the kicker

Winning Today’s "Debbie Downer" Award…

…are NBC’s Chuck Todd and Mark Murray, who unceremoniously inform us today that “it’s been a bad week for everyone.” But if you’d thought you’d actually...
March 21, 2008

…are NBC’s Chuck Todd and Mark Murray, who unceremoniously inform us today that “it’s been a bad week for everyone.”

But if you’d thought you’d actually had a, you know, pretty okay week: fear not. The “everyone” the political gurus are referring to is, tellingly, only McCain, Clinton, and Obama. So why are their glasses half-empty?

For McCain, it was his Shiite-Sunni gaffe, which allowed Democrats to have a field day criticizing his understanding of Iraq, as well as his commander-in-chief credentials. For Clinton, it was the failure to have re-votes in Florida and Michigan, which makes her path toward winning the Democratic much, much more difficult. But hands down, no one had a tougher week than Obama. Just look at the post-Rev. Wright/pre-race speech poll numbers that are still circulating; it’s what makes the Clinton and McCain folks think their week went better than Obama’s did.

Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.