I totally disagree with this statement..”The media thus had an enormous amount of time to strategize how it was going to attack, malign, berate, and brutalize her through the primaries…to hand the nomination, and presidency, to Obama instead.”
Hilary was the media darling, no media attacks or hard questions whatsoever, but that changed over night when Edward Kennedy backed Obama. Suddenly Hilary was death. It was like watching FR take over the NYtimes and WAPO (which no doubt delighted me) . I could not believe the attacks that suddenly came out. His assessment is totally wrong, Obama was a no where candidate until that moment.
I think you’re half wrong about that. Obama won the early primaries which put him insurmountably ahead of Hillary, who came on strong at the end.
The press was enthralled with the very idea of the first black president much more than with the first female president. Hillary was thought to be both an appendix of Bill and the boss of Bill and too independent for much of the press.