Thursday, July 19, 2007

The Beltway Clique

Onto Ambinder's other ridiculous statements in his post. He offers another reason why the press latched onto the Edwards story and not the Romney story:

There is a difference in the political reality: fairly or unfairly, a healthy chunk of the national political press corps doesn't like John Edwards.

Fairly or unfairly, there's also a difference in narrative timing: when the first quarter ended, the press was trying to bury Edwards. It's not so much interested in burying Romney right now -- many reporters think he's the Republican frontrunner.

I am really too pissed off to offer anything thoughtful here, so I will let Digby say it for me:
Now, I am not especially surprised that the press corps doesn't like John Edwards. Many of these people probably didn't like guys like him in high school either and one thing we know about the political press corps is that they have never matured beyond the 11th grade. (See: chilean bass stupidity.) But I have to ask, once again, just who in the hell these people think they are and why they think they are allowed to pick our candidates for us based upon their own "feelings" about them? I don't recall electing them to anything. (But, hey, maybe we should just poll the kewl kidz and find out which candidate they "like, totally, like" and we can cancel the election and save a lot of time and money.)

This is our Beltway press corps, in a nutshell. They see themselves as divine creatures. They know what's best for the American people, and they will base those decisions on the most ridiculous of reasons. This, of course, isn't the first time its happened. The press corps fell in love with George W. Bush and hated Al Gore. They mocked John Kerry, Howard Dean, and John Edwards in 2004, while their naughty parts became engorged at the first sight of the War President.

They managed these elections like high school girls manage their own popularity. Unfortunately for us, the outcome here wasn't that Sally got to be homecoming queen, instead we ended up mired in a war that won't end, an economy that is just moments away from collapse and a Constitution that is now in the White House septic tank.

Thanks guys!

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