and now, the backlash

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who has detected the stirrings—at long, long last—of a press that has been scandalously reluctant to exercise skepticism when it comes to Barack Obama.

Jeff Jarvis, who has also been on the case, adds a few logs to the fire today.

Mickey Kaus wrote about a category he called “undernews”—stuff that’s out there that doesn’t “bubble up” into the mainstream news. (I will reprint the entire post below***; it’s well worth reading.) In mid-January, Kaus addressed (not for the first time) some (a fraction) of the undernews then available about Obama:

Undernews Alert: It’s hard to believe that Obama’s Afrocentric church–with its troubling attack on “the pursuit of middeclassness”–isn’t going to be an issue in the campaign, soon. There are already wild, inflammatory emails circulating, apparently. … Update: Here is the offical Obama response page. Excerpt:

“There is information on the Black Values System in the new member packet provided at Trinity, and the new member classes put the Black Values System in the historical context of the civil rights movement.”

Hmm. It must be understood in “the historical context.” That’ll reassure nervous white voters! The Obama camp would seem to be severely underestimating its vulnerability on the church issue if it thinks lecturing people on the civil rights movement will solve this problem for them in the long run. … 1:18 A.M.

Here’s some fallout from just a fraction of the Obama undernews, reported in today’s New York Post. (I alluded to it the other day as Obama’s Jewish problem.)

Hikind, a Democrat who has yet to endorse a candidate for president, said Obama had not satisfactorily distanced himself from Wright, his Chicago-based personal pastor, noting, “This is a man who thinks Farrakhan is a great guy and God’s gift to the world.”

Hikind went on, “Obama has said that you can be a supporter of Israel even if you’re for giving up land to the Arabs, which is true - but for a guy running for president to take a position like this in advance of getting into office, combined with everything else going on in the Middle East, that scares the hell out of me.

“There are a hell of a lot of Jews who are concerned about these issues, and they go way beyond Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, people I describe as conservative Reagan/Giuliani Democrats,” said Hikind, who backed Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984.

Hikind’s warning about Jewish concerns over Obama are being widely but privately voiced among top New York Democrats.

“There is anxiety, there is concern, on the part of a lot of important Jewish Democrats in New York,” one of the state’s most influential Democratic activists told The Post.

Upshot: There’s trouble in River City.

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*** Here’s Mickey Kaus, in December 2007, on the “undernews”:

update: This reprint does not contain the original boldface, italics, or links provided by Kaus. To get those, you’ll have to visit his site—which you should do anyway.

Friday, December 21, 2007

The Matrix: Room Eight’s Jerry Skurnick has suggested that the electoarate is splitting into two diverging parts–people who follow politics and people who don’t–with the people who follow politics much better informed than they were before (thanks to cable, web, etc.) and the people who don’t follow politics less well informed (they used to get at least some information from Walter Cronkite). That certainly rings true to me. And it may, as Skurnick claims, explain some of the new volatility in polling–e.g., when the uninformed majority suddenly discovers, say, that Rudy Giuliani has been married three times.

But there’s a second way to divide the electorate that asks how the voters inform themselves. Do they rely on the traditional Mainstream Media (MSM), or do they get their political information from the Web, from cable news, from the tabloids, etc. This division may have once seemed unimportant, but it doesn’t anymore–its seriousness is suggested by the MSM’s impressive resistance to stories bubbling up from the blogs and the tabs that don’t meet MSM standards (putting aside whether you regard those standards as high or merely idiosyncratic). “Rielle Hunter”–the woman whom the National Enquirer alleges was John Edwards’ mistress–was the top-searched name on the MSN site at one point Thursday, I’m told. Meanwhile, in the traditional mainstream press, ‘Rielle Hunter” was mentioned only … well, zero times.

Of the two ways to divide the electorate, the second is arguably more important. After all, even those who don’t follow politics, will eventually inform themselves before the election.** But if the MSM/Web barrier remains as robust as it’s been, those who inform themselves from the MSM will find out something different, when they finally tune in, than those who go to the Web and learn both the news and what might be called the “undernews.” *** If you’re thinking of voting as a Democrat in Iowa or New Hampshire, you might watch NBC and never know about this messy Rielle Hunter business. Or you might read DailyKos know the whole allegation plus the arguments against it plus seven theories about how it came to light. That knowledge might cause voters to vote against Edwards or to vote for him–but either way first they have to find out.

Likewise, TNR’s Noam Scheiber suggests that the egghead sector ( “urban, college-educated liberals”) of the Democratic party–which used to be less partisan and combative than the blue-collar/labor sector–is now more partisan and combative, because its eggy heads are wrapped up in Kos and other anti-Bush sites, where they absorb the latest undernews about the machinations of Karl Rove and Tom DeLay. Scheiber argues this is a good development for Obama, who surprisingly doesn’t have to become more partisan then he actually is in order to win over non-egghead (labor) Dems.

The 2008 campaign will be a test of the relative strength of these various differently-informed electorates. Of those who follow politics (Skurnick’s first group) how many follow the “undernews” and how many merely watch Brian Williams? Of those who don’t follow politics (Skurnick’s second group) how many bone up in the end by madly googling the candidates, and how many just read the editorial endorsements in their local papers? The non-MSM Enquirer will be in the checkout aisles all over Iowa, but will it have an impact?