Campaigns & Elections

Not that there was any doubt that McCain walked away the winner from Rick Warren's forum, but when David Shuster cracks that Obama was lucky not too many people were watching . . . Subbing for Chris Matthews on this evening's Hardball, Shuster kibitzed Saddleback with Dem Steve McMahon and Republican Todd Harris. Shuster made his surprising remark at segment end.DAVID SHUSTER: I think it also…

**Video Below the Fold** Question: Isn't it big news when a leading candidate for president of the U.S. admits that since 2003 he has been lying about a vote he once made? Even more to the point, isn't it big news when the candidate himself was on TV not long before that admission saying that everyone else is the liar? So, why is the media silent on the 180 degree about face that the Obama…

For the second time in a month the CBS Early Show featured Mike Crowley, the editor of the liberal magazine New Republic, as a political analyst to speculate on vice presidential nominees for John McCain and Barack Obama. On Monday’s CBS Early Show, the focus was on Obama as co-host Harry Smith declared: "There's speculation that Barack Obama might choose his running mate sometime this week,…

Writing his faithful blog readers an epistle on Saturday's candidate forum with evangelical pastor Rick Warren, Time magazine's Joe Klein expressed disappointment that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) did not take the moment to teach the multitude, let alone perform miracles like curing Chris Matthews's restless leg syndrome and/or priapism. But let not your heart be troubled, for Klein has some sermon…

As NewsBuster Brad Wilmouth has noted, over the weekend NBC News political director Chuck Todd, previewing the Saddleback forum, suggested it represented an opportunity for Obama to forestall "personal hatred" of him by evangelical Christians.Todd has now contacted NewsBusters to express regret over his choice of words.  Todd's initial remark was made to Andrea Mitchell during a pre-game special…

With this year's vice presidential picks expected any day now, time to go into the MRC archive for a look back to 2000 when Dan Rather's left-wing tilt still got air time on a major network. When George W. Bush named Dick Cheney, Rather introduced the Tuesday, July 25, 2000 CBS Evening News story by relaying the derisive and negative Democratic spin against the GOP ticket: In the presidential…

Andrea Mitchell's floating of the Obama-camp accusation that John McCain cheated by overhearing Obama's responses at the Saddleback forum, as NewsBuster D.S. Hube reported, isn't the first time the NBC correspondent has made herself propagator-in-chief of Obama's conspiracy theories.  As NewsBuster Noel Sheppard has noted, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has now written NBC to protest Mitchell…

Many of you are aware of the kerfuffle surrounding the "cone of silence" complaint being ginned up by the Obama campaign after the recent Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency on Saturday, August 16. The claim made by Obama and his willing accomplices in the Old Media (like Andrea Mitchell, not to mention the DailyKos) is that John McCain "cheated" by hearing the questions proffered to Obama,…

The McCain campaign isn't taking Andrea Mitchell's cheating claim made on Sunday's "Meet the Press" lying down. Politico reported moments ago that campaign manager Rick Davis has sent a strongly-worded letter to Steve Capus, president of NBC News, sharply criticizing Mitchell's suggestion that the Arizona senator had somehow cheated at Saturday's Saddleback Civil Forum.In it, Davis expressed…

The Associated Press is so omnipotent that it can divine what poll results mean, even if it directly contradicts what the pollster says about them. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press announced the results of a poll it did on the presidential race on Wednesday.AP must not have liked Pew's results or its conclusions, because, in an unbylined report, it totally recast them, as…

As my colleague D.S. Hube reported, Andrea Mitchell on Sunday's "Meet the Press" suggested the Obama campaign felt John McCain "may not have been in the cone of silence" during Saturday's Saddleback Civil Forum, "and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were." Although she claimed this was being "[put] out privately" by Obama's people, CNN is now reporting that his campaign is…

Is the media's honeymoon with presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama finally over?When the New York Times begins questioning whether there's anything behind the junior senator from Illinois besides promises of change one has to seriously wonder.Such was the case in a Times piece published online moments ago -- that is scheduled to be on Sunday's front page! -- entitled "Allies Ask…

The back-and-forth over Jerome Corsi's book, "The Obama Nation," has been heated, largely unfair to the author, and predictably marred by attacks from allegedly "objective" journalists as well as Democratic mouthpieces (but I repeat myself). Blatant examples of media bias have been noted by several NewsBusters posters, including Tim Graham (here, here, and here), Geoff Dickens, Mark Finkelstein,…

**Video Below the Fold** Barack Obama has been fond of playing the race card in this campaign telling his enraptured audiences that Republicans will attack him because he's black, even though no GOP candidate or campaign has done so to date. But, Obama is a newcomer to the racemongering game when compared to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. True to form, in a recent interview…