Many of the newspapers that have hailed Hillary Clinton’s primary victories this week as “historic” are the same ones that took a hard pass on her when she first ran in 2008.
“Clinton makes history: Claiming nomination, she’s 1st woman to lead major party ticket,” the Dallas Morning News’ front-page read Wednesday morning.
The Los Angeles Times’ front page read, “A LOCK ON HISTORY: Clinton claims Democratic nomination with primary wins — and a nod to a long struggle for women’s rights.”
“Clinton basks in historic moment,” said the Chicago Tribune.
The San Jose Mercury News’ front page described Tuesday evening as the night that Clinton “made history.”
The gushing, laudatory language used this week by newspapers to describe Clinton’s White House bid stands in sharp contrast to how many of them brushed off her first attempt to “make history.”
Of the top 10 most-circulated newspapers in the United States, the Houston Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, the Dallas Morning News and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution all endorsed then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., over Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.
“Clinton’s return to the White House that she occupied for eight years as first lady would resurrect some of the triumph and argument of that era,” read the L.A. Times’ endorsement of Obama. “Hillary Clinton’s election … would drag into a third decade the post-Reagan political duel between two families, the Bushes and the Clintons. Obama is correct: It is time to turn the page.”
The Dallas Morning News endorsement said at the time, “Americans are tired of divisive, hard-edged politics. Democrats would inspire a refreshingly new approach by choosing Mr. Obama as their 2008 candidate.”
“Hillary Clinton in moments of crisis hasn’t been an ennobling sight. Her reliance on her husband, the less-than-presidential Bill, to trash-talk Obama reaffirms that the Clintons do whatever it takes to prevail,” said the Chicago Tribune. “Think what you will of the war, but Sen. Clinton was an enabler when that was popular. In Kerryspeak, she was for the war before she was against the war.”
Things have changed, apparently, as many of these papers are now calling “historic” the candidate they once passed over as old news.
This week, Clinton “carved her name in history,” the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday.
The New York Times and the New York Daily News, however, get points for consistency: They appear just as excited today for Clinton as they did in 2008.
Over at cable news, the Clinton marveling was much of the same.
CNN’s Jeff Zeleny referred to Clinton claiming the nomination Tuesday evening as her “history-making moment.”
At MSNBC, NBC News special correspondent Maria Shriver implored the network’s viewers to pause and soak in the momentous occasion.
“[T]his is a moment and I hope we take a moment — I hope we pause not only to think about how this is historic and unprecedented for her, for women, but about all the people that made this moment possible,” she said, “all the women who went before her, all the women whose shoulders she stands on and I think that this is a big moment for the country, for anybody who has had a mother or a daughter or a sister and I think she deserves that moment.”
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Pictures courtesy the Newseum.
