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Pundits, Polls Call Debate for Obama

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Uncommitteds Side With Democrat on Economy

Pundits and instant polls called Tuesday night’s presidential debate in Nashville, Tenn., for Sen. Barack Obama.

CBS said: "Thirty-nine percent of the 400 uncommitted voters surveyed identified Barack Obama as tonight’s winner; 27 percent said John McCain won, while 35 percent saw the debate as a draw.

"After the debate, 68 percent of uncommitted voters said that they think Obama will make the right decisions on the economy, compared to 54 percent who said that before the debate. Fewer thought McCain would do so – 49 percent after the debate, and 41 percent before."

CBS News and Knowledge Networks conducted what they called a nationally representative poll.

CNN’s polls also called the debate for Obama.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. asked, "Who did the best job in the debate?"

The answer:

Obama 54%

McCain 30%

Among debate watchers, the percentage of those who viewed Obama favorably rose from 60 percent to 64 percent. Those who viewed him unfavorably declined from 38 percent to 34 percent.

McCain’s favorable rating remained at 51 percent; his unfavorable at 46 percent.

On who would better handle Iraq, the CNN results were Obama, 51 percent and McCain, 47 percent.

Who expressed his views more clearly in the debate? Obama, 60 percent, McCain 30 percent.

On the Washington Post Web site, Associate Editor Robert Kaiser wrote:

"As I did the first time — just 11 days ago, if you can believe it — I did not think this was McCain at his best. He often seemed very self-conscious to me. His breathless voice tonight sometimes seemed strained and unnatural. His determination, evident in the first debate, to avoid his catch-phrase ‘my friends’ disappeared tonight. He repeated himself quite often. But he ended very well. Obama seemed to project the same steady, cool persona we saw the first time out, and which, the polls say, won the debate for him then. But he avoided answering quite a few questions, which may have annoyed viewers. Of course McCain avoided answering some questions too."

Kaiser returned after 11 p.m. to write, "Just getting Stan Greenberg’s analysis of his 50-member focus group. It broke ‘heavily’ for Obama; his 50 moderate, undecided voters strongly thought Obama won, and voting preferences shifted strongly in Obama’s favor. 42 percent of previously undecided voters said they are now for Obama, and his favorability ratings went way up."

On CNN, Bill Bennett, the former Reagan administration official, said, "I so much admire John McCain, I don’t think the campaign was as good as the man."

Fellow conservative Pat Buchanan said on MSNBC: "McCain won the debate but Barack Obama was a cool [customer]. He would not let himself be fazed."

Others said McCain seemed dismissive toward Obama, particularly in a reference to Obama as "that one." "It’s clear these two guys don’t cotton to each other," James Carville, the Democratic strategist, said on CNN.

An MSNBC focus group in King of Prussia, Pa., broke 60 percent for Obama and 40 percent for McCain.

"You put the two of them together, Barack Obama says change," CNN’s Candy Crowley said. "McCain was pretty good on foreign policy, but Barack Obama is a better performer. He’s better at synthesizing his ideas. McCain tried some attempts at humor" that fell flat among those who weren’t already among his supporters.

On the same network, Democratic strategist Paul Begala noted that while McCain left the stage relatively early, Obama stayed to shake hands with those in the audience for the town-hall format, knowing reporters would interview them.

In the print edition of Wednesday’s Washington Post, television critic Tom Shales was among those who noted that, "as the debate ended, a camera caught Obama extending a hand in McCain’s direction and what looked like McCain refusing to shake it, although watching at home one couldn’t be certain. McCain’s wife, Cindy, stepped in quickly and shook Obama’s hand."

Readers of the online edition of the Wall Street Journal were among those who saw racial condescension in McCain’s answer to an African American, Oliver Clark, who said, "through this economic crisis, most of the people that I know have had a difficult time. And through this bailout package, I was wondering what it is that’s going to actually help those people out."

McCain replied that, "one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I’ll bet you, you may never even have heard of them before this crisis."

 

October 6, 2008

Is Artwork Inspiring or Degrading?

Reaction to Illustration "Stunning in Its Ferocity"

A "visual op-ed" in the Cleveland Plain Dealer was "a thoughtful, fascinating piece of work by one of the most thoughtful, fascinating people who work here," artist Andrea Levy, Ted Diadiun, public editor at the Plain Dealer, wrote on Sunday.

But "the reaction we got from a distressing number of readers was stunning in its ferocity.

