Barracuda Bandwagon

"Underscoring the building strength of Mr. Obama's candidacy in the final phase of the campaign, he was ahead of Mr. McCain among various groups that voted for Mr. Bush four years ago: those with incomes greater than $50,000 a year; married women; suburbanites; white Catholics, and is even competitive among white men -- a group that has not voted for a Democrat over a Republican since 1972, when pollsters began surveying people after they voted."

The NYT margin: 52-39 Obama. Oh, and Bush is at 22.

To no one's surprise, the Times endorses Obama.

Salon looks at the year's media misfires, which is another way of saying how the McCain campaign blew it. In fact, Mike Madden and Walter Shapiro lead off with " The Cult of Sarah Palin":

"McCain's choice of a running mate on the eve of the Republican National Convention set off a wave of emotions that quickly veered from 'Sarah Who?' to 'Sarah Wow!' Even amid the initial gooey-eyed gush, there were dangerous signs that the McCain team had done a sloppy job in researching her background. But the boffo convention speech, the giddy poll numbers and Palin's rock-star crowds gave rise to half-baked theories about the veep pick's ability to transform the presidential race and even snare a chunk of the feminist vote. After the disastrous Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric interviews, however, the Palin pick seemed less a moose-hunter's delight and more like stale (Dan) Quayle. A Pew Research Center national poll released this week found that 49 percent of voters now hold negative opinions about Palin, compared to 32 percent voting thumbs down in mid-September. The Pew survey discovered that a stunning 60 percent of all women under the age of 50 currently have negative feelings about Palin.

" Steve Schmidt Is a Genius. When McCain took the lead after the GOP convention in many national polls, the immediate reaction was to lionize top strategist Steve Schmidt for imposing order and discipline on the unruly campaign. But, in truth, Schmidt's ascension probably only intensified a problem that has dogged McCain from the outset -- a focus on day-to-day tactics over long-term strategy and a coherent rationale for the campaign. McCain often dominated the daily news cycle, but failed to dominate the hearts and minds of voters. Many in the Obama campaign believe that the turning point in the race came when McCain dramatically suspended his campaign on the eve of the first debate in order to fly to Washington to join in the ineffectual dithering over the economic crisis. Schmidt's war-room mentality (he ran the rapid-response team for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004) may have been ill-suited for a political year when McCain needed a Big Idea to compete with Obama . . .

" The Hillary Holdouts Will Never Come Back. During July and August, just about the easiest way to get on television was to announce that you were an angry Hillary voter who would never, ever support Obama. Of course, political science studies dating back three decades show that party loyalty invariably trumps hurt feelings by the time November rolls around. Guess what? For all the PUMA nonsense that filled the airwaves over the summer, the Pew Research Center poll this week shows that Obama is beating McCain by a 91-to-5-percent margin among self-identified Democrats. So while independent-minded blue-collar voters who may have opted for Clinton in the primary are still being wooed by the Obama campaign in states like Pennsylvania, virtually all the dyed-in-the-wool Democrats have (surprise!) returned to the fold."

I kept saying at the time that of course most Hillary voters wouldn't defect to McCain. But the media loved that story line.

Former McCain 2000 adviser Mike Murphy offers the RNC some "possible spin lines" for Neiman Marcusgate:

"What you sneering critics in the liberal MSM fail to see here is . . . a Jobs Program! Saks floorwalkers, cashiers, a team of sweating porters to haul the merchandise from the store to the motorcade . . . chiropractors to treat those porters. Sarah Palin knows how to create jobs!

"Still cheaper than Mitt Romney's hair products. We're saving money here . . .

"William Ayers is a terrorist!