Who is making Clinton "inevitable," the media or Clinton herself?

I've been increasingly disturbed by the media coverage of the election campaigns. Months have gone by and still no substantive coverage of the issues of the most concern to people: the war is barely talked about except that Bush has handled it wrong; no coverage of the health care proposals; no questioning about how to handle the economy and the sub-prime housing meltdown; and no coverage about education. Actually, it would be fair to say that there really hasn't been much coverage of this campaign at all (except for the horse race.)

To make matters worse, the media, or rather CNN in this case, has been working with the Clinton campaign to select question for the debate. Before it was just a suspicion of mine, because what I can see with my own eyes, now there is evidence to back it up.

From The Nation by Ari Melber:
"Clinton Under Fire for Planting Fake Questions" —

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign came under fire over the weekend for planting fake questions at town hall events, as all the Democratic candidates gathered in Iowa for the state party's pivotal Jefferson- Jackson Day dinner.

The Clinton campaign arranged for a college student to ask a "canned" question at an event on Tuesday, which was first reported on Friday by Patrick Caldwell, a writer for Scarlet and Black, a student newspaper at Grinnell College. The student, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, said a senior Clinton staffer told her what question to ask after Clinton finished her remarks.

And the other campaigns are making their feelings known about this issue...

From LA Times Blog by Andrew Malcolm:
"More reaction to Clinton's planted question" —

Speaking to reporters in Nashua, New Hampshire, the freshman Illinois senator said planting rigged questions among crowd members is “not a practice that we’ve ever engaged in and it’s not a practice that we ever plan to engage in.”

Over the weekend, as reported here Friday night, Clinton staff were forced to admit that they had planted at least one question with a student at a public forum in Newton, Iowa, last week. To watch a video of the rigged question and Clinton's perfectly formatted response, click here.

On Saturday, former Sen. John Edwards said his campaign does not stage questions and criticized Clinton, saying, "That's what George Bush does."

This is not good. Whoever becomes president next will inherit a lot of power because of the one sitting in the chair right now. Do we really want the next president to have power issues? And this is a power issue. She has a lot of power and she is using it to push herself forward. We will not counter-act the effects of the Bush Administration and their conservative cohorts by becoming just like them. This has a Karl Rove feel to it. Are we going to allow the media and the Clinton campaign ram thier choice as the nominee down our throats? Maybe not. If we look at the poles for the Iowa Caucus as of 11/02 - 11/18, and given +/- 3% differential, the top three candidates are in a statistical dead heat.

From RealClearPolitics Average:

Date	Clinton	Obama	Edwards	Richardson	Biden	Spread
11/02 - 11/18	27.2	24.8	21.8	10.3	4.2	Clinton +2.4

And the ABC/Washington Post Poll has Obama ahead this week:

Date	Clinton	Obama	Edwards	Richardson	Biden	Spread
11/02 - 11/18	26	30	22	11	4	Obama +4.0

So much for the media dictating the outcome.

I don't know anything about Iowa and its people; they might as well be from Mars as far as I know. But this I do know, the American people need to act like grown-ups this time. This isn't a high school election for senior class president. This is serious business. The next president will have a hell of a mess on their hands to clean up. We need someone who is trustworthy and has a sincere concern for the country and not just their own personal ambitions.

As for the substantive issues, it looks like we will have to become our own reporters and dig for the truth. We have to do our homework as citizen journalists and help each other, because it doesn't look like the media will.