Barack Obama is President, Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House, Harry Reid is Senate Majority Leader, Bill Clinton is doing the television circuit to revive his reputation, most journalists are still hopelessly in the tank for the current White House resident, and the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza is concerned that the Democrats don't have a voice to counter Republican talking points.

This is almost as silly as a New Yorker losing sleep over the Yankees not having enough money to field an allstar team next year.

Regardless of the apparent absurdity, such was Cillizza's point in a blog posting at WaPo's The Fix (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's "Hardball," invited on California Senator Barbara Boxer to dismiss the increasing number of townhall protestors opposed to Obama's liberal agenda as the "angry, and "noisy," "well-dressed middle-class people in pinks and limes...Brooks Brothers Brigade." After playing brief clips from the townhall protests Matthews devoted the first half of his show to knocking down their legitimacy, something Boxer actually instructed Matthews to do, as she urged the MSNBC host: "You, you in the media have to take a look at what's going on here. This is all planned. It's to hurt our president and it's to change the Congress." To which Matthews suggested the grassroots revolt should be ignored, as he depicted the protestors as stooges of the health care industry.

MATTHEWS: Do you think the health insurance companies that have made money for years on health care are the bad guys here? Do you think they're behind these so-called Astroturf demonstrations? That they're not really grassroots. These Brooks Brothers attacks on these congressional meetings?[audio available here]

Before the Boxer interview, Matthews invited on the Politico's Jeanne Cummings who also pooh-poohed the demonstrators:

The Washington Post has published a glowing article about likely incoming AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka (photo), titled "Trumka Hopes to Mend the AFL-CIO." Writer Chris Cillizza asks in the very first sentence of his Monday Fix story, "Can Richard Trumka reunite the labor movement?"

Cillizza portrays Trumka as genuinely puzzled over the reason for the big split in the labor movement:

With Trumka's election virtually ensured, the central question is whether he can heal the rift that occurred four years ago when the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters (among others) left the AFL-CIO to form a new labor coalition known as Change to Win.

Trumka, in a recent interview with the Fix, was puzzled over the reasons behind the fracture. "First they said it was because we did too much political action [and] that obviously wasn't the case since everyone spent a lot of time on political action," he said. "Then they said we didn't spent enough time on organizing."

Regardless of the reasons for the split, Trumka says his background prepares him well for the task of reunification. Elected as the head of the United Mine Workers in the early 1980s, Trumka helped unite warring factions within the group and bring it under the AFL-CIO umbrella. "Over the years, I've had a fairly successful record of bringing people together," he said.

Update/Closing thoughts (14:34):  Hearst columnist Helen Thomas continues to make a cartoon of herself in her using her perch to parrot ultra-left-wing talking points. Her question today was on why President Obama wants to send troops into Afghanistan to "kill more people."Without doubt it was the loopiest left-wing question posed today. Oddly enough, given her history of bias, one of the best queries today came from April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks, who questioned the wisdom of pegging hopes of economic recovery on so-called "green jobs."

About to live-blog the White House daily press briefing. I'm focusing chiefly on the questions from the journalists. I'm watching via Fox News.

13:42: Gibbs: our e-mail system isn't working so well, apologizes for that to press corps. 

Questions from reporters follow:

13:44, female reporter: Can you describe a little more fully about Amb. Rice's comments on mid-east diplomacy

13:45, female reporter: So you can't say when the diplomacy [with Iran] will begin or how?

13:46, Chuck Todd, NBC News: When are you guys going to announce a housing plan? Where is the money? Is it part of TARP?

13:47,Todd's followup: Does that mean it will not be part of the $350 billion?

13:48, Todd: Going to encourage banks to lend more?

The election is over, but quite clearly the Palin Derangement Syndrome suffered by many in the mainstream media isn't.  This morning's CNN Reliable Sources was typical.  Joining host Howard Kurtz to discuss Sarah Palin were Beth Fouhy, an Associated Press political reporter, Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik, and Julie Mason, the Washington Examiner's White House correspondent.  Mason opined: "I don't think she helped herself at all this past week. I think she actually probably made it worse."  To Zurawik, the Alaska governor's recent interview with NBC's Matt Lauer "shows you how in a way, deviously clever Palin is in trying to repair her image."  Then it was the AP reporter's time to take a few shots:

FOUHY: Well, I think what we learned is that she is extremely ambitious. I guess we already knew that, but she's as ambitious as ever despite the brutal campaign that she herself described that she went through. But she's also pretty unprepared.

