Hillary's healthcare story

Yet again, I just love the analysis at Hullabaloo:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/

Ok, look. You can hate Clinton or love her, but this is the lowest form of campaign journalism and it should be condemned. At this point they have said, over and over again, that Clinton told "untruths" or "exaggerated" when the fact is that she repeated a story she heard from a citizen -- a story which, without knowing the name of the person, which she didn't, could not be verified by her campaign. And why should it? The sheriff told her this story on camera, it's completely believable because every single day something like this happens multiple times across the country, she used no names, accused nobody specifically and didn't claim to have personal knowledge of the story. She repeated something that was told to her. It's not a lie or an untruth or fundamentally misleading in any way.
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Now in this case, I don't know where the story came from, but considering it's a hospital coming forward for truly inexplicable reasons to say it wasn't guilty of something no one had accused them of, I suspect Republicans. Or it could simply be that the press itself just pulled the storyline off the shelf in response to the Bosnia flap and ran with it all on their own. Whatever the case, it's bad journalism, thick with innuendo and short on facts and used as an example of a character defect of a Democrat, creating a self-perpetuating "perception" that justifies the "storyline." Same old shit.

After all, when is the last time you saw something like this pulled on a Republican, especially one named John McCain, who has flip-flopped so badly on the biggest issues of the day that he has to take seasick pills and who lies as easily as he breathes? Never. You see, the "storyline" about Republicans is that they are all "stand-up guys" and "straight-talkers" not hysterical liars and mincing flip-floppers. (Surely you can see the symbolism in all those "stand up" and "flip-flop" allusions.)

You may hate Clinton with everything in your being, and that's fine. But this kind of journalism is what's killing our political system and what gets people like John McCain and George W. Bush elected. Clinton was repeating a story about bad health care which she heard on the campaign trail from an American citizen. She wasn't tooting her own horn or putting down her opponent in the telling of it. She was illustrating the plight of the uninsured in this country, which even if it turns out to not be specifically correct in the details, is certainly not something that doesn't happen every day to somebody in this country.
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Lot's of nice liberals blamed Gore for losing that race, even though he came out ahead in the popular vote and had a third party candidate running on his left. (I won't even bring up Florida) They said, "he should have run a better campaign." Well, it ain't easy when you have a sophomoric press corps that has decided they don't want you to be president because you aren't as much fun as the other guy.

Perhaps this time they will decide they like Barack Obama better than John McCain. I sure hope so. But you'll have to forgive me if I feel that might not stand us in good stead in the long run. These people have their own agenda and it isn't what's best for the American people. They shouldn't be picking our presidents even if once in a while they might inadvertently pick one you like. Nobody elected them to anything.