Media coverage of the 2008 presidential election identifies immigration as a key issue for the U.S. electorate--even though, according to most polling, it does not rank as a top priority for voters.

CNN's Republican debate on November 28 opened with a full 35 minutes devoted to the issue of immigration. Washington Post columnist David Broder (11/15/07) referred to "illegal immigration" as one of two major "icebergs ahead for the Democrats" in the upcoming presidential race (ex-President Bill Clinton being the other purported shipwrecker).

Columnist and CBS correspondent Gloria Borger (U.S. News & World Report, 11/10/07) declared immigration a "killer issue," and that Democratic candidates "had better get started" on a solution: Independent voters are unhappy that nothing has been done on the matter, and anyone who wants to be president needs to keep independent voters happy." Borger approvingly quoted Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who thinks the time has come for a "welfare moment"--an allusion to Bill Clinton's pledge to "reform" welfare in 1992.

By the time the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries passed in early January, there had been several distinct cycles in the media coverage of the fight for the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton went from inevitable nominee to also-ran to comeback kid in the space of a week, for example, while Barack Obama was transformed from hopeful newcomer to sure-thing front-runner in one evening.

One media trend remained remarkably steady, though: the press corps' hostility to the John Edwards campaign.

Edwards' anti-corporate rhetoric was clearly off-putting to many pundits and reporters, who were shocked that the sunny optimist they covered in 2004 transformed into a serious critic of money-driven politics who talked passionately about poverty. Rather than engage his arguments about corporate control over the political system, the media caricatured Edwards for having a large house, a brief stint working for a hedge fund, and his expensive haircuts (the "three Hs," as they would become known in the mainstream press--see Extra!, 11=12/07).

Edwards' establishment-challenging rhetoric on economics and trade policy would be easier for the media to denounce if the public didn't seemingly agree with him (at least insofar as it expresses itself through opinion polls). So the press has generally either scorned Edwards as a phony or dismissed him as irrelevant.

Leading up to the New Hampshire primary, the storyline on the Democratic side was the disastrous state of the Clinton campaign. Her loss was a given; it seemed the only considerations were the margin of defeat and whether or not she would even continue running at all. The day of the primary, the Washington Post reported (1/8/08) that a second loss to Obama "would leave the New York senator's candidacy gasping for breath," and declared that Clinton's vow to stay in the race



Clinton, of course, won the primary--surprising the pundits and contradicting the polls that journalists unwisely use to set the tone of so much of their coverage. In the aftermath, the media were left asking what went "wrong" with the numbers. As the front page of USA Today declared (1/10/08), "For Pollsters, N.H. 'Unprecedented.'" (This isn't so, actually; the USA Today story included a state pollster who noted that pre-election polls in 2000 vastly underestimated John McCain's victory over George W. Bush--e.g., New York Times, 1/30/00.)

Corporate Media’s Green Politics
“That’s going to be a major part of CBS next year. We’re seeing a very robust amount of money. We like the fact that there are a lot of candidates. And we like a lot of candidates with a lot of money. We do not want election reform.”
—CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves on political advertising (Forbes.com, 12/4/07)

Snarking Up the Wrong Tree
The Washington Post (12/6/07) reviewed a John Edwards TV ad that asked, “Do you really believe if we replace a crowd of corporate Republicans with a crowd of corporate Democrats that anything meaningful’s going to change?” Since the ad couldn’t be proven false, the Post instead struck the popular media pose of sneering at Edwards for being a wealthy person who advocates for the poor: “In this narrative, the former plaintiff’s lawyer and hedge fund adviser casts himself as the populist outsider who’ll take on greedy corporations.” Actually, there’s nothing at all unusual about a plaintiff’s lawyer taking on greedy corporations; that’s largely what they do—and it’s why they’re so despised by corporate media (Extra!, 3–4/04).

No Job? No Trouble