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.