Blogging on Meds

The Philly debate and the GOP attack ads that followed.

One Thing PA Changed: The Media’s Love Affair with Obama is Over.

Last Wednesday during the first half of the ABC debate, Obama sparred with Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over his character and electability. Obama came off as glib and annoyed.

The next day, Obama’s campaign and his supporters attacked ABC’s line of questioning, which they felt unfair. True, the entire first half of the debate was policy free; economy and Iraq questions should have been asked.

But the “electability” issue is a real one. The media was offended by the debate’s fallout. They considered it an overblown outrage towards a legitimate question: Is a black guy with a sketchy pastor, who thinks some whites are bitter, and who hangs with 60’s terrorists able to win in November?

I wondered last Thursday if Obama had lost the national media. But I knew that only after the PA primary, and only if Obama lost by a wide margin, would we see the results. Well, the results are in. Obama has indeed lost the media.

Since the debate, op-ed pages have simmered with Obama dissing. When even Bob Herbert, the resident black man at The Times, is complaing of “hollow rhetoric,” you know you have a problem. Both David Brooks and Maureen Dowd, previously Obama cheerleaders, have unsheathed their cleavers. Today, most major oped pages—NYT, WaPost, BosGlobe—question Obama’s candidacy in ways unseen before the debate.

The LAT takes the cake, leading with a “New Republican ads target Obama — and make Democrats fret” story. Looks like the electability issue ABC was hammering away at is real:

As they promote their candidates and try to pave the way for GOP victories this year, Republicans have begun making their case to voters in advertisements featuring a new star: Barack Obama.

In North Carolina, a TV ad shows Obama’s former pastor making racially charged comments. An Internet ad attacks a Pennsylvania congressman for endorsing Obama’s presidential bid. A New Mexico radio ad says Obama disrespects “the American way of life.”

The ads also are playing into a debate among Democratic officials about Obama’s electability in November. GOP strategists said the negative six-week campaign in Pennsylvania produced reams of material that, for the first time, laid out for them a clear pathway for attacking Obama. They pointed to the much-publicized sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Obama’s pastor of 20 years; his past association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers; and the senator’s own statement at a San Francisco-area fundraiser that “bitter” people in small towns “cling” to faith, guns and anti-immigrant sentiments.

Note those three issues (Wright, bittergate, Weather U) were at the top of ABC’s questioning. So was ABC really out of line? Obama is going to have answer these questions all year—ABC was just the first to ask them. “Electability” is the campaign’s main issue now, so if anything ABC was ahead of the curve.

Obama’s visible annoyance during the debate, combined with his campaign and supporters’ over-reaction, is yet another example of a rookie mistake. Why didn’t Obama make light of all these unimportant questions about faith and flag—crack a joke, laugh at that idiotic flag woman? Why did he let surrogates run wild and attack ABC afterwards? Why pick a fight with the media, who’ve largely offered positive coverage?

Obama’s been on a slow dive since early March. He ought to shake up his campaign a bit, re-write his stump speech (I never want to hear the Dick Cheney’s my cousin joke again), and start outlining real policy proposals. This week the New Republic, Obama’s house organ, runs a million word piece about Obama’s Iraq plan being a lie. If Obama is truly above “old politics,” he’ll take this chance to ignore the gossip and petty personality/character talk and move issues—especially that little war in Iraq—back to the center of the race.