"The words were spare: Across the top she said, ‘There is a bridge to somewhere, but can we cross it?’ Below, she continued, ‘or instead, prop-politics? Paperdollitics? The voting booth is a very private place. It’s been said that this is not a race about race, but of course it is. And it’s about our bodies, our partners, the earth and our faiths [plural], as well. Or are these just props, too? Is the flag an accessory?’

"Clearly, to me at least, the illustration emphasized the importance of Obama’s presidential candidacy as an emblematic separation from a time when black men were lynched for being ‘uppity.’

"I spent a lot of time Sunday morning with Levy’s thoughts and imagery, and felt enriched. Many readers shared my appreciation and described the piece as brilliant, inspiring, poetic and eloquent.

"But others — mostly from my side of the political aisle – concluded that Levy meant to imply that anyone who opposes Obama is a racist, and that the noose was there to incite hatred. People called it deplorable, degrading, offensive, disgusting. Some canceled subscriptions and others threatened cancellation unless the paper apologized."

Obama Says Voters Won’t Reject Him Based on Race

"Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is pointing to the success of his presidential campaign as a sign that voters won’t reject him based on race," Mike Allen wrote Saturday for politico.com.

"’The fact of the matter is people have been continually looking for how race will impact this campaign,’ Obama said in a satellite interview Friday with Washington’s WJLA ABC 7. ‘And yet, I’m here, 30 days out, competitive in Virginia.’"

Meanwhile, Douglass K. Daniel, in an analysis for the Associated Press, wrote on Sunday of a "racially tinged subtext" in vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s claim that Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn’t see the United States like other Americans.

And in the New York Times, columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, writing about last month’s survey by the Associated Press, Yahoo and Stanford University on race and the election, said "racists" aren’t the issue.

"Rather, most of the votes that Mr. Obama actually loses belong to well-meaning whites who believe in racial equality and have no objection to electing a black person as president – yet who discriminate unconsciously," Kristof wrote.

He quoted John Dovidio, a psychologist at Yale University: Those voters’ doubts "tend to be attributed not to the person’s race – because that would be racism – but deflected to other areas that can be talked about, such as lack of experience."

PBS Film Looks at Latino Influence in Presidential Race

PBS is debuting a primer Wednesday that traces Latino influence in presidential politics from John F. Kennedy to the present.

Among the more intriguing parts of the one-hour documentary "Latinos ’08" is an examination of Latino ambivalance toward Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, and the disappointment of many with Sen. John McCain, the head of the Republican ticket and a former champion of immigration reform.

Obama’s message of hope fell flat with Latinos because they are already "replete with aspiration," Roberto Suro, the former Washington Post and New York Times journalist and founding director of the Pew Hispanic Center, says in the film. For white liberals, voting for Obama is "a way of cleaning their conscience," Rodolfo De La Garza of Columbia University says, asserting that Mexican-Americans have no similar guilt over treatment of African Americans.

Among Obama’s negatives, the senator voted for a wall along the Mexico-U.S. border and had built no relationship with Latino elected officials, Suro said.

His Democratic primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, scored numbers among Latinas that exceeded even those among white women, Bill Clinton’s Housing and Urban Development secretary, Henry Cisneros, notes. Ruben Navarrette Jr., syndicated columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune, says, "She learned from the mistakes of her husband, who presided over eight years of a black and white America."

On the Republican side, analysts in the film note that McCain now says he would not vote for his own immigration reform bill, disappointing Latinos who had heavily supported him in his Senate campaigns in Arizona. Meanwhile, other Republicans, such as Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., have been outspoken in their opposition to illegal immigration, a stand that spilled over into antagonism toward Hispanics in general.

In the film, the Rev. Luis Cort?©s Jr., president of Esperanza USA, a network of Latino churches, notes the growing Latino birth rate and says he told former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, "If you attack us, we will remember that, and you will never, ever have a Republican president in the future." Still, Latinos are still developing the cohesion that other groups have already created.

The documentary is produced by Phillip Rodriguez, a senior fellow at the Institute of Justice and Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Its appearance on PBS follows agitation by Latinos for more inclusion in the network’s documentary programming.

Big Audience Expected for Obama-McCain Rematch

The Democratic presidential running mates Barack Obama and Joe Biden are doing a better job in the debates than their opponents, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Susan Davis reported Monday for the Wall Street Journal.

