We are again being pounded by the Obama-clones to give up faith in Hillary and walk away from her campaign.

Do you remember New Hampshire? They got that wrong!

Do you remember Texas and Ohio? They got that wrong!

Do you remember Pennsylvania? They got that wrong!

Do you remember Indiana? They got that wrong, too.

Again and again the media plays into Obama’s empty promises and Hillary keeps fighting back.

We are the ones who can keep her working to win the nomination. Between now and Denver there are literally thousands of ways big and small that Obama can slip up (how many more Rev. Wrights are out there?) or Hillary can score a victory. Don’t let those opportunities slip away.

With all the media negativity, there is something you can do to feel better about this campaign, about yourself, and about Hillary’s chances of being our nominee. . .

Contribute. She needs money to compete in West Virginia. She needs you to tell her to keep working for us.

Here’s her web site: hillaryclinton.com. Please visit and give what you can. . .

– Rake

I manage five web sites, four blogs, one MySpace profile, two Twitter profiles, teach three online college classes, send out three email newsletters, run one Yahoo group and one Flickr site for fellow alumni, get about 1,000 emails, mostly junk, and 10,000 total visitors at these various sites each week.

With so many digital networks running in and out of my life, why do I feel out of touch? I am one big social network and yet I feel entirely antisocial.

The other night two MySpace friends said they were bored. Is that all this is? Boredom? I think it’s more than that, at least for me.

Remember when being connected meant having the family over for Sunday dinner, or going to the beach with your kids? Or playing cards in the kitchen til late at night with another couple, having a laugh and losing maybe 2 bucks?

When did I stop going out for dinner with normal, healthy grown-ups who could talk about politics or sports and not throw food at each other?

When did the women in my life all end up 20 years younger than me and have social histories that would make Britany Spears look like Mother Teresa?

When did I suddenly stop drinking good Cabernet and honest Chianti and instead decide that vodka on the rocks was a suitable dinner drink?

When did I start thinking that every TV news anchor, commentator, blogger, and political pundit was a whore, 20 IQ points dumber than me, and pathologically narcissistic?

When did I start defining my life by my favorite scenes in movies or a dozen old songs that I can’t remember the words to anymore?

When did I stop using language to reveal the hidden life of my soul and the lives of others, and instead start scribbling 200 word monologues about nothing on blogs that most people don’t bother to read, or if they do it’s just to tell me I’m full of shit.

I must be breaking some social networking rule because I haven’t read too many rants here about people feeling disconnected, out of touch, and totally baffled by the way things have turned out in this totally wired world.

It must be me. Old Rake. The Teddy Bear waking up from his long winter nap a little groggy and cranky.

Beckett said, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

Rake says, “I can go on, but I won’t.”

Instead, I’ll go checking my blogs and web sites and email accounts like a tired lobster fisherman, slowly cruising over the dark waters, wondering what I’ve caught at this hour of the night.

Most likely, it’s just dead fish and an old pair of sneakers.

My co-editor at the Quarterly, Frank Marafiote, also publishes Coaching News and Events, a marketing blog for executive, career, and life coaches. Yesterday he published a comment about the damaged business reputations that can result from misuse of social networking tools. For those of us in the political realm, we know full well that our “enemies” will find ways to inflict harm whenever and wherever they can. We’re used to it, expect it, and actively deal with it.

Not so with smaller businesses and professional practices. They tend to be less aware of the angry voices that might use social networking as a way to ruin their reputations and businesses.

Here’s Frank’s comment, a reminder to smaller companies to be alert for negative comments and some common sense ideas on how to deal with it.

How Social Networking Can Kill a Business.

Most of us take for granted the power of social networking to expand our contacts and gently promote our businesses.  We need to remember, however, that there is also a downside to this “empowerment.” The same tools that can be used in a positive way can also be used to damage our reputations and destroy our businesses.

