A Small Victory

FIFTEEN points??!?! Good Lord, when is the last time an election was EVER separated by 15 points ????

So beyond that, think this guy has a somewhat inflated ego in his view of his pet "media" ???

Holy Crap.

Hey Michele, I imagine you enjoyed Clemens getting SHELLED in the first inning of the All Star Game. Manny and Soriano with dingers.

If the media's bias is worth even a third of the 15 percentage points that Newsweek's Thomas asserts, that will be very, very bad news.

Even worse - to clarify, how about an incumbant president losing by 15 points ??? EVER ? Anyone ? And the result of media bias alone ?

Anyone who thinks that there will be a 15 point spread in this election isn't paying attention, which alone should make Mr. Thomas' assertions seem fishy.

Coming from a conservative, status-quo driven outlet like NEWSWEEK makes it even more disengenious.

"Coming from a conservative, status-quo driven outlet like NEWSWEEK..."

Riiiiight. Whatever gets you through the night.

I took it to mean not that the spread would be 15 points, but that the coverage would be worth (add) 15 points to the Kerry Edwards numbers.

Relax folks, I don't think that's what he's saying. He's saying that the media's influence is already embedded in the current numbers we look at every day, so that poll results from last year, today, and on election day might be up to 15% different without the consistent pro-Kerry media bias.

It's still a pretty strong (and shocking) claim, since he's essentially conceding that without the media's constant harping, Bush would always have been and would be ahead by enough to win in a landslide. He's also therefore saying that the country as a whole would be overwhelmingly more Republican than Democrat if it weren't for the media constantly spinning left.

But he is definitely NOT saying that on some day before the election, The Media is going to switch on their giant Bias Machine and transform the poll numbers from 50-50 to 42-58.

So much for "campaign reform" ... first it was 527's then it's "mainstream" media that will be trying to drive the show two months out, when the rest of the citizenry is legally muzzled from exercising their 1st amendment rights..

And it certainly wasn't Ashcroft doing the crushing of dissent this time..

Thank you, John McCain.

Oh... Don... take a gander at the Newsweek cover and tell me again Newsweek is some sort of "conservative, status quo" rag.

I don't know what you're smoking, but put the pipe down and step away.

Don's just parroting the Altermanesque party line. The mummified corpses of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao could be raised from the dead and put in charge of the news divisions of the LA Times, the NY Times, and the Washington Post, and Don would still be saying that there was no evidence of leftist control of the media.

By the way, FDR beat the hapless incumbent Herbert Hoover 57.4% to 39.7% in 1932. I'm pretty sure that media bias really wasn't the deciding factor.

Sean and Darleen:

There is such a thing as a liberal media---I know because I read it. It's magazines like The Progressive and radio shows like Democracy Now. On it's best day, Newsweek is firmly middle-of-the-road. On most days, they simply reprint White House press releases verbatim and call it a day.

So they have the latest neocon boogie-man on the cover...so what? Previous covers have included Dubya, Spider-man, and Tom Cruise. What's that supposed to prove?

Scott:

"The mummified corpses of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao could be raised from the dead and put in charge of the news divisions of the LA Times, the NY Times, and the Washington Post, and Don would still be saying that there was no evidence of leftist control of the media."

Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are, to the best of my knowledge, still dead, and therefore not running any of these media outlets. Multi-national media conglomerates and heavy GOP campaign contributors are the ones who are running said media outlets.

Don's opinion's on the media are a classic example of why the media doesn't think it's liberal (or liberally biased). They know REAL lefties like Don so they can't be liberal, right?!

BTW, Don, multi-national conglomerates, media and other industries, could give a crap who's in office (most give to both parties equally). It's influence they want, to make regulations and tax laws that benefit them at the expense to any small business or upstarts.

JFH:

"BTW, Don, multi-national conglomerates, media and other industries, could give a crap who's in office (most give to both parties equally). It's influence they want, to make regulations and tax laws that benefit them at the expense to any small business or upstarts."

I know---doesn't that sound like a conservative agenda to you? It certainly sounds like a conservative agenda to me.

The liberal agenda is equal rights, environmental protection, public education, and fairness in employment/housing/etc. The conservative agenda is tax breaks for billionares and large corporations, such as Post-Newsweek Stations Inc (the parent company of Newsweek Magazine).

