From Amanda Terkel in the Huffington Post (2/1/12):

Newt Gingrich Florida Primary Results 2012: The Candidate Who Refuses to Operate Within Reality

...From the beginning to the end of Gingrich's election night party, the campaign and its supporters seemed to be operating outside of realities, denying the importance of this large state's primary contest and insisting that victory was going to be theirs as soon as voters opened their eyes and truly saw Florida winner Mitt Romney as a "Massachusetts moderate." Gingrich, in fact, never even congratulated Romney on his win.

I'm a fan of Terkel's work, but this genre of punditry is unfortunate. At the moment (Real Clear Politics, 2/1/12), Gingrich is the top choice of Republican voters nationwide, according to surveys by Gallup, NBC/Wall Street Journal and Rassmussen. True, Romney has major advantages in terms of fundraising, organization and party support.  But if Gingrich chooses to believe that being the candidate more Republican voters want makes him the candidate most likely to be nominated, that hardly makes him delusional.

Even if he were well behind in the polls, but still wanted to give voters a chance to hear his message and decide whether or not he deserved their support--is that really a reason to ridicule him? More than 90 percent of the nation's voters have yet to have a chance to take part in the nominating process; it's a little early to mock anyone for not having the same foresight as the political pundits who know the results are already a foregone conclusion.

As best I can tell, the labor battle in Wisconsin is a big story--and maybe the biggest labor story in years. But as Amanda Terkel reported at the Huffington Post, that doesn't mean you're going to see union advocates on the Sunday chat shows. Terkel noted:

A union official told the Huffington Post that when none of the Sunday shows' producers reached out to them to book a labor representative this week, several unions started to pitch the shows with affected workers and local and national leaders who they felt could discuss the protests. The official said the response from the shows was essentially "thanks, but no thanks."

Terkel's original post has been updated to reflect the fact that NBC's Meet the Press has announced that it will add Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO to its roundtable. The show will include an array of Republicans and conservatives: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, John McCain (because how could you have a Sunday show without him?), Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.*). Liberal MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell will also be on hand.

Shutting out labor is nothing new. A FAIR survey in 1995-96 found:

John Sweeney and Thomas Donahue, candidates for the presidency of the AFL-CIO, were the only guests who were labor leaders. Instead of worker representatives, the shows invited the CEO of United Airlines, the CEO of Continental Airlines, a Goldman Sachs analyst, retired basketball stars and political satirists.

Last week on ABC's This Week the roundtable segment was titled (on the show's website) "Roundtable: Unions vs. Tea Party." They did manage to find a Tea Party congressman (Steve Southerland), along with right-wing regular George Will and right-leaning reporter Jonathan Karl. On the other side? Democratic strategist Donna Brazile.

(Corrected: Emanuel is a Democrat)

Amanda Terkel of Think Progress (6/18/09) has posted video and transcript of an MSNBC segment in which Joe Scarborough asked CNBC's Jim Cramer about "a stunning poll the New York Times has this morning suggesting that Americans are more concerned about deficits than stimulus":

Cramer claimed that Americans aren't buying into healthcare reform right now because "it just means tax increases, and there's got to be someone who pays for it." According to Cramer, the solution that "everybody" wants is for Obama to "go away": "But until we get the economy moving again, I think everybody wishes that Obama would just kind of go away for a little bit."

If Cramer looked closer at the poll, it also shows that 57 percent of the American public approve of what Obama is doing on the economy overall. Of course, Cramer is someone who claimed that Obama's policies have resulted in “the most, greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a president” and is known for his irresponsible financial cheerleading (e.g., “Bear Stearns is not in trouble“).

Terkel has to wonder if, in actuality, "maybe it's not Obama who Americans want to 'just kind of go away for a little bit.'”

Last night (3/23/08) Bill O'Reilly aired the results of his stalking expedition against Think Progress blogger Amanda Terkel, who had dared to question (3/1/09) the appropriateness of O'Reilly speaking at a fundraiser for a foundation for rape survivors in light of his suggestion (Radio Factor, 8/2/06) that a "moronic" rape/murder victim had invited assault by her drinking and the way she was dressed.

In the segment, O'Reilly presents the controversy sparked by his speaking a dinner for the Alexa Foundation as a conspiracy masterminded by "elements at NBC News" led by NBC president Jeff Zucker, whom O'Reilly refers to with more than a whiff of paranoia as "the man behind the curtain." But the person O'Reilly went after directly was Terkel, who the segment referred to as a "a villain" and "just dishonest" and accused of producing "perhaps the worst garbage" about O'Reilly's suitability as an anti-rape advocate.

O'Reilly's chief stalker, Jesse Watters, apparently followed a vacationing Terkel for two hours before badgering her to explain "the Mel Gibson component to Bill's analysis"--the context that O'Reilly's remarks about "moronic" murder victim Jennifer Moore had supposedly been yanked from. The blogger did not immediately recall this aspect of the three-year-old broadcast, but when she subsequently looked it up, she discovered the connection that O'Reilly drew between the actor's anti-Semitic tirade and the murder victim's death (Think Progress, 3/24/09):

I think it's safe to say that if Mel Gibson didn't get drunk, he wouldn't be in this terrible situation he finds himself in. And if a young woman, 18-year-old Jennifer Moore of Harrington Park, N.J., didn’t get drunk, she’d be alive today.

Hateful as O'Reilly's blame-the-victim rhetoric about Moore was, O'Reilly has stooped even lower, suggesting that an 11-year-old boy who was kidnapped and molested over a four-year period didn't escape his abductor because he enjoyed his captivity (O'Reilly Factor, 1/15/07):

And the question is, why didn't [Shawn Hornbeck] escape when he could have?... The Stockholm syndrome thing, I don't buy it.... The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted...I think when it all comes down, what's going to happen is, there was an element here that this kid liked about his circumstances.

Women invite assault by the way they dress; kids like to be raped. To quote Bill O'Reilly out of context: "It doesn't get much more evil than that."