I spend a little time each day watching some cable news - never FOX as it would turn my stomach, but a little CNN and a little MSNBC. Keith Olbermann is obviously an Obama supporter, which is a refreshing change on a cable channel, but almost all the other hosts seemed to have a vested interest in painting the race as much closer than it is. After all, if Obama is ahead by 8 points, as he is in one poll out today, and stays ahead by that much or more, it's going to be a very boring race, ratings will be down, and corporate media will lose money.
So the cable hosts look at polls with anywhere from a four to an eight point Obama lead and call it "a dead heat." Or they say that Obama should be ahead by fifteen points, so McCain must be closing in, or on the verge of pulling ahead. They channel Maureen Dowd and say Obama has no funny bone. McCain, they say, is funny, which is what the people want, even though the people are tired of having a clown in the White House. They say Obama got upset with the New Yorker cover, when he obviously didn't. They excuse McCain's mistakes and say he had a bad day or got mixed up or is such an expert that he simply confused Czechoslovakia with the Czech Republic. They say it is no big deal that McCain misremembers his stands on issues and his votes on bills because he's a maverick, a straight talker, and these things are aberrations. Yet Obama frowns and he has no funny bone. He's an elitist, arrogant, and too serious for his own good.
This is what got us eight years of George W. Bush, this willingness to give the stupidest and least qualified candidate a pass because the press somehow sees the smarter candidate as having an unfair advantage which ruins the myth of a close race. No one in the media wants one candidate to just run away with things and hurt their ratings, so they make sure he doesn't.
John Kerry was ahead of George W. Bush at this time four years ago, and the media was unwilling to let that stand. Kerry couldn't be allowed to run away with the election as that would end the race too soon, before all the money could be made with ad buys. So the suspense of a tight race had to be preserved. Enter the Swift Boat Veterans and their dishonest and ugly ads slandering Kerry, which might have died after the money to air them ran out, but which were shown over and over - for no charge - by the cable guys.
The media destroyed Kerry, by giving such attention to those terrible ads, and they seem to be trying to destroy Obama as well. This time the only thing that will destroy Obama is another terrorist attack that might scare enough voters into choosing McCain. But even that may not work as it will prove that Bush's policies did not protect us.
I think the polls that are being reported are probably underreporting the true extent of Obama's lead and I believe the media knows that - after all, they commission most of the polls. Obama will win in a landslide. That's the only reason the media are pushing so hard to discount the polls, and give McCain the benefit of the doubt that they never give Obama.
