The headline from The Hill referring to a Bloomberg poll:
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is supported by 33 percent of Democrats surveyed in the poll, followed by Vice President Biden at 25 percent and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at 24 percent.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, former Sen. Jim Webb (Va.) and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee combined to receive less than 4 percent support nationally.
Seriously? I'm a bit incredulous at this result. It certainly seems like an outlier for Biden, if not for all three candidates. And the sample size is small - only 375 for the Democrats out of the 1000 in the entire poll. But this poll is getting a bunch of buzz. Which reminds me of a few other articles I've read recently.
First, Lanny Davis yesterday, also in The Hill writing about the way polls are covered:
When CNN/ORC reported in its Sept. 10 survey that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was polling within 10 points of Clinton nationally among Democrats — 27 percent to Clinton’s 37 percent — those results were major stories in most of the mainstream media and breathlessly repeated on the cable morning, afternoon and evening shows.
Then on Sept. 21, less than two weeks later, CNN/ORC reported that Clinton’s lead had nearly doubled — the former secretary of State now had an 18-point lead, with 42 percent to Sanders’s 24 percent.
Is anyone surprised that the Sept. 21 results received far less coverage than the Sept. 10 results?
Bunch of other examples in there. There is an accusation of a pro-Sanders bias, but I (and many Bernie supporters would agree, I believe) do not think the media is pro-Sanders at all. Bernie sometimes struggles to get coverage. If Bernie got the coverage Trump was getting, he would be in better shape. I think it's an anti-Hillary bias. The media just doesn't like her. We got a similar story back in early September from
The Huffington Post titled "The Media's Coverage of Hillary Clinton Is Downright Irresponsible." A snippet:
I'm not the first to notice the media's biased, even sometimes downright inaccurate coverage of Hillary Clinton. Journalists seem almost gleeful in their framing of Clinton's "fall." And I would be remiss not to mention how the idea of women like Hillary Clinton, who unabashedly seek power, make people uncomfortable, and sometimes angry.
The media's power to set the agenda and frame issues is a powerful one, because it influences the public's attitudes and political choices. Journalists have a choice in what they cover and how they cover it, and in this instance, many chose to focus on Clinton's vulnerability. But as now should be clear, that's not the whole story, and effectively this kind of journalism disservices the public. We rely on the news media for political information, and while in any process conducted by human beings, some level of bias is inevitable, the coverage of Clinton is more than just biased, it's downright irresponsible.
So let's gander around the interwebs and see what is on tap today.
Politico has three cover stories about Hillary. First we have "Hillary's FBI Nightmare" with subheading "If the feds have Clinton's personal emails, too, some of them are bound to come out — exactly as she feared." Second, "Hillary approved special status for aide Huma Abedin" - by one of the authors of the first story. Third, "NSA chief dragged into Hillary email debate." Nothing positive there. There is a fourth story with a slanted headline but it's a neutral article, entitled "Huma Abedin hosts a Paris soiree with Anna Wintour." It's mostly clickbait, it's just about a fundraiser. To be fair, there's an anti-Trump story, two anti-Fiorina stories, and even an anti-Pope story, and the only presidential candidate with a "pro" story is Lindsay Graham.
The Hill has a Pro-Sanders story about asking Obama to repeal the Cadillac tax, a story about how Hillary was the original birther - which even though it has been debunked, the Hill runs unchallenged (they weasel around it by quoting Trump and not reporting the facts - thus the story is Trump's comment not the truth), and a negative story where the NSA says that Hillary's private email server would be a target for foreign attacks. No mention of Colin Powell's private email server, of course. Another story "Emails to Hound Clinton for Months" - which is true, but only because the anti-Clinton media is pushing it. There is a positive story on Hillary where she is pushing for power grid upgrades, but it's sorta buried with all the negative.
I could go on - but my point is that one of the big reasons that Hillary is declining in the polls has absolutely nothing to do with Hillary herself, but rather the media's interest in hyping every possible anti-Hillary item. It drives ratings, sorta like any story (positive or negative) about Trump. Today, Fiorina is getting skewered as well - as soon as someone gets near the top, the media will investigate. At some point soon I fully expect Bernie and Biden to get bashed by the media, but Hillary will be their favorite target. Hillary's biggest challenge is to find ways to cut through this, given that I assume she won't be able to make the media like her in time.
My theory for the past 15 years, which I espoused for the first time in the summer of 2000, is that the press didn't like Al Gore, and the negative coverage of his campaign was what pushed us into 8 years of President Bush. His wardrobe, his stiffness, and his sighing at a debate were more important than the fake "compassionate conservative" label that George Bush was using as cover, and his sheer incompetence as governor and businessman weren't deemed important. I think that the media desperately wants "anyone but Hillary" to be president. What may help in the end would be if the same media come to the conclusion that the Republican circus would be even worse - as they hit Trump and Fiorina we're starting to possibly see that. I fear though that Marco Rubio (lots of positive press today for his crying at the pope's speech) or John Kasich (the faux "moderate" in the race) may be deemed by the press as "sane enough" to win. That's scary.