So as a corollary it means such a low campaign will be run by McCain until Media changes. That is a too big of a ‘change’ for America which both ‘change’ leaders can not deliver; especially in such a short time of 55 days. It all then points to continued dirty McCain campaign until he wins the election. What do Obama do here? Either get as dirty as like McCain or find some alternative. What is that alternative? Any answers?

The media should stop covering Palin until she is willing to answer questions from the press.

Great, insightful post, EK. Hope it is linked to by everyone.

This message was brought to you by the Applied Behaviorists in Media Group.

- g

ps I keed, good post

No, Umesh, there's no alternative. Obama, himself and in his campaign ads, has to attack McCain as a liar every day,a AND we need 527's to go right after McCain and destroy him in a way that makes the Swiftboating of Kerry look like a love tap. I don't like that those are the rules of the game, but I find dealing with reality more productive than living in a pleasant fantasy world. The stakes for the country are too high to screw around and score another narrow, high-minded defeat.

msw

is absolutely right.
but i am sure the press will be flooding to the town hall meetings, where john mccain will be propped up by sarah and cindy.

how do these "best political minds in the country" look at themselves in the mirror anymore?

to see george will~ as an apologist and defender of palin's complete lack of knowledge and honesty...

gloria borger~ defending the lies about palin's earmarks by saying that they were less than those of the last governor...

to see david gergen~ defending palin's competence by setting the bar for her knowledge to that of the ordinary person on the street.

to watch the abc roundtable, i could barely imagine a group of more smug and condescending patricians more out of touch with the real life of americans.....as they set on their rarified perch.

only to name a few...

is this the excellence that they strive for in journalism?
what do they perceive their responsibilities to be regarding truthfulness?
the patient is bleeding, and they are busy assisting in pulling out the tubes.
in my opinion, they should be fired. they have long forgotten what honest journalists are supposed to do....and perhaps if they lose their jobs and medical benefits and pensions...they might regain some perspective on what is going on "down here"...but they have long forgotten what it means to be "one of us."

Gotta agree. Press coverage has been disgraceful for about 75-90% of the campaign. Maybe if they pretended to care about issues, people actually would.

In that vein, gotta give CBS News credit for its "issue a day" thing on the evening news. It's really not a bad segment.

This idea also offers insight into McCain's repeated claim that Obama made him do it. He thinks that if he could have ridden Obama's press train to the town hall meetings, he wouldn't have had to create the conflict to get attention. Same as a kid acting up in school when behaving, but not excelling isn't working.

Obama, himself and in his campaign ads, has to attack McCain as a liar every day,a AND we need 527's to go right after McCain and destroy him in a way that makes the Swiftboating of Kerry look like a love tap.

It's not going to happen. What may happen is that Obama's framing of McCain will take root, explain and undermine every single one of his assaults: "John McCain is not serious about governing."

McCain did this because he was losing, to be sure. It's a desperate gamble, and they have to keep it afloat until the election. I doubt that they can.

Obama handled the "lipstick on a pig" pretty well. Use the controversy to drive your frame: "I didn't call Sarah Palin a pig, I called John McCain's policies a pig."

Maybe no one cared (much) about McCain when he was offering is policy speeches and poverty tours because McCain is not a very compelling candidate (He did still manage to get the Republican nomination). Once McCain's people realized he couldn't win on the merits they went dirty to get the media's attention - and yes, it works, I'm not sure it's the media's fault as much as a fault of human nature.

Well duh. Television is a visual medium where image trumps logic every time and the most compelling images are the ones that show conflict. It goes back to the beginning of elections in the television age. People who listened to the Nixon-Kennedy debates on the radio or read the transcript, thought Nixon won, those who saw it on television thought Kennedy won. The Republicans learned their lesson, the Democrats obviously haven't.

When was that last time the coverage wasn’t this bad? Ever? I’d bet Ezra could save his posts about the coverage of this year’s election and other than changing a few names could recycle them four years from now. Ideally every news program would be as thoughtful as Bill Moyer’s Journal, but it’s not what most people want to watch. And other than to work the refs, tying ourselves into knots about every media outrage really isn’t going to change anything.

