So Where is the Story?

I happened to be in my car at 8:00 am today and I listened to CBS news on the radio. The news broadcast at that time is about three times longer than the others during the morning; it is claimed to be a full report on national news. The top story was about yesterday's primary elections; I heard that Mitt Romney won easily (no surprise there) and was just about at the number of delegates needed for nomination. That was it; no other coverage of the primaries was included. I have to say that I was amazed. There was an enormous story in those primaries, and CBS was choosing not to cover it.

So what is the story? President Obama came close to losing the Democrat primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky. In Kentucky, "uncommitted" got 42% of the total vote and carried more than half the counties in the state. In Arkansas, an unknown businessman named John Wolfe got 41% of the vote and also carried a large number of counties across the state. Indeed, outside Little Rock, the vote in Arkansas was nearly tied.

These vote totals are incredible. Obama is having trouble carrying the votes of DEMOCRATS in these two states. The last time a sitting president had trouble of this sort was 1968 when Lyndon Johnson almost lost the New Hampshire primary to Eugene McCarthy. Johnson won and held McCarthy to 42% of the vote. The result was nevertheless so shocking that Johnson withdrew from the race. In 2012, the media won't even tell us about the story. CBS is just protecting Obama from having to explain why Democrats in these states refuse to support him.

I know that neither Kentucky or Arkansas is likely to vote for Obama this year. So what! In 1968, New Hampshire was unlikely to vote for Johnson. It did not matter. Also, remember all those primary nights earlier this year when we heard about how Romney had problems with very conservative voters in his race with Santorum et al? The smarmy talking heads on CNN nearly had a nervous breakdown as they breathlessly told us of this "glaring weakness" for Romney. Some of the Republican base was voting for candidates other than Romney; how can he possibly win in November -- ot so they told us. But now we have some of the Democrat base voting against Obama. These are not votes for another candidate; they are purely protest votes against Obama. Where is CNN now? Will we hear David Gergen or or Gloria Borger opine at length about how this shows Obama's weakness? I doubt it. Certainly, they said nothing of the sort last night as the votes came in.

The media ought be ashamed of itself for covering for Obama.

UPDATE: I have now checked the other major media to see coverage of this story. MSNBC, not surprisingly, mentions the results and then explains that they are the result of local racism. ABC has only a sentence in the middle of a long article which says that Obama did not do as well as might have been expected.