By Peter Rosenstein.
We have been witnessing the most biased reporting of any election I have ever seen. This isn’t only about FOX news spouting lies and bringing racists on to attack President Obama. This is about the media apparently doing all it can to bring down Hillary Clinton by skewing every report, including blatant headlines containing lies inThe New York Times.
In the past few day’s two new national polls, one from Suffolk University the other from Quinnipiac came out. Any candidate seeing numbers like Hillary has in those polls would be opening champagne and their opponents would be figuring out what they are doing wrong. After months of a non-stop barrage of negative attacks by Republicans and the press, Clinton still leads the Democratic primary contest by huge numbers and beats every Republican candidate in general election match-ups. She is also leading the Democratic contest in every primary state except for one poll in New Hampshire, which has her a few percentage points behind Sanders. She is 56 percentahead of the field in South Carolina. Now, according to VOX, the various media are reporting these great numbers for Clinton with their own headlines. Bloomberg says, “Biden More Competitive Than Clinton Against Leading Republicans: Poll”; Politicoreports, “Poll: Biden outperforms Hillary in general election; Trump leads GOP field”; and Time says, “Voters open to Joe Biden presidential bid in new poll.”
Then Thursday evening I heard Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News talking about the Quinnipiac poll saying, “New poll shows Biden is running a wave of popularity over Hillary Clinton.” One has to wonder either what drugs he is on or whose biases he is channeling. Both these polls show Hillary’s lead in the Democratic Primary is staying strong. Biden actually comes in third behind Sanders. That is nearly 30 percent behind Clinton. How one can determine that he is riding a wave of popularity is incredible. He actually only has about a 10 percent higher favorable rating than Hillary in one poll and that is after she has been attacked for months, and Biden has yet to enter the fray where he will surely get beaten up quickly.
In fact, according to Daily Kos, “at the beginning of March, Clinton led the GOP field by an average of 50.3 to 42.6, or 7.7 percentage points. Now, in late August, she leads 48.7 to 41.2, or 7.5 percent. Clinton’s “collapse,” in other words, is 0.2 percent! No serious analyst would consider that anything more than a rounding error. (And we’re not cherry-picking the start date, either: The picture is the same if you dial it back to Jan. 1.)”
When it comes to whether Biden will have a smooth ride, Donald Trump has already brought up the plagiarism issue which forced him out of his first presidential campaign, and that will only be the beginning. People need to remember Biden left the 2008 race after getting only 1 percent in the Iowa caucuses.
So it appears the press is doing what they always do to politicians: build them up so they can tear them down later. That seems to be how to sell newspapers and get TV viewers, and it is a sad commentary on both politics and today’s media.
We really need to look at another way to run and report campaigns, but until that happens we should collectively ask the media to stop spouting nonsense. Clinton and Sanders are actually talking about issues and Clinton is putting out nearly daily policy papers. The most recent was her plan to help rural America. Heaven forbid we give voters something real to talk about, something that will actually impact their lives. Instead the media focus is entirely on rumors of Biden running and no one even bothers to mention what platform they think he can run on.
Like nearly all Democrats, I like Joe Biden. I agree with what Hillary said as reported on CNN: “I just want the vice president to decide to do what’s right for him and his family.” Biden is a really nice guy, but there is much in his long legislative record that will be attacked and if the press gets him to run, they will then use that to tear him down. Hillary’s votes are more progressive than Biden’s, and Sanders’ take on issues is more to the left of Hillary. So will a very progressive leaning Democratic Party suddenly go with the more conservative candidate of the three main candidates? One really has to ask: what is the media thinking?
