After winning yesterday’s Democratic primary in Mississippi, Sen. Barack Obama last night appeared on television to thank his supporters.
A rousing victory speech in a sweaty auditorium before thousands of swooning citizens of the Magnolia State?
Nope.
An interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN—the Characters of Cable being as much Obama’s constituents during this coming six-week voting lull as any citizen of any state. Obama acknowledged his primary win, expressing his gratitude “to the people of Mississippi for their wonderful support,” on CNN’s Blitzer-helmed “Special Coverage of the Mississippi Primary.”
With no actual voting scheduled until April 22 and therefore several weeks with no clear, universal campaign news “hook,” (and still all that air time to fill—MSNBC even has a new show, “Race to the White House With David Gregory” set to launch next week ) the Blitzers and Crowleys, Matthews and Mitchells, and Humes and Camerons of the world will be left more than ever to their own devices to decide what’s “news,” how to focus their campaign coverage, which clip from the trail deserves continual-loop status on any given day. (They’ll get some direction, as always, from campaign press releases, emails, Matt Drudge, etc).
The upshot? Brace yourself for more horserace, more trivia, more intense veepstakes speculation and even more time devoted to that unedifying cable favorite: split-screen dueling campaign surrogates.
