By Tracy Dingmann
Okay, so the Albuquerque Journal is a newspaper and newspapers have editorial pages, where the ownership of the paper traditionally gets to express its undiluted opinion.
I get that.
So, I realize that it is the Journal’s perfect right to publish an editorial today (subscription required) that amounted to a mocking, scolding missive to Democrats in the wake of Wednesday’s GOP upset in Massachusetts.
Called “Senate Upset Applies Brakes to Lawmakers,” the lengthy editorial takes an apocalyptic view of Republican Scott Brown’s defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley:
If President Obama hopes to accomplish health care reform and other initiatives, he needs to view the GOP upset in Massachusetts as a wake-up call of immense magnitude.
This seems like a bit of an oversell, but I guess the Journal’s owner and editors are entitled to their (unsurprisingly) harsh view of the Massachusetts election.
What really knocked me off my chair was this passage:
The Massachusetts’ upset is a game changer. Now Obama and the Democrats need to reassess their strategy if they are to be successful on any front. It’s also a harsh reminder that in politics nothing can be taken for granted, and it takes more than a cocky attitude and rousing speeches to govern. (Emphasis mine.)
Really? If you are President George Bush, you can land a jet on an aircraft carrier and airily declare that combat in Iraq is “over.” You can ignore the wishes of millions of Americans who seek to end the Iraqi conflict for real by simply calling yourself “the decider.”
But if you are President Barack Obama and you ask lawmakers to reform the nation’s broken health care system, the Albuquerque Journal declares you “cocky.”
Go figure.
At least they didn’t say uppity.
Umm…..exactly! I guess they decided to come up with a new code word.
The New York Times article announcing it would institute a pay wall for frequent readers mentioned the Journal as one of the few papers that has a universal paywall alongside the Financial Times and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Now, the FT is a niche publication seen as important enough to its readers that a paywall makes sense. They can afford it and would pay for the unique information it provides. But I cannot understand how the Journal or the paper in Arkansas see themselves as possessing that kind of inelastic demand in readership. It does not make financial sense, especially given how little actual news is in the effing rag.