Entries tagged with “Steve Benen” from Reality Window

If you missed it, cspanjunkie.org has uploaded it to youtube in segments and collected them all in this post. CNN has the full transcript. UPDATE: CSPAN has uploaded the complete debate to youtube.

Here is one of the more memorable salvos that Obama delivered.

In general, the quick polls and focus groups identify Obama as the winner though the punditry splits on the point. Steve Benen has a round-up of the polls and focus groups and how they viewed the debate results.

The Obama campaign chose this excerpt from the debate for the first post-debate ad which is already out.

ZERO

It certainly draws a focus to the point Nate Silver made in his analysis of the polling and the pundits at TNR.

My other annoyance with the punditry is that they seem to weight all segments of the debate equally. There were eight segments in this debate: bailout, economy, spending, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, terrorism. The pundit consensus seems to be that Obama won the segments on the bailout, the economy, and Iraq, drew the segment on Afghanistan, and lost the other four. So, McCain wins 4-3, right? Except that, voters don't weight these issues anywhere near evenly. In Peter Hart's recent poll for NBC, 43 percent of voters listed the economy or the financial crisis as their top priority, 12 percent as Iraq, and 13 percent terrorism or other foreign policy issues. What happens if we give Obama two out of three economic voters (corresponding to the fact that he won two out of the three segments on the economy), and the Iraq voters, but give McCain all the "other foreign policy" voters?

  Issue        Priority      Obama     McCain
Economy         43    -->    29        14
Iraq            12    -->    12         0
Foreign Policy  13    -->     0        13
 ==========================================
Total                        41        27

By this measure, Obama "won" by 14 points, which almost exactly his margin in the CNN poll.

McCain's essential problem is that his fundamental strength - his experience -- is specifically not viewed by voters as carrying over to the economy. And the economy is pretty much all that voters care about these days.

EDIT: The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on "understanding your needs and problems" before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on "prepared to be president" to a +21.

Nate's analysis underscores why the viewer polls all clearly give Obama the win for the evening.

From the foreign policy perspective, Fred Kaplan of Slate declares "Judged on the substantive issues, especially on which candidate has the more realistic view of the world, Obama won hands down." Joe Biden certainly delivered that message as well in his appearance on CNN.

As an aside, Wolf Blitzer was finally forced to respond to emails and comments on why the Republican VP candidate was not interviewed by saying that they would have been more than happy to interview Sarah Palin if she had been available. It seems she was being booed (video) on the streets of Philly before the debate began. [via WGRZ]

Back to Joe though. He was in fine form last night.

Yes, Joe. Obama certainly did well.

And McCain didn't help himself with his refusal to look at Obama, his obvious looks of annoyance and anger, and his moments of foreign policy brilliance like this one ... comparing the height of North Koreans to South Koreans. Really.

What on earth was that about? McCain was stuck in history, inarticulate at many points, an angry old man and it showed.

Obama was a little stiff in the beginning but came out with a strong opening statement, concisely made, and once he got going, he was on. He demonstrated skills on multiple levels, how he deals with a cantankerous opponent, his concern for the middle class, his grasp of economic realities, his strategic view of the US's role in the world, his awareness of the need to balance multiple roles/needs of the US including economic, environmental and diplomatic requirements. He did well.

Well, they've done it. I clicked on The Carpetbagger Report in my blogroll to see what Steve Benen had to say about Biden and got reminded of his post earlier this week announcing that he, Kevin Drum and Hilzoy are going to play hopscotch on the blogs. And, yes, in the process, ruining my blogroll list.

Actually congratulations to all three. Kevin Drum will be leaving the Political Animal blog at The Washington Monthly to start blogging at Mother Jones under his own moniker. Steve Benen will close out The Carpetbagger Report and start blogging at the Political Animal along with Hilzoy who's already confessed that he loves Obsidian Wings so much, he can't give up the habit and will still be blogging there as well.

So Kevin's at MJ, Steve and Hilzoy are at Political Animal/WaMo and Hilzoy's still at ObWi. Add that to Yglesias's from The Atlantic to CAP and Ta-Nehisi's move to The Atlantic and it sure does make hash of a blogroll and links in a hurry. Hope they don't wipe out The Carpetbagger Report archive and break all my links.

Between TalkingPointsMemo's followup on Ron Fournier's friendly words of encouragement to Karl Rove and JedReport's highlighting of Liz Sidoti's gift of sprinkled donuts and coffee (just like on the double talk express bus), Nedra Pickler's dubious contributions, Beth Fouhy's gooey "I miss Hillary" gusher, you have to shake your head and wonder what's happened to the AP.

Steve Benen identified some more head-scratchers:

I suppose the first time I noticed this "new" AP came in March, when Fournier wrote an item -- whether it was a news article or an opinion piece was unclear -- that said Barack Obama is "bordering on arrogance," "a bit too cocky," and that the senator and his wife "ooze a sense of entitlement." To substantiate the criticism, Fournier pointed to ... not a whole lot. It was basically the Republicans' "uppity" talking point in the form of an AP article.