The comment below about a restaurant was posted to a widely read forum in the community where I live. Most people are guessing that a disgruntled employee made the comment. Nevertheless, reading it certainly gives me some reservations (pun intended) about wanting to eat there.

The same types of things certainly were said by unhappy customers or employees years ago, but the number of people who heard it was very limited. Now, in almost an instant, the same comments have a worldwide audience. Because this restaurant operates in a tourist area, visitors doing informational searches about where to eat will very likely run into this “review.”

So what does this mean for coaching businesses and other reputation-based enterprises like ours?

First, we need to stay alert to what is being written about us. Just as you might check your credit report on a regular basis, you need to do a “reputation report” on your name and your business. You can purchase services that will monitor your business name and alert you whenever it is mentioned on the Web. You should also do your own frequent searches using the major search engines. By “frequent,” I mean at least twice a month.

Second, be proactive. That means staying in touch with your market and providing positive and helpful information via your blogs, press releases, Web forums, trade and business Web sites, etc. Stinging negative comments are less credible when they are read in the context of a positive news environment.

Third, react. In the case of this restaurant “review,” there’s a chance that by complaining to the webmaster the comment might be removed. If that is not possible, get third party endorsements — and your own — on the site as soon as possible. Don’t let the mud hang there on the wall with no counter-response. Otherwise, readers will assume it is true.

So here’s how one person damaged the reputation of a local business –

Top Ten Reasons Not to Go to XYZ Restaurant

10.) Drink are priced way to high even if they are doubles

9.) Lyn and Bob no longer own the place

8.) They have the same 12 specials on rotation all the time

7.) That peppercorn encrusted tenderloin special they sell for $25 is select grade beef not prime or even choice meat.

6.) The owners treat their long term employees as if they worthless

5.) Seafood that comes in on Friday will be either frozen and used the next weekend or packed in ice in hopes that they use it, they never throw anything away!

4.) I’ve seen rotting lamb chops that are green and smell like a horses a** be cooked and served to customers

3.) If you send something back there and it needs to be cooked it def. gets cooked in the microwave. The owner insists on it

2.) The walk-in cooler in the kitchen looks like the inside of a dumpster, its disgusting and should not be a place where food is stored

1.) The new ownership is clearly out to take advantage of the consumer and its employees. The food at best is mediocre, the management is rude, and it is just not the what the XYZ was or ever will be again. Lyn made that place her baby and these people are ruining a great local tradition!

Still hungry?

Although he spends more time that he should writing about politics and correcting graduate advertising papers for his students, my co-editor for the Hillary Clinton Quarterly, Frank Marafiote, also manages a thriving marketing and public relations consulting practice.

Along with other types of solo practitioners and small businesses, Frank is also deeply focused on helping mediators, counselors and coaches — people who help others — do a better job of winning new clients. As he explains it to me, helping the coach who helps the client helps the world become a better place — a more “Level Five World” as it calls it, where self-actualization and personal transcendence are more realized.

Well, here’s his “shameless” plus on Coaching News and Events, his blog for executive, career, and life coaches. What’s he selling? Nothing more innocuous than a free subscription to his marketing newsletter, The Marketing Taxi. The difference, Frank says, is that the newsletter sells a very potent and engaging connection between self-growth and business growth.

Here’s his news story:

I suppose a shameless plus once or twice a year wouldn’t test the loyalty of my readers too much. After all, my purpose is to help myself by doing something amazingly helpful to you.

The Marketing Taxi is a new marketing ezine targeted directly towards the people I work with every day — coaches, consultants, practicing professionals of all stripes (CPAs, attorneys, health care providers, mediators). Its goal is to help them achieve their unique vision of success as professionals and community leaders.

There are four aspects of The Marketing Taxi that make it unique among newsletters.

The articles we publish and the advice we give are geared towards small businesses with limited resources. While we often talk about retoolling successful approaches used in larger companies, we are also committed to giving you advice that must work in the small office, sometimes the one person office.

