It's now a week since we have had confirmed what alert observers knew on March 4.

Obama picked up seven of nine outstanding delegates, giving him a total
of 99 Texas delegates to the party’s national convention this summer.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won the other two, giving her a total of 94
Texas delegates, according to an analysis of returns by The Associated
Press. 

It is now over one month since Obama won the Texas Democratic Party delegate allocation process.

It is now over one month since voters voted in primary elections and caucuses.

It is now over one month since the mass media mistakenly reported that Clinton "won" Texas.

It is now over one month since news media started misleadingly and routinely referring to the Clinton primary victory in Texas, without even mentioning the Obama caucus victory in Texas, or the combined Obama victory in the delegate allocation process.

It is now over one month during which I haven't heard the Obama campaign point this out very much or very often.

It is now a week since any doubt about the outcome has been resolved in Democratic county conventions.

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What if you had a victory and nobody came?

What if a victory fell in a forest and nobody heard?

What if you had a victory but it didn't fit the narrative?

What if national reporters were too lazy to report the actual election results?

What if national news media were embarrassed to admit they hadn't understood the process they were reporting on?

What if they'd rather accept one campaign's spin about an election than add up the actual numbers?

What if the idea that an African American man could win Texas is so strange to the media that they can't wrap their head around it to report it?  (A white woman sure... Ann Richards, Molly Ivins... we all know Texas loves a strong woman... so a Hillary Clinton victory fits the only possible narrative we have of Texas.)

Obama won Texas.  The media won't report it.  Weird stuff.

(Yes, there could be efforts to change this outcome until the Democratic state convention circa June 6-7, but it is unlikely that Obama supporters will lose interest between now and then and be forced to concede delegates and anyway is that really an excuse not to report the delegate victory a month ago... and certainly now?) 

Everywhere you look major media outlets are somehow not counting Caucus victories for Obama... particularly in Texas.

For example:, this article by Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/

QUOTE

Clinton supporters say the slow pace of commitments is because of concerns, after Obama's March 4 losses in TexasSen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), a Clinton backer.

and Ohio, about whether he can win in November -- doubts they have
aggressively sought to stir in their private lobbying efforts. "If you can't win it in the primary, how are you going to win it in November? That's our pitch," said

UNQUOTE

If you read that carefully, it is clear that this framing is being taken straight from the Clinton campaign.  Why?

Is the Obama campaign strategically deciding not to contest this framing for some reason, such as to avoid seeming petty?

Are the media embarrassed to admit they called Texas too soon?  (And is it the editors of the Post, or these particular reporters... or some kind of institutional embarrassment that holds that the paper cannot admit error once a story is committed to print?)

Do Washington Post reporters actually have a pro-Clinton agenda?  (And why would they?   I mean seriously, can't they do the delegate count and reach the obvious conclusion about where there bread will be buttered in the future?  (... by either Obama or McCain... and probably not by Clinton.)

Or do they have a McCain agenda that leads them to have a pro-Clinton agenda?

Or are they simply careless with fact checking?   I mean anyone can go look up a delegate counter and find out what the actual count is:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/

Anyone, including Post reporters can look up the total vote count too: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html

I realize that the quote above about Texas is just a direct reflection of Clinton camp framing, but wouldn't responsible reporting point out that the claim of a Texas victory is open to dispute?  

Why don't Obama campaign people point this out to reporters? 

(To answer my own question, maybe they think it doesn't matter... only delegates matter... and let the world think what they want about Texas.  Maybe.)

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Media framing question 2

Where do people get the idea that the nomination race between 2 Democrats tells you much about how a Democrat will perform against a Republican? 

Most Obama voters will vote for Clinton and most Clinton voters will vote for Obama... if the alternative is McCain.

Obama's inability to defeat Clinton in those (in Sirota's terms) middle states with an AA population between 6% and 17% says nothing about his ability to win those states when he is running not against a good democrat like Clinton, but instead against an evil war mongering Republican like John McCain.

Unfortunately the reverse is not exactly true... insofar as Clinton's ability to win in red states is much more in doubt.  But even there, the efforts Obama and Dean have made in some nontraditional states that Obama has won in the primaries could well lead to some surprising Clinton victories.

No, the purpose of these primaries is to assess the preferences of Democrats and the outcomes of those assessments say little about the likely strength of the candidates against Republicans.  

The strengths of the candidates against Republicans have a little to do with policy and a great deal with personality.  When you listen to each of these people, how do you feel about them in comparison to how you feel about that old guy... John McCain.  

I think when you line up the personalities of Obama or Clinton, you can see one potential victory... and one potential defeat.  It has nothing to do with primary victories... everything to do with how personalities play as observed on the TV screens of America.  I give the Hawaiian the advantage in that subtle contest.

Here's how Obama needs to respond to this shot.

"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said. "You don't choose
your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."...

The Clinton campaign has refrained from getting involved in the
controversy, but Clinton herself, responding to a question, denounced
what she said was "hate speech."

