A Leaky Argument

"Obama's comfortable 6-8 point lead will mushroom in the next 3 weeks and make election day a holy living hell for the GOP with a landslide in both the popular vote and electoral college for Obama and a sweeping away of many Republican stalwarts in the House and Senate. It will be an historic repudiation of Republicans and will place the party in a position where it will probably spend a decade or more in the wilderness."

But Paul Mirengoff at Powerline is more optimistic, citing a new Rasmussen poll:

"If McCain really is, say, 5 percentage points behind Obama, then he's certainly within striking distance. Some might even argue that, at that spread, Obama isn't really ahead, given (a) the margin of error, (b) what happened to him during certain primaries and (c) the notion that black candidates tend to 'underperform' on election day in comparison to how they poll.

"That's not my opinion, particularly in view of the likelihood of voter fraud and Obama's concentration of resources in key states. But I'm pretty sure that, in theory, two and a half weeks is sufficient time to overcome a 5 point lead (assuming, again, that this is what Obama has)."

We're about to find out.

Who knew Fox News was so powerful?

"I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls," Obama tells the NYT Magazine. "If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn't vote for me, right? Because the way I'm portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?"

The Times-reading part is especially damaging.

Now this is enough to give you heartburn: A minor Republican functionary in California comes up with Obama Bucks, which are food stamps, you see, with the senator's picture, and that is illustrated, get this, with a bucket of fried chicken and a slab of watermelon. The woman, Diane Fedele, says she didn't see anything racist about it. Of course not.

Remember Vicki Iseman? Of course you do. She's the Washington lobbyist that the New York Times attempted to link to McCain last February, based on the suspicions of two unnamed former aides. Now she breaks her silence with National Journal's Ed Pound:

" 'I did not have a sexual relationship with Senator McCain,' she said in a three-hour interview last month in a seventh-floor conference room in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. 'I never had an affair or an inappropriate relationship with Senator McCain, and that means I never acted unethically in my dealings with the senator.' Iseman, a partner in the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay, where she has worked for 18 years, adds, 'I have never even been alone with Senator McCain.'

"Iseman says she answered every question put to her by The Times, but that the newspaper 'chose to disregard' many of her answers. 'The New York Times set out to write a story about a 'romantic relationship' in exchange for legislative favors . . . Make the lobbyist a prostitute -- pretty heady stuff. The only problem was, they were wrong on all counts.'

"In strong language, Iseman also lashed out at John Weaver, a former top McCain strategist who left the campaign after a power struggle in July 2007. She said that Weaver had an 'ax to grind' and had used The Times to orchestrate the story and damage McCain's presidential campaign. 'The New York Times had four reporters [work] almost four months on this,' she said in an e-mail to National Journal this month, 'and John Weaver made them his marionettes.' Weaver, she says, was 'Machiavellian' and a 'Benedict Arnold.'

"Weaver, a seasoned political operative, flatly denied Iseman's assertions. 'I love John McCain,' he said in an interview, 'and I wouldn't do anything to harm him.' Weaver said he responded to only one of eight written questions from The Times and put the answer on the record. 'I responded accurately,' he told NJ. 'I did not help leak that story.'

"The Times stands behind its article. 'I think that the story stands up, an important story, a strong story,' says Dean Baquet, an assistant managing editor who runs the newspaper's Washington bureau and who helped oversee The Times' reporting. The newspaper 'had ample, multiple sources for the story,' he says, and had aggressively pursued Iseman's side, staking her out, sending her e-mails, and leaving her phone messages. He says that his reporters sought her comment 'very early on in the process,' but 'we couldn't get her to sit down and talk.' "