Hi guys-

Sorry I'm delayed in posting. I was detailed to another assignment last week, but producer Martin and I are back covering the youth vote and are geared up to begin a fresh batch of stories.

I've been thinking about this for the last few days....and it stems from a story I covered last week....Bill Clinton just won't let the race issue go. He told a Philadelphia radio reporter, "I think they played the race card on me," after the reporter asked about Clinton's comments comparing Obama's South Carolina win to Jesse Jackson's in 1988.

Is Clinton kidding-why did he take the bait and revive a story that had gone away?!

I wonder--Why won't Bill Clinton put a sock in it and stop messing up Hillary's efforts to stay on message? I ask this question of practically every Democrat I'm able to corner. "What‘s he thinking" and "why won't he stop talking about Jesse Jackson, the race card or even his wife's Bosnia flap?" I ask. The answer I get has always been the same: "he's out of practice." Huh? Clinton has forgotten what it's like to campaign, to be in the spotlight or be held accountable for his words?! He's one of the brightest political minds--how on earth could he have become so clumsy in less than eight years?!

Finally, I found an explanation that makes sense.

Bill is befuddled by new media realities (YouTube, bloggers, and embedded reporters) which provide that unforgiving warts-and-all coverage that didn't exist in 1992 or even in 1996. Come to think of it, when Clinton ran CNN was the only cable news outlet and MSNBC and FOX News weren't even up and running until the mid-1990's! Ah, so much has changed since he was the young candidate. Shows like Colbert Report and Jon Stewart weren't in existence. This is how many people get their news today and network news isn't watched like it once was.

Perhaps the most agonizing for Clinton was the embedded reporter. Did you know that TV outlets had reporters embedded with Bill Clinton? Yes, Bill. Not just Hillary, McCain, Obama, Huckabee and the rest but Bill had his own embeds, too, even though he wasn't a candidate. Following Bill started after the Jesse Jackson controversy. Our former embed Cristina Corbin explained:

"Embeds have added a whole new dimension to election reporting because they're uniquely positioned to catch all candid moments--on the stump or behind the scene--and make them available--quickly--for everyone to see."

Ryan Lizza, who wrote "Bill vs Barack" for the May 5th The New Yorker, says Clinton was caught off guard.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2008/05/05/080505ta_talk_lizza

"Adjusting to the modern, gaffe-centric media environment has been wrenching. At most of his Pennsylvania stops, the national press was represented mainly by a pair of young TV-network "embeds," whom Clinton regards not as reporters but as media jackals who record his every utterance yet broadcast only his outbursts, a phenomenon that has helped transform him into a YouTube curiosity and diminished him-perhaps permanently. "It's like he's been plucked out of time and thrown into the middle of this entirely new kind of campaign," the adviser told me. Jay Carson, a senior Clinton campaign official and Bill's former spokesman, said, "Because of the way he is covered, the only thing anyone ever sees is fifteen seconds that is deemed by the pundits to be off message."

Fifteen seconds that will forever live on the internet.

Related articles:

Clinton a victim of youTube

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6555285.html?desc=topstory

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0429/p08s01-comv.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/us/politics/29bill.html?ref=us