Obama vs Clinton

The Rude Pundit writes about why he prefers Clinton to Obama: Besides the substantive issues,

The Rude Pundit still believes the rotting corpse of a skunk could beat John McCain in the general election, but if anyone could lose it for the Democrats, it'd be Hillary Clinton. Because, despite what Ann Coulter says about conservatives running from McCain, somewhere in some cellar in some Little Rock or DC mansion, there's a machine that's been whirring its gears on low for the last seven years that's getting greased up and ready to kick into full speed once more, and it's aching to chew up Clinton, ready to get sticky with her blood and bones, for once it's really chugging, that fucker needs to be fed, ready to spew once again to willing, slavering media dogs who lap up that anti-Clinton vomit like it's kibble from Walter Cronkite's ass.

The thing is that, if it's Clinton vs. McCain, the press is gonna be fellating McCain with all the suction force of a Hoover on deep pile because of his come-from-behind victory, because he has been fondling their balls in the back of the Straight Talk Express since 2000. Because everyone is a product of their learned behavior, and if the Clintons react to the Obama speed train like it's run by Richard Mellon Scaife because that's what they know, the media will turn on Hillary Clinton even more so, because that's what they know.

I can't fault the Rude One too much for his opinion, but I think it's incorrect.

The press is "gonna be fellating McCain with all the suction force of a Hoover on deep pile," no matter who wins the Democratic nomination. Yes, the press has been going after Clinton for years, so many of the negatives are already in place. But the press will have plenty of time to destroy Obama, just as they destroyed Al Gore and John Kerry, neither of whom are Hillary Clinton.

I'm not going to vote for either one in the primaries. If conditions were as they were in 2000, either one would make a fine President, but after eight years of Bush, neither have the will or the ability to make the kind of substantive changes I think the country needs. Still, there are good reasons, substantive reasons to prefer one candidate over the other.

But if you pick a candidate based on how unfairly you think the media will bullshit and lie about one candidate over another, you yourself are buying into the premise that the media's bullshit and lies should control elections. And once you buy into that premise — especially if you buy in consciously and deliberately — you are just as surely enslaving your vote to the corporate media as if you were a brain-dead Fox News viewer.