Daily Reminder: January 11, 2012

This week, back in 2010, a book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin providing an inside look at the 2008 presidential campaign hit the bookshelves with a resounding “thump!” among pols and pundits alike.

Harry Reid, then the Senate Majority Leader, found himself apologizing for something he was quoted as saying in Game Change. The passage:

[Reid's] encouragement of Obama was unequivocal. He was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” as he said privately. Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama’s race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination.

A Democrat, Harry Reid merely issued a half-hearted apology and let it be. The mainstream press returned the favor. Contrast the media’s reception of Reid’s comments and apology with those of Republican Trent Lott, who was forced to abandon his post as Senate Majority Leader in December 2002 after reciting an off-color joke at a party celebrating the late Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday.

300 DAYS UNTIL ELECTION DAY
375 DAYS UNTIL JANUARY 20, 2013