Nothing demonstrates how sheer godddamn useless the American news media is as the primaries this year. It’s been very funny to see the press veer wildly from their starting position of Hillary Clinton as the designated winner, only for Obama to be anointed as such the minute after he had won the Iowa primaries, then to be written off again now Clinton has won New Hampshire. This tendency to latch on to the latest shiny thing as the One True Shiny is of course at its worst in the US press, but don’t for a minute think it’s much better elsewhere; just listen a few days to Radio 4’s newscoverage if you want proof.
Meanwhile another annoying feature of the US newsmedia is also in full force, their pretence that their own prejudices, likes and dislikes determine objective reality and are shared by the voters. The pres has alway loved McCain and always assumed against all evidence to the contrart that this was shared by the Republican primary voters. Now that McCain has won New Hampshire, which should not have been a surprise, considering he did this last time as well, expect them to become insufferable in their McCain lovin’.
all of which would be annoying enough on its own, but unfortunately this press posturing can and does influence real world events. If the big story is that Obama or Clinton is winning, instead of the much more prosaic truth that they both have now picked up roughly the same number of delegates, chances are people alter their voting. Doesn’t always work of course; the big Hillary Crying Jag that was such a sure sign to the pundits that she had lost the plot seems to have done exactly the opposite. Because the media blew it up so much it galvanised some groups of voters into voting for her.