Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary prompted a temporary feast for political junkies: ceaseless post-mortems on the temporary upending of Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner and cable TV’s pro bono ratings dynamo.
Bernie Sanders? Hillary Clinton? They verged on after-thoughts, even as a superficially upbeat Clinton chimed in for MSNBC from home Wednesday morning in Chappaqua, New York. Meanwhile, Bill Kristol, the reflexively contrarian editor of The Weekly Standard, shared visions of “some statesman-like type,” GOP figure arising out of the ashes of a contested convention in July and valiantly recapturing the White House for the Republicans.
True or not, the assessment come amid what may just be morphing into a golden age for both the quantity of coverage and the growing sophistication of much of it — even factoring in all the redundancy, legitimization of B-list consultant types and screechy, UFC-like marketing of debates and town halls.
Yes, the press has been consistently wrong on bigger trends throughout the campaign; most notably missing the Trump phenomenon, among other false steps. But it’s getting lots of things right, too, and Trump is helping everybody monetize coverage in a nation where political participation is stagnant or even on the decline.
A junkie’s cup runneth over, with facts, rumors, speculation and lots of smart insiders being, well, insiders. An old guard is assisted, too, by a new and generally vibrant generation of reporters, who work their butts off (and then may fight to get in a word edgewise with the likes of Chris Matthews holding hosting court).
“The (Republican) nominee will be Trump or Cruz,” said pollster Scott Rasmussen on Fox News early in the day. Cruz is just better organized, will fare better than Trump in “back end” of the campaign states, like Wyoming, he said. And he’s already doing the leg work in schmoozing convention delegates who would theoretically be freed from initial obligations to Trump on a potential second, even third or fourth ballot at the convention.
Can anti-Trump forces now coalesce and do well in upcoming primary states like New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania? That was the question posed by CNN’s David Gregory, the former (fleeting) host of NBC’s “Meet the Press.” In another realm, Gregory obviously knows painfully the high-profile professional downside of low numbers.
Oh, John Kasich, remember him? The Ohio governor had an awful night in Wisconsin and pins hopes for any victory on his native Pennsylvania’s upcoming primary. His only reason for being right now, the punditocracy agrees, is to remain alive for a contested convention and hope that he can pull a Houdini-like reappearance and be deemed a more centrist, potential slayer of a Democrat in the general election.
All the networks have opted for distinct family-like groupings of observers as a smart way to breed viewer familiarity and, when done right, a certain creative dynamic. In some cases, it works; in others not.
At “Morning Joe,” for example, the subordinates tend to be far more interesting (if less opinionated) than seven-figure co-hosts Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who at times come off as Trump shills (and do seem openly defensive about the reputation).
On Wednesday, that meant that Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin and John Heilemann were among those on these who were strong on the inherent weaknesses of both frontrunners (Trump and Clinton), the limits of drawing too much significance from the Wisconsin votes, the delegate math in both parties and the potential psychology of a contested GOP convention.
It was part and parcel of cable TV’s maniacal, and often informative, focus on the campaign. For sure, it still falls far short of the precision and eclectic range of great daily newspaper coverage, such as the politics pages of The New York Times. But it’s sharper than in the past and, of course, at times just a lot more entertaining than the printed page or screen.
And it wasn’t to say that Trump Mania rode roughshod over all other comers. While Clinton was conspicuously absent after Tuesday’s loss to Sanders, she was back in action with morning interviews on both MSNBC and CNN from her suburban New York City home.
Journalists crave the anecdotal, especially those who just don’t or can’t get out much. In the case of generally desk-bound Brzezinski, there was a young female assistant of hers who just adores Clinton.
In a very solicitous opening, she told the homebound candidate about the MSNBC aide-de-camp as a way of wondering why so many other young people are preferring Sanders.
“I think it’s exciting to be protesting. I totally get the attraction of this,” said Clinton with a surface bonhomie that surely contained a little chagrin bordering on condescension.
“In all the research I have seen, a lot of young people like both of us…I’m not as worried as the numbers might show.”
Perhaps. But there is no shortage of numbers to mull these days as the media devours maps, math and months of an ongoing spectacle.
