Concern Trolling for Hillary

I understand that the New York Times printed a fairly scathing indictment of Hillary Clinton's campaign yesterday.  I think a few people might actually be influenced by that piece due to the nature of the argument they make.  What they were doing was, unfortunately, fairly unique.  They were speaking the truth about the campaign.

What has been far more common in the Times is that they push Hillary's talking points for her.  They have played a big role in shaping the narratives she needs to prolong her bid because the Times' stories are picked up on the wire and repeated all over the country.  

They do for Hillary what FOX does for GOP candidates.  But they've been doing it for one Democrat over another and civilized people aren't supposed to pull those tricks at all because they obscure truth on purpose.    

This morning's front-pager by Adam Nagourney should be laminated for the ages. http://www.nytimes.com/...

It is quintessential trollery.  It pushes the exact Concerns about Obama that the Clinton campaign needs to have on the front burner in order to have any argument at all.

Today's piece was called, 'Obama Struggling to Add Support of Key Blocs.'

The title of the thing alone says quite a bit.  Obama has clearly won over more 'blocs' than Hillary because he's beating her for the nomination.  But just like the Important States fallacy pushed by her campaign, they have tried to plant this idea of Important Voters and here the Times plays echo chamber for them.  

Key Voters vs Less Important voters?  It's an offensive notion if you really get into it but it's not so surprising that a campaign for the nomination would make arguments along those lines.  The problem is that members of the supposedly critical press have been bending over backwards to adopt these talking points.  They aren't reporting that Clinton makes these arguments, they report the arguments themselves as news.  

I'll avoid a dissertation on Concern Trolls because most people here can see one from a mile away.  Consider the treatment these statements would receive if they were written here.

While arguably critical to determining the viability of Mr. Obama’s candidacy, the role of race is difficult to disentangle from the other strands of the political debate surrounding him, encompassing topics like values, elitism, ideology and experience.

Determining the viability of the prohibitive front-runner for the nomination?  The one who is also polling ahead of the presumptive GOP nominee even with half the Democratic Party still hammering him?  We need to discuss whether he's viable at this point?  

Notice also how easy it is to Surround Obama with Concerns about values, elitism, ideology and experience.  Weighty stuff.

But just when it seemed that the Democratic Party was close to anointing Mr. Obama as its nominee, he lost yet again in a big general election state, dragged down by his weakness among blue-collar voters, older voters and white voters. The composition of Mrs. Clinton’s support — or, looked at another way, the makeup of voters who have proved reluctant to embrace Mr. Obama — has Democrats wondering, if not worrying, about what role race may be playing.

Just when it seemed he would be annointed?  Really?  We thought he was going to win PA and wrap this up?  In the six weeks of focusing on that state, who made that prediction?  Who thought it seemed that way?  

Now he's getting dragged down?

Here, Nagourney starts with a completely false premise to bolster Hillary's idea of a Turning Tide and throws in the notion that it's because Obama is black.  

The piece eventually becomes a laundry list of Concerns about Obama's candidacy.  It couldn't have been formulated better if it was done by someone on Clinton's own staff.

Complicating things even further are the high-profile episodes that have rattled his campaign.

His remark at a private fundraiser in San Francisco about bitter blue-collar workers “clinging” to guns and religion was the kind of assertion that would be damaging to a candidate of any race. Inflammatory statements by Mr. Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who is black, have been seized on by Republicans to present Mr. Obama as unpatriotic. An advertisement released by Republicans in North Carolina on Wednesday included that portrayal.

The statement by Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle, that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country,” has been invoked by Republicans in an effort to portray Mr. Obama as culturally unlike the people he is asking to vote for him, a historically potent line of attack.

How thorough that he even gets Michelle in there.  Notice that he must spell out for us again that Rev. Wright is black just in case you missed it.  

And, of course, the 'clings' line is used in the FOX News way, pretending that Obama wasn't talking about clinging to issues to vote on but people actually clinging to their guns and religion.  Perhaps Nagourney is too simple minded to understand the difference?  Because a legitimate journalist should probably be that smart.  If he does understand it, this crosses a serious line of intentional misrepresentation.  The fact that he's not the only one doing it is no excuse and, in a sense, only makes it more insidious.  

The entire piece reads this way.  It's a form of extreme trollery, it's front page on the Times and thus repeated all over the place and this stuff has been going on throughout the campaign.  This hack, Nagourney, is playing the same game as the moderators in the fake debate on ABC.  These things might concern people so, it's the responsible thing for us to hammer away at them.  Someone is going to hit you down the road with this, so we'd better make sure it gets headlines now.  

I enjoyed the fact that people shared my outrage after the ABC fiasco.  But it was a little frustrating too because pointing to that debate as in any way unique misses the point that it is exactly what is going on all the time.  

The New York Times had every right to endorse Hillary Clinton.  The editors show some intellectual integrity in their willingness to criticize her now.  But far more influential than anything happening on the editorial page is the use of fake 'reporting' like the article featured here to help create an alternate reality where Senator Clinton's campaign is something that it's not.  

The irony of discussing Obama's viability at this stage of the game should be a joke to be scorned and laughed off of a blog somewhere.  Instead it is among today's most high-profile news pieces in the country.

I believe that without this kind of reinforcement of the Clinton campaign's tortured logic, she would have lost her ability to remain in the race and scam money from people who believe the situation is different than it actually is.  

The Obama campaign isn't worse than Clinton at managing expectations or shaping narratives.  It's just that they're dealing with a hostile and crooked environment.