West Virginia Media Narrative

Filed under: 2008 elections, Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Lead Story — Claudia, Assistant Editor on May 14, 2008 @ 11:34 am CEST

Clinton won West Virginia by a large margin. Does the media care?

As expected, Hillary Clinton utterly destroyed Obama in the West Virginia primary yesterday, netting over twice as many votes as he did. Her landslide victory was predictably spun as a turning point by her campaign and just as predictably studiously ignored by the Obama campaign (Obama was is Missouri campaigning, a non-verbal message that he’s already concentrated on the general election).

Her huge victory was expected, and the spin by each campaign is entirely predictable, to me the only mystery was how the media would talk about it.

So let’s look at that.

CNN spends about one sentence telling the results and the rest of the article discussing the spin of both campaigns, especially Clinton’s and hashing numbers of who will vote for who and why.

The New York Times also spends almost no time on the victory itself, and jumps directly to analysing the numbers and what they mean in terms of electability. Of special and very sad note:

Two in 10 white West Virginia voters said race was an important factor in their votes. More than 8 in 10 who said it factored in their votes backed Mrs. Clinton, according to exit polls.

Race is not always just a card, there are people who are authentically racist, and people who while they don’t consider themselves racist, feel very uncomfortable at the prospect of a black president. What is almost more maddening than the unfortunate presence of such attitudes in society still today is the argument made that Obama shouldn’t be the nominee because there are people who will never vote for him because he’s black. Essentially this is saying “Please take your cues from the racists”.

The Washington Post spends more time than the others on the victory, including quotes from the victory speech and a much more sympathetic detailing of the Clinton campaign’s arguments. They go on to explain in full detail just how difficult the battle still is for Clinton and the fact that superdelegates have thus far failed to be impressed, but the article is much more centered on Clinton and her arguments than others.

Reuters leads with the less-than-optimistic headline “Clinton vows to keep her uphill bid alive” but follows with a fairly balanced article, stating the results, the campaign spin, and the numerical situation.

All in all, media have partly done what I expected them to do. They’ve announced the victory, and then pounced greedily on the demographics. I expected to spend a little more enthusiasm talking about just how big the victory was though. Instead the narrative is a discussion on what the lopsided Clinton win amongst blue collar workers (read: less educated whites) means for Obama’s chances in the general election. The tone underlying the media narrative has not changed. Obama is the presumptive candidate and this contest is being analyzed through that lense.

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1 Lynne

May 14, 2008 @ 10:48 pm CEST

Actually, if you ask me, the real loser of this primary was the state of West Virginia. It’s been a long time since I saw a state get this beat up by both left and right. The ugly stereotypes flung into every blog and broadcast have been downright depressing; it’s been a tough week for Mountaineers. Apparently, we’re all toothless, smelly, inbred proto-humans. In the name of denouncing racism among voters, the pundits have called Mountaineers an inferior race. Here are some things I’ve been seeing: "genetically deficient…cousin marrying" (Daily Kos comment) "their legacy hasn’t changed much in the last 50 or 60 years- neither has their DNA" (Don Surber comment) "this sad pocket of people represent remnants of bigotry, race hate, and social and economic paranoia…these are people who are easily led.." (Moderate Voice comment) "uneducated, unwashed bigots" (Buzzflash comment) Some commenters have even suggested that West Virginians surrender their right to vote until they "progress" and "get education." Others claim the state is so poverty-stricken that nobody’s judgement there can be trusted. Gee- literacy tests for voting, anyone? How about a poll tax? West Virginia was born when it seceded from the Confederate states in disgust. Maybe it’s time to secede again- this time from the whole union. We’re already an isolated, "irrelevant" bit of dreck, after all. Excuse me while I go scrape the nasty taste out of my mouth.