blog report

The Yankees, the Olsens, and the Veepstakes

June 30, 2004

Mickey Kaus isn’t happy with The New York Times‘s write-up yesterday of its own NYT/CBS poll. The Times chose the headline, “Bush’s Rating Falls to Its Lowest Point, New Survey Finds,” despite the fact that the new poll shows the president has gained seven points on Kerry in the last month. Though Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder report that Bush’s approval rating is at an all-time low, Kaus notes that a poll listed on the Times‘s own website from a month ago puts that rating a point lower. That was a CBS poll, rather than a NYT/CBS poll, but Kaus argues that it shouldn’t make any difference. It’s hard to disagree, though his conclusion that “Nagourney has become a national embarrassment” is not something Campaign Desk would ever endorse.

Noam Scheiber, writing on The New Republic blog “&c” (that’s pronounced Et Cetera, by the way), agrees that the Times‘s story on its own poll was off. Asking, “Did the Times miss the beginning of a Bush comeback?”, Scheiber writes that the Times “breathlessly proclaims the poll to be miserable news for George W. Bush. But when you actually read over the results, they suggest Bush’s numbers are either stabilizing or improving somewhat.”

Meanwhile, Daniel Drezner hasn’t had enough of the veepstakes. “Gephardt or Edwards?” is quickly becoming the new “Mary-Kate or Ashley?” but Drezner argues that on policy issues, they really aren’t so different from each other (Gephardt and Edwards, that is. Mary-Kate and Ashley have differed over the feasibility of the Middle East “roadmap,” among other issues.) But then Drezner admits he’d never vote for a Kerry-Gephardt ticket, while he’d consider Kerry-Edwards. Why? As he sees it, “the most important gift in campaigning is the ability to say something a voter disagrees with while making that voter think you’re still a good guy. Reagan had it. Clinton had it. Edwards has it. Gephardt doesn’t have it.” Now that’s honesty; it isn’t often you see a blogger who cheerfully confesses, “I’m easy.”

Dem From CT, writing on the Daily Kos, links to a story in The Hill which reports that the major networks are planning to cut down on coverage of this year’s conventions, ignoring some of the speeches from earlier in the week. D From C notes that the networks’ decision “may crimp plans to showcase the GOP’s huggable side, so I expect mucho pressure from the WH to make ’em change their mind. For the good of the country, of course.”

And finally: “Dick Cheney just got booed at the Yankees game,” reports John Aravosis of Americablog. Sure enough, when Big Time was pictured on the stadium screen during the 7th inning stretch, the crowd responded with an old-fashioned Bronx cheer. (Interestingly, this New York Times report on the game initially included a reference to the incident — which was also included in the New York City home-delivery print edition — but it’s since been removed from the website, according to Atrios.) But Aravosis may be going overboard when he suggests, “this is the blue-collar Bronx we’re talking about, and Cheney is still getting booed – not a good sign for the Bush-Cheney ticket. The election is over.”

Easy there, tiger. We weren’t at the game last night, but we can reliably report that it’s been a while since the Yankee Stadium crowd for a game with the Red Sox could be called “blue-collar.”

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–Zachary Roth

Zachary Roth is a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly. He also has written for The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, and Talking Points Memo, among other outlets.