The question is: does the Obama really understand the media landscape and how is he going to create conflict to drive the narrative? How is he going to make a visceral connection with his audience? I’m sure there are better minds than mine thinking about this stuff (hopefully), but I can think of two approaches.

1) Scare the sh!t out of everyone. McCain’s health care plan will cause you to lose you health-care coverage. McCain is reckless, particularly when talking about war. McCain is old and losing his grip and is going to be easily manipulated, and stop saying he’s going to be the same as Bush. He’s going to be much worse.

2) Stir up resentment. They did a little bit of that with the number of houses controversy, but they need to do a lot more. Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech was a lost opportunity. The jist of it was “I’m better than you because I came from a small town, but I’m happy to take your money anyway.” John McCain is on record for saying that he’s running for president not out of some sense of patriotic duty or to help his fellow Americans, but because he just wants to be President. Literally, more than half of his acceptance speech was about himself. It’s not the party of we, it’s the party of me, John McCain.

Obama’s already won our hearts and minds, but he’s going to have to punch us in the gut if truly wants to save us from ourselves.

this is only partly true. McCain was doing those poverty tours and policy speeches between March and June, when the press was of course preoccupied elsewhere. There's no legitimate way they can blame the lack of coverage on bias. He was not where the news was.

Then in June and July, McCain ran a listless and close to laughable campaign. They were getting nowhere, but it was not for lack of coverage. Hence Steve Schmidt's ascendancy, after which they tightened up, and got traction on Georgia and the "celebrity" issue. Those weren't deceitful and dishonorable. At that point there was NO REASON WHATSOEVER to go entirely negative and dishonest. Independent of any other factor, they made a clear-eyed, calculated decision to flood the zone, throw Obama on defense, and fight the media. They knew they would lose any other way.

It doesn't change the fact that Obama wants Kindergartners to learn sex-education,
or that he thinks public schools should teach 6 year olds about same-sex couples.

He's going to lose on that alone.

How John McCain and the Republican Party came to oppose those people like the PTA who want our youngest children to be safer from pedophiles & child molesters, I don't know.

John McCain could lose just on his weird attacks on keeping children safe from sex predators.

But the John McCain of 1968 would be deeply, deeply ashamed of the John McCain of 2008.

There seems to be a series of posts today that seems to attribute McCain's bounce in the polls to the advertising McCain is doing. Is there any proof of this corollary? Not being a VIP political blogger, it seems to me that a post convention bounce could account for some of the polling? No?

Where was Bush a week after the convention in 2004? +17 I believe, not +2. By Oct. 15, he was even with Kerry.

Coincidentally with this whole, "Cinderella" narrative by the press about McCain's comeback, all these polls changed their internal adjustment for voter id. Seems that not enough random people were saying they were Republicans, so those that did were overweighted. Never mind that Dems have out registered nationally by millions over Repubs.

If we learned anything from Obama vs. Clinton is the press wants a close race no matter what. Pollsters too (nobody commissions polls in a blowout).

Anon- Save it for blogs where people are too dumb to know the difference. Everyone here knows that's a lie.

If we learned anything from Obama vs. Clinton is the press wants a close race no matter what. Pollsters too (nobody commissions polls in a blowout).

Here we see the truest statement made this year. It is like this every election cycle. Anytime it looks like the balance is falling to one candidate, something happens that makes it close again. It's like the world series. It seems like it is either a 4 game blowout or a seven game down-to-the-wire knucklebiter.

BTW, if you haven't seen it yet, "Recount" is awfully good. It makes you feel sick, but a great show.

But the John McCain of 1968 would be deeply, deeply ashamed of the John McCain of 2008.

