Analyze This: Cable News Gets Loose with Its Labels

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Daniel Libit of The Politico reports that "among the things that the proliferation of TV cable news has wrought is slackened standards for what constitutes a political strategist," a term which has lost its meaning now that it is "used as a catchall tag for a whole host of people with varied -- and often peripheral -- backgrounds in electoral politics." Jane Fleming Kleeb, a so-called "Democratic strategist" -- a label which she openly admits is misleading -- says "this group of make-believe strategists has become something of a pundits club, with participants working together to compensate for each other's experiential or informational deficiencies." Bona fide strategist Ed Rollins "blames the cable news networks for 'dumbing down' good analysis in the name of multitudinous voices." Independent TV analyst Andrew Tyndall "thinks the 'mislabeling' is also the product of the media's unyielding 'bid to seem as though they are inside the horse race.'" Fleming Keeb says, "If you had a bunch of us in a room and asked if we are political strategists, I think you would get a lot of laughter."