Second, from our perspective YOU ARE THE BUSINESS. Marketing the business means marketing you the business owner. So we will talk about you — your role, your dos and dont’s, the little things you can do to attract new customers using the power of your passion for your business and the primary draw. In the process you will become a more confident, more focused, better manager and leader.

Third, we understand that your relationships with your clients are very different from say, a replacement window business or cable company, or even your auto repair mechanic. The level of trust, honesty, and openness required for success far exceeds the typical business-customer relationship. We will delve into this more in The Marketing Taxi, but we believe it is the crucial perhaps the most important consideration in your business.

Finally, we believe that the work you have choosen do is a path towards your personal fulfillment and self-actualization. Not everything we do takes us to that special place of personal transcendence, what Thomas Moore calls the “life work” or “work of the soul.” But that’s where we strive to belong.

So, as marketing ezines go, The Marketing Taxi has a very special task and mission. For sure, you will read plenty of useful marketing tips and how-tows. But it’s all laid out for you for a very specific purpose, to turn you into “The Transcendent Marketer” if that’s were you want to go.

Let me invite you to suscribe. Just click on the link at the top of this page. Along with some other additional info, you’ll see you can get right away a copy of your free report: Creating Effective Press Releases in a Web 2.0 World. We also have an iron-clad Privacy Policy: your info is safe with us, and if you are not happy for any reason or just have too much to read, the unsubscribe process is simple.

So, where do you want YOUR business to go?

I hope you will join us for a unique experience that combines both marketing and personal achievement into one fascinating journey

Sincerely,
Frank Marafiote, President
Emerge Communications
Editor: Coaching New and Events
Editor: The Marketing Taxi

Not long ago, someone asked me if the media was out to “get” Hillary Clinton. The short answer is, “Yes.”

It’s payback time for the media. In a nutshell, even the most liberal in the press hated the Clintons: hated them because they played favorites, hated them because they were so successful, hated them because the Clinton staff treated the press like shit, hated them because they were no different with the media than their GOP predecessors.

Many in the mainstream media who had to climb over the Berlin Wall protecting Hillary and Bill fifteen years ago are still out there writing. Even those who were still learning how to write a lead got the message passed down to them: the Clintons eat shit because they treated us like shit. Pass it on!

After I was asked about this, I researched some of the media stories we did about First Lady Hillary Clinton for the Hillary Clinton Quarterly. This one I am especially proud of. I was just a researcher but we got great quotes from top of the line reporters like Margaret Carlson from Time, Bill Zwecker from the Chicago Sun -Times, Suzanne Fields from the Washington Times, and Susan Milligan, who now writes for the Boston Globe.

All these reporters spoke candidly to us about what it was like covering the Clintons. Their candor was both surprising and unsettling. And it was clear it was not an easy job: many reporters came away with sour feelings. As one of them told us, back then the Clinton press briefings were like “food fights.”

Candidate Hillary Clinton has suffered the backlash from events that took place ages ago. Given the cheap egos of so many journalists, I am not surprised. Most of them feel like second class citizens and are usually treated that way. As they say, “revenge is a dish best served cold.”

Here’s our story about Hillary and the media, and we’re sticking to it!

“She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not: Hillary Clinton and the Media”

The on-again, off-again love affair between the media and the First Lady is back on again, thanks in large measure to White House counselor David Gergen, whose public relations finesse has not only helped President Clinton, but has sweetened coverage of the First Lady as well.

For many observers, the First Couple’s recent trip to Japan for the G-7 economic summit clearly demonstrated the power of the White House to reshape public perceptions of a First Lady whose image had been teetering between that of an artificially-sweetened “Hostess With The Mostest” and a leathery “Hillary the Policy Wonk.” At last, some say, we’re finally seeing Mrs. Clinton as the multi-dimensional woman she really is.

Not coincidentally, relations with the media have never been better. And whether or not David Gergen truly deserves all the credit, some in the media believe it is his handiwork that has given both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton a second chance with the public.

