That said, cue the media to start their 2000 redux coverage the second the Democratic nomination is over. McCain was the belle of the media ball in 2000, and I can’t help thinking that there is more than one beat reporter who thinks ‘gosh, imagine how much better off we’d be if he’d won in 2000′ and not ‘gee, imagine how much better off we’d be if we didn’t cover Al Gore like he was kid we hated the most running in the 7th grade class elections”.

Almost all of the things that make McCain viable are fictions pimped by media. It’s kind of hard to see the same people who ignore McCain’s constantly and consistently not being a straight shooter or a maverick suddenly waking up and realizing that he’s a pretty boldfaced liar when he wants to be. If its Hilary, we are going to get a rehash of Clinton Derangement Syndrome mixed with a dash of Al Gore ala “people don’t like her” and “she’s so packaged and processed”. If its Obama, I think they are going to be mainly Al Gore-ing him, but by hammering him the same way they hammered Gore but using exact opposite reasons they hammered Gore to make the same kind of attacks. “He’s too charismatic” will be Obama’s “He’s so wooden.” “He’s all speeches and no substance” will be Obama’s “He’s such a cold, droning policy guy.” “His followers are a cult” will be his “He doesn’t make people very passionate about him or his campaign”.

Candy Crowley is already rearin’ to carry the “Democrats are in disarray” meme, any one she can find. Fictional or quasi-fictional, any will do. With Obama ahead now its “the cult” meme one night, its the idiotic “stolen words” meme the next. If Hilary wins Wisconsin she’s go back to giving it to Hilary. The front pagers on the New York Times are sharpening their pens into knives already. The Washington Post Op/Ed page is filing its fangs.

I think the obvious way to the Democrats winning is to beat the crap out of McCain with all the things Karl Rove came up with in 2000. He’s an angry, old man who doesn’t have the temperament to be President. He’s no straight shooter. Where I think we have a serious problem doing that as Democrats is that I don’t think the cable news or national print media is going to allow it. At least, not without an incredible job of working around their constantly reinforcing a McCain friendly CW. Mainly because it doesn’t fit into their own slavish devotion to heralding St. John the Maverick, but also because it seems to have been already decided that going after McCain for his temper and other dubious things like his record as a maverick are just not going to get covered. We have no liberal Fox News. So, we are still getting our memes filtered via a “liberal” media that thinks McCain got robbed in 2000 and that the most obvious arguments about why he shouldn’t be President are off the table as far as they are concerned for now.

This is where I think people like Taylor Marsh have it completely backwards and its why I don’t put a lot of weight into the Obama Derangement Syndrome arguments.

As he looks more and more like he’s going to be the nominee I think it cannot be understated that Obama has the better campaign of the two by far and that, mixed with his huge advantage over McCain in terms of personal and social appeal, may be exactly what it takes to overcome the media’s coming pro-McCain narratives and Al Gore-level of coverage childishness of the Democratic ticket that I believe is coming and coming fast.

Barack Obama standing next to McCain is a disaster for McCain. Obama also doesn’t have an idiot like Mark Penn telling him the exact opposite of what should be done to put the campaign back on top. And he doesn’t have a campaign dumb enough to make Texas a firewall, without understanding that the way Texas is set up there is no way Texas will give either candidate an overwhelming delegate victory. But most of all, I think Barack Obama’s youth and hopeful campaign will open up the obvious comparison to cranky old McCain and from those comparisons open up the doors to breaking this already rising media embargo on negative McCain factors being ignored or spun away. At least nominating Obama gives us a better shot at establishing them via his more competent campaign.

I think if Hilary finds a way to win the nomination, and I will be fighting for her just like I’ll be fighting for Obama, the first thing she has to do if she wants to win what is going to be the ugliest campaign since the last one… is to fire Mark Penn. Five minutes after she gets the job. She can win, either can, but she’s going to have to reinvent her campaign to beat whats coming. I think McCain’s people would be gleeful to face a Mark Penn run Democratic race as a Susan Estrich run one considering all the disadvantages they have that other GOPers haven’t in terms of money. If its Obama, I think he gives us the best shot of short-circuiting the Al Gore effect by going right to the wide spectrum of people, independents, moderates and liberals, who are inspired by him and using the great contrast to force the media to address the contrasts.

No matter who wins, this era of having to overcome the media AND the GOP has to end because we should be on the verge of a clear realignment election and its pretty frustrating and outrageous that after everything that has happened since Florida 2000, we still have to come up with ways to fight the right and work around the “liberal” media carrying GOP water. If the GOP loses the White House, they are simply going to obstruct everything they can until they can mount a comeback as ‘reformers of paralyzed government’. If they can just dampen the gains in the House and Senate, they can do what they are doing now for years to come, and they all know it. And they also know that the media will cover it with their memes and frames and ignore that they were the forces that paralyzed the state. That is intolerable, but it works for them because they can do it.

We need a liberal cable news network to negate Fox News and to help slap the so-called liberal media back to some semblance of balance, and I think we need to do what the right did and beat the shit out of the media even more than we have been in the last few years even if we do get that cable news outlet. God, where is the wildly free-spending George Soros of Bill O’Reilly’s fever dreams when you need him?