debates
When Obama was leading the race in leaps and bounds, he blew off this GOP proposal. Too bad. Had Obama locked in that deal, he would now be able to confront McCain face-to-face about some of the Republicans’ more aggressive – if not to say cynically manipulative – recent television advertising claims. An Obama-McCain series would also have drawn attention away from Gov. Palin, the autumn cover girl.
Failing to go all the way with the Clintons
Yes, I know, Bill and Hillary got prime speaking roles in Denver. And yes, I know, the Clintons are difficult to deal with and probably hope Obama fails. Still, it’s Obama’s task to latch on to them, even against their will. But he was too proud. Although he’s going to see the former president this week, Obama should have broken bread with Bill months ago. Obama needs the Clintons to defend and work for him. They are not eager to do so, but it was still Obama’s task to trap them into displays of political enthusiasm. It’s just my guess, but I think Mr. Clinton would have been open to the wooing – if for no other reason than to recapture his reputation as an avatar of the civil rights cause. Obama also neglected to court Clinton fundraisers and supporters in places like Los Angeles. All they want from Obama is a phone call. They would swoon.
The 22-state strategy
For months, the Obama campaign invested advertising time and organizing money in an impressive array of red states that haven’t been on the Democrats’ radar in recent elections. This made for great press clippings. But, for the most part, it was a waste of assets. Except for perhaps Virginia, most out-of-the-way states do not seem likely to end up in Obama’s fold. He’d be more successful focusing on traditional battlegrounds.
Failing to state a sweeping, but concrete, policy idea
It is not enough to be for change – everybody is, or is trying to be. To make it stick, Obama needed, and needs, to put forth an easy-to-grasp grand proposal, one that would encapsulate what his central message. That tagline? That he is dedicated, body and soul, to advancing the economic interests of hard-working, average Americans. He has the makings of such a proposal – his tax cuts for low and middle-income families. But he has yet to package that, or anything else, in an easy-to-grasp, hard-number plan for voters. Instead, he’s got more of a laundry list than an actual rallying cry.
Remaining trapped in professor-observer speak
When you listen to Obama, it sometimes feels like you’re hearing a smart but distant analysis of the political scene. He sounds like a writer or teacher, but not the leader of a political crusade. Obama has been far too “meta” – a detached commentator on his own situation and his own country. Voters want an action plan, not an exegesis.
and now, for the (I know you were expecting it) coup de gras:
But if I were an Obama partisan I would be worried that his mistakes have a common thread - pride.
Obama seems to want to do things on his own, and on his own terms. It’s understandable. Obama has his own crowd – from Chicago, from Harvard, and from a new cadre of wealthy, Ivy-educated movers and shakers.
“He’s an arrogant S.O.B.,” one of the latter told me today. “He wants to do it his way, and his way alone.” But politics doesn’t work that way. And has Obama should know, or is about to find out, that everyone needs a little help.
Everyone get your popcorn and gather round, this promises to be major fun…
Posted by AD76
MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.
That experiment appears to be over.
After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.
The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.
“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.
Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. Although MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004 conventions, its competitive position did not improve, as it remained in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks. In prime time, the channel averaged 2.2 million viewers during the Democratic convention and 1.7 million viewers during the Republican convention.
The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately.
“In a rapidly changing media environment, this is the great philosophical debate,” Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said in a telephone interview Saturday. Fighting the ratings game, he added, “the bottom line is that we’re experiencing incredible success.”
But as the past two weeks have shown, that success has a downside. When the vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin lamented media bias during her speech, attendees of the Republican convention loudly chanted “NBC.”
In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”
The employee, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because the network does not permit it people to speak to the media without authorization. (The New York Times and NBC News have a content-sharing arrangement exclusively for political coverage.)
Mr. Olbermann, a 49-year-old former sportscaster, has become the face of the more aggressive MSNBC, and the lightning rod for much of the criticism. His program “Countdown,” now a liberal institution, was created by Mr. Olbermann in 2003 but it found its voice in his gnawing dissent regarding the Bush administration, often in the form of “special comment” segments.
As Mr. Olbermann raised his voice, his ratings rose as well, and he now reaches more than one million viewers a night, a higher television rating than any other show in the troubled 12-year history of the network. As a result, his identity largely defines MSNBC. “They have banked the entirety of the network on Keith Olbermann,” one employee said.
In January, Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” began co-anchoring primary night coverage, drawing an audience that enjoyed the pair’s “SportsCenter”-style show. While some critics argued that the assignment was akin to having the Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly anchor on election night — something that has never happened — MSNBC insisted that Mr. Olbermann knew the difference between news and commentary.
But in the past two weeks, that line has been blurred. On the final night of the Republican convention, after MSNBC televised the party’s video “tribute to the victims of 9/11,” including graphic footage of the World Trade Center attacks, Mr. Olbermann abruptly took off his journalistic hat.
