Some of their harshest comments were reserved for the media, and particularly cable television hosts and pundits – a complaint the Clinton campaign has repeated for months.
From the day of Iowa’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, an annual Democratic fundraiser last fall at which all the candidates spoke, Obama, whose well-received speech was seen as a turning point in his campaign, became the “media darling,” Olafsen said. “Early on she was proclaimed the queen, and then he was crowned. And it became a case of don’t let anything get in the way of this train.” Obama was a blank slate, and Clinton was the caricature, Olafsen says, portrayed as “being difficult and bitchy – they love that word.
For a woman, it’s a fine line. Too much [strength] is bitchy and too little, you’re a weakling. She carried all of those caricatures as excess baggage, and that’s a heavy load.”