Even those not normally inclined to think kindly of the Clintons seem impressed — at least for now. According to Suzanne Fields, a conservative columnist with the Washington Times, “There has been a decided change in public relations since David Gergen has been there, and he is serving both Hillary and the President well. Gergen gets an A+ for orchestrating the entire image of both Hillary and the President.”

Bill Zwecker, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, agrees: “I think it’s a total package and Gergen has improved her coverage as well.”

Whether it’s David Gergen or a learning curve that would have taken affect anyway, the First Lady’s press office has also been getting better grades from the media. Says Margaret Carlson, White House correspondent for Time magazine: “In the beginning, the press office in general was less accessible. As time has gone by, the White House is more open because not being open didn’t work for them.”

Adds Zwecker: “The First Lady’s White House staff has settled in now and are seemingly much more comfortable with what is obviously a huge job. They’re more confident, not as overwhelmed with the whole situation. The response now is excellent — they call you right back. All that translates into better coverage in the media, which means she’s going to be perceived better by the public, because we’re the vehicle by which it’s all distilled.”

Relations between the press and the First Lady have been on a roller-coaster ride from day one. Once the euphoria of the Inauguration wore off, positive stories with titles like “The Cult of Hillary” gave way to less flattering pieces, such as Michael Kelly’s coy dissection of Mrs. Clinton’s “politics of meaning” in New York Times Magazine.

According to Carlson, the problems started with the high expectations of the media. “We thought things might be different (with Hillary) than they were with Barbara Bush, who would never take a question and really answer it. She was totally scripted: it was ‘the lovely school,’ ‘the lovely hospital,’ ‘the lovely day care center,’ ‘the lovely literacy.’ We expected more from Mrs. Clinton.”

“They were naive,” says Suzanne Fields. “They (the press office) were unprepared for the press, they got scared very quickly. It wasn’t just the way they were protecting Hillary. It was also the way they were attempting — and not doing a very good job at it — to protect the President.”

Conversations with White House reporters suggest two major consequences of that initial rift between the press office and the media. First, it inhibited the media’s ability to get its job done: to have access to the First Lady, to obtain information about her, to be able to ask meaningful questions and write stories without fear of paybacks or retaliation. The second consequence — clearly an outgrowth of the first — was that Mrs. Clinton herself was being “Balkanized” — she was being chopped up into discrete, easily digestible pieces, when indeed she is more complex and integrated than the media made her out to be.

Like husband and wife in divorce court, both sides accuse the other. Less partial observers argue that there’s enough blame for everyone.

In a review of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in the July/August issue of the American Journalism Review, Jim Anderson provides an analysis of the authors’ “propaganda model” and their belief that government news is sifted through several “filters” before it ever reaches the public. “Reporters and editors — as well as the publications they work for — prosper or die on their ability to establish and foster a symbiotic relationship with sources, mainly in government,” explains Anderson. “Depending on how well they behave, reporters and publishers will be rewarded with inside stuff, or alternatively punished by deprivation of access.”

Although the Chomsky/Herman book was written specifically to address the issue of government control of foreign policy news, the notion of news filters is applicable to domestic news coverage as well. On May 8, in “First Lady’s Press Picks,” Washington Post media reporter, Howard Kurtz, wrote: “Reporters who are deemed friendly (to Mrs. Clinton) are getting plenty of access. Others are required to submit questions while the First Lady’s press office weighs their interview requests. And some publications are simply getting the cold shoulder.”

One publication in the doghouse for awhile was Newsweek, which had published a story mentioning the rumor that the First Lady had thrown a lamp at the President. “They let us know they were giving these interviews to Time and U.S. News as punishment, which seems a little petty,” Newsweek’sWashington Bureau Chief, Evan Thomas, told Kurtz.

