You seem to be saying that Hillary ought not to complain about bad media treatment because Chris Dodd, John Edwards, et al. were treated worse?

This seems way off base to me.

Take the media obsession with John Edwards haircut last winter (or whenever it was) -- the media's insistence on defining a very intelligent, progressive and caring politician using some irrelevant trivial event.

Now, imagine that kind of crap every week, and you get an idea of what Hillary goes through. Normal people crumple under that; Clinton not only keeps smiling, but most of the time handles it with some good humor.

Is it sexism? Leftover resentment toward Clinton (although why the national media should, in particular, have some resentment toward Pres. Clinton I don't know -- maybe he made their job too easy!)? Some other reason? In truth, there probably is no one reason, but a complex intermarriage between the herd mentality of the national press corps, the demands of 24-hour news coverage, the influence of the Intertubes, and a thousand other variables.

Bil and Hillary are not free of blame. Not only did they commit gaffes, but they have been in the public eye for so long, they often cross the line between what they should say privately and what they should say publicly, particularly the President when he is blowing off steam or analyzing a situation.

But while the reasons are complex, and perhaps difficult to connect up with any particular treatment by any particular media outlet, the overall picture -- that there are "Clinton Rules" when it comes to covering them, is pretty clear. Occassionally, those rules are applied to others -- the Edwards haircut and Rev. Wright being a pair of notable examples -- and it does destroy candidacies.

Bill and Hillary deal with this everyday.

Is it unfair. I don't know and, at this point, I don't care. But I don't think it should be minimized.

the main biases the media has shown in this election have been the same-old, same-old:

1. They love "conflict"
2. They still think John McCain's a "straight talker" or a "moderate" or something
3. They hate substance
4. They hate serious analysis
5. They can only handle 2 candidates at a time, apparently (sorry, John Edwards et al)
6. There have to be two "sides" to everything, even when there aren't two sides
7. They love it when they can frame things in a way that touches on race, gender, or other hot-button issue

I'm sure I missed a few...please feel free to pile on.

This is addressed at her supporters.  I'm saying that her supporters have been screaming that the reason Hillary Clinton lost is because of the media.  This is not true.  Edwards, Biden, etc. can argue that they lost because of the media.  

Hillary Clinton lost because she ran a poor campaign.  She ignored caucus states, and let Obama run up the score so much that it virtually became impossible for her to stop him.  Accussing the media of The arguments against her by the media right now ARE, in fact, pretty fair: she has no legitimate chance at winning the nomination.  These aren't sexist arguments; they're political arguments that happened to be aimed at a woman.  

The media gave Hillary a gift: inevitablity.  She squandered it by actually BELIEVING that instead of preparing for a tough primary nonetheless.  Hillary Clinton acts as if the media has been against her since day one.  Until Iowa, they were ready to hand her the nomination.  The blame for this loss isn't on sexism, isn't on the media: it's on a poorly managed campaign.

"Hillary Clinton lost because she ran a poor campaign."  Most importantly, they assumed they'd win by/on Super Tuesday (whoops!) and had no plans beyond that. They went back and forth on whether to compete in the Iowa caucuses, largely ignored the other caucus states (as Dan notes), had a bunch of feuding prima donnas on the campaign ("too many cooks..."), etc., etc.  What's incredible is that Clinton went from the inevitable nominee to...well, not the nominee in just a few months.  Blaming the media or sexism is simply avoiding the fact that the Clinton campaign (Mark Penn et al.) blew it, big time.

She ran a bad campaign and deserved to lose. Obama won this thing fair and square, in my book. If you want to see a campaign in which the media really had an effect, look at 2000.

And Lowell is exactly right about what drives media coverage. It's not necessarily bias against one candidate or another (with the exception of 2000, when Al Gore made the press corps feel stupid and small, and they responded accordingly).

I would just add the herd mentality should not be underestimated. There is little incentive for a reporter to ever go out on a limb and report something different than everyone else. If you miss the story, your editor is pissed. If you scoop it, then it takes everyone about 24 hours to catch up, and inevitably bloggers will surpass you quickly, since it's about 15 million to one at that point. Before you can say Richard Milhous Nixon, you're nothing more than fishwrap.

It's difficult to even discuss the media's coverage of a political campaign while the campaign is going on, without it being dismissed as whining or working the refs.  Maybe with the Clinton campaign drawing to an end, there's a space to do that.

