Rachel Maddow is maybe my favorite political commentator as far as any cable news show, or an extremely close second to her colleague Chris Hayes.
But she has led her broadcast -- twice now -- with a teeny tiny NPR station poll showing Clinton ahead of Sanders in Massachusetts. A poll that boils down to about 240-some-odd self-described likely Democratic voters. It appears they just called random people, rather than using any kind of voter database to focus on historically likely voters, which itself establishes the poll as close to useless. The show has blown up these really questionable numbers in a huge red banner kept on the screen for the length of the pieces.
Rachel claimed, loudly and repeatedly, that this is super important because there aren't any polls coming out of Mass, and this shocking new information could spell doom for the Sanders campaign.
But there are other polls out of Mass. They all show Sanders ahead, or a virtual tie. The Real Politics average at the moment is +.6 for Sanders.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/ma/massachusetts_democratic_presidential_primary-3891.html
Yet this is her big story for two nights running -- that Sanders suddenly way behind in Mass, and his whole campaign is therefore in doubt.
Something screwy is going on at MSNBC. It's been intermittent, but continual. Chris Hayes is now centering a huge portion of each show on Donald Trump. One night he literally ran Trump's empty chair at his tantrum-inspired solo event, and off-handedly mentioned Sanders was speaking live somewhere. For about 10 minutes, half the screen was devoted to Trump's. Empty. CHAIR.
I'm assuming there is some executive-level pressure expressing itself in various ways, offset and modified by the broadcaster's own proclivities and loyalties. Matthews swings a lot of clout there, and he clearly is heartbroken Clinton isn't running away with it as predicted. Regardless, the upshot is becoming a confused, less-than-totally-credible mess.
Clean up your act, guys. You're embarrassing yourselves.
= new reply since forum marked as read