Sun-Times columnist Zwecker, who had the dubious distinction of being the first to write about the lamp-tossing incident, told HCQ that he has suffered the consequences of that story as well. “I certainly felt the wrath of the White House both directly and indirectly,” says Zwecker. “I know that items were fed to other Chicago journalists that ordinarily might have been fed to me. It was a punishment for having written that story.”

While the First Lady’s press office might have been miffed for awhile, they seem willing to forgive, if not forget. “I have no problems now,” Zwecker says, adding, “I don’t fault them so much because that kind of reaction is true of every political operation.”

The First Lady’s press secretary, Lisa Caputo, in talking to Kurtz, denied any retaliation against Newsweek, telling him, “We give a lot of thought to the kind of interviews Mrs. Clinton does, given the constraints on her schedule. I do what any other press secretary does, just to get a sense of the story. That’s my job.”

Susan Milligan, who covers the White House for the New York Daily News empathized with the press office reaction to the lamp story and the way it was covered by Newsweek. She told HCQ, “It was a cheesy way of writing about a rumor. I don’t blame them (the First Lady’s press office) for being angry about it.” Milligan said she doubted that the granting of interviews with the First Lady is based on some kind of payback system. “I think there’s favoritism, but I don’t think it has to do with what you’ve written. It has to do with who you represent. The networks, the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times are always going to be favored in that regard. Those are the media outlets they can use the best.”

Milligan, too, has noticed a vast improvement between the media and the White House press office. “It’s gone from bad to good because they took George (Stephanopoulos) out. The chemistry is much less confrontational. Things had gotten really, really bad with George — briefings were like food fights. It was just a bad scene. They no longer presume that every question is an assault.”

Off the record, one reporter who covers Mrs. Clinton and the White House for one of the nation’s largest daily newspapers was more blunt in her comments about those shaky, pre-Gergen days. Fearing retaliation from Mrs. Clinton’s press office, she asked HCQ not to identify her. “I’m still trying to get an interview with the First Lady,” she explained.

Reporter X had just returned from covering the First Lady’s address at the University of Pennsylvania and spoke to HCQ for some 45 minutes, describing at length what she called the “shoddy treatment” of the national press corps by White House staff. “They never even answer the most basic questions, there are no fact sheets, no information about schedules, nothing.” She said it was the “arrogance” of the White House staff, however, that bothered her and other reporters the most. “I had one White House staff member tell me we (reporters) were acting pissed off because they made twice as much money as we did.” Clearly frustrated, she added, “The real irony is that a lot of us voted for the President.”

Was the treatment of the press corps affecting coverage? “What do you think?” she asked. “They believe they can go over our heads, go direct to local TV stations and newspapers and not have to deal with us. It worked during the campaign, but it’s not working now — people aren’t paying attention to the talk shows they way they were before the election. We’re here and we’re going to stay here and write our stories. When the shit hits the proverbial fan, those same reporters will have to write about it. Guess what we’ll be writing?” Not long after Reporter X vented her frustrations, the “Travel-Gate” story broke. As she predicted, the media went after that story like angry sharks shredding a wounded baby seal.

(We spoke to Reporter X again in mid-June, after Gergen had started working his media magic and asked how it was going. “Better,” she said. “A lot better.” Had she gotten her interview with Mrs. Clinton? “Not yet. Lisa (Caputo) told me they’d try to find time in the schedule. They’ve got a long list of requests.”)

Of course, media complaints about lack of access, “spin-doctors,” and favoritism are nothing new. Nor is the inclination of White House press officers to favor media outlets likely to view their client favorably an invention of the Clinton Administration. A love-hate relationship between the media and the White House is normal and should be expected. What is new is this: coverage of Mrs. Clinton is complicated by both a press corps and a White House press office that seem to be having trouble deciding how to report on such a unique First Lady.

