(updated)
I keep reading that Hillary Clinton's greatest vulnerability in a 2016 presidential race will be her awful relationship with the press. I haven't read the Ken Auletta article on this yet, but The New Republic's Isaac Chotiner read it and has responded with what he apparently feels is a bold pronouncement: that Hillary has no one to blame but herself for her bad media relations. (I thought the vast majority of the press believed this, but Auletta apparently has a more nuanced take.)
However, Hillary's awful media relations somehow didn't prevent this from happening:
Americans overwhelmingly side with Hillary Clinton over Karl Rove in brain flapGee, do you think the public might already have well-formed, mostly positive opinions of Hillary Clinton and her husband, and therefore the Clintons might not need to stroke the media incessantly in order to remain in the public's favor? Could it possibly be that they've hit the sweet spot now, and the amount of negative coverage they get from the mainstream press engenders sympathy, the way Rove's attackdid?
Two-thirds of Americans in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll disapprove of the Republican strategist raising questions about Clinton's age and health in advance of her potential presidential run. The lopsided negative reaction to Rove's commentary -- just 26 percent approve of his topic of criticism -- includes majorities of every age group as well as Democrats and independents.
... Big majorities of nearly all demographic and political groups disapprove of Rove's focus, including men and senior citizens, two groups that the GOP needs in a general election. Only among the subset of conservative Republicans do a majority (52 percent) approve of what Rove said. Even among those who would oppose Hillary Clinton as a candidate in 2016, nearly half disapprove Rove's commentary....
I don't know how the press will possibly function in the next two and a half years if it's not being stroked by the presidential front-runner. This could be a real media crisis.
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ALSO: I almost forgot to give you the key finding of this poll:
Hillary Clinton and her ex-president husband win substantial popularity in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. ...Or as Oliver Willis says:
Fifty-five percent of Americans say they’d support Clinton running for president in 2016. More, 63 percent, express a favorable opinion of Bill Clinton, the second-highest popularity rating he’s achieved in decades in the public spotlight....
Clinton's support as a candidate is similar to when it first was tested in an ABC/Post poll a year and a half ago (then 57 percent)....
benghazi scandal slashes hillary clinton approval from 57% to 55%, democrats in disarray http://t.co/BZilj5XnMK
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) May 28, 2014Heh. Indeed.
6 comments:
Why wouldn't Hillary get along great with the MSM?
Just look at the way they treated her back in the 90's, when they passed along every crackpot Reich-Wingers most insane bullshit theo...
Oh, that's why.
Where should she stroke them? I mean, does Maureen Dowd even have erogenous zones? She could give them all "happy endings" and they would continue to attack her.
All this "Clinton fatigue" and Hillary Hate was way overblown. What happens as people get older and last is that they can achieve an iconic status or, as my grandfather said shrewdly about himself as he neared 80, "you go from being a pariah to a pet" (I'm paraphrasing, there, because I can't remember the word he chose for pet). But it was true in his case and it can and/ or will be true in Hillary's case. The majority of voters who matter in the coming election were too young to care about her travails during the Clinton years and, what is more important, they don't see her and Bill as competitors. There was so much resentment on the right of the Clintons as "supplanting" an older generation of Republican male leadership. And on the left there was rage because Clinton and HRC were seen as squandering the chance of two terms because of their personal problems. But that is just irrelevant to a new, younger, voter. The Clintons are grandparent age now and people are still comfortable turning to such a person for advice and governance. As the Millenials age up they will want to vote for someone their age but right now I just don't see any problem for Hillary with younger voters and I don't see it with older voters either. She's aged with them and is like a comfortable, known quantity.
The media can kiss my rosey red ass.
Marie Antonette and her cohort had no idea what was coming.
No fear.
Incidentally it's not a question that gets asked very often, but the last time it was (as far as I can find), in 2012, the "political media" were getting approval ratings of 10% (losing to "undecided" with 12%).
Click through the link to the ABC News story and read the comments to get that less-than-hopeful feeling about the nation. There are some seriously angry and stupid people out there.
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