As media outlets across the fruited plain float the notion that Sarah Palin hurt John McCain's chances of winning the White House, the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza will break with the herd on Sunday to dispel this nonsense.

Imagine that.

As the last of his "5 Myths About an Election of  Mythic Proportions" slated for Sunday's print edition but already available at the paper's website, Cillizza parted with his fellow journalists who believe "McCain made a huge mistake in picking Sarah Palin":

Say what you will about President George W. Bush, but I don't recall him ever mocking an elderly widow in his pronouncements.  But Barack Obama couldn't get through his first press conference as president-elect without doing just that.

Answering a question from Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times as to the presidents he has consulted during the transition, Obama took a gratuitous jab at Nancy Reagan, who was recently released from the hospital after breaking her pelvis in a fall.

BARACK OBAMA: In terms of speaking to former presidents, I've spoken to all of them that are living, obviously President Clinton--I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any séances.

View video here.

Regardless of what Barack Obama said in Denver this evening during his Democrat presidential nomination acceptance speech, it was a metaphysical certitude most mainstream media members would love it.

Such appears to be the case with the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza who quickly posted his opinions concerning the junior senator from Illinois' moment in the sun at the paper's The Fix blog:

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post's "The Fix" blog executed an example of political gymnastics so amazing for its twisting of reality that it boggles the mind. He actually turned comments by Barack Obama from a dissing of "small town" America to one highlighting how mean Republicans are. You heard me right. Obama's comments had absolutely nothing to do with the GOP, yet Cillizza was somehow able to take his derogatory comments against the American heartland and turn it all into a discussion on how Republicans will attack the Democrat candidate! Talk about a bending over backwards to use an Obama gaff to attack Republicans, this one takes the cake and shows how in the tank for Obama Chris Cillizza seems to be.

So, as you may be aware by now, at an appearance in San Francisco where Obama was talking to some far left-wing California donors, he basically said that small town Americans are racist, gun-nuts who are religious fanatics and who just don't get it.

Despite his war wounds, can Bob Kerrey still kick Chris Matthews' butt? We might soon find out, because on this evening's Hardball Matthews lumped Kerrey into a group of Clinton sycophants he derided as "castratos" and a "eunuch chorus."

Chris was kvetching about the way a variety of Hillary Clinton supporters including Kerrey have lined up to take shots at Barack Obama. In endorsing Hillary yesterday, the former Nebraska senator went out of his way to draw attention to Obama's Muslim background.

View video here.

"CNN's 'Reliable Sources' is one of television's only regular programs to examine how journalists do their jobs and how the media affect the stories they cover." -- from CNN's "Reliable Sources" website [emphasis added].

When it comes to "how journalists do their job," the story of the week was Wolf Blitzer's spectacular failure to do his. Going into Thursday's debate, the big question was how Hillary was going to deal with the inevitable grilling over her flip-flopping on the issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. But when Blitzer finally got around to the issue, well into the debate, he didn't bother to ask a single follow-up question to Hillary's terse "no" answer.

So surely Reliable Sources's host Howard Kurtz would put that question squarely on the table on today's show, right? Wrong.

Chris Matthews can't get enough of John Edwards' brutal-but-funny anti-Hillary ad, playing it twice during this evening's "Hardball." Set to the Blue Danube Waltz and based on clips from last week's debate, the theme is Hillary's double-talk on Iraq, Social Security and immigration [her triple-toe loop on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants].

But in the three-cushion game that is presidential billiards, two of Chris's guests surmised that the ad, in taking down Hillary, would likely redound to Barack Obama's benefit.

View video here [includes the Edwards' ad].

Looking to sample the political opinions of regular Americans? What better cross-section than the denizens of MSM newsrooms! That seems to be Mike Barnicle's attitude, at least. The former Boston Globe columnist-turned-MSNBC contributor is guest-hosting for Chris Matthews on this afternoon's "Hardball."

Chatting with guests Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post and Holly Bailey of Newsweek, talk turned to the topic of Americans' desire for political change. At one point Barnicle made this observation:

MIKE BARNICLE: The force for change that's out there, if you talk to regular people, people like me, people like you, the idea that they want a change is a very powerful force.

View video here.