How much trouble is Barack Obama in over the extremism of Jeremiah Wright? Enough that Dem strategist Donna Brazile has been reduced to arguing that as black preachers go, Wright is relatively moderate. Enough that the normally affable Brazile got a bit short with Time editor Mark Halperin, he of the infamous memo to his subordinates during the 2004 presidential campaign while serving as ABC News political director.

The comments came during the panel discussion on today's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on ABC.

View video here.

Ignoring National Journal's recent finding that Barack Obama had the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate in 2007, Time Magazine's senior political analyst Mark Halperin, appearing on Thursday's American Morning on CNN, claimed that both Obama and John McCain were "centrists" as he explained New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's recent decision not to run for President. Citing Bloomberg's intent to run only if both major parties nominated extreme candidates, Halperin explained: "He ended up with two guys who are centrists." (Transcript follows)

It appears now that Barack Obama is the favorite to win the Democrat nomination for president, media are reluctant to use Hillary Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy" tag.

Apparently, the new strategy when someone on the right says something someone on the left doesn't like is to blame it all on the "Rough Republican Attack Machine."

At least this was the way Time editor-at-large Mark Halperin defended Michelle Obama from talk radio and conservative blog reaction to her disgraceful remarks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer imaU2fan):

On the PBS talk show "Charlie Rose" Thursday night, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham declared that Hillary Clinton was right that it was a "great night for Democrats" and a bad night for Republicans. He scoured Mike Huckabee as an embarrassment: "Do you really want to see if a Southern Baptist minister who took two days to find out about the National Intelligence Estimate about Iran is going to be your standard bearer in a world at war?" He also declared it was "a rather odd thing for the Republicans of Iowa" to "say to the world that the strongest possible president is a Governor of Arkansas who does not have a great deal or any real foreign policy experience." Meacham seemed to have no sense of irony that the same words were easily spoken of Bill Clinton in 1992, and Rose didn’t call him on it, even though they joked "how many presidents does Hope, Arkansas get in one lifetime?"

Meacham also never thought it was odd that the Democrats of Iowa said to the world that the strongest possible president is a man with three years experience in the U.S. Senate who said (a) that he would meet with America-hating dictators and strongmen like Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez without preconditions and (b) then wildly swung back to suggesting he would bomb inside Pakistan to strike al-Qaeda. Meacham, who honored McCain’s courage for supporting the surge in Iraq, never mentioned Obama thought it was a mistake. When it came to the Democrats, Meacham sounded like he was offering a toast:

Hillary Clinton has no right to complain that her friends and flatterers in the media are rough on her. But when Clintons hit rough passages on the road to victory, this is what Clintons do: complain. That’s too meek. They whine.

But she obviously feels wronged by the news media when her polls begin to slip and she looks at her Barack Obama’s worshipful press clips. In fairy-tale terms, Obama is Snow White, and Hillary is the vain and wicked queen peering into the mirror and demanding to know "who is the fairest of them all?"

One last tidbit from State of the Union Night: On Tuesday night’s Charlie Rose talk show on PBS, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and ABC political director Mark Halperin and White House correspondent Martha Raddatz took turns sticking forks into President Bush and saying he was done. Meacham said Bush attempted to show he’s "actually involved with reality, that he’s a reality-based figure." Halperin agreed that the president "wanted to show that he had a reality-based presidency, but I don’t think he did. I think the war is over politically." Halperin even suggested that if Congress could vote by secret ballot, both Republicans and Democrats would vote to end the war – and vote for Bush’s presidency "to end today."

Sen. John Kerry's "botched joke" was just a "classic freak-show story" unworthy of front-page play -- but Sen. George Allen's "macaca" was worthy of wall-to-wall coverage. That is apparently the opinion of the Washington Post's John harris.

This week Harris, the national politics editor of the Post, and Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News, are participating in "The Breakfast Table: An E-Mail Conversation About The News of the Day" at the online magazine Slate. (Harris and Halperin are also co-authors of "The Way to Win: Clinton, Bush, Rove and How to Take the White House in 2008.")

The national press corps is justifiably looked upon with suspicion by conservatives and in dire need of reform if it wishes to regain their confidence, especially since that's a sound business strategy.

Those are the words of ABC News political director Mark Halperin who on last night's "O'Reilly Factor" provided a resounding endorsement of the idea that the elite American media needs to stop being liberally biased. (Video available in WMV or Real. MP3 audio also available, transcript is after the jump.)

