Dan Boren

Whether it's deliberate obfuscation or just plain laziness is up for debate, but the media have a penchant for misleading news consumers with the meme that Blue Dog Democrats are politically "conservative." While the Blue Dog caucus is decidedly more moderate than Democrats as a whole -- you could individual members are "conservative for a Democrat" -- they rarely if ever qualify as conservatives when you look at the entirety of their voting records.

If a Republican Congressman publicly announced that he will not endorse John McCain because the GOP presidential nominee is too conservative and has a track record of refusing to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats, would the press report it?

Probably 24 hours a day, seven days a week until this Republican Congressman became a household name, right?

Well, on Tuesday, the Associated Press revealed the name of a Democrat Congressman from Oklahoma that is refusing to endorse Barack Obama for president because he believes the nominee is "the most liberal senator" in the nation whose "record does not reflect working in a bipartisan fashion."

Oddly, this announcement went almost completely ignored by television news outlets while garnering no attention from major newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today: