2008 Presidential

The Obama presidential campaign indisputably used new media better than any before it to build a virtual army of grassroots supporters, and to wield that army as a powerful tool for fundraising, rapid response messaging, and boots-on-the-ground campaigning. But the energy that surrounded Obama and his team after the election, and supporters' expectations that President Obama would be the…

Diabetic or not, you might want to have a dose of insulin handy while watching this morning's video clip. The Early Show's review of the past year was one sicky-sweet adoration—in overtly religious terms—of Barack Obama.Harry Smith set the tone with his opening comments:"Politics, and patriotism and the presidency: it is the place where the secular and the religious merge. One of the sacraments…

The New York Times's veteran New York-based reporter Michael Powell, who suggested Rudy Giuliani played the race card as mayor in a Sunday front-page story in July 2007, abruptly admitted that many of the attacks on the former New York mayor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate were “caricatures.” Powell’s admission and other bits of backhanded praise came, conveniently enough, in a…

What politicians say to get elected can come back to haunt them and vilifying the lobbyist profession to score campaign points is going to do that to President Barack Obama, according to MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-anchor Joe Scarborough. Scarborough appeared on BBC Radio 4's Dec. 20 broadcast of "Americana" with host Matt Frei and explained how Obama's 2007 pledge to not hire lobbyists isn't…

Remember all those blog posts from the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan bashing Sarah Palin for employing a ghostwriter? Well, it turns out many of those posts may have been written by...a ghostblogger! Apparently Sullivan's busy schedule prevented him from writing everything on his site, so, without informing his readers, he employed a few ghostbloggers to write in his name.Daily Dish readers were…

World News anchor Charles Gibson appeared on Monday’s edition of The View to tout his own objectivity and to swear, "I'm very fond of John McCain. I carry no water for Obama." Speaking of the 2008 election, he marveled, "It was an amazing moment to say to the country that we have elected and African American as the 44th president of the United States.... It was just an amazing moment for the- for…

The last two times I remember this happening -- with Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s and New York City Mayor David Dinkins in the early 1990s -- it at least took a few years for exasperated establishment media liberals to blame the system for a favored politician's difficulties in achieving his agenda, and to call the country and Gotham, respectively, "ungovernable." Afterwards, Ronald Reagan and…

Despite all the campaign assurances that he would see the Afghan war effort through, liberals are incensed that Obama is following through on his pledge to, you know, win. The latest lefty to excoriate the president for pursuing America's enemies abroad is veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who today lamented that Obama must now be dubbed a "war president.""Obama should remember his…

White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, recently ridiculed a Gallup poll which showed the President's approval ratings at a record low for this stage of his presidency, for seemingly no other reason than they showed the President in a negative light.  Gibbs referred to the Gallup polling organization as a wildly fluctuating EKG, labeling their results as the equivalent of ‘a 6-year-old with a…

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs lashed out at Gallup polling today for releasing poll data that the administration does not like. The most recent Gallup poll shows President Obama's approval ratings at 47 percent, the lowest rating on record at this point in any presidency."If I was a heart patient and Gallup was my EKG, I'd visit my doctor," Gibbs told reporters today, referring to…

New York Times health care cheerleader-reporter David Herszenhorn seems unhappy that Republicans continue to oppose Obama-care -- especially John McCain, who Obama beat in the 2008 election. Herszenhorn really “cranked” up the melodrama (and old man insults?) in his Monday morning post on the Times's “Prescriptions” blog, “The Crankiness of the Defeated," turning a hum-drum event -- the 73-year-…

New York Times readers were treated to a rare dose of sympathy for Sarah Palin and her new book yesterday. Columnist Stanley Fish reviewed "Going Rogue", and cast it in a generally appealing light, while dispelling some of the most trumpeted criticisms of the former Alaska Governor's autobiography.Fish introduces his review with a humorous anecdote poking fun at some of the more deranged Palin-…

The Obama presidency is, for better or worse, the most media saturated administration in the nation's history. Due at least in part to revolutionary changes in the sharing of information, but equally abetted by the president's media-hungry personality and style of governing, Obama's face is just about everywhere these days.And Americans have noticed. In an attempt to land a spot on a DC-based…

Norah O'Donnell just can't stop condescending to supporters of Sarah Palin.  Appearing on Morning Joe today, the MSNBC correspondent rehashed a line she has used before: that fans of Sarah Palin are just too darn busy to know what's happening in the world.  According to O'Donnell, Sarah supporters don't have "30 minutes to an hour to read the newspaper."As I reported here, O'Donnell sounded the…