politico has been, is, and will continue to be a website that is nothing more than an avenue for propaganda and apologia for the right-wing movement. As if we needed any more proof. Maybe I've been blind to similar sentiments on this site and other liberal sites, but it seems to me that I haven't seen the kind of condemnation of politico that I feel it deserves.
I think we all know of the infamous politico memo about "winning the morning, afternoon, etc," proof-positive of the fact that creating waves and controversy is more important than reporting the news. The mind-numbing shallowness and complete disregard of policy makes for the E! of political coverage. As for the people that consume politico and keep their page views up, I just don't understand it. A personal example: I was volunteering on a political campaign with several other younger people. One of the brightest guys on the campaign staff, who was doing much more than me for our guy, really shocked me with what I regarded as a damning admission. One morning we were all bullshitting and our wunderkind said that he always checked two sites when he woke up: the Times and politico. As petty as it sounds, I lost a lot of respect for this guy when he said that he has to read politico every morning. I regard it as the equivalent of political glue-huffing, a haven for political novices and right-wing psychos.
I know that judging a site by the comments is probably not the wisest thing to do. That being said, politico's comment section is probably as near to redstate or freerepublic as you're going to get without going to those cesspools. The editors and piece-writers at politico know who they're appealling to when they write their schlock: the wingnuts who beg to eat their shit, and the beltway media morons who are virtually indistinguishable from the former.
In short, politico is a joke. Their reporting is garbage and almost always slanted towards reflecting Republican talking points. Inch-deep reporting and subjects, items like "Michelle Obama touches queen" or "Beck takes on Obama," that's all politico is good for. It's washingonpost.comlite, a center-right "consensus" that expired about five years ago. The sooner that politico is not allowed to even remotely influence even the periphery of the national media's political conversation, the better.