Who died and left Tim Russert in charge?
Very early this morning, after many voters had already gone to sleep, the conventional wisdom of the elite political pundit class that resides on television shifted hard, and possibly irretrievably, against Senator Hillary Clinton’s continued viability as a presidential candidate.
The moment came shortly after midnight Eastern time, captured in a devastatingly declarative statement from Tim Russert of NBC News: “We now know who the Democratic nominee’s going to be, and no one’s going to dispute it,” he said on MSNBC.
As she so often does, digby sums it up best:
Who the fuck anointed Tim Russert as the final arbiter of anything? His job is to analyze the political landscape not declare the decision as if he were some kind of Roman Emperor giving a thumbs up or thumbs down. It’s bad enough that these gasbags put those thumbs on the scale as hard as they do, but actually taking the initiative to say when the race is over is even worse. To coin a favorite Village phrase, “it’s not their place.”
There’s a story about LBJ and former Washington Post and Newsweek editor Ben Bradlee. Bradlee was at Newsweek (this was in 1964) and he predicted LBJ was going to remove J. Edgar Hoover as director of the FBI. The White House called a press conference and Bradlee expected to see his prediction announced. Instead, LBJ gave a testimonial about Hoover and exempted him from mandatory retirement. Moments before the announcement Johnson told press secretary Bill Moyers to call Ben Bradlee and tell him, “Fuck you.”
I’m eager for Senator Clinton to drop out, but not right now.