Kudos to Howard Bryant for at least bringing up the fan factor.  He’s in the minority.  Last night I watched oh-so-serious football men Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison sagely opine that the Colts had no responsibility to anyone but the team.  Really?  What about all those angry people who bought tickets for that game? What about all the Colts fans who wanted a perfect season?  I understand Caldwell’s perspective on the matter, but the arrogance of the talking heads is staggering.

For all the daily sports jibber jabber about what team’s number one, what team’s a fraud, and which coach is on the hot seat, the fans get ignored with alarming frequency.  These all-important sports moments are presented as though they occur in a vacuum and that we intrinsically understand their profound impact on our lives.

I didn’t hear or read one argument like the following: Caldwell has a right to pull his players, but he should have informed ticket buyers ahead of time.  Or how about this one:  The Colts should have put their decision to a local fan vote, seeing as how the fans watch the games and buy the tickets.  Such arguments are considered subversive and deviant in the ultra corporate NFL, a league that can’t possibly fathom a world where Americans no longer care about football.  Hey, we’ll blackout your games in a recession, our coaches will intentionally roll over upon clinching playoff berths, and our sport will cripple your heroes for life…but you suckers will never turn away, right?

The NFL has an underlying assumption that Americans will do anything for pro football—as though it’s encoded in our national DNA.  That’s a mistake.  Football is popular here, but it’s continued dominance isn’t assured.  The United States boasts one of the fastest changing, most diverse populations in the world.  Not everybody wants to hunker down and watch the start-stop-timeout-challenge ‘action’ of the NFL.  I do, but most of my friends who emigrated here don’t.  Soccer and basketball have done far more to ride the globallization (get it??) tsunami.  I’ll still root for the Chargers, but part of me wants America’s other sports to overtake this self-important, fan-hating concussion mill.

Test Vid

Safe Obama-153 (CA, IL, NY, VT, MA, CT, RI, MD, HI)
Safe McCain-125 (AZ, UT, ID, WY, ND, SD, NE, KA, OK, TX, MS, AL, KY, TN, SC, AL)

Leaning Obama-37 (OR, WA, ME, NJ)
Leaning McCain-69 (MT, NM, AK, LO, GA, NC, WV, IN)

Toss Up-154 (NV, CO, MO, IA, MN, WI, MI, OH, VA, PA, FL)

First off, what separates “toss-up” from “lean”? It’s currently blurrier than the line between “gaffe” and “flub.” Obama is ahead by 13% in the latest Wisconsin poll, but somehow Farvetown is completely up in the air (Yes, I know that Kerry took WI by the slimmest of margins, but still, 13 points!). The same can be said for Meen-ah-soh-tah, where Obama leads by 15 points in the latest Rasmussen.

New Mexico is probably a T-up, though Obama leads by 9% in the last Rasmussen poll. Somehow it lies in McCain’s lean column. Some of McCain’s safe states seem quite poachable. South Carolina, and some of the oft forgotten plains states are currently competitive (It’d be nice if I could actually find recent polling from the urban futurevilles of North Dakota).

And there is one big decision that helps Obama’s numbers. The gator state is in the T-up column, when it should really be spotted to McCain—maybe even as a “safe” state.

So what does this all mean? Is CNN trying to augment the argument for a close ‘horserace?’ Are they just lagging on their numbers? Are they over-relying on the 2004 map? Do I need to get out more?

Reverend Wright-28

The Suicidal Nature of the Democratic Primary battle-11

Obama’s Condescension-4

Hillary’s Condescension-2

How Little We Know About Obama-4

Since I’m reading Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland,” I decided to focus on the “Liberal condescension” trope. Perlstein has posited that it is really the only way older conservatives know how to talk about liberals. He could be on to something. Oh, and of the 139 presidential race editorials, 49 were on the specific, pressing topics, of Reverend Wright, primary hand wringing, perceived liberal condescension, or Obama’s unknown quantities. And those are only the dumb topics I had time to chart this morning.

A major trope in the 50 days (2/14-5/6) of WaPo presidential race editorial tracking was the “suicidal Dems” theme. I often found myself snickering at this repetitive, hyperbolic, primary handwringing. Of the 139 total Op-Ed pieces (28 in February, 47 in March, 52 in April, and 12 in May), 11 had the specific message of, “The Democrats are hurting themselves with this protracted primary battle.”  This very narrow topic comprised a whopping 8 percent of all tracked articles.

Now, intuitively, this thinking made sense. The fight between Clinton and Obama often seemed ugly and counter productive.  But these pundits did not make a compelling case for the damaging impact of an extended primary fight. More importantly, aren’t there other pertinent issues to harp on?

Some horserace pundits had serious addictions to this chicken little special. Most amusingly, David Broder (who led all pundits with 3 primary concern pieces) wrote about this topic on 4/20, and then wrote about the exact same thing on 4/24. Sigh, here are the listed doomsayers.

February

2/25 Bob Novak

March

3/6 Harold Meyerson

3/6 David Broder

3/6 Bob Novak

3/11 Richard Cohen

3/17 Bob Novak

April

4/15 E.J. Dionne Jr.

4/20 David Broder

4/24 David Broder

4/25 Eugene Robinson

I tallied up some basic themes in my fifty day overview (2/14-5/6) of WaPo presidential race editorials. The first trope I charted was the “not getting enough scrutiny” topic. Allow me to explain. This is the somewhat common theme of stating that a candidate is getting a “free pass” from the media on a certain issue. What I love about this theme is the sadly predictable lack of pundit corroboration that comes with it. This claim is lazily thrown out there without even the easiest of Lexis Nexis searches to back it up. Anyway, here are the numbers for this theme, by month. Oh, and keep in mind that all the listed editorials have the same message of “X candidate is getting a free pass.”