"By a 21 point margin, 50%-29%, voters said the Democrats had the debate edge over rival Republican running mates John McCain and Sarah Palin, while 10% of respondents said the two tickets were equally as good and 4% said neither was good.

"McCain and Obama will face off for the second of three debates Tuesday evening at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. This forum will be a town hall style format, where questions will come from the audience as well as viewers on-line. The debate doesn’t have a specific topic, and Tom Brokaw of NBC will moderate it.

"The two candidates will likely get a better viewing audience than the first debate – held on a Friday night — which was the least watched debate in modern history."

Meanwhile, Gwen Ifill‘s performance as moderator of Thursday’s vice presidential debate remained a topic of discussion.

"Ifill generally received positive, but notably mixed reviews from her television news colleagues on the questions she asked during Thursday’s Vice Presidential Debate, according to data gathered exclusively for TVSpy.com, using the iboqx interactive ballot box," the TV tipsheet Shop Talk reported.

["Approximately 100 different TVSpy viewers interacted with the iboqx and
questions presented," ShopTalk’s Thomas Petner told Journal-isms on Tuesday.]

CBS anchor Bob Schieffer, who is to moderate the final debate on Oct. 15, told the National Journal he thought Ifill received "a little bit of a bad rap" by critics who said her book-in-progress about black politics disqualified her as a moderator.

"I mean — and all I know about this is what I’ve literally read in the papers, but it’s my understanding this book is still in manuscript," he told Tammy Haddad. "It hasn’t even been set in type yet. She’s about in the middle of it and as it was explained to me, this is not a book about Barack Obama; it’s a book about black politicians and the gains they have made in recent years. So I thought that was a little bit of an unfair charge against her," Schieffer said.

Henderson Named Free Press Editorial Page Editor

Stephen Henderson, deputy editorial editor at the Detroit Free Press, will become its editorial and opinion editor in January, the newspaper announced.

Henderson, 37, will oversee the editorial pages and lead the commentary and blogs on www.freep.com

He replaces Ron Dzwonkowski, 56, who after 10 years as editorial page editor will become associate editor.

The announcement was one of several made last month in anticipation of the Nov. 9 departure of Executive Editor
Caesar Andrews, who holds the No. 2 newsroom job.

A Detroit native, Henderson worked with the Free Press in the mid-1990s, held editing posts with the Baltimore Sun and the Chicago Tribune, and in 2003, became the first mainstream newspaper reporter of color to regularly cover the U.S. Supreme Court. He did so for the old Knight Ridder newspapers, and then for the McClatchy Washington bureau. Henderson returned to the Free Press in 2007, and writes a weekly column.

Karen Lincoln Michel Promoted to AME in Green Bay

Karen Lincoln Michel, president of Unity: Journalists of Color, has been named assistant managing editor of the Green Bay (Wis.) Press-Gazette, the paper reported on Thursday.

Michel has served as chief of the Press-Gazette’s Madison bureau since June 2005.

"In my travels as UNITY president, I’ve heard a lot of pessimism about the future of newspapers. But I think in these critical times, there is opportunity for growth in a new direction," she said in the story.

Michel, 49, worked as a reporter for the La Crosse (Wis.) Tribune and the Dallas Morning News. She also wrote columns on Native American issues for the New York Times Syndicate’s New America News Service. Michel, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, was part owner from 1987 to 2005 of News From Indian Country, published in Northern Wisconsin on the Lac Courte Oreilles Indian Reservation, the story said.

Debate Continues Over Coverage of Wall Street

Media second-guessing over coverage of Wall Street prior to last month’s financial meltdown continues.

"As news organizations chase exclusives about the Wall Street meltdown, they also are grappling with a troubling question: Why didn’t they see this coming?" Howard Kurtz wrote on Monday in the Washington Post.

"After being burned by years of cheerleading before the dot-com collapse, the media warned repeatedly that the surge in housing prices might turn out to be a bubble. But the emphasis was generally on the potential toll on homeowners, not the banks that would be left holding bagfuls of bad loans. As in the savings-and-loan scandal of the late 1980s, the press was a day late and several dollars short."

In the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer on Sunday, public editor Ted Vaden said, "Here’s what I think readers are looking for: a) The latest news, as fast as you can provide it. b) Understanding of the causes and impact of the financial turmoil. c) What does it mean to me — my savings, investments, job, retirement?

"I think The N&O has done a good job with the hard news coverage but, as the comments indicate, can do better helping people understand and cope."

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