“The press corps tends to view First Ladies in a one-dimensional way,” says Margaret Carlson, whose Time cover story on Mrs. Clinton, “Ascent of a Woman,” itself made news. “They see her either as traditional or as a raving, independent feminist. The press chose ‘B’ at first. What’s really surprising to me is that there are lots of people who really know better, but still for the purpose of simplicity or for having a theme cover just one side of her. Hillary is both.”

Bill Zwecker admits that while Mrs. Clinton might have been over-simplified by the media in the past, that is changing. “In the beginning there was so much emphasis on her as some kind of super-woman that there was short-shrift given to her other duties as First Lady — as official hostess, for example. We (the press) have been doing a better job of covering her in a more balanced way.”

Ms. Carlson, herself a mother and career woman, suggested to HCQ that one reason the press corps sometimes has trouble covering the First Lady is that “there are a lot of men in it.” Conceding that it’s “all new to us (women), too,” Carlson nevertheless believes it’s more difficult for male journalists to understand and relate to the First Lady. “I think men are much simpler creatures. They go to work and they’re at work. You don’t find out if they had children until their obit is written. Women are both traditional children-loving, child-centered, husband-caring, grocery-shopping, neighborhood-helping people, and they are trust-busting lawyers, tough journalists, and feminists.”

According to Carlson, it’s that diversity of roles, not a formulated White House media strategy, that best explains why the First Lady might appear one week on the cover of a traditional women’s magazine and talk about child-rearing and family issues, and the next week be featured in the political pages of news magazines such as Time discussing health care reform. “If somebody called me and was doing a story for Parenting magazine, I’d happily talk about my daughter and her soccer games,” Carlson says. “On the other hand, if American Lawyer calls and asks what it’s like to be a lawyer and a journalist, I’d talk about that aspect of my life, too.”

Mrs. Clinton is not the first First Lady to be “over-simplified” by the media, says Suzanne Fields: “That was true of Rosalynn Carter and Nancy Reagan, too.” Fields sees the one-dimensional portraits of Mrs. Clinton as the work of Mrs. Clinton’s handlers and special interest groups, not the media. “As a lawyer, Hillary drew attention and was brought into the limelight by feminists who wanted to make a big deal of her having a profession.”

Susan Milligan believes that if there is a new White House media strategy, its purpose is “to make it clear that she is a mother and a feeling person, not just the health care coordinator. Personally, she’s not as warm as President Clinton, one on one. That just isn’t her demeanor. They want her to have a somewhat softer image.”

Mrs. Clinton’s interview with Katie Kouric, says Milligan, was clearly an effort to “soften” the First Lady’s image, though from Milligan’s perspective, it didn’t quite ring true. “I don’t think she enjoyed answering those questions — she doesn’t like talking about her personal life. Even so, I got the impression they thought it would be a good idea to show that side of her.”

To Bill Zwecker, the First Lady’s media image is not as closely managed as some might think. “This White House is not as calculating as people assume, and that might be one of their problems. I don’t see them sitting around and strategizing about image. Clinton’s people are a lot more issue oriented than issue-management oriented. All the years with Nixon and Watergate formed a lot of journalists’ approach to life — we automatically assume everyone is out there spin-doctoring everything.”

If the love affair between the media and First Lady is on again, is it likely to stay that way? Says Zwecker: “I’m a great believer in the pendulum theory. It’s hard to find a middle ground — it tends to swing one way or another. It’s like a feeding frenzy in this business. If someone writes a story, everybody jumps on the bandwagon. If it’s negative, then everybody’s on that negative side. Then reporters start thinking, ‘Gee, we’re being too negative,’ and the pendulum moves back the other way and we tend to be too soft. We tend to be more controlled by that pendulum than we should.”

“It’s like a marriage,” says Susan Milligan about the media-White House relationship. “There’s always going to be ups and downs in the relationship. You’re practically living with each other. You’re bound to fight.”

Stay tuned, folks. This ain’t over. 
 

 The following news release was sent out today by the Hillary Clinton Quarterly –

The States Won by Hillary Clinton Control
63% of U.S. Gross Domestic Product.

