Ground Game

The Huffington Post's Tom Edsall has a popular post today arguing that the media have switched their allegiances from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton:

While reluctant to speak on the record, Clinton supporters are very pleased with the overall switch in tone of the coverage, particularly the willingness of the media to explore the question of whether Obama could be a loser in November.

While The Washington Post runs an op-ed from Clinton strategist Geoff Garin arguing that Clinton has been unfairly labeled by the media as running a more negative campaign than Obama. So, who is right?

The right answer might be that neither are entirely correct. Overall, the press does seem to be turning a more critical eye towards Obama, but that does not naturally equate into "positive" coverage for Clinton. From a purely Machiavellian view, it's fair to say that any negative coverage of Obama is a plus for Clinton, but it's not accurate to say the media has jumped ship to Clinton. Liberal and independent voices have long been saying that the media were deeply flawed in their largely unquestioning approach to President Bush in the lead-up to the Iraq War. But many of those same journalists have, until recently, shown a comparable "ignorance is bliss" approach to Obama. The real complaint should be about journalists willfully taking sides without a foundation of empirical data.

Less time needs to be spent on Garin's complaint. Aside from Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton has run the most negative campaign of the primary season. It's true that Obama's operation has done its share of negative campaigning, but that does not mean it has been as negative as Clinton's. In this case, where the public does in fact perceive Clinton as having run the more negative campaign, we can refer to Arnold Schwarzenegger's own prior campaign acknowledgment that "where there's smoke, there's fire."

Blogger reactions to both posts after the jump...