Word: press
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...Press critics can decide how much truth is in Clinton's claims that the media put its thumb on the scale for Obama. But taking the fight on purely political terms, the verdict is clear: Clinton's jabs at the media gave her a focus and energy she lacked through Obama's long string of February victories. The battle fired up her supporters, it offered an explanation for her losses, and it may have inspired some journalists to turn up the heat on her opponent to prove their fairness. (It didn't help that in the days before Texas...
...question is: What took her so long? Biographers have traced Hillary Clinton's beefs about press bias back more than 30 years, to Bill Clinton's first, failed, campaign for Congress, when reporters could have been more diligent in knocking down false rumors about Clinton's anti-Vietnam activities. Yet, while her husband has been grousing about the media's coverage of Obama for months, the candidate was passing out chocolate hearts to her press corps as recently as Valentine's Day. This, too, is part of the saga: since the early 1980s, Hillary Clinton has tried charming the press...
...That was the nation's first look at what has become a signature of Clinton family politics: When trouble comes, jab the media. Deep as their resentments are of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," as Hillary Clinton dubbed their political foes, the family's opinion of the press is even lower. "All reporters do is observe and criticize," Clinton biographer John F. Harris wrote, summarizing their views. "They don't do anything." Political enemies at least stand for something. As polls routinely show, much of the American public shares this low regard, which makes the media an ideal enemy...
...downside: Battling the press is a short-term tactic, not a long-term strategy. You blast away for weeks, the smoke settles...and the press is still there. After Clinton's strong showing Tuesday, the limelight is likely to swing back her way. She won't look as much like an abused underdog, and her coverage will feel less elegiac. Nothing dims the glow of sympathy like success...
...Meanwhile, holding the people who cover you in such low regard makes it more difficult for the Clintons to persuade fair-minded journalists of just about anything. If the press isn't worthy of any respect, then there's no reason not to manipulate it with impunity - but no important journalist wants to be manipulated. You can scold Ted Koppel for chasing trash - once - but you pay a price when the "trash" turns out to be true. No one likes being played for a chump...