But the AP's coverage has deteriorated since -- and it goes beyond just the AP giving John McCain donuts and McCain giving the AP barbecue. There was the slam-job on Obama that read like an RNC oppo dump, followed by a scathing, 900-word reprimand of Obama's decision to bypass the public financing system in the general election, filled with errors of fact and judgment.

When Obama unveiled his faith-based plan, the AP got the story backwards. When Obama talked about his Iraq policy on July 3, the AP said he'd "opened the door" to reversing course, even though he hadn't.

The AP's David Espo wrote a hagiographic, 1,200-word piece, praising McCain's "singular brand of combative bipartisanship," which was utterly ridiculous.

The AP pushed the objectivity envelope a little further with a mind-numbing, 1,100-word piece on Obama "being shadowed by giant flip-flops."

The AP flubbed the story on McCain joking about killing Iranians, and then flubbed the story about McCain's promise to eliminate the deficit. It's part of a very discouraging trend for the AP that's been ongoing for a while now.

Per Steve and Michael Calderone at Politico, the responsible party is the relatively new bureau chief, Ron Fournier who took over in May 2008. His predecessor, Sandy Johnson who was ousted in an unfriendly turnover regards him "as a threat to one of the most influential institutions in American journalism."

"I loved the Washington bureau," said Johnson, who left the AP after losing the prestigious position. "I just hope he doesn't destroy it."

It seems that all of this insertion of opinion and attitude into the AP's daily reporting is deliberate as part of Fournier's "accountability journalism". Politico noted:

Fournier himself, shortly before taking the job as bureau chief, wrote several models for what he's called "accountability journalism." A January lead declared that "Obama is bordering on arrogance." A month later, he began a column with "The Democratic nomination is now Barack Obama's to lose."

Fournier and other critics of the conventional press model, especially those on the left, have said that being released from the tired conventions of news writing is exactly what journalism needs.

By these lights, the mentality that presumes both sides of an argument are entitled to equal weight is what prevented the media from challenging the Bush administration more aggressively on the Iraq war and other issues.

Others warn that what Fournier and other proponents see as truth-telling can easily bleed into opinionizing -- exactly the opposite of the AP's mission of "delivering fast, unbiased news."

The real question comes down to what do you pick as facts. There's this at the end of Calderone's article:

"But boy, when we can cut through the clutter, and we can say 'Barack Obama put politics over his word,' which he did -- that's a fact," Fournier said. "He did. He may not like the way Liz wrote it, but it is a statement of fact."

No, Ron, it isn't a statement of fact. At no time did Barack Obama ever promise to take public financing. You may not like that point because it destroys your great lead but it's true.

So, the lesson here is to start regarding the AP as uber-bloggers -- a group of writers doing news-based items wrapped in their opinions which they may or may not identify as facts whether or not they are truly facts.

You can take away the question mark on the title of this piece. It's definitely:

AP Self-Destructing

UPDATE: Steve's list has become so popular, he's made it a feature on his blog which will be maintained and updated so use this link for the up-to-date version.
- - - -
Steve Benen of the Carpetbagger Report and his readers have provided us with a definitive list of McCain's flip-flops and it's a pretty thorough job with 62 items divided by policy category for easy reference.

As the self-designated keeper of the Official List of McCain Flip-Flops, I'm pleased to report, thanks to reader contributions, we now have a whopping 62 policy reversals from the Republican nominee. If McCain wants to argue that flip-flops are an example of a political leader who can't be trusted to keep his work or honor his commitments, McCain might as well drop out of the race now.

Here's the first 15 on The Carpetbagger's McCain Flip-Flops list:

I have commented before on NYT's waste of money on columnists who don't know what they're talking about. This time Oliver Willis, Kagro X and Steve Benen all beat me to it. Here's video courtesy of Media Matters. I think Steve summed it up best for me:

Obama has spent a lot of time, Brooks says, in "university towns" -- meaning that he's one of those guys interested in book learnin'. Can't have someone like that in the Oval Office. No siree.

As for the focus group that apparently hadn't heard much from the media other than news about Jeremiah Wright, this might be a clue to Brooks and his colleagues that the coverage of the campaign is not serving the voters especially well.

Brooks concludes that arguing that McCain offers voters another term of Bush is "factually inaccurate." Fair enough. McCain agrees with Bush on economic policy, tax policy, foreign policy, national security policy, judicial policy, healthcare policy, immigration policy, and housing policy. Other than that, though, it's completely irresponsible to argue that McCain offers the nation more of the same. What we were thinking?

Thank goodness we have someone as insightful as Brooks to explain these matters to us in the nation's most prestigious news outlet.