Debates

At the top of Thursday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Jeff Glor reported on the upcoming vice presidential debate by declaring: "35-year Senate veteran Joe Biden versus the upstart from Alaska, Sarah Palin, the surprise VP pick, whose credentials have been questioned after a series of attention-grabbing interviews." Despite referring to Palin as an "upstart," Glor also pointed out Biden’s…

Due out from Random House Publishing:Breakthrough: Politics and Republicanism in the Age of DeweyAuthors: The Editors of the Chicago Daily Tribune.Publish Date: January 20th, 1949.Thoughts from the authors:

Friday’s Washington Post carried an ad from PBS touting their two TV debate moderators: "Objective. Impartial. Independent. The NewsHour’s Jim Lehrer and Washington Week’s Gwen Ifill bring PBS’s tradition of integrity to the most important conversations in America – so you can make up your own mind."Sadly, that ad is not accurate. Even before addressing whether "independence" is demonstrated by…

There's one good reason Gwen Ifill, the host of the PBS show Washington Week, is moderating the vice-presidential debate: she has a forthcoming book about Barack Obama (and other black Democrats) called The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Ifill talks about the book project on YouTube here. In addition to her portrait of Obama, Ifill will also investigate Massachusetts Gov.…

The wording may be a tad nuanced, the referenced two-bit dictator from a different country, but the idea behind the following jokes involving Barack Obama and the race card seems too similar for mere happenstance. Judge for yourself. On September 19, conservative blogger Jim Treacher wrote the following fictious exchange between "President" Obama and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that seems eerily…

MSNBC may have dropped Chris Matthews as “news anchor” of major political news events, but he was a major presence during coverage of Friday’s debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Immediately following the debate and in a special Hardball that aired at midnight EDT, Matthews insulted John McCain as “troll-like” and insisted the Republican nominee showed “contempt” for Obama by looking at…

"The View" co-hosts, who seemingly have difficulty understanding the Constitution, have demonstrated their lack of understanding in economics. Recapping Friday’s presidential debate on the September 29 edition of "The View," co-host Sherri Shepherd wondered how we can raise taxes. Whoopi Goldberg replied "it’s not going to happen. We are in too much financial trouble. We can’t."A very brief…

Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher L. Brent Bozell, III appeared this morning on the Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends to discuss the media's nearly unanimous acclamation of Illinois Senator Barack Obama as the winner of last Friday's Presidential debate.Mr. Bozell noted one of the few press exceptions, Newsweek, who gave the nod to Arizona Senator John McCain, but…

Barack Obama's desultory debate performance has left Maureen Dowd in the dumps.  Her weekend column is a laundry list of Sunday-morning quarterbacking.  Dowd's biggest beef is Obama's failure to have goaded McCain into a damaging display of ill-temper.  Just for fun, let's meander through Maureen's musings.The president . . . is so insecure that he could only choose a vice president he knew would…

When the latest installment of Saturday Night Live parodied Friday’s presidential debate, the NBC comedy program gave attention to Barack Obama’s connections to convicted criminal Tony Rezko, corrupt Chicago politics, and Obama’s recent attempts at "playing the race card," which notably are all matters that the mainstream news media have given little attention to. While the show also took a…

Watching Saturday’s network morning shows, the talking heads seemed to agree that Friday night’s debate did not produce “a clear winner” or any “knockout punch,” and that it was unlikely that any “needle was moved” among undecided voters. Yet those same networks tried to also argue that Obama had really won the debate, superficially suggesting that McCain’s “disdainful” body language poorly…

Andrea Mitchell gave it the old Hollywood try for Obama this morning.  Summarizing the debate on Today, Mitchell managed to cobble together a video clip that showed McCain's only stumble, while snipping out what many including her colleague Chris Matthews saw as the debate's most salient feature: the multiple times Obama expressed agreement with McCain.And so it was that Andrea treated us to…

Awarding Barack Obama two grades of A-minus and one B-minus while presenting John McCain with two grades of B-plus and one B-minus, at the end of his “Nightline Report Card” segment on Friday night, ABC's George Stephanopoulos declared Obama the “winner” -- with a big illustrative check mark on screen:Bottom line, the winner is Barack Obama. He comes into this race where the country wants change…