If you don’t believe me that if we held Joe Biden to the Sarah Palin standard, the media would make mincemeat of the Delaware Democrat, then take a listen to former CBS News Anchor Dan Rather (at about 1:54 below):
(Via HotAir.)
Had Sarah Palin said that John McCain’s election would generate an international crisis to test the Republicans mettle as Joe Biden said about Obama, Rather believes “it would be above the fold in most newspapers today . . . the newspapers would have jumped all over this and so would the major television outlets.”
While newspapers and TV ignore this, Rather did offer us some hope that people may yet learn of Biden’s wariness about his running mate’s readiness. He suggested that internet would pick up the story and that could be “more important.” (Recall this wasn’t the first time Biden raised the issue of Obama’s readiness. During the campaign for the Democratic nomination, the Delaware Democrat said his Illinois colleague was not ready for the White House.)
With Rather’s coments, we have a lion of the old media acknowledging just how “in the tank” the MSM are for the Democrats.
Had the media offered him the same scrutiny they offer Sarah Palin, well, we’d be questioning his fitness to serve as much as they do hers. Not just that, we’d be wondering what he truly thinks about his running mate’s readiness to lead.
As Noah Pollak puts it:
Biden is saying two things about an Obama presidency: first, that Obama will be tested by America’s rivals; and second, that Obama’s response to such a test will likely be unpopular with the American people. Presumably Biden does not believe that the reason for that unpopularity will be because Obama is too decisive or too tough with our enemies — it will be because Obama is perceived as too soft and indecisive in a crisis.
Bill Kristol echoes that:
Biden is forecasting that Obama will have what seems to be a weak response to a provocation from, say, Iran or Russia, and he’s urging the liberals of Seattle and elsewhere to stand with Obama against the expected domestic criticism.
In other words, Biden is forecasting inaction by Obama in the face of testing by a dictator. I suspect he’s right in this forecast. McCain might want to clarify this point. It’s not just that Obama’s own running mate expects an international crisis early in his presidency. It’s not just that Obama has a weak foreign policy record. It’s that Biden himself expects what will appear to be a weak response from Obama to testing by a dictator.
Now Biden presumaby thinks such an apparently weak response would be in our long-term interest. But McCain needs to force that debate: “Sen. Obama, will you in fact do nothing in response to a Putin provocation against Ukraine or a final push by Ahmadinejad toward nuclear weapons? Isn’t that what your running mate has forecast? Isn’t it awfully dangerous to forecast weakness on the part of an American president?â€
McCain should just use Biden’s quotes about Obama, along with Obama’s encounter with Joe the Plumber in his ads. Maybe that would break the Obama spell on the country.
I just have to wonder what Obama is going to do with Biden if he is elected. Has a vice-president ever been disowned by the President?
Remind me again…who is Dan Rather?
Dog Bites Man, Version 413
Honesty from Dan Rather???
Did Hell just freeze over???
Latest from the MSM: Socialist is a code word for the n-word.
Dan Rather knows a little bit about media bias…
#5: “Latest from the MSM: Socialist is a code word for the n-word.”
Really? And I was just getting used to, “Senator Obama, I have a question about your tax plan” being code for the n-word.
Wow. You’ve written a myriad of posts on supposed media bias in just the past 48 hours. I guess we know who you’ll be blaming on November 5th. But really, It’s a very rare event for a political party to have their clock cleaned in two successive elections. It’s only happened twice – to the Democrats in 1950-1952 and to the Republicans in 1932-1934. Usually, once the electorate exacts it’s pound of flesh, parity returns in the next election. So if the Republicans get walloped again, and all indications are that this turn may be even worse than in 2006, you might want to look at Republican policy as a cause, rather than the media.
And as I’ve been saying since early 2007, ever since Republicans started trumpeting the low approval ratings of the Democratic Congress as cause for hope, the people disapprove of Congress, not because they are upset with the Democrats, but because they voted for change in 2006 and didn’t get it. So this time, look for the voters to eviscerate what’s left of the Republican minority. In two weeks, the American people will double down on the change it sought in 2006.
Believe, me, Erik, I see the problems of Republican policy, failing to articulate a clear conservative mesage.
But, the media covers for the Democrats misdeeds and that’s troubling, very troubling.
Nonsense. Republicans cleaned Democrats clock in 2000, 2002, and 2004.
You mean like how the liberals blamed the US Constitution and “ignorant Floridians” for their 2000 failure? Or is it more like how the liberals blamed the “redneck red staters” after 2004?
HUH????? The liberals were the ones who promissed change. They’re the ones who swore they would carry out “the will of the people”. They’re the ones who promissed to end the “culture of corruption” and “drain the swamp”. Instead, they handed us their very own brand of corruption and immorality.
They ASSumed that the American people wanted to suffer from an embarrassing defeat in Iraq. They also ASSumed the American people would let them steal the power of CIC from the president. Who’s fault is it that they have no idea what the American people want?
Just like Comrade Obama ASSumes the American people are now tolerant of Communists, money for nothing and chicks for free. The liberals ASSume that the country will vote for a inept black man because of his skin color just because they would.
Not to mention the ass spanking of 1995.
Even Rather’s comments won’t get any play in the media- except for maybe FOX News and the internet. You think the old media is going to broadcast on of their own calling them biased? Look what happened to Bernard Goldberg when he attempted to expose the rampant liberal bias in the media. He got drummed out of the beltway faster than Obama is running away from Bill Ayres.
Honestly, the disgusting way the mainstream news media has coundcted themselves this campaign season makes Dan Rather’s national gaurd story debacle look like a botched joke.