There’s more to this than just egg on a few reporters’ faces. By making so much of polls which utterly failed to measure Edwards’ appeal to late-deciding voters, the Post and others set the bar almost impossibly high for Kerry in Wisconsin. Thus when Kerry’s victory turned out to be narrower than anticipated, the press immediately ruled that his campaign had lost its aura of inevitability. Jeff Greenfield’s characterization of polls as the “crack cocaine” of political junkies never looked so apt.

As for ARG’s local clients, they did even worse, if Bennett is to be believed — creating a desired storyline, then actively avoiding any hint of evidence to the contrary.

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