Yeah I agree - Gore should have grown a pair.  He up against some pretty evil shit though..

Good article about it here:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/featu res/2007/10/gore200710

Why?  Because I don't believe this spin about the press being unfairly hostile to Hillary Clinton?  I point to a study, you point to an opinion piece.    

In any event, I read that link and I very much disagree with it's analysis.  The problem with it is that he fails to acknowledge the transformation of the news media that has occurred since those primaries he talks about.  Additionally, he also fails to distinguish between different kinds of journalists - between pundits and straight news anchors.  He points to pundits who called for Hillary to get out.  But, that's what pundits do, they express their opinions.  I see absolutely no problem with pundits expressing what he or she believes a candidate ought to do.  

Your pulitzer prize winner also fails to explain or acknowledge why these pundits called for Clinton to get out.  It wasn't just that she had no chance, it was because she was staying in the race with little chance of winning and engaging in destructive negative campaigning in the process.  Hillary has been running nearly a purely negative campaign since the weeks leading up to Texas/OH.    Those pundits calling for her exit were saying that as a way to criticize her negative campaigning.  If she had been running a truly positive campaign, I doubt you would have heard the calls to get out.  In fact, if she had taken the high road, she probably would have strengthened her case to become Obama's Vice President.

But, still, the worst part of his analysis is his failure to put the 2008 election into proper historical context.  Back in 1980, or even in 1984, you didn't have the wall to wall coverage on multiple media outlets like you do now.  Back in 1980, a sports writer like Mike Lupica wouldn't be writing an op-ed about the presidential elections.  There were no internet news magazine like Slate, either.  The current media obsession on reporting and analyzing elections as a horse race is part of the blurring of the line between entertainment and media, a blurring that has occurred as control over media outlets and content have been decentralized.

If we could point to one campaign when the media started to transform into the monstrosity it has become today, I think many would point to Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign.  It was Bill Clinton who creatively used nontraditional media outlets as campaign opportunities.  Remember when Bill played his sax on the Arsenio Hall Show with those dark shades on?  That's considered one of the key moments in Bill's ultimately successful campaign.  What was so novel about this moment was not that it occurred on a non-political t.v. talk show.  But, this important moment was completely non-substantive.  It was all about style, symbolism, and appearance.  It was the beginning of the dumbing down of presidential elections that began in 1988 with Bush's awful race-baiting, sound-bite campaign, but Bill's campaign exploited the new media with a lot of creativity.

So, to say that Hillary has somehow been a victim of a biased media is far fetched.  She and Bill are still the masters of spinning and framing, as I argued in my earlier post.  I'd argue that it's been her media savvy skills that has kept her poorly organized, poorly run campaign afloat for longer than it had any business being afloat.

The reason why she lost has nothing to do with media bias.  There are 3 main reasons that she lost: (1) - she made a fundamental error running as an establishment candidate when the country wanted a change candidate - she just completely misread the mood of the electorate.  By the time she had remade herself into a populist candidate, it was too late; (2) Her vote on the Iraq War, a mistake further compounded by her stubborn refusal to admit that it was a mistake, like Edwards did; and (3) probably the most important reason - Obama was just a better candidate with a more appealing and consistent message and a superior, well organized campaign.  

A caveat to what I wrote.  I actually do agree that sexism, just like racism, has been an aspect of the campaign.  Weren't you the one who put up that link showing the various clips of sexism in the media?  I don't think that could have been avoided, though, with the first serious black and female presidential candidates running in the same race.  Race and gender were going to be issues and they have and still are issues.  They will continue to be issues during the general election.  I'm just hard pressed to conclude that gender bias was a crucial reason or one of the most important reasons that Hillary Clinton lost the race.