Big Media Fluff McCain, Stuff Edwards

Posted by Phoenix Woman, Firedoglake at 8:28 AM on February 2, 2008.

Finally, much too late to do anything about it, somebody else last week pointed out what I mentioned weeks ago:

... But the mainstream media, long determined to ignore Edwards and keep this a feisty, feuding two-person race, is not letting him show his stuff where it currently counts--against McCain.

Thursday night, Tim Russert was oohing over how close a McCain-Obama or McCain-Hillary race would be: the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal head-to-head match-up poll shows McCain beating Hillary by two points and tying with Obama; Obama and Hillary each clobbered Romney, Giuliani, and Huckabee. When I saw that Edwards wasn't part of the six-pol poll, my jaded jaw almost dropped.

Though I shouldn't have been surprised. CNN also disappeared the former North Carolina senator from its most recent (mid-January) head-to-head poll--even though Edwards was the only Dem to beat McCain in its previous (mid-December) match-up. At the time, CNN polling director Keating Holland wrote, "Edwards is the only Democrat who beats all four Republicans, and McCain is the only Republican who beats any of the three Democrats. Some might argue this shows that they are the most electable candidates in their respective parties."

Why wouldn't CNN include its own previous chart-topper? Don't know. CNN wouldn't return my calls.

Interestingly, Edwards (with twenty-six delegates per MyDD's delegate counter in the sidebar) had been doing much better on the Democratic side than the also-withdrawn media darlings Giuliani (with no delegates whatsoever) and Thompson (with eleven) have been on the Republican side -- which makes the press treatment of Edwards explainable only if you take into account the corporate media's pro-GOP and anti-populist bias.

The latest Rasmussen head-to-heads now show McCain beating Obama by six and Clinton by eight. Other polls show similar results. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted about a week ago, has McCain beating Hillary Clinton by 2 points, 46%-44%. This is a three point improvement for McCain, and a 3 percent dip for Clinton. Obama ties McCain at 42%, after having led him by 6 in the previous poll. And in the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted two weeks ago, McCain beats Clinton by 3, 50% to 47% -- even though Clinton had led him by 6 in the previous poll. Obama loses to McCain by 5, even though he had led by 3 in the previous poll.

The latest set of national h-2-h polls from RCP are, when averaged out, slightly kinder to the Dems as they include the Dem-friendly LAT and CNN polls, but still show McCain edging both Hillary and Obama.

The bottom line: DON'T BE COMPLACENT. This is NOT a guaranteed win for the Dems this year. McCain is the GOP's strongest guy in the general. Period. (It's the biggest reason why I backed Democrats in Michigan crossing over to vote for Mitt Romney: So he'd stay in the race and with luck eventually win the GOP nomination.)

Why is McCain so strong in the general? Because too many liberals, moderates, and antiwar people think he's one of them. Rasmussen's polling bears this out, showing that he does a better job of picking up swing voters than Hillary or Obama.

We HAVE to hammer McCain hard, and hammer him often, to keep him from winning the nomination, or at least soften him up for the general. The best way to do that is to constantly point out how he talks "tough" but always falls in line behind Bush, especially on Iraq and Iran. Otherwise we're going to be in for a very grim surprise come November.

Tagged as: media, democrats, clinton, obama, mccain, edwards

Phoenix Woman is a regular blogger for FireDogLake