Does it strike anyone else how strange it is that at the end of every day this site and every other progressive site is grousing about the same thing.

"Can you believe that with all we have to deal with that the media is obsessed with Obama's race and birthers". The subtext is "We don't buy that crap but some stupid people might."

Obama would not be President if most people bought that crap. In fact most people haven't been buying that crap since they tried to railroad Clinton. In between elections it is too easy to forget that and that is what that media is counting on.

That hierarchical media is the message. That media will always protect "the villagers" of Washington and the Masters of Wall Street from outsiders and any threat to the status quo. That media is dying. It is a feeble old lion, striking out and lying with every last breath to deny its inevitable demise. Journalism will survive on the web but it is our job to make sure it doesn't survive in its present corrupt form.

This interactive media is the message. This media is the people. The people are the message.

When will this media stop obsessing with that media and focus on putting pressure directly on our representatives?

When will this media, TPM, Huffpo, Salon etc, produce its own evening interactive summation of the days news instead of letting that media set the narratives and the priorities for us.

Everywhere you look this morning in the MSM the headlines are the same; the time for final negotiations is now and reform is stalling.

Do I wish Democrats would have started with single payer as their default negotiating position? Yes, and I would bet that if that ABC/Post poll that says that Obama has lost support for reform is accurate, and I doubt it is, it is because Obama hasn't gone far enough to push for real reform.

But remember, the stories we are seeing this morning are just like HUNDREDS of other stories in all forms of media written in the last couple of months that all say the same thing; Obama is losing momentum in the push for health care reform. Meanwhile the ball has been pushed down the field closer to the goal.

For the last ten years media narratives have had very little effect or relation to actual public opinion. You can make the case that the corporate media chorus was able to stop reform in '92 because without interactive web pushback they were able to create the perception that reform was dead in the water. They are trying to do the same thing now, story after story for months on end says that reform is stalling.

But ever since the media tried to railroad Clinton when Republicans were impeaching him for a blow job, the public has been using the web to push back and find the real story of what has been going on. If the corporate media really had much effect on public opinion now then Obama would never had been nominated much less elected. Those days are over but they still try to convince us that media blowback is equivalent to public blowback.

Don't buy the hype. Turn off the cable blather and help move the ball down the court. Fax your Senator and remind them who is the real boss.