Character Assassination?

" 'If you notice, there hasn't been a lot of publicity on these polls I just told you about,' Clinton said. 'It is the first time you've heard it? Why do you think that is? Why do you think? Don't you think if the polls were the reverse and he was winning the electoral college against Sen. [John] McCain and Hillary was losing it, it would be blasted on every television station? You would know it wouldn't you? It wouldn't be a little secret.' "

I will simply observe that I've seen those polls reported again and again.

In Newsweek, Evan Thomas pens an open letter to Obama:

"The good news is that you have all but won the nomination. The bad news, if we are willing to face reality, is that the country--some parts of it, anyway--may not be ready to elect a black president of the United States. It is hard to get a precise fix on the problem. Voters generally deny to pollsters that race is a factor in casting their votes, but when they step into the privacy of the polling booth, their prejudices can sometimes emerge. Probably only a tiny fraction of voters are outright racist. But race is not irrelevant to many others, black or white; exit polls vary greatly by state, but show that 10 to 30 percent of primary voters considered race as they voted (if white, those voters broke overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton; if African-American, they voted for you).

"NEWSWEEK pollsters recently created a 'Racial Resentment Index' to measure the impact of race on the 2008 election. White voters were asked a series of 10 questions about a variety of race-related topics, including racial preferences in hiring, interracial marriage--and what they have 'in common' with African-Americans. About a third of these voters scored 'high' on this index; 29 percent of all white Democrats did. Overwhelmingly, these Democrats are the ones most likely to defect to John McCain in the fall. (Among 'High RR' white Democratic voters, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, Clinton leads McCain by 77 percent to 18 percent, while you win by only 51 percent to 33 percent.) Many Democratic voters in West Virginia interviewed by a NEWSWEEK reporter on primary night, May 13, did not hide their animus toward you as a kind of exotic alien. Menina Parsons, 45, said she will not vote for Obama in the general election because 'I don't think he's real. I don't think he's American.' "

MSNBC Taking Flak

We'll close today with my report on a cable channel under fire--from all sides:

MSNBC, which bills itself as "the place for politics," is being pummeled by political practitioners.

"It's an organ of the Democratic National Committee," says Steve Schmidt, a senior strategist for John McCain's campaign. "It's a partisan advocacy organization that exists for the purpose of attacking John McCain."

Ed Gillespie, President Bush's counselor, says there is an "increasing blurring" of the line between NBC News and MSNBC's "blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann."

Terry McAuliffe, chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, says Matthews has been "in the tank" for Barack Obama "from Day One" and is practically "the Obama campaign chair."

Why are operatives from across the political spectrum suddenly beating up on the third-place cable channel? Phil Griffin, the NBC senior vice president who runs MSNBC, dismisses the criticism, calling Schmidt's broadsides "pretty outrageous accusations."

"To call us an arm of the DNC is a joke," he says. "We have people with multiple points of view. Everyone is getting a little thin-skinned. We argue and debate every topic."