BTW, most conglomerates do give to both parties, but not equally. Enron, for example, gave 98% of it's political bribes to the GOP.

http://www.corporations.org/campaign$$/ is a great resource for seeing who is buying who.

The conservative agenda is tax breaks for INDIVIDUALS. Where did you get your Enron figure? On Opensecrets.com the greatest spread for an election cycle was 20/80 (During the first Clinton years it was around 40/60), still you point has some validity; until you see who the top donors of all time (mostly unions).

BTW, Don why is it that liberals like you, when they have a valid point, have to go ahead and exagerate it to the point of unbelievability (And they say that conservatives lack nuauce)

Kerry is a neocon?

That's the funniest thing I've heard since the Chappelle show's Rick James bit.

I know---doesn't that sound like a conservative agenda to you? It certainly sounds like a conservative agenda to me.

This is clearly an agenda of people who favor government regulation (via industry oversight or the use of the tax code) of the marketplace. Which isn't "conservative" by any stretch of the imagination.

BTW, most conglomerates do give to both parties, but not equally. Enron, for example, gave 98% of it's political bribes to the GOP.

71% is not 98%.

One other thing. Does anyone really think that a difference of 2.8 million dollars over 14 years (averaging $200,000 per election cycle) is a significant disparity? With presidential elections running into the tens of millions of dollars (and for this year it appears to be hundreds of millions) $200,000 is a drop in the water.

Don Myers: More evidence of Newsweek's conservative bias. That'll get ya started.

The lawyer representing President Bush in the Plame case, James E. Sharp, is also defending Ken Lay in the Enron case.

earl: Your point being what?

Earl's point is that he's a conspiratorial idiot.

I would like to see more get made of Evan Thomas' bit....by the media, that is.

I agree with all of the above that Kerry/Edwards will not be helped all that much more by media....it will be Bush who (could) be hurt.

also, the media exagerates its importance. I should know, Im in it.

I see. Republicans control the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court, but the reason Bush is going to lose in November is because of the MEDIA. Hell, everybody hates the MEDIA, don't you know that?

As Ban Johnson said to Charlie Comiskey in 1919, "That's the whelp of a beaten cur."

Bush got enough unquestioning media support to choke a camel last year, and the year before that. If he's lost it now, it's through his own dishonesty and incompetence, which is also why he's going to lose the election.

Or do you have so little confidence in your fellow Americans that you think they could actually be duped by the MEDIA?

Sorry folks, but as a liberal I can assure you that the news is very slanted to the right, The very fact that the media doesn't pick up every Bush Conspiracy theory and regurgitate it ad nauseum PROVES they're clandestinely controlled by Skull & Bones. For instance, Newsweek has failed to mention anywhere that not only was Nick Berg decapitated by CIA agents, but the man wielding the knife was Donald Rumsfeld himself. So don't try to tell me that Newsweek isn't a conservative propaganda whose only goal is to keep Bush in power! It's all there in black and white, people!

pk: Hey, I guess Ashcroft's mind control rays got to Katie Couric

And as my great-great-grandpappy said in 1873, "I love dem ol' quotes. Makes me look so durn int-ee-leckshul."

15 points may be a stretch, but it's not entirely unrealistic. That doesn't mean Kerry will win by 15, or even win at all, but rather that his final number will be 15 points higher than it would otherwise be because of the unrelenting media drumbeat in his favor and against Bush. I've long believed that the Democrat party would be non-viable at the national level if the media weren't so solidly behind them.

I think that the Media's support is worth 15 points. Kerry is already benefiting from it. It just isn't enough to up his Q factor.

Reagan-Mondale ended up with 17.3% spread. So, 1984 was the last time there was a spread so large come November.

They were just talking about a poll bounce, of course, which could expected to evaporate... should it ever materialize. Kerry seems to be the only candidate in memory to get no bounce whatsoever from his VP pick.

The hilarity continues.

The "mainstream media" has a right-wing bias?

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Of course to our liberal moonbat friends, the "mainstream media" will continue to have a "right-wing" bias until they openly call President Bush and conservatives nazis, fascists, racists, etc.