Politico: Obama is winning, therefore, Obama is losing

See this right here? This is why I don't bother reading Politico.

In the two months since Barack Obama captured the Democratic nomination, he has hit a ceiling in public opinion polling, proving unable to make significant gains with any segment of the national electorate.

While Obama still leads in most matchups with John McCain, the Illinois senator’s apparent stall in the polls is a sobering reminder to Democrats intoxicated with his campaign’s promises to expand the electoral map beyond the boundaries that have constrained other recent party nominees.

GAAAAHHHHHH. Three things.

1. Only in DC journalism does it make sense to write an article claiming that, because Barack Obama has a narrow but significant lead, Barack Obama is clearly in trouble. This is like a sportswriter saying that the Bruins are obviously screwed because they keep winning games by just two goals.

2. It's not surprising that the polls haven't moved this summer -- it's the summer. Nobody pays attention to politics in the summer, except high-information voters (basically all of whom have already made up their minds). What would be strange is if the polls were moving. Gallup's Frank Newport seems to agree, in this delightfully loopy (and obviously truncated) quote from the article:
   

   “What’s remarkable this summer is the stability of this race,” Gallup’s director Frank Newport said. “In a broad sense, it is similar to previous elections.”

   (Sidenote: why do reporters always quote pollsters to make them sound like Zen masters? Take this, also from the article: "ABC News Polling Director Gary Langer asked, “If everything is so good for Barack Obama, why isn’t everything so good for Barack Obama?”" I really don't think that sentence means anything at all.)

3. Obama's promise to "expand the electoral map" would naturally expand it beyond pollsters' likely-voter screens, so we really can't ascertain whether that strategy is working by looking at national polls. We won't know that until election day.

It really saddens me that people spend their time reading this bullshit. WHEN will the elite media learn the basics of polling? WHEN?

Everything that's wrong with elite media

This Washington Post article is the most infuriating thing I've read in weeks:

McCain-Obama So Far: Positively Negative
By Dan Balz

A campaign between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain once offered enormous possibilities for something new. Instead, the two presumptive nominees have opened their campaigns for the White House with what looks and sounds like a repeat of the kind of politics both have promised to leave behind.

Since Obama (D-Ill.) wrapped up the Democratic nomination a few weeks ago, he and McCain (R-Ariz.) have served up a series of indignant exchanges over foreign policy, terrorism, the economy, energy and campaign money. Their aides have gone further, with snarling put-downs in conference calls and taunting e-mails that flow constantly out of the Chicago and Crystal City headquarters... On a host of issues, the differences between the candidates are profound and should provoke a vigorous debate. Both candidates once promised that such a debate would be civil and respectful. But right now the presidential campaign appears to be more a rerun of the kind of polarized battles of the recent past than something that heralds something new.

Think this through for a minute. The candidates are having intense, passionate, public arguments over ISSUES -- not shallow bullshit like flag lapels and hotheaded preachers and however many wives John McCain's had, but ISSUES -- and Dan Balz is upset because they're not being "civil and respectful." Apparently foreign policy, terrorism, the economy, energy, and campaign finance are just not relevant to the Washington Post unless they come dressed up in fancy clothes. This is how our media thinks: politics as nothing more than a debutante ball. It makes me sick.

These people should not have any role in our national discourse. They just shouldn't.

Everything that is wrong with David Brooks

Brooks on Wednesday, writing about the shallow ABC debate that everyone hated:

We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall. Remember how George H.W. Bush toured flag factories to expose Michael Dukakis. It’s legitimate to see how the candidates will respond to these sorts of symbolic issues.

Okay, but, see, no it's not. Only in the twisted mind of a mainstream political reporter is anything related to these issues "legitimate". The other day I had an argument with a commenter in which I suggested that our media (elite and wannabe-elite) is cognitively incapable of distinguishing the symbolic from the real; well, here you have Exhibit A. This man needs help.

...Perhaps the greatest contribution of political blogging since its inception around 2002-2003 has been its thesis that mainstream political journalism, as an institution, is intellectually bankrupt. Digby has been the most prominent and eloquent articulator of this thesis, and Atrios probably the most reliable, but it informs almost all the discussion everywhere from activist-type blogs to snark blogs to the wonkosphere and outward. It's a commonplace at this point. So maybe that's why so many bloggers were in such googly-eyed outrage on Wednesday night; ABC unabashedly and unreservedly endorsed all the transparently stupid bullshit that we've spent years trying to beat back. Moments like these, and Brooks' astonishing column, ought to remind us how far away we really are from having a media with a brain...

Huffington Post: OMG SURROGATEZ!!1!1

At the increasingly worthless Huffington Post today:

Two great writers (Tom Edsall is a Pulitzer finalist, and Jason Linkins is the genius behind DCeiver), two stupid-ass stories. This fussing about surrogates has been the leitmotif of the 2008 race: Austan "NAFTAGate" Goolsbee, Sam Power, Ferraro, Wright, the stupid Obama dude, apparently now this lady, the list goes on. Yet does anyone outside the elite media and the fanatic bloggers actually care whose surrogates did or said what? I love me some horse-race politics, but come on. It just isn't news. You might as well make a big deal out of that hissy fit the Clinton diarists had at Daily Kos this weekend... wait, what?

(sound of soft, gentle weeping)

I want this campaign to be over.