“I’m sorry, it’s necessary to say this,” he began. After saying that the video had exploited the memories of the dead, he directly apologized to viewers who were offended. Then, sounding like a network executive, he said it was “probably not appropriate to be shown.”
In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Olbermann said that moment — and the perception that he is “not utterly neutral” — restarted months-old conversations about his role on political nights.
“I found it ironic and instructive that I could have easily said exactly what I did say, exactly when I did say it, if I had been wearing a different hat, and nobody would have taken any issue,” he said.
“Countdown” will still be shown before the three fall debates and a second edition will be shown sometime afterwards, following the program anchored by Mr. Gregory.
The change casts new doubt on what some staff members believe is an effective programming strategy: prime-time talk of a liberal sort. A like-minded talk show will now follow “Countdown” at 9 p.m.: “The Rachel Maddow Show,” hosted by the liberal radio host, begins Monday.
Mr. Griffin, MSNBC’s president, denies that it has an ideology. “I think ideology means we think one way, and we don’t,” he said. Rather than label MSNBC’s prime time as left-leaning, he says it has passion and point of view.
But MSNBC is the cable arm of NBC News, the dispassionate news division of NBC Universal. MSNBC, “Today” and “NBC Nightly News” share some staff members, workspace and content. And some critics are claiming they also share a political affiliation.
The McCain campaign has filed letters of complaint to the news division about its coverage and openly tied MSNBC to it. Tension between the network and the campaign hit an apex the day Mr. McCain announced Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. MSNBC had reported Friday morning that Ms. Palin’s plane was enroute to the announcement and she was likely the pick. But McCain campaign officials warned the network off, with one official going so far as to say that all of the candidates on the short list were on their way — which MSNBC then reported.
“The fact that it was reported in real time was very embarrassing,” said a senior MSNBC official. “We were told, ‘No, it’s not Sarah Palin and you don’t know who it is.’ ”
Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams, the past and present anchors of “NBC Nightly News,” have told friends and colleagues that they are finding it tougher and tougher to defend the cable arm of the news division, even while they anchored daytime hours of convention coverage on MSNBC and contributed commentary each evening.
Mr. Williams did not respond to a request for comment and Mr. Brokaw declined to comment. At a panel discussion in Denver, Mr. Brokaw acknowledged that Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews had “gone too far” at times, but emphasized they were “not the only voices” on MSNBC, according to The Washington Post.
Al Hunt, the executive Washington bureau chief of Bloomberg News, said that the entire news division was being singled out by Republicans because of the work of partisans like Mr. Olbermann. “To go and tar the whole news network and Brokaw and Mitchell is grossly unfair,” he said, referring to the NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell.
Some tensions have spilled out on-screen. On the first night in Denver, as the fellow MSNBC host Joe Scarborough talked about the resurgence of the McCain campaign, Mr. Olbermann dismissed it by saying: “Jesus, Joe, why don’t you get a shovel?”
The following night, Mr. Olbermann and his co-anchor for convention coverage, Mr. Matthews, had their own squabble after Mr. Olbermann observed that Mr. Matthews had talked too long.
Some staff members said the tension led to the network’s decision to keep Mr. Olbermann in New York for the Republican convention, after he ran the desk in Denver during the Democratic convention. MSNBC said that he stayed in New York to anchor coverage of Hurricane Gustav. But some workers say there were other reasons — namely, that Mr. Olbermann was concerned about his safety in St. Paul, given the loud crowds at MSNBC’s set in Denver.
NBC Universal executives are also known to be concerned about the perception that MSNBC’s partisan tilt in prime time is bleeding into the rest of the programming day. On a recent Friday afternoon, a graphic labeled “Breaking News” asked: “How many houses does Palin add to the Republican ticket?” Mr. Griffin called the graphic “an embarrassment.”
According to three staff members, Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal, and Steve Capus, president of NBC News, considered flying to the Republican convention in Minnesota last week to address the lingering tensions.
Up to now, the company’s public support for MSNBC’s strategy has been enthusiastic. At an anniversary party for Mr. Olbermann in April, Mr. Zucker called “Countdown” “one of the signature brands of the entire company.”
Just last year, Mr. Olbermann signed a four-year, $4-million-a-year contract with MSNBC. NBC is close to supplementing that contract with Mr. Olbermann, extending his deal through 2013 — and ensuring that he will be on MSNBC through the next election.
Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting for this article.
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September 8, 2008
MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat
WE ARE THINKING DEMOCRATS - NOT YELLOW DOGS
by Bill Boe
Hillary’s speech answers the burning question that has been on the minds of her supporters since that Saturday afternoon when she suspended her candidacy—quo vadis? (i.e. dear girl whither go’est thou?). Are you still the war goddess we saw on the night of the South Dakota victory just waiting for the right opportunity to launch a counteroffensive; or have you abandoned the quest and if so why? The answer is neither. Instead, Hillary has decided to wrap herself in the tattered principles of the party, and the highest ideals of our nation, and to dare the rest of us friend and foe alike to follow her lead. In this safe haven, she finds personal and political salvation. She knows who Obama is and supports him only to that extent.