Although Hillary Clinton is lagging in the total delegate count, after April 22nd’s impressive 10-point win over Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, she has added another economic powerhouse to her list of primary victories.

After doing an analysis of the Gross Domestic Product produced by each state, the states that Hillary Clinton has won contribute a whopping 63% of the total contested GDP, as compared to Barack Obama’s 37%.

Indeed, even if Obama won every primary still to come, he would still be several trillion dollars short of Hillary’s total.

The analysis was performed by Frank Marafiote, MBA, editor of the Hillary Clinton Quarterly using data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

“While many people have commented on Hillary’s ability to win large, industrial states, no one has specifically defined what ‘large’ means other than delegate counts or population,” said Marafiote. “Our analysis shows that these states are not only rich in delegates and voters, they are incredibly rich economically, at least in terms of their contribution to the U.S. economy.”

According to the analysis, most of Obama’s victories — with the exception of his home state of Illinois — have come in second-tier economic states.

“The significance of this data cannot be overstated.” said Marafiote. “These states are the economic backbone and future of this country. That is where Hillary is winning. Even though ‘total states won’ and delegate counts get most of the attention, Hillary’s almost two-to-one lead in states that contribute the most to our economy sends an important message to the Democratic Party.” 

* All dollar figures are in millions. For this analysis, U.S. Territories were not included in the totals.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, data released 6/7/2007.

I’m delighted that Katie Couric told us
About ‘Bama’s drooping black phallus.
Because in PA
He didn’t get his way
Michele is buying lots of Cialis.

Reason to cheer, Hillary fans! This just in via Fox News:

A new national poll shows Barack Obama’s once-healthy lead shrinking to a hair’s width, suggesting his defensive performance at the Wednesday debate in Philadelphia may have hurt him.

The fresh numbers come as Hillary Clinton calls on Obama to quit whining about his supposed unfair treatment at the debate. Her campaign has already claimed Obama is just trying to cover up an “awful performance” by saying he was hammered with petty political questions.

The Gallup daily tracking poll, taken from Tuesday to Thursday, indicates viewers may have had similar assessments.

The poll showed Obama with just a 3-point national advantage over Clinton, 47 to 44 percent. A few days ago, Obama had an 11-point lead in the same poll.

The new poll surveyed 1,231 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, and had a margin of error of 3 points.

The reaction of the Obama campaign and his media posse to the Philadelphia debate is another instance in which they expect affirmative action for their campaign, or they start whining about how unfair everything is.

ABC News held one of the best debates ever. It was a solid, appropriate mix if character and policy issues. It was also the first time that Obama was not allowed to wriggle away from answering the tough questions he has tried to duck for month.

Obama wants special treatment, a kid gloves process in which he gets to malign and attack Hillary Clinton, but has immunity from questions about his own history, his voting record, his campaign tactics. Treat him like any other candidate and he screams racism and calls in his “posse” — Oprah and Clyburn, for starters — to defend him.

As someone who has followed Democratic primaries for at least 30 years, I have never witnessed such a whiney, complaining candidate as I have Obama. Like his supporters, the Untouchables, Obama picks and chooses the rules that he wants to play by. If he doesn’t like the rules of the game, he either ignores them or complains about them.

What Obama really wants is affirmative action for his candidacy — a little “helping hand” to guide him into the White House.

Like good Democrats, we might even give it to him. While we’re at it, why don’t we just give him food stamps, rent subsidized housing, free child care, free health care, and free tuition to Harvard, along with the Democratic nomination AND the presidency? Perhaps he will finally feel he has a level playing field?

Don’t count on it. Given his track record as a candidate, I suspect he would then whine about Congress and accuse them of racism when none of his legislation gets passed.

They just can’t handle it! These are men who tremble at the thought of a strong, multi-dimensional woman like Hillary Clinton. So they do only what they know how to do: ridicule, taunt, belittle, and tease.