“Sneak peek inside Hillary Clinton 2016: There’s no ‘I’ in campaign,” screams this latest in-kind contribution to her campaign from CNN. Unlike 2008, where they deliberately memory-holed Obama’s past in some of the most blatantly Orwellian journalism ever displayed by the MSM, Time-Warner-CNN-HBO is definitely “Ready for Hillary.” So much so that they’re running this:
No ‘I’ in Clinton 2016
But Clinton has told her advisers that she intends to aggressively campaign as though she has a primary opponent, aides say, by listening to concerns of voters and taking great pains to avoid the appearance of a coronation.
One approach is to avoid blatant suggestions of the historic nature of her candidacy, hoping to fight impressions that Clinton’s presidential aspirations are all about her.
That was one of the key findings of research already conducted through focus groups in Iowa and New Hampshire. Those conversations, coupled with the searing lessons from 2008, have led aides to impress upon Clinton and her loyal circle of admirers that, far more than her own political ambitions, this race must be about what voters want.
While it seems basic, the fresh crop of advisers cringe at how she announced her last presidential campaign, with a video message and a statement on her website that declared: “I’m in. And I’m in to win.”
This first-person mantra, which flourished repeatedly throughout her statement back on Jan. 20, 2007, will be all but stripped from her vocabulary, aides say. In its place will be a pledge to carry the causes of Americans who feel left behind in the economic recovery and the growing divide among classes.
As I said, the story itself is headlined, “Sneak peek inside Hillary Clinton 2016: There’s no ‘I’ in campaign.”
Umm, but there is an (i) in Clinton, and as Yahoo’s Matt Bai notes:
Um, guys? There actually *is* an ‘I’ in ‘campaign.’ @CNN: Sneak peek inside Clinton 2016: There’s no ‘I’ in campaign http://t.co/uE6nqznIAP
— Matt Bai (@mattbai) April 6, 2015
This is the sort of trivial gaffe that the media would have used to hang Sarah Palin (to borrow from some of Keith Olbermann’s eliminationist rhetoric that year) — or Hillary herself, in order to clear a path for the anointed Barry O. Instead, it not only is ignored by CNN, they write an equally silly puff piece around it.
As my friend John Nolte of Big Journalism likes to say, “Democrats sure got it good.”
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