You don't even have to go that far back: I think the John McCain of 2000 would be ashamed of the McCain of 2008.

e-fucking-nough with the "john mccain used to be an honorable man" crap.

is that even true? I can't see that it's based on anything other than a media image carefully honed by mccain himself.

why isn't it just as likely that mccain has always been a scum-sucking asshole? certainly there seems to be enough evidence that this is the case.

instead, I think the need on the left to hagiographize the pre-2008 mccain (a need shared by the media) reflects a ridiculous embarrassment at criticizing a veteran.

and that wimpiness, when so much is on the line, will be our undoing.

when will dems learn we screw ourselves by being too polite?

voters want representatives who will fight for their interests. and when we can't stand up against GOP thugs, when we don't fight back---hard--is it any wonder voters assume we can't protect those interests?

screw the marquis de queensbury rules. take the fucking gloves off.

no more jibes that mccain can't use the 'net (ho ho). or how we have an education platform (whoopee). obama needs to scare the shit out of voters as to what a mccain presidency would do: on taxes, on choice, on the environment, on healthcare, on security.

all true; all tied to policy positions.

elections are won on fear. that's not pretty and it's not ideal. but it seems to be true. and obama, who's got more than a working knowledge of alinsky, ought to know that you organize people from where they are, not where you want them to be.

Best. Post. Ever.

Save this one for posterity. It's exactly right.

John McCain finally figured out that he can't win by being John McCain. Only Roveism can beat Obama, because we live in a country where that excrement works.

mencken's right. I was overdoing it on purpose, given what I preceded, playing that up.

But, yeah, I get really, really tired of the "But John McCain used to be Jesus before 2000" or whatever.

And don't forget that McCain said the campaign didn't have to get ugly if only Obama had gone on the town hall meeting speeches with him.

Not sure the logic in that, but I'm sure in McCain's twisted mind there is some.

El Cid used to be insightful before he became addicted to Obama's ball sweat

The media went from being watchdogs of our Democracy (Freedom of the Press for that reason) to lapdogs of the corporate bottom line.

McPOW needs the media. If he and his string doll bash the media, why give them a forum? They won't answer questions? Don't give them air!

I know it sounds cruel, but sometimes you have to throw water on the tantrum.

Media won't do it, so we must. Constantly.

McPOW has disgraced every POW with his flaunting of wounds to avoid accountability. How would that work in the WH? "Don't ask, I'll bleed on you!"?

Obama needs to call them lies. The media has to grow a pair and call them lies.

They are lies. Brilliant posts here (except the anon BS)

The press goes where the money is. Rating go down when they report on policy. The public has no appetite for the boring stuff. They want a good easy storyline with a nice juicy conflict.

Elections are still all about low information signals and who can set the storyline. The sooner we stop deluding ourselves into thinking that campaigning is some noble "discourse on the direction of our country" the sooner we'll start winning.

Seems clear to me McCain is still upset about 2000, when Bush pummeled him with dirty tricks, and he took the high road. And, understandably, he saw what everyone saw with Bush the last 8 years and regrets not fighting back. When he sees Obama, he's really campaigning against Bush 2000, and it's easy to see how anyone's ego would rationalize doing that for the "good of the country."

Please. Lie? One thing liberals have done this past few years is cheapen the word "lie" to the point of absurdity. When the campaign that says McCain wants to fight in Iraq for 100 years starts talking about lies, I and many millions of others yawn between laughs. One of the great myths Democrats tell themselves is that they play fair and Republicans are harsh. In between stanzas of the "Bush-McCain, Bush-McCain-Palin, Bush Lied, Bush Lied, Bush Lied" mantra they sing with not an inkling of humor or shame.

Please. Lie? One thing liberals have done this past few years is cheapen the word "lie" to the point of absurdity. When the campaign that says McCain wants to fight in Iraq for 100 years starts talking about lies, I and many millions of others yawn between laughs. One of the great myths Democrats tell themselves is that they play fair and Republicans are harsh. In between stanzas of the "Bush-McCain, Bush-McCain-Palin, Bush Lied, Bush Lied, Bush Lied" mantra they sing with not an inkling of humor or shame.

So, it's the media's fault that McCain is a lying, violent, misogynist who makes bad choices in people and sold his reputation for a handful of silver? Nice.

They say we get the government we deserve. Do we really deserve these wretched human beings who pass themselves off as honorable (e.g, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Feith, Rumsfeld, Palin, etc.)? Are we that far over the waterfall?

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