Love, Actually

This election season is proving the old adage, "Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line" to be wrong.

David Brooks has an interesting piece today in the Times about John McCain and Mike Huckabee and how the Republican leaders hate them.

"I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party," Rush Limbaugh said recently on his radio show. "It's going to change it forever, be the end of it."

And yet, John McCain won New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Democrats may not love Hillary but we respect her. She's the smartest girl in the room. It's easy to fall in Love with Obama's rhetoric, but do you actually think that from day one he'll get the job done?

Erica Jong wrote an amazing peice on the Huffington Post comparing the 2000 election adn how the press never really questioned George Bush and loathed Al Gore to today's love fest with Obama and the obvious disdain for Clinton.

I had met Al Gore at a fundraiser and thought he was brilliant. And a good speaker. And a decent guy. I couldn't understand the press about him, which seemed to me to assault him for possessing functioning brain cells. I was astounded that journalists seemed to love this dumb frat boy named George W., who glad-handed the press while they made fun of this brilliant man (Al Gore) who had a good grip on foreign policy, the environment, the economy (we had a surplus then, remember?) social issues, civil rights for minorities and majorities (women's rights).

Al Gore was so obviously the superior candidate that it seemed absurd that anyone would ever consider voting for George W. Bush.

But the press hated Gore and loved Dubya -- as he was then called.

You'd think that after eight years of Bushwa, we'd look deeper at the candidates and what they read, what they think, what they've done all their lives. You'd think we'd notice that Hillary was always for kids and mothers and flex time and family leave. You'd think we'd notice that the people of New York State hated her at first as a carpetbagger but then fell in love with her because she did so much for them -- even in the formerly Republican areas upstate. You'd think we'd notice that Obama is extremely promising as a leader but a bit unseasoned. You'd think we'd notice that the press is anointing him without much inquiry while enthusiastically smearing HRC. You'd think we'd notice that electing a new face is not as important as looking at thirty-five years of passion for civil rights, women's rights, the Constitution. You'd think we'd mistrust the press a little more because the press just loved smearing Al Gore before he was a Nobel-ist. He was always very smart. Do we need the dynamite factory to validate our perceptions? Apparently.

Perhaps it's not that the media has written a narrative for the election and are determined to push it on us that explains their hatred of Clinton. Could the media's love affair with the Obama be explained as simply as we resent people who are smarter than us?

The good news is that the electorate has wised up since 2000. Sure, Obama was going to win New Hampshire. The press was "blindsided" by Senator Clinton's victory. There was so much backlash against Chris Matthews that he had to apologize for his treatment of Clinton.

It's not just the writers who are on strike; it's the voters. And we won't be lead like sheep again.