If Obama IS the Media Darling, people will more than likely support and vote for the Underdog which would, in this case, surprisingly be John McCain!

The more readers and viewers they have, the more comments and posts that blogs are drawn in to analyze the ludicrous bullsh!t they spew, the more encouragement they get to continue doing it.

It's positive reinforcement of the most simple kind.

Main steam American is more aware of this unfairness with the media than you might think and this awareness does not brain wash the voters in to voting for Obama

However, He is not even progressive.  He is not for Universal Health Care, or for women.  He is an underhanded liar, and he hangs with radicals (who, btw, are not progressive).  His economic policies are out of the 30's and his foreign policy is out of the 50's.

He's got Wall Street and the Hedge fund managers so far up his backside, when he blows his nose dollar bills come out.

He is Republican lite- check out his vote on the FISA bill.  He picked Joe Biden, whose vote on the war was the same as Hillary's.

You wanted him - you got him.

They wouldn't be doing so if they didn't believe that it provides them with some advantage in their campaign against Obama.

The media is unlikely to ever attack Obama in the way they consistently attack the Clintons, but, their willingness to attack the Clintons does Obama no favors. It detracts from and obscures the message his campaign hopes to put forward -- both positive messages in support of his campaign and negative messages aimed at the McCain campaign -- and diminishes the Democratic brand.

The Obama campaign has done a good job of marketing Obama -- but their efforts have mostly been successful in terms of niche, rather than mass, marketing. The Obama campaign's marketing has been brilliant in terms of two important (especially in the Democratic primary) markets; affluent, hip social liberals, especially young people. And, of course, African Americans. In terms of brand identity, he's Billabong. And that's cool. But you need a much broader, not so cool, brand reach -- like that of Macy's, Nike or Target, if not WalMart, to win a national election.

The support he is getting from that broader market -- who never heard of Billabong and wouldn't relate to it if they had -- those voters who don't show up at his mass rallies or wait for his text messages -- isn't based in the Obama brand, it is based on the Democratic brand. A brand that, whether Obama's most rabid supporters like it or not, relies heavily for any positive reputation it has, in terms of success, competenence and recent achievement, on the accomplishments of the Clinton administration.

For those who embrace the Obama/Billabong brand as cool and something they can relate to (including much of the media), the Clinton/Macy's image is a turn off and something to be derided. Unfortunately, to win, Obama is going to have to attract a huge number of voters who just simply aren't that cool or hip -- and who feel derided every time the Clintons and their achievements are derided.

However, before we feel too sorry for John McCain lets still remember that he still gets more favorable coverage than Obama.

Per Frank Rich

George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs documented in its study of six weeks of TV news reports this summer, Obama's coverage was 28 percent positive, 72 percent negative. (For McCain, the split was 43/57.)

What I do believe is that a combination of less unfavorable coverage of Hillary along with the public pushing back against the Obama phenomenon had a greater effect on Obama popularity losses in the latter part of the  primaries.

The argument still does not sit well with me for a number of different reasons that have already been discussed.  And I've really tried to tell myself to only take on the things that are most explicitly divisive within the context of the party itself, things directed at Clinton.

This is directed at McCain.

Eh. Have at it.

But I can say while by some measures it continues to be an asset, it is not... using Dowd here, in the constant push and pull rollercoaster of a decision that remains very difficult for me, is not an asset for Obama for at least one voter.

Media darling in the rest of the media, including print?  Not at all.  Not in the regular broadcast networks' news programming.  Not at the major papers, where it's probably somewhat even right now.

CNN is about 50-50, afaict, despite just hiring a couple of Repubs for political coverage, and despite Dem-denigrating Gloria Bolger.

Media darling?  George W. Bush is the all time winner there, by far.

Reagan comes in second.

Obama, only in the context of his primary race, was a MD for a ltd time and for ltd purposes.  

Now that we're in the GE, the coverage is probably actually slightly favoring McCain by about 60% favorable -- once we add in traditional network coverage and all the millions the old 3 networks still reach, plus all the highly negative things about McCain that either don't get reported by the MCM or are severely underreported.  

Still, it's not nearly as bad as what Kerry received of course, about 75% negative.

You seem to have missed the Center for Media and the Public Affairs study of McCain vs Obama TV news coverage, showing that McCain gets far less negative media attention than Obama, now that Obama is more visible in the news:

Study Finds Obama Faring Worse On TV News Than McCain

Obama replaced McCain as the media's favorite candidate after New Hampshire.  But now the networks are voting no on both candidates.... Since the primaries ended, on-air evaluations of Barack Obama have been 72% negative (vs. 28% positive).  That's worse than John McCain's coverage, which has been 57% negative (vs. 43% positive) during the same time period. ...Obama ran even farther behind McCain on Fox News Channel's Special Report with 79% negative comments...