April 13, 2007
Imus Ouster Will Benefit Hillary
With the firing of Don Imus by CBS, Hillary Clinton has overcome another obstacle in her fight for the Democrat nomination in 2008.
Imus, a limousine Liberal from the upper-West side of Manhattan, has been a significant national outlet for many Democrat politicians in the past. The LA Times has a story this morning lamenting how Imus' departure from the airwaves is a blow to Democrats.
"Over the years, Democrats such as [Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr.] came to count on Imus for the kind of sympathetic treatment that Republicans got from Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.CT Senator Christopher Dodd may as well cancel the lease on his Presidential Campaign headquarters. Dodd declared his candidacy on Imus' show because...well...nobody else cared.Equally important, Imus gave Democrats a pipeline to a crucial voting bloc that was perennially hard for them to reach: politically independent white men.
With Imus' show canceled indefinitely because of his remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, some Democratic strategists are worried about how to fill the void. For a national radio audience of white men, Democrats see few if any alternatives.
"This is a real bind for Democrats," said Dan Gerstein, an advisor to one of Imus' favorite regulars, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). "Talk radio has become primarily the province of the right, and the blogosphere is largely the province of the left. If Imus loses his microphone, there aren't many other venues like it around."
But Imus and his radio crew have been vicious towards New York's Junior Senator, taking shots at her every chance they could. And now he's gone, which works to her favor. Clinton was quoted as saying, "I've never wanted to go on his show and I certainly don't ever intend to go on his show, and I felt that way before his latest outrageous, hateful, hurtful comments". Of course, Hillary never and wouldn't ever appear on "Imus in the Morning", because he wouldn't give her the kind of pass that the rest of the adoring MSM does.
Not only can Imus no longer have any fun lampooning her or calling her out for her phoney pandering (like her recent attempt to adopt a Southern drawl), but any opponent she has for her party's nomination won't be able to use the show as their own personal megaphone. It's a win-win for Nurse Ratched.
Posted by Gary at April 13, 2007 10:15 AM | TrackBack"the blogosphere is largely the province of the left."
Since when?
I think what Gerstein was referring to is the influence of the nutroots as an outlet for Left-wing politicians and causes seeing as his boss was on the receiving end of that influence.
The Right side of the blogosphere has done a great job exposing the deficiencies of the MSM but they've yet to exercise the level of grass-roots mojo that the Left has in political races.
We'll see whether or not that changes in 2008. But the Right currently dominates in talk radio.
Posted by: Gary at April 13, 2007 10:27 AMI think you're right, Gary, but given that Hillary's opposition at this point seems to be Obama, who benefits from the same puff-piece journalism, I think that it benefits him some, too. I'd like to see either of them have the stones to get on O'Reilly's show, who is probably the last tough questioner they'll have to face (aside from a minor Russert ambush or two).
Posted by: The Colossus at April 13, 2007 01:01 PM
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