Obama Learns to Use the Media

And quite skillfully I might add:

(CNN) — Hillary Clinton's campaign says it remains upbeat about the New York senator's White House chances, but rival Barack Obama said Saturday he would likely be treated differently if his campaign had suffered a similar string of losses as her's.

Asked in Ohio by a reporter if he would be treated differently had he lost as many contests as Clinton, Obama said, "Yes."

But Obama said he understands why the treatment is different, saying it would require a knockout blow for Clinton to quit because she's "part of the Democratic network in Washington."

"Look, I'm the challenger, I'm the upstart," he said. "I'm the insurgent — she's, she's the champ. She's part of the Democratic network in Washington and, you know, if you're the title holder then you don't lose it on points. You got to be knocked out."

Very nice, he uses his agility to not only cast himself as being porrly served by the media (an false charge but hey, it's politics) and smack Shrillary as an insider at the same time. The boxing reference will apeal to men as well.

He does have a point, if Obama were in Clinton's position, he'd be counted out and the media drone of Hillary's inevitability we've been witness to over the last four years would've continued unabated. But now that the paradigms have changed, the media still count Hillary in the races and are setting up the "comeback kid" scenario (and continue to protect her as well).

Ah, the fun of it. The Democrats as a whole and the media in particular are on untrodden ground, they have a minority candidate beating a woman candidate that they've backed for years. They can't quite bring themselves to count out the carpet-bagging junior Senator from the Empire State but would easily have counted the untested and ambiguous senator from Illinois if the situation were reversed. There are signs that the MSM is ebbing in their support but it's not complete yet.