In a followup to an Oct. 19 internet posting in which he sarcastically implied that reporters take their cues from Democrats and liberal activists, Halperin stated that the press should use the 2006 elections as an opportunity to regain the public trust:

"In this country, we've got these old news organizations, the major networks, ABC, where you [O'Reilly] used to work, the New York Times, the Washington Post. These organizations have been around a long time, and for 40 years conservatives have looked with suspicion at them. I think we've got a chance in these last two weeks to prove to conservatives that we understand their grievances, we're going to try to do better, but these organizations still have incredible sway, and conservatives are certain that we're going to be out to get them. We've got to fix that."

This is too extraordinary for words – not the possibility of it happening, but that anybody in the drive-by media would even suggest it. After all, if there ever was proof that the press are colluding with Democrats, here it is.

ABC News's "The Note" reported on October 19 that members of “The Old Media” are “giddy with excitement over the prospect of the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Mehlman machine losing," and are having “secret morning conference calls with Howard Dean and George Soros” to discuss how they “can keep the meta-narrative (‘The Democrats are going to beat Bush and run Congress!!’) going for another 19 days, without interruption.”

This is akin to Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift actually saying something bad about Bill Clinton. Yet, there it was, in black and white. Please be advised that the writers by-lined included Mark Halperin, David Chalian, Teddy Davis, Tahman Bradley, Sarah Baker, Catrin Jones, Erica Anderson, and Daniel Steinberger. As such, this wasn't one writer's opinion:

Reports Drudge on himself:

ABCNEWS, WASH POST REPORTERS: 'DRUDGE RULES OUR WORLD'

Here they come...

In the stampede of books attempting to make their mark this season comes THE WAY TO WIN, by longtime political reporters Halperin and Harris.

The political director of ABCNEWS and the national politics editor of the WASHINGTON POST make it official in their new insider tome on DC politics and how it's played: The four words in every newsroom and campaign headquarters are: Have you seen DRUDGE?

MORE

Instead of exploring the accuracy or inaccuracy of former President Clinton's claims during his temper tantrum directed at Chris Wallace in an interview aired on Fox News Sunday, the ABC and NBC evening newscasts on Monday suggested a larger strategy to motivate Democrats. ABC anchor Charles Gibson framed the event: “When asked about efforts he made to get Osama bin Laden, the former President got angry. Was he really mad or was he using anger to make a larger point?” Reporter Dan Harris proposed: “Unlike Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry, who many believe failed to effectively combat efforts to distort their image, the Clintons believe Democrats have to push back hard.”

NBC anchor Brian Williams turned to David Gergen who rationalized the tantrum: “He'd just come off a terrific week as ex-President and raised over $7 billion for worthy causes, walked into an interview with Fox with Chris Wallace that he thought was going to be at least half about his initiative. And then he thought he got sandbagged by this question...which echoes the conservative criticisms.” Gergen predicted: “It's going to be a rallying cry for Democrats because Bill Clinton has sent a very clear message to Democrats. If you get bullied, if they try to roll over you, you've got to punch back and punch back hard. That's the way to win.”

In "Voting to Kill, How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership" (Simon & Schuster, $15.95) Jim Geraghty has created a handbook for how Democrats can regain power (not that many will read it, or take the lessons to heart if they do), or how Republicans can maintain their current advantage. Geraghty, a former mainstream journalist, describes in precise detail both the reasons for Republican success since that awful day in September, and the self-defeating actions of the Democratic party since.

President Bush is an even greater threat to our civil liberties than that bête noire of the left, Richard Nixon. That's Morton Halperin's conclusion in a Los Angeles Times op-ed of today, Bush: Worse Than Nixon.

Halperin was once a name in the news. In 1969, then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger named Halperin to the NSA. But soon thereafter Kissinger suspected it was the dovish Halperin who leaked to the NY Times the fact that the US was secretly bombing Cambodia. The FBI began tapping his phone, and Halperin was soon gone from NSA. Perhaps Halperin's biggest claim to fame is the fact that Pres. Nixon put him on his 'Enemies List.' A red badge of courage, no pun intended, off which a person can no doubt eat for a lifetime in liberal circles.

Halperin remains active politically, serving as a senior fellow at the 'Center for American Progress.' As detailed by the invaluable Discoverthenetworks, CAP is a George Soros-funded organization founded on the risible notion that American colleges and universities are dominated by . . . conservatives."

Writes Halperin:

"It's hard not to notice the clear similarities between then and now. Both the Nixon and Bush presidencies rely heavily on the use of national security as a pretext for the usurpation of unprecedented executive power.