Sunday, April 27, 2008

The Media Want A Frenzy. The Voters, Not So Much



[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]


So the media whip up a big-ass circus around some remarks that they — a bunch of folks who live in exclusive gated communities — deem somehow reflective of an "elitist" defect in one of the Democratic candidates and spend all week whipping it up. And what’s the result? Well…
Barack Obama’s “bitter” comment may have had little immediate impact in the Democratic primary race in Pennsylvania, according to a poll out this morning.

The Quinnipiac University poll found that Hillary Clinton leads Obama 50 to 44 percent, a margin unchanged since the organization’s last statewide poll at the beginning of the month.

The unchanged margin does not come as a great surprise. Obama’s remark was made public Friday afternoon, leaving only two days to permeate the public.

The poll, conducted Wednesday through Sunday night, revealed no noticeable shift in support for polling done on Saturday or Sunday. It is the first indication that Obama’s controversial remark may not dramatically change the head-to-head match-up in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary next Tuesday.
Anymore, you can pretty much figure that the people making these news judgments and setting daily news budgets built around permutations of the consensus "big stories" are working from faulty assumptions. They’ve been getting it wrong for the past ten years, and longer, after all.

Judging by tonight’s results, the voters aren’t much impressed. "Bittergate" was much ado about nothing, electorally speaking and real-world speaking.

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