How deep are MSNBC and its parent company Comcast in the tank for the Democrats? So deep that even the New York Times [!] has headlined an article "Welcome to the MSNBC, Er, Democratic Convention." [H/t Mediaite]
The article details how MSNBC personalities were treated like rock stars by adoring Dems. Even more telling is this: "Four years ago, there was open anxiety inside MSNBC over having the unabashedly partisan Keith Olbermann anchor convention coverage. But the era of liberal hand-wringing appears to have passed." Translation: in the tank and proud. Comcast's servicing of the Dems doesn't end with adoring coverage. It also translates into cold, hard cash from Comcast execs. More after the jump.
2012 Democratic Convention


Comparing the RNC and DNC conventions on Friday's NBC Today, MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough declared a knockout for Democrats: "...if we're going pound for pound, round for round, this wasn't Ali versus Frasier, this was Muhammed Ali versus Chuck Wepner...It was ugly..." The liberal crowd assembled around Scarborough at a bar in Charlotte all cheered and applauded the statement. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Scarborough's boxing reference was to a 1975 fight when Wepner went 15 rounds with the heavyweight champion Ali before losing. On the conventions, he argued that Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden "all hit home runs...all hit it out of the park," while in Tampa, "you had a Republican convention that was trying to figure out how to love Mitt Romney."
Mercifully, the political conventions have ended.
The political press will keep buzzing over whether Clint Eastwood's unconventional speech helped or hurt Mitt Romney and whether the snafu over Israel and God in the Democratic platform will do any lasting damage to President Obama. Republican reporters will think former President Clinton talked too long, and Democrats will note that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie talked more about himself than about Romney.
The Democratic Convention produced a "home run derby of speeches," insisted CNN's John King early Friday morning on Piers Morgan Tonight. This came after CNN hailed Michelle Obama's DNC speech as "probably a grand slam" and Bill Clinton's DNC address as "one of the great modern political speeches I have ever heard."
"But over all, Democrats have to leave this town pretty happy. Still a close election, but Democrats have to leave happy. They had three very good nights, a home run derby of speeches," hyped King.

While the liberal media have noted how little foreign policy was raised at the GOP convention and will surely play up President Obama's attacks on Republican opponent Mitt Romney as being weak on that issue portfolio, it's noteworthy how little media attention is being given to the Democratic Party's views on America's most reliable, democratic ally in the Middle East, Israel.
Even as Democrats on Wednesday afternoon hastily re-added language about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel to their party platform, the document is hardly as pro-Israel as its 2008 iteration, Ben Shapiro of Breitbart's Big Government site noted in a September 6 post. "[T]he full language of the 2008 platform is still gone, Shapiro noted, before quoting the 2008 document's Israel plank and then explaining that:

During early Friday morning’s coverage of the Democratic Convention, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews decided to play a clip of the previous evening's acceptance speech by Barack Obama to demonstrate that he was a “moderate” and “certainly not a socialist.” (video after jump)

During MSNBC’s Thursday night coverage of the Democratic Convention, Melissa Harris-Perry and Chris Matthews decided to further indulge in their unhealthy obsession with birtherism. You may recall that Matthews hijacked Andrea Mitchell’s interview of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to ask a question about birtherism during the Republican Convention on August 29. On September 5, Matthews concluded his interview with San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, an alleged rising Democratic star, why there are so many birthers in his state of Texas.
Perry’s birther interjection concerned Obama’s speech dealing with the theme of citizenship. In fact, she called it a “brilliant” moment. However, she made the patently false claim that mainstream Republicans are birther enthusiasts and “redefined” the term herself to convey an overt collectivist idea of citizenship. On the other hand, Matthews, who sat down with Rep. Joseph Crowley and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who declared that the "right wing" wants President Barack Obama's document because "he's black" and doesn't understand why people still don't "get it." Well, it's probably because conspiratorial drivel doesn't go mainstream all that often. (video after the jump)
Not all members of the media offered a "tepid" reaction to President Obama's DNC address. ABC's Jonathan Karl hyped that Obama's crescendo to his speech that the audience loved was "vintage Obama."
"But that last part of the speech was vintage Obama, trying to get these people here, to get the people that drove his campaign, talking about we have providence on our side. They loved it," reported Karl, who added "Tears in the eyes of a lot of these delegates, a lot of tears."

In their pre-game analysis before President Obama's nomination acceptance speech Thursday night, ABC News painted the costly cancelation -- "a hefty six figures" in fruitless set-up costs for broadcast equipment for the networks, reported Dylan Byers of Politico -- of tonight's planned Bank of America Stadium venue as a "lucky break."
"Absolutely a lucky break," political contributor Matthew Dowd told anchor George Stephanopoulos, insisting that while the Obama campaign "could have filled the stadium... there is no way they could have repeated the energy in this crowd." But meanwhile over on CBS, anchor Scott Pelley showed viewers at home the scene at Bank of America stadium, where "it is dark and there is not a drop of rain falling in the vicinity here in Charlotte. [video follows page break]

The liberal personalities on MSNBC reacted to President Barack Obama's Thursday night speech at the Democratic National Convention in the exact same way they did to Bill Clinton the previous evening - with unanimous praise. Ed Schultz's ecstacy was apparent: "He made me feel good tonight. He made the American people feel good tonight, and he gave us confidence....It was a very visionary speech." Al Sharpton trumpeted the President's "epic" address, and declared, "I think that Barack Obama won the election tonight."
Unsurprisingly, Chris Matthews rambled on and on about the apparent greatness of the speech: "I think tonight he did it again, didn't he?...The most powerful statement tonight he made is, I am the President. I am the President, and you're not, and I've had to do the tough things of leading this country, and you haven't....It was a profound statement of, I've got the best position in this country and in this race, because I am doing the job and you're just twiddling your fingers, thinking about what it might be like to be President....What a home run that was." [audio available here; video below the jump]

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the media reaction to President Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday has not been anywhere near as gushing as expected.
On CNN, Piers Morgan said, "It may be that both presidential candidates’ wives made better speeches than they did.”

The media reaction to President Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday has been rather tepid so far.
On CNN, Wolf Blitzer said, "I thought there would be more specifics. There were a lot of goals expressed, generalities, a lot of stuff we’ve heard before. I didn’t hear any specific new initiative that the President unveiled."
