Power Tool Shorts Out

This is precious. Steven Hayward writes at Power Tools that news media are turning against President Obama.

As I predicted last week, the media are starting to turn on him. Right now it is mostly showing up on the editorial pages in the ranks of unsigned endorsement editorials. Papers that endorsed Obama enthusiastically in 2008, like the Orlando Sentinel, are coming out for Romney.

On Memeorandum, Hayward’s rant was grouped with the following editorials:

The Salt Lake City Tribune endorses … Obama.

The Denver Post endorses … Obama.

The Tampa Bay Times endorses … Obama.

What’s that you said, Hayward?

Hayward is very excited that the New York Observer endorsed Romney. This shouldn’t be surprising, however. The Observer was purchased by trust-fund baby Jared Kushner in 2006, after which its better writers — the ones I liked, anyway — walked out. It used to be an intelligent read; now it’s mostly an upscale tabloid.

But isn’t it just like a wingnut to see a couple of endorsements (or one poll) as the beginning of a tsunami.

Reality and Its Detractors

There possibly is no clearer measure of the difference between the U.S. Right and Left than the way we react to bad news. Righties immediately scream that the whatever-they-don’t-like is a lie, because it doesn’t fit what they think reality is supposed to be. And they blame somebody else, usually news media, or Democrats, or anybody but them. The whatever-it-is is never their fault.

Lefties accept the reality, sometimes perceiving the reality as even worse than it is. Then we blame ourselves (or at least each other), and form circular firing squads.

(It really does resemble the dynamics of domestic abuse situations, in which the abuser is perpetually flying into rages because the world isn’t the way he (or she) wants it to be. And then he (or she) concocts some reason to blame the significant other, or the kids, and takes the rage out on them. The abusee, all too often, blames her/himself and accepts the abuse.)

This week a Gallup daily tracking poll showed a significant lead for Mitt Romney. Nate Silver calmly and rationally explains why there is reason to think the Gallup poll is wrong. In a nutshell, the Gallup daily tracking poll has a history of swinging wildly in ways that don’t show up in other polls, and whenever that happens Gallup usually is wrong. See Nate for the wonky details; Business Insider provides a simplified version of what Nate wrote for those of us who don’t speak wonk.

Predictable headlines from rightie blogs:

“Nate Silver Blows Gasket as Gallup Shows Romney Pulling Away in the Presidential Horse Race” (American Power)

“Nate Silver Asks: Whose Shark Is This, and Why Do I Feel a Need to Jump It?” (The Other McCain)

“Romney Surges In Polls, Nate Silver Hardest Hit” (The Lonely Conservative).

That last headline is especially off, because the other polls, as in plural, are mostly showing Obama making a small gain over Romney (see also Sam Wang’s latest figures). It’s just the Gallup poll that shows a “surge.” Oh, and a Pew poll taken before the Tuesday debate shows Romney looking better on foreign policy. But that’s about it.

Speaking of foreign policy, Mittens hasn’t been talking about Libya lately. I wonder why?