February

Obama: 2/7 David Ignatius

March

Clinton: 3/8 Colbert I. King

McCain: 3/6 Harold Meyerson, 3/11 E.J. Dionne Jr

Obama: 3/3 Bob Novak

April

Clinton: 4/26 Colbert I. King Jr.

McCain: 4/1 Eugene Robinson, 4/22 Eugene Robinson

Obama: 4/4 Charles Krauthammer, 4/25 Geoff Garin

May

McCain: E.J. Dionne Jr.

So the counts are as follows: Clinton got two such themes, Obama got four, and McCain led with  five. Here’s the interesting wrinkle, though. Every column that posited a lack of McCain scrutiny did so with a specific attribution: The Democratic dogfight was to blame. In my next post, I’m tallying up how many WaPo columns were specifically dedicated to hand wringing over the Democratic nomination battle.

In tracking the Washington Post themes, I wanted to know which politicians were receiving the most negative coverage, and when they were receiving it. I post my results with this caveat: Tracking negativity can be subjective. If a column stated that a candidate was either fundamentally flawed, or employing a bad strategy, I charted it as “Negative.” This was tricky in the case of Eugene Robinson, who wrote a few columns that stated the Democrats were erring in not attacking McCain. Who is getting the real criticism, here? In the case of Eugene, I made the call not to count the articles as negative coverage. Grey areas were no obstacle in the case of Bob Novak, who wrote a whopping 6 clearly negative pieces on Barack Obama. Same goes for Charles Krauthammer, who wrote 5 negative Obama screeds.

Overall, I recorded 17 negative Hillary Clinton pieces, 30 negative Barack Obama pieces, and 11 negative John McCain pieces. The last two weeks of February saw 7 negative pieces, easily her negative coverage peak in my sample. Over that same time period, Obama only recieved 2 such pieces, and McCain had 3. Obama got hit worst around the time of the Pennslyvannia primary (held April 22nd). From April 14 to April 25, Obama tallied 8 negative columns. Obama saw a second apogee in the return of Wright coverage (5 such columns from May 1-6). The second peak is very interesting because I found no sinking poll numbers that correlated with the negativity (Rasmussen has Obama gaining 6 points on Hillary during this time period, as does Gallup). With only 11 negative pieces, McCain has not really had “peaks,” but he did tally 3 attacks from 4/22 to 4/27. His poll numbers have been somewhat stagnant over the course of my research. Currently, Clinton is losing ground to him and Obama is gaining.

From February 14 to May 6 (50 days), I read and wrote basic summaries of every presidential race related editorial in the Washington Post. One of my initial goals was to track opinion page themes, in hopes of finding a connection between WaPo tropes and actual public opinion. Specifically, I wanted to see a correlation between events and positive/negative coverage. After matching Op-Ed themes with head-to-head (McCain vs. Obama, Obama vs. Clinton, Clinton vs. McCain), Zogby, Gallup, AP and Rasmussen poll results, I found little correlation between public opinion results and Post coverage. What I did find was a heavy emphasis on “character” issues, and little emphasis on policy issues.

There were one major instance of poll activity correlating to opinion making. Obama’s numbers dipped in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright coverage, which hit the airwaves beginning on March 14. On March 17, Gallup tallied Clinton 47%, Obama 45%, and Obama 49%, McCain 47%. Two days later, after the story had gotten significant media attention, Gallup had Clinton 49%, Obama 42%, and McCain 47%, Obama 43%. Thus, began an onslaught of Wright questions in the Washington Post Op-Ed pages. From March 19 to the beginning of April, a whopping 10 out of the 21 presidential race focused editorials were devoted to the Reverend Wright issue.

A few factors may have fueled Wright pontificating in March. The new issue’s connection to race and boomer generation ‘culture wars’ was probably just plain interesting to many media members. Perhaps the negative poll bounce prompted some of the heavy Wright attention, and Obama may have attracted more coverage with his “A More Perfect Union” response speech.

The rationale for heavy early May “return of Wright coverage” makes little sense, though. The pastor made three few public appearances, and the Washington Post deemed it necessary to devote an astounding 8 out of 12 May 1- May 6 presidential editorials to this topic. This is odd because I found no evidence of a negative public reaction during or after the pastor’s April 26 PBS interview, or April 28 National Press Club speech. Obama still felt the need to “distance” himself from Wright, and did so in an April 29 speech. Obama’s poll numbers remained relatively stagnant immediately after the speech, and trended upwards in the following weeks.

As he came closer to mathematically eliminating Hillary Clinton, Obama’s poll prospects saw an uptick (The most recent polls show Obama beating Clinton by 7 points in the Gallup, 7 in the Rasmussen, and a whopping 16 in the Zogby). This is quite interesting for reasons I will get to in the second phase of my conclusions.

Obama’s refusal to wear the flag pin is indicative of a good thing: He is an independent thinker.

• 5/6 E.J. Dionne Jr.

The strange race has transformed who the candidates are. Clinton went from overconfident to the pugilistic comeback kid. Obama went from the transformative upstart to being the flawed frontrunner.

• 5/6 Wrap: I can’t believe Cohen said something substantive. Too bad it’s still personality-centric.