The more I think about it the more I realize that this is the right answer for Hillary. Consider the matter from her perspective: you have given everything you have to this ship of fools called the Democratic Party–everything. During the past eighteen months you made a clear, cogent and convincing case for your candidacy, your party and this nation. It resonated with the American People. You made them feel that they were a part of something wonderful which was about them and more than them. Big Media dismissed the historic nature of your candidacy but we did not. You re-energized women and caused conservative men to rethink the whole issue of women’s rights at a time when this country needs all heads in the game. You connected with real people and changed the world for the better.
At the same time, what you have done for this country has come at a high personal cost– in terms of heartbreak, betrayal, and disappointment. We admire your commitment to duty and the self discipline it requires. But no human being is immune from such sentiments. Thus, we can only imagine how it broke your heart to see two of your closest friends and allies suffer tragic deaths in the days leading up to the Convention. Or to see your beloved daughter savaged by the likes of David Schuster and his MSNBC cronies. Likewise, we can only imagine how it felt to see people like Bill Richardson forget all you have done for them and turn their backs on you in your hour of political need—after they promised to support you. Or to be targeted by traitors like Dean, Pelosi and Brazille who conspired with the likes of Karl Rove to undermine your candidacy, and the standing of centrist Democrats in the party. Or insiders like Patty Solis Doyle who betrayed your confidence and made you wonder who you can trust. Finally we understand the bitter disappointment of winning the popular vote only to be cheated out of the nomination by the forces of corruption, and thus deprived of the rightful opportunity to do great things for the country you love.
The Democratic Party has made a fatal mistake in nominating Barack Obama to be President of the United States. Now they will do everything fair and foul to foist that mistake on the American People. They will hack voting machines in key states, they will lie cheat and steal, and they will launch the same misogynistic attacks against Palin that they did against you while Obama maintains plausible deniability. No doubt, you will do what you can to prevent this but it is not in your hands. Rather it is in the hands of people like Axelrod who are devoid of moral scruples and in the primary we saw the lengths to which they would go to disenfranchise voters. They are left wing ideologues of various stripes, their goal is to take over the country as they have the party and if they fail then they will try to make you a scapegoat.
These people cannot connect with the traditional base of the party and they know it. Therefore, they will cast you into the breach. They will ask you to sell their candidate to the same audiences who previously rejected him in favor of you. Then they will ask you to spearhead the attack against Palin to neutralize the gender issue. I hope you will tell them that Obama and Biden must sell themselves to these audiences—it cannot be done by proxy. Furthermore, I hope you refuse to attack Palin personally and confine the discussion to policy related issues. Everyone knows your candidacy is what made hers possible. And, you know that if you attack her on behalf of Obama then you will diminish the good will you have worked hard to establish with those audiences. Lest we forget, it is Biden’s job as vice presidential nominee to handle any attack on Palin. If he is sane, sensible and sober, then he will keep it to a bare minimum. There are plenty of snarling hyenas in the press who are chomping at the bit to destroy any opponent of Obama for a Pulitzer, a promotion and a passport to hell.
We are your supporters and we are thinking Democrats—not yellow dogs. The party of Barack Obama is no place for centrist democrats. When Howard Dean calls the Republican Party the white peoples party, when the Chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party tells black voters to not support white candidates, when Obama himself claims that people who live in small town America are bitter, cling to guns and religion, and when former Democratic Chairman Don Fowler hopes a hurricane will hit New Orleans during the Republican Convention something is clearly amiss. Furthermore, we know who is running the party now and what their real agenda is. Finally, we know who Obama is, who he is not and if he is elected then woe betide the country. We need leaders within the party who remember how things were before he took over and continue to fight for the American People. But the Obama cancer is metastasizing throughout the party and the only way it will be cured is through a sweeping defeat at the ballot box.
It is clear to us that this train is headed in the wrong direction. Therefore, we must step off and switch to another train for the time being. Yes, Obama talks a good game but if past is prologue then he will break his promises to the American people, and honor the ones he makes to big business and to a new coalition that does not include us. We are freer than you are in this respect, since we do not have a constituent base to serve, or a senate position to protect. We can flatly state that an Obama presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for the country. Consequently, we cannot possibly vote for him. So keep the torch lit dear girl, fight for us as best you can and lord willing we will rendezvous with you in after the election when Barack is beaten and this fever has passed. Until then we bid you a fond adieu.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fXUqzTj910
THANK you, Paul !!
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Will Bower Will Bower the P.U.M.A who never sleeps 
Was on MSNBC this morning with Monica Novotny, here’s the interview…
Will Bower on MSNBC
