Anyway, he goes on to explain that things aren’t really so bad for those who’d like to see a President McCain.
[S]ome number of the public may change their minds in the final two weeks of the campaign, and may decide McCain-Palin offers a better kind of change – perhaps enough to give McCain-Palin a victory.
Sure, maybe that will happen. But there’s no evidence of that happening, and Kristol doesn’t bother to point to any (if anything, the evidence points the opposite way). He just says anything’s possible. Again, the NYT pays this guy?
Now he gets even stupider. On the possibility that McCain might pull off a win:
The media elites really hate that idea. Not just because so many of them prefer Obama. But because they like telling us what’s going to happen. They’re always annoyed when the people cross them up. Pundits spent all spring telling Hillary Clinton to give up in her contest against Obama – and the public kept on ignoring them and keeping her hopes alive.
Why do elites like to proclaim premature closure – not just in elections, but also in wars and in social struggles? Because it makes them the imperial arbiters, or at least the perspicacious announcers, of what history is going to bring. This puts the elite prognosticators ahead of the curve, ahead of the simple-minded people who might entertain the delusion that they still have a choice.
Utter, total, complete, head-up-the-ass nonsense. First off, the notion that Bill Kristol isn’t a charter member of the “media elite” is laughable on its face. He’s got a regular op-ed slot at the NY Times, for f&#@’s sake. Second, his thesis is completely wrong. The “media elites” would LOVE a McCain win — not because they’re secretly in the tank for McCain, but because it would be a phenomenal story, and the media loves nothing so much as a huge, unexpected story. Of course, pretty much everyone — including Bill Kristol, though he won’t quite come out and say it — is assuming that Obama is going to win. But why is that?
Because that’s what the American people are telling them.
As I’ve noted before, polling works. And every national poll, as well as every aggregator of state-level polls, says that if the election were held today, Obama would win easily. Yes, that can change — today is not election day. But Kristol has got things exactly backwards here. The “elite prognosticators” that he’s feebly attacking aren’t putting themselves “ahead” of the American people. To the contrary — they’re reacting to what the American people are telling pollsters. Even Howie Kurtz gets this:
For all the complaints that the media swoon over Obama … journalists are ultimately driven by electoral math. If McCain were to make a comeback in the almighty polls, the narrative would abruptly change.
Honestly, if anyone can see any shred of redeeming value in Kristol’s column, any insight into anything that merits a spot on the NY Times op-ed page, I wish you’d let me know.
Only by inference, apparently:
If the public’s opinion is the final arbiter, then surely we should be ending the Iraq occupation with all possible speed, eh, Bill?
Yes, if there’s one thing the news networks would hate, it would be an even closer presidential race. They would absolutely detest a gripping, down-to-the-wire contest that would up their ratings numbers and ad revenue.