I’m not talking about the MSM “turning” on Obama, which did happen, to some extent, in the run-up to March 4. was the subject of 69 percent of all campaign articles last week, generating more coverage–most of it negative–than any other candidate in any other week this year. But that squall has passed (despite the candidate’s carping). The big problem for Obama going forward doesn’t have anything to do with reporters ragging on Tony Rezko, flogging the Austan Goolsbee flap or sharpening their stories in shame after

Case in point: Pennsylvania. Check out the post-March 4 coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Politico or even on this blog. All three news sources skipped straight past the next two contests on the Democratic calendar–Wyoming on March 8 and Mississippi on March 11–to preview the Keystone State, which doesn’t vote until April 22. (And we weren’t alone.) I even called Pennsylvania “the next contest,” as if the Magnolia and Equality States had vanished from the schedule. Why? The promise of drama. Some MSMers might disagree, saying we’re right to focus on a bigger state where more people vote. But we didn’t foam and froth over Illinois or New York. The truth is, a state’s size is less important to the press than its unpredictability. Most pundits expect Obama to crush Clinton in the heavily-black Mississippi primary and organizable Wyoming caucuses, just as they expected Obama to win his home state and Clinton to win hers. But no one is quite sure how Pennsylvania will pan out. And so we gravitate toward uncertainty and conflict.

Are we being fair? Not really. At this point in the race, emphasizing unpredictable states clearly favors Clinton. After dropping 11 straight contests in February–all of them somewhat predictable, and therefore (fairly or unfairly) not devastating–the former First Lady is now determined to prove that she can “come back.” According to her campaign, that doesn’t mean overcoming Obama in states where he’s strong, like Wyoming and Mississippi. It means picking an unpredictable state–Pennsylvania–and establishing that as the next plot point. In sports, this would seem ridiculous; the Dolphins earn an “L” when they lose to the Patriots, even though no one expects otherwise. But politics isn’t football, and Clinton’s strategy plays perfectly into the media’s need for the ebb and flow of narrative.

Obama’s storyline, on the other hand, is static. I am winning by 100-plus delegates, he says. No matter what happens in the upcoming contests, I will still be ahead in the delegate count by the end of regulation. The superdelegates will have no choice but to crown me as the nominee. Chances are that’s true; Clinton will have an impossible time catching up, no matter which states she wins. But if the MSM based its campaign coverage around the “Obama narrative,” Tuesday’s dramatic March 4 Clinton wins would amount to nothing more significant than a six-delegate gain, and Obama’s “likely” victories in Mississippi (two delegates) and Wyoming (nine delegates) would completely cancel out Clinton’s “likely” margin in Pennsylvania (53-47 for 10 delegates). Move along, people. Nothing to see here.

Unfortunately for Obama, the press doesn’t feed on “more of the same.” It needs the promise of plot twists–in other words, news–to keep churning. This isn’t right or wrong. It isn’t about advertising dollars. It isn’t even conscious. It just is. And it’s exactly what the Clinton campaign is providing. I said at the start of this post that the media is “sort of” biased against Obama. What I meant is that there’s no real bias against the candidate himself. (The MSM will always go tougher on Clinton.) Instead, it’s a bias–systematic, institutional and unavoidable–against the story he wants us to tell. Faced with a choice between a page-turner and Gertrude Stein, reporters and pundits will write the former every time.

And so we continue to churn away.

UPDATE, March 7: Reader maggie22 has a very smart take on this phenomenon. I disagree that the media is “choosing to focus on the contests where Clinton should win”–early on, Obama ALWAYS trails Clinton, the more familiar candidate, and it’s reasonable to expect him to make up those margins in large, diverse (and, yes, uncertain) states like Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. Plus, many of Obama’s biggest wins (think caucus states) have less to do with demographics than with his campaign’s ability to mobilize small, passionate groups of supporters–which undercuts maggie22’s 50-50 demographic argument. But on the whole, I think she (he?) is largely correct. Take a gander:

The media isn’t choosing to focus on the uncertain contests. It’s choosing to focus on the contests where Clinton should win. Pennsylvania is a chief case in point. It has an Ohio demographic and the added handicap for Obama of being a closed primary. He’s going to have a hard time closing the margin to under double digits. The only difference between PA and MS is that Clinton has succeeded in convincing the media that the states that matter are the ones that she happens to have an advantage in. Obama inadvertently plays into this by pursuing his strategy which is to contest everywhere. So it looks like he expects to ‘win’ in PA. In fact, he’s campaigning to prevent her from picking up the big chunk of delegates that comes with a blow-out.

Obama’s strategy is a good one in that it respects all 50 states, and is clearly playing to the delegate count – since the aim is to never let her have a blow-out. But PR-wise it has backfired on him in a bit. He contested OH and TX both of which had strong Clinton demographics. He succeeded in keeping them from being blow-outs. But the perception is that he “lost”.

(To see this, check out the Obama campaign’s spreadsheet on how the primary season would play out. They have OH and TX marked as LOSSES for them.)

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The media is promulgating a bunch of other Clinton narratives that just don’t withstand scrutiny. Why is there pressure on Obama to show that he can win her demographic and not pressure on Clinton to show that she can win his? Why do the big states matter more than what already registers in terms of the number of delegates assigned to them (e.g. IN + NC > PA but PA is the big deal)? Why should the popular vote matter when nobody has figured out how to fairly aggregate the results from the caucus states? Why do the choices of democrats in red states not matter as much as the choices of democrats in blue states (don’t red state democrats get a say in the national ticket)? etc. etc.

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The narrative as I see it is that there’s a near 50-50 split in demographics. Obama is winning because he has (a) more effectively translated his demographic into delegates than has Clinton and (b) because he has occasionally made some inroads into her demographic. That’s what he got for campaigning hard in all the contests that came up. She’s failed to exploit her advantages effectively and she hasn’t even tried to go after his demographic. Her only hope is to cherry pick ways of looking at the results in a way that favors her (red states don’t count, southern states don’t count, etc), and persuade superdelegates and the media that she’s the stronger candidate.