If we do not interrupt the 24/7 propaganda  machine that the media is running in endless loops scripting Obama as the 'good' candidate and Hillary as the 'bad' candidate, we are not doing our job in defending free and fair elections.

If a candidate cannot get a fair hearing, it doesn't matter what positions and issues she/he espouses because there is nothing fair about an election in which one candidate is consistently maligned virtually 24/7. Last night the commentary on both MSNBC and CNN-- which has now removed both James Carville and Paul Begala at Obama campaign insistence-- bordered on the maniacal. It was pure hate, hate, hate--of the Clintons.

"Vanity Fair" did a great piece some months ago about the influence the media's villification of Al Gore had on the 2000 presidential race.  Maureen Dowd of the NYT was a chief architect and implementer of the attack then, and she is leading the pack now.

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Blogger and CQ Weekly columnist Craig Crawford hits the nail on the head with his column this week:

Ultimately, I do not see a way out of Bush fatigue. When people are tired of you, they stop listening to you. And that is the president's biggest problem. His message is not getting out because the relentless repetition of his rhetoric is sounding like reruns of a television show we have already seen several times.

Being a lame duck is bad enough, but when the public actually begins to tune a President out, it's just about over. Feel free to discuss this or use this as an open thread.

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