Campaigns & Elections

**UPDATE - 09/28/08 PM** Barack Obama played the "me too" game during the Friday debates on September 26 after Senator John McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet with the name of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier that lost his life in Iraq in 2006. Obama said that he too had a bracelet. After fumbling and straining to remember the name, he revealed that his…

We have to mark this down in the "this is news?" category, but the Washington Post has decided that it would be newsworthy to report on some guy who has already painted a "President Obama" painting to hang in the White House upon coronation... er, I mean election. No, seriously. This really is news! Heck, why else would they report this if it wasn't real news? Do ya think they're in the tank er…

With all the mainstream media emphasis on poll numbers that supposedly show strong leads for Barack Obama I was wondering if there should be any analysis of an AOL straw poll that shows John McCain solidly beating Barack Obama in a random sample of hundreds of thousands of readers. A major difference between the AOL straw poll and that of other polls is that the AOL poll does not consist of…

Andrea Mitchell gave it the old Hollywood try for Obama this morning.  Summarizing the debate on Today, Mitchell managed to cobble together a video clip that showed McCain's only stumble, while snipping out what many including her colleague Chris Matthews saw as the debate's most salient feature: the multiple times Obama expressed agreement with McCain.And so it was that Andrea treated us to…

During late night coverage of Friday's presidential debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, “Hardball” host Chris Matthews attacked the Republican for showing both “contempt” and an “inferiority complex” towards his Democratic opponent. The MSNBC host asked liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, “What do you make of what I take as contempt? And I’m not sure contempt is…

Here is something that the media should focus on. In the debates tonight, Barack Obama said that even Henry Kissinger agreed with Obama that on a presidential level a diplomatic meeting with as rogue a leader as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a good idea. McCain immediately said that this was not true, but the issue wasn't further addressed in the debate. Well, now Henry Kissinger himself is…

How disappointed was Chris Matthews with Barack Obama's debate performance tonight? How angry was Matthews at Obama for agreeing so much with John McCain?  Enough that Matthews unleashed the ultimate Dem insult, saying Obama reminded him of . . . Richard Nixon.Matthews first vented his frustration at Obama adviser Linda Douglass.CHRIS MATTHEWS: Linda, my friend, why did your candidate agree so…

The Associated Press apparently isn't satisfied going after Sarah Palin full throttle. The GOP Vice-Presidential nominee's visit to New York City apparently went so well that an ABC pictorial series is called "Sarah Palin Takes News York" -- though the last slide takes a shot at the McCain campaign for setting boundaries on access to Palin during her meetings with foreign leaders. ABC claims that…

With less than 40 days until the election and the U.S. going to hell in a handbasket, America needs Howard Fineman now more than ever. That according to, well, Howard Fineman. Here's how he opened his first entry in his new Newsweek blog, "Race to the Finish.":Is it just me or does everything seem to be broken?Our credit markets are scared of their own shadows. Our political system looks…

Is there some kind of competition on the left to see who can make the most denigrating remark about the mental acuity of Republicans?  As we've noted, last night Paul Begala called President Bush "a high-functioning moron," perhaps his bid to one-up Rep. Charles Rangel, who had called Sara Palin "disabled."Today, it's Jonathan Capehart's turn.  Speaking with David Shuster on MSNBC this afternoon…

The New York Times is going the way of MSNBC. I suspect they're going to find that appealing to the Angry Left is not a successful business model. Rather than investigate the campaign donations paid out to Senators Dodd, Clinton, and specifically, Barack Obama, by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, the NYT focused instead on McCain aide Rick Davis's employment by the consulting firm, Davis & Manafort.

"Good Morning America" reporter David Muir on Friday reported live from Mississippi and somehow managed to not feature a single supporter of Senator John McCain, despite the fact that a Research 2000 poll found the Republican candidate maintaining an 18 point lead in the state. In the only allusion to that, Muir began, "In a state considered deeply red, John McCain has family roots here." He then…

CMI Director Robert Knight appeared on Fox News Live on Friday morning to discuss the key role that character played in the presidential primary debates, a major finding from CMI's latest report, "‘Character,' the Most Important Issue in the Presidential Debate." Knight stated: "Character was the big factor. A third of the questions were directed at trying to find out whether the candidates had…

With the first official presidential debate for 2008 set to begin this evening on the Oxford campus of Ole Miss, Washington Post associate editor Kevin Merida gave readers of today's Style section a glimpse at how the state of Mississippi is still "Bearing Its Southern Cross."Merida opened by insisting that the Magnolia State "has been chasing away ghosts for years, trying to rid itself of a past…