Getting to know you
By Ron Beasley
Todays Gallup Daily Tracking Poll gives Obama his biggest lead yet over St John McSame - nine points. Now Gallup thinks this has something to do with all the news coverage of Obama's trip- not that people liked what they saw of course. But even though he was in the news less than Obama I really wonder if it was McCain's response to the trip that had a greater influence. McCain is looking older and coming across more incoherent everyday. It's almost become a daily event that McCain will say something and then deny he said it. The latest example here . As all of their issues melt away the McCain campaign and the Republicans have been forced to rely on the only weapon they have left, Karl Rove trash in the gutter politics - lie and make shit up and hope that it sticks. And in the past it has stuck with help from the "liberal media".
The bottom line: voters who were hoping for a campaign dominated by debate on issues rather than another descent into personality definition politics will have to wait a while. The problem is that Democrats have had leads going into general elections before but when they’ve been successfully branded by Republicans as soft on national security or not caring enough about the military they have often lost. Is the Obama campaign skillful enough to respond, short-circuit and counter these allegations?
Joe asks if the Obama campaign is skillful enough to respond. Only part of the question I think. Will the media allow them to respond? When we were in the middle of the Swift Boat slime fest fours years ago the media would put the slime on page one and the corrections and rebuttals on page 16. The talking heads on network and cable news would spend hours on the slime and virtually no time on rebuttals or corrections. Is there any reason to believe it will be different this time? According to this from James Rainey of the LA Times the answer in no.
In study, evidence of liberal-bias bias
Cable talking heads accuse broadcast networks of liberal bias -- but a think tank finds that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Barack Obama than on John McCain in recent weeks.
During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.
Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.
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