Slate's latest SlateV feature offers hands-down the best comparison of any campaign since Edwards got branded a Breck Girl: Hillary Clinton as Tracy Flick, Reece Witherspoon's maniacal overachiever in 1999's Election.  I have to admit that the Slate piece is hard to refute.


I am, of course, waiting for a fair and balanced press to compare Obama with Steve Urkel. 

Not holding my breath, though. The media's take on the Michigan primary (such as it was) was not encouraging.

Here's what happened in Michigan.  Of the three leading contenders for the Democratic nomination, Clinton was the only one to participate in Michigan's primary, and garnered 55%. 40% of primary voters there were "uncommitted," meaning they supported a candidate other than Clinton, Kucinich, Dodd, or Gravel (who?), who decided to stay on the ballot even though the DNC, as the Times explains, "plans to penalize Michigan Democrats for holding an early primary by stripping the state party of all its delegates to the national convention."

Here's what the media made of it.  Headlines ranged from "Obama, Clinton tied in 2008 Democratic race" to "40% of Democrats vote 'uncommitted'."

Reuters celebrated by running results of a Reuters/Zogby poll (and we know we can trust Zogby to be balanced when it comes to the Clintons) that found that "Barack Obama has erased a once substantial deficit to climb into a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race." The results were presented like this:

Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman U.S. president, held a 21-point edge over Obama in October. He cut that to 8 points by last month, and the new survey gave her a 39 percent to 38 percent edge.

Her 1-point lead was well within the poll's margin of error of 4.7 percentage points.

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, and Clinton were essentially deadlocked among a variety of groups, including men, women, Democrats and independents. Obama led substantially, 65 percent to 15 percent, among black voters.

Obama barely led among voters under age 24, a substantial drop in support from last month, but led Clinton among voters aged 55 to 69, normally one of her strengths.

Notice that any favorable results for Clinton are immediately qualified ("her 1-point lead was well within the poll's margin of error of 4.7 percentage points" — instead of simply "the poll's margin of error was 4.7%") and any unfavorable results for Obama are instantly ameliorated ("...but [he] led Clinton among voters aged 55 to 69, normally one of her strengths").

MLive.com ("everything Michigan") quoted several primary voters who seemed not to understand that Obama and Edwards had not been removed from the ballot by Clinton or her "surrogates," but had removed their own names from the ballot in protest of Michigan's renegade decision to hold their primary at a date the party's National Committee had not approved:

"I'm pissed off that Clinton is on there and other major candidates are not; I think that's just wrong," said the salesman for 3M Corp., who lists himself as an independent. "I know it's like throwing your vote away, but it's to send a message. It's an unfair process."

Support for Clinton in the state was called "meaningless." You can bet that if Clinton's take had been less than half it would have been very meaningful, indeed.  Another significant blow.  Evidence that Hillary's "race-bating strategy" was backfiring, proof that she could not whine and cry her way to victory.  As it is, her majority in Michigan was summed up by Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan politics thus: "I think she dodged a bullet."

Slate's Dickensianly-named Chadwick Matlin also saw Hillary's glass as half-full:


John Nichols of The Nation, a staunch anti-moderate, was one of the few in the media who did find Michigan meaningful.  He called Clinton's win there " ominous":

When two out of every five voters choose nobody rather than a prominent candidate who is running with little or no opposition, that candidate's got no reason to celebrate.

Hillary is still losing the War of Metaphors, that's for sure.  The kindest characterization since we last checked in was Slate's Timothy Noah calling her "an important kibitzer." Chris Hitchens, the godless slob, called her the "mendacious" "despised and much-deceived wife." His insults are almost as pretty as Shakespeare's.  I'm waiting for him to start writing them in iambic pentameter.

He went on, to sum up: "Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut."

But, hey, didn't Tracy Flick win in the end?