The mainstream media is doing a poor job of covering this election in my opinion. They want both parties to have a close primary election -- because a close election gives them more viewers, and then they can sell more lucrative advertisements. And to promote the illusion of a close election among Democrats, they include non-candidate Joe Biden in all their polls -- and take every opportunity to bash the leading candidate, Hillary Clinton. A prime example of this is their continuing coverage of the e-mail "scandal" (even though it has been clearly shown that Clinton did nothing wrong, and broke no law or regulation).
Their continuing story is that Hillary Clinton is in "trouble". Well, if she's in trouble, then every other candidate in both parties would love to be in that much trouble. She continues to maintain a large lead over all the other Democratic candidates.
These charts are made from information in the latest CBS News / New York Times Poll -- done between September 9th and 15th of a random national sample of 351 Democratic voters, with a margin of error of 6 points.
Note that Clinton has a 20 point lead over Sanders (47% to 27%) -- and that's with non-candidate Joe Biden included in the poll. If you take Biden out of the equation, it gets even better for Clinton -- giving her a 30 point lead over Sanders (58% to 28%). Those aren't troubling numbers for Clinton. Those are great numbers.
And when you look at the poll's demographic breakdown (chart below), it still looks very good for Clinton. While she has a small lead among men (within the margin of error), she has a 34 point lead among women -- and women outvote men in our elections.In the 18 to 49 group, Clinton and Sanders split the vote, but Clinton carries a huge 35 point lead over Sanders on the 50 & over group. And while Sanders has a 5 point lead among liberals (within the margin of error), Clinton has a 29 point lead among moderates.
Hillary Clinton is NOT in trouble -- and she is the clear favorite for the Democratic nomination.
It's like I said last night: they are determined to define her performance as failure. Anyone else winning 70% of the popular vote wins a landslide; but for Hillary, it would be 'disappointing" because she didn't get 90%. Of course, if she got 90%, they would claim it was a "coronation" and make up stories about how she's controlling the party or something.
ReplyDeleteI just posted an article calling for people to let the election go on. It's on the other side of the issue: I wish liberals would stop freaking out about Bernie Sanders and just let the candidates make their cases. But if you read Jonathan Bernstein (which I highly recommend), barring a major (real) scandal, Clinton already effectively has won the nomination because of all the parts of the nomination process outside the votes.
The whole thing is exhausting. And I don't know what the media have to complain about. They have two really interesting candidates with just enough differences to make for an interesting contest. Of course, I say that as someone who likes policy. And maybe that's the problem. If Clinton and Sanders aren't neck and neck, the reporters will have to talk about policy. Oh, the horror!
The trouble is not so much the running attempt to create a battle, or suspense, but the way the two of them are being pushed to battle each other -- which only gives Republicans ammunition. I wish someone would come up with a t-shirt that shows Hillary, Bernie, or even the others, with an arrow pointing to the person the voter is backing, but the legend "I'm for ... but any of these are better than any Republican running" or the like. (If it showed the clown car, it would be better to show it in cartoon form, with the Democrats as photographs.)
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And, just for legal purposes, I renounce any claim to this idea and anyone may use it without any form of recompense to me -- though if "Prup" gets worked into the design somewhere, I might actually smile a little.