I tend to credit Bob Somerby's thesis, often explained on The Daily Howler, that there is a long trend of bias in the big corporate-owned media against the leading Democratic politicians.  A bias in the sense that the Democratic frontrunners are treated a lot more roughly than the Republican frontrunners.

It's easy to dismiss that view as a conspiracy theory or paranoia, but the factual trend isn't so easily dismissed, going back to what was done to Bill Clinton, then to Gore, then to Kerry.  

At a critical point in the campaign, the Oct. 30, 2007 debate, Clinton seemed to be on the receiving end of such treatment.  Some gift.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh1...

Putting Hillary Clinton's case aside, is the same thing now happening, or starting to happen, to Obama? I was starting to think so, with the flap over Reverend Wright's sermons.  What are you going to do about it if it happens to Obama?  What can you do?  

My conclusion is that the only way to keep the elite journalists honest, is to do the kind of work that is being done by Somerby or at Media Matters.  There needs to be a lot more of that sort of work done, by different voices.

These men were torn down by the media before they even got a chance.

Not so. These men were ignored by the media. There's a difference. Take a look at the study done by the Project for Excellence in Jounalism that I referenced in this post back in February. No one else got any traction because the media was obsessed with making it a horse race between Obama and Clinton.

And we let them.

The media focus exclusively on frivolous aspects of his campaign while ignoring his fight against poverty.  

Nobody gave him a real shot at winning.  From the second Barack Obama announced, it became a two-person race.  Edward's "hair-cuts" and such were an "issue" for the media, but that was at least recognizing he was a candidate.  He was never considered truly legitimate, even whe he was running ahead in Iowa.

Once Obama announced, not even Edwards haircuts made the news. He was ignored from that time on.

The biggest mistake Hillary Clinton and her campaign made was hiring Mark Penn.  And every subsequent bad decision after that had Mark Penn's handwriting all over it.  

Hillary will wrap up the nomination by Super Tuesday - Mark Penn.

We don't need to organize in caucus states - Mark Penn.

We don't need to worry, the big states will put us over the top.  We will sweep all 441 delegates in California.  All Mark Penn.

The bottom line here is that Hillary, Uncle Bill and Penn all thought this would be over by Super Tuesday.  All three were too arrogant to even imagine that Obama could catch on.  

And catch on he did.  The signs were all there that he would catch on with voters but Hillary and her campaign chose to ignore all the signs until Missouri, Idaho and Washington State were all decided late on Super Tuesday evening.

And by Super Tuesday evening it was way too late.  She was out of money, there was no plan to continue after Super Tuesaday, and the calendar moving forward for her was a disaster waiting to happen, as we saw in Virginia, Maryland, D.C., Louisiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Maine, Wisconsin, etc.

After Super Tuesday, Obama beat Clinton in 11 straight caucuses and priamries during the month of February.  130 delegates of his now 180 delegate lead were acquired during the month of February.

Clinton and her campaign also understimated the staff that Obama put togther.  Certainly they should have had a clue regarding his potential as a candidate during 2007 when he was raising funds at an historic clip.  But Obama's staff put together a game plan, paid for by there historic fund raising, that called for them to compete in every state - and that they did.  

Bill Clinton's remarks comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson, in an attemot by Bill Clinton to marginalize Obama as the black candidate, had a huge impact on this race.  Had he kept his mouth shut, the loss would not have been nearly as bad in South Carolina, as his statement drove up Obama's tunout.  But the biggest impact it had ws denying Hillary a bigger slice of the African-American vote in future primaries and caucuses.

Ad last but not least, there is Clinton fatigue.  And Bush fatigue.  I think the arguement that there has been a Bush or Clinton in the White House since 1981 has an impact as well - voters were simply sick of them.  

And Obama's victory is truly historic.  No insurgent candidate has ever been able to put together a coalition that was able to stop the establishment candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. But of course that has now been accomplished by a man named Barack Obama - what a story for the history books.        

remark about Jesse Jackson offended a lot of whites, too, as did his subsequent statements, and those of Hillary Clinton herself and others in the campaign.  Since when do Democrats go for the lowest common denominator, and expect to avoid offending all those "elistists" who believe in tolerance?  These are not Democratic arguments, these are not Democratic strategies, and they backfired, big time.

"Corporate execs force pro Bush narrative"
http://www.salon.com/opinion/g...

I find it hard to believe that the same corporate execs don't influence political coverage using the exact same techniques.