"You know, I spoke out against Don Imus (who was fired from his
radio and television shows after making racially insensitive remarks),
saying that hate speech was unacceptable in any setting, and I believe
that," Clinton said. "I just think you have to speak out against that.
You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by
getting up and moving."

1)  Actually Hillary, we do choose our families, and sometimes when a husband chooses an intern instead of his family, spouses have to choose whether they stay with the errant husband or not.   We all respect your privacy and your private choice to stay with your husband.  Can you respect Obama's choice?   Oh you stayed with your husband for your daughter's sake?   And how did staying with a philanderer help her?   I see.  He has some good qualities too.  I see.  Well then, so do the members of my church, including pastor Wright.   Surely as a Christian you understand that.

2)  The Black church and Trinity church in particular is my community.  I don't have to agree with everything that everyone in that community says, and I've told you that I don't.  If you say I can't be a member of that church, then which African Americans are good enough to meet your standards?   (And by the way, shall we examine the statements of some of the religious figures YOU have associated yourself with Hillary?   We have the information ready in a press release.)

3)  You've misunderstood who is a leader and who is a follower at my church.   Pastor Wright was a spiritual leader, but I am a political leader.  My goal has been to bring my community away from an older perspective and toward a more inclusive perspective.  (Have the evidence ready.)  He's not my guide on matters of race.  I am his guide, to the best of my ability. 

4)  The essence of my Christianity is not to leave people behind, not to leave behind sinners and those I disagree with, but to bring them along through engagement and persuasion.   That Christian perspective explains why I am a member of the church and it explains how I will conduct the affairs of the United States in the world... engaging and relating to those I may disagree with.

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This brings his Christianity to the forefront, explains how it relates to the Wright affair, connects to Christians in this Christian nation (said the Jewish guy), reverses his position from someone who is following Wright to someone who is trying to lead Wright and his community in a new direction.

Now that last move may not be fully justified if, as I've heard, he's not a fully involved member of the church.  But he might be advised to try it because he is not going to escape the Wright anvil, and so long as the focus is on Wright as leader, Obama as follower, the narrative works against him.

He needs to find instances, if not in church then in Chicago more broadly, where he worked against or spoke against some aspect of the Black church that he found objectionable.  He needs to position himself as a leader, not a follower, even though you and I think we know that he was basically just trying to gain AA creds/legitimacy by being a member of that community.

This response positions him as a Christian, as a leader, and as a forgiving person... toward Hillary, Wright, and in a sense toward White America.  Remember his possibly best move from his Race speech was understanding the fears of his White grandma.    This response eliminates any nonesense about being a Muslim.

This response is wiser than distancing himself from the Church.  They are going to try to lynch him with loops of Wright.  He needs to address it head on continually from now until November.  Everytime he does so he is emphasizing his Christianity, his rootedness in a church, AND his differences with the church.  If he runs away from it... "I didn't know"... "I wasn't there"... it will not work.  His response needs to shift to "this is my disagreement" with Wright... "this is what I did and said"...  "this is why Wright is wrong". 

It doesn't matter that so much of what Wright says is dead on.    They will make a caricature of him that will be almost impossible to counter.   Obama will need to respond to the caricature.   Distancing will just look defensive.   

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OK, that's my best strategy advice to the Obama campaign for today.

Is Obama too Black?  How about too smart?  The dangers of obvious intelligence should not be underestimated.  An incident in the career of Adlai Stevenson (two unsuccessful runs for Presidency) reminds us of the dangers of intelligence.

Stevenson's wit was legendary. During one of Stevenson's presidential campaigns, allegedly, a supporter told him that he was sure to "get the vote of every thinking man" in the U.S., to which Stevenson is said to have replied, "Thank you, but I need a majority to win."  (Wikipedia, but available from many other sources...)

Frank Rich observed the other day in the New York Times that it was remarkable that Obama seems to think in whole paragraphs, while McCain and Hillary seem to think in sentences (sound bites)... and Bush seems barely capable of thought at all.   

“I share the general view that Mr. Obama’s speech is the most remarkable utterance on the subject by a public figure in modern memory. But what impressed me most was not Mr. Obama’s rhetorical elegance or his nuanced view of both America’s undeniable racial divide and equally undeniable racial progress. The real novelty was to find a politician who didn’t talk down to his audience but instead trusted it to listen to complete, paragraph-long thoughts that couldn’t be reduced to sound bytes.”

Ha ha ha.   We over-educated bloggers laugh, but our laughter is dangerous, and comes at our own peril.

What should Obama do?  Dumb it down?   I don't think so.  His long and considered thoughts have integrity.  They are an expression of his integrity.  He's got to find a way to connect to ALL the people of Pennsylvania and everywhere else, but I don't think he does so by changing how he talks to them.  Or maybe he does need to change it a little?  Because one way or another, all the "thinking" people aren't enough - he needs a majority.