Hillary Clinton’s primary lead has become so large, the media doesn’t know what to do with itself
Hillary Clinton’s lead in the democratic primary was always at least twenty points on average in national polling, even as you were reading headlines about her supposedly being in “trouble” or that rival Bernie Sanders had all the “momentum” or that he was somehow the de facto “frontrunner” over her. But now that Clinton has cleared several key hurdles, her lead is swelling to historically large proportions – leaving the media beside itself.
There is no reason to suggest that most news outlets have any specific bias against Hillary Clinton or any other candidate. But for the sake of ratings and interest, they’ve needed to find a storyline in the democratic primary. The trouble: there isn’t one. She’s obviously going to win. Her only notable rival Bernie Sanders is running a campaign of ideas which was never really intended to make him a contender, but rather to build momentum for his legislative agenda once he inevitably heads back to the Senate. The other three democrats running against her are so irrelevant that two of them have already dropped out. There simply are no competivive storylines, so the media has had to invent a few.
That’s why we saw months of headlines about faux-scandals like “email” and “Benghazi” which the media would have quickly dismissed as partisan nonsense if not for its desperate need to find a democratic primary storyline. Same things goes for the phantom Joe Biden candidacy, which was never going to happen despite a summer of headlines. But with Hillary having aced her Begnazi testimony, with Biden having begged off as was inevitable, and with Sanders having graciously put the email nonsense to bed, her already-dominant lead is exploding. NBC and the Wall Street Journal say she’s now leading by 31 points nationally. Even the conservative Fox News says she’s up by 25 points.
And that’s left the media going down stranger roads than ever to try to find a storyline. The latest: even as Hillary and Bernie continue to point out their differences on some issues while both carefully trying to avoid any personal attacks, various major news outlets are now taking each of their words out of context to try to invent a food fight between them which simply isn’t there. Who knows what they’ll come up with next. But with primary voting not until next year and no real competition left in this blowout of a primary, they’ll have to come up with something to write about.
http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/hillary-clintons-primary-lead-has-become-so-large-the-media-doesnt-know-what-to-do-with-itself/22966/
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