After FINALLY giving a sharp and inspiring debate performance, especially necessary after last week's debate wrecked his NH chances for 2nd (I can say this because I am a Clarkie), the media such as Hardball have just decided to ignore Clark. This is a travesty of massive ramifications at this point in the race. What follows is my email to Hardball. If you want to do something about Clark getting shafted out of the coverage, please write something yourself. Also, if any of you have the email addresses of the AP reporter covering the debate or the pool reporter doing it, please let me know, as it looks like we're losing the media battle there as well, despite Clark's fine form in tonight's debate.
--------------- Dear Chris,
I am a little astounded that your panel immediately after tonight's debate did almost no analysis of General Clark's performance, which, if we count the number of applause lines, was the best among the non-Sharpton candidates. Considering the degree to which the media's judgment that Clark performed poorly at last week's debate hurt Gen. Clark's New Hampshire chances, shouldn't his big improvement (especially vis a vis Edwards, who in the opinion of your own analysts was "bland" and unimpressive) count for a bit more coverage than a single brief mention by Pat Buchanan?And I also don't understand your justification for only including as the "frontrunners" in South Carolina (and therefore the only candidates worthy of extended analysis) Kerry, Dean, Edwards, and Sharpton.
As the following link attests, the most recent repuatable polls indicate that Clark is running either 2nd behind Edwards (Survey USA, Jan. 24-26) or 4th ahead of Dean and a statistically insignificant 1% behind Sharpton (American Research Group, Jan. 23-24):
http://www.dcpoliticalreport.com/2004/SCPoll.htm
The most recent reputable polls indicate that Clark also holds leads in Oklahoma and Arizona and is a tight 2nd in NM, AND has the most cash on hand after Kerry. Indeed, EVERY indication shows that he is in a much better position to survive Feb. 3 than Dean, who is out of cash and who just lost his campaign manager and had to replace him with a message-undermining Washington insider.
Please: if you have a cogent reason for this disrespect to General Clark's candidacy, I am open to hearing it. But to write off Gen. Clark as not a contender in SC, especially after this strong debate performance seems to me unjustifiable, and at best the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that responsible media commentators should want to avoid. ---------------