Good! I'm glad to see the Obama campaign on its game!

Could this be the portents of a new aggressive press push-back policy? If so, about fucking time.

Obama leading in the national polls and leading in several swing states would indicate that he has bridged the racial divide. Didn't read the article.

yeah i agree, everytime a poll come out they always focus on race, instead of see the numbers as they are and reporting the whole poll and not just the part thats going to get the paper noticed
http://sensico.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/whos-laughin-now-suckers/

Heck, when the liberal blogosphere is running around analyzing "why Obama is losing" (their answer: flip-flops!!!!) based one polling outfit (Newsweek) showing a drop in gap of 12 points, clearly overlooking the fact that their samples of Dems/Reps in the two polls were statistically different, what do you expect of a pro hack Nagourney?

The reason why Obama will win is because he is solidly reality based, unlike all the yippers on the sidelines...

Oh, also, do you have the entire Obama response?

Media pushback! Methinks ex-Hillary staffers in the Obama campaign may be showing their mettle.

As for Nagourney, his beltway cockamamie has for much too long deserved to be slammed with facts and reality.

♪ Oh happy day!

I thought the same things when I looked at the underlying data. Obama has 31% approval among whites, McCain has a 35% approval among whites - yet somehow Obama is failing to bridge the racial divide. Heck, that 31-35% among whites voters is probably a smaller gap than the one that existed between Kerry and Bush around this time in 2004.

Also, with McCain down by 6 overall, shouldn't he be the one worrying. Shouldn't he be trying harder to win over some of the black and Hispanic voters who overwhelmingly approve of and say that will vote for Obama? I mean, only 23% of Hispanics approve of McCain and only 5% of blacks approve.

Obama, if the status quo holds relative to this polls, wins the presidency, even with only 31% of whites approving.

Why wasn't the story about how McCain has been unable to bridge the racial divide? Why isn't the story about how Obama has a huge approval advantage over McCain among blacks and Hispanics yet they are almost tied among whites - McCain's own race? (and, I might add, Obama's)

Thanks, NYTs, for spinning a poll that holds almost nothing but bad news for McCain into one where Obama still can't win over whites.

You just know they wanted to headline the memo, "And in other news, Obama has not yet cured cancer."

As the paper of record in this country, its influence extends far beyond the daily readership.

Bitch slapping the Gray Lady - Always a good move

I'm not too pissed. Misusing polls is rampant among the various news outlets, especially ignoring the margin of error.

Adam Nagourney is useless. The NYT has some of the most useless humans in existence writing for them these days.

The logic in Nagourney's article is completely flawed. It is based on the assumption that Blacks have a much more favorable impression of Obama (80%) and a much less favorable impression of McCain. The favorability numbers for white people for both candidates are within the margin of error. It seems to me the correct headline is: "McCain has a real Black people issue" rather than "Obama has a race issue." Obama seems to be doing just fine.

Another logical flaw is assuming that the difference in opinion between white and black people is completely attributable to race. If you check out similar polls between Clinton and Bush, you'll probably find very similar numbers -- white people about tied, but black people overwhelmingly in favor of Clinton. Would the headline then have been "Bill Clinton Fails to Close Race Divide?" I don't think so.

Piss poor attempts by the NYT and the New Yorker to remain relevant by constantly rehashing the "race issue".

Neither are much better than CNN with their inane special "Black in America" which they promo endlessly throughout the day..

More reasons to seek alternatives to the MSM.

I must say I still do love the NYT and a cup of coffee on the weekend, for pure entertainment value, but I am far less likely to follow or to trust their coverage of the events of the day. They have made too many mistakes to overlook.

The NYT has steadily diminished itself over the past 8 years, trying to grasp at relevancy in the Internet age.
Between Judy Miller, the "where's the rest of the story" on McCain and Vickie Iseman, hiring, then then having to fire hack sportswriters who plagiarize and engage in charater assassination, Mike Freeman, and now the crap they've been writing this campaign.

It sucks.

Don't forget David Brooks and that schmuck who gets a cookie when he manages to be right, Bill Kristol. Two more shitstains on what was previously a fine institution.

Once I looked beyond the headline, the story immediately looked suspicious to me. If whites are giving Obama 31% favorable, and McCain 35% favorable where's the big divide?

Obama isn't black.

He's "exotic".

Sheesh...

Why the shock over the grey lady's turn to the tired trope of "racial differences" where other more satisfying explanations exist?

Since the release of the Moynihan Report, if not earlier, liberals have been blaming massive structural social inequalities on "racial attitudes" and other such pseudo-psychological bs.

"Race" is to "whining" as Nagourney et al are to Phil Gramm and his ilk - both sides agree American social problems are psychological at root, they just differ regarding cause.

NYT: "More than 80 percent of black voters said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama; about 30 percent of white voters said they had a favorable opinion of him."

You can continue sticking your heads in the sand, continue blaming the messenger, but the fact is that Obama is probably the weakest candidate that Democrats could have run. There's a reason that he's currently in a tight race with an old man running a poor campaign for the party that most Americans have rejected. Just about any Democrat would be in a much stronger position at this point, and it's not only because he's black, though that certainly will continue to be a significant factor. But it's also because he's perceived as being very arrogant and elitist, and he has no experience in addressing the problems that most Americans care about. More recently, he's also shown himself to be a shameless opportunist who has, in the words of Adrianna Huffington, undercut his own brand.

The fact is that Obama's candidacy has been going downhill for months now. He peaked in February and lost most of the primaries after that. But due to the crazy rules of the Democratic Party and the ruling over Michigan and Florida, we're stuck with him.

That's not to say that he has no chance of winning the general election. Most Americans would desperately love to vote for anyone promising to change the direction of the country. But Obama and his rabid supporters need to wake up, smell the coffee, and realize that as much as they may idolize Obama, and as much as he idolizes himself, the fact is that he currently rubs most Americans the wrong way. And renting out a stadium so that he can continue to conduct his campaign as an evangelist or rock star only tends to cement the negative view that most Americans have about him and his ego.

Latest headlines from the NYT:

Obama still fails to transform stone into bread
Obama only able to feed hundreds
Obama can't walk on water, but "can swim"
Obama not delivering on commitment to heal lepers
Survey: Obama struggling with Czechoslovakian demographic
Obama's problem with America

Oh, and he's black.

I was glad to see the campaign response. I had the same reaction when I read the article. The data have little relationship to their conclusions. When you have a story to tell and reality intercedes, it's always easier to ignore reality. Just ask George Bush.

Some people just can't keep from stirring shit up. Just something to do to make the dog days more interesting.

I'm white, old, working class and delighted with Obama. And I know a shit stirer when I see one.

Obama is polling just as strongly with whites as John Kerry did. Who knew that John Kerry was black!

Here's our take on this whole ordeal from

The Obama campaign's response team setup to counter the false/inaccurate information that is being foisted on the American public serves two valuable purposes. It immediately provides a factual counterbalance to the false/inaccurate information being disseminated and it also gives the people who are putting it out to identify themselves as journalists or propagandists. A jounalist will respond by substantiating the accuracy or fallacy of conflicting information, while a propagandist will respond without addressing the the accuracy or fallacy of the information. In either case, the man who is going to be the president of the United States is putting them on notice that he is aware of who they are and what they are saying, and knows the difference between an honest journalist and a lying propagandist.