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Wednesday, May 12, 2004
NYT Weighs in on the Swing State Battlegrounds
Posted by DavidNYCI am finally done with finals - thank the maker! Oddly enough, the past week has been one of the busiest for the SSP, with a lot of posts and a lot of visitors. My un-shocking discovery: Blogging is a great way to procrastinate - so maybe it's not so odd, then!
Anyhow, I just wanted to point you to Adam Nagourney's NYT piece on the swing states. Nagourney would be one of my least favorite writers at the Times, were it not for the existence of Jodi Wilgoren, Kit Seelye, Jeff Gerth, Judith Miller and... oh, why bother? But Nagourney is their main political go-to guy, so let's see what he says.
His argument seems to be that some people think that more states are in play than the usual list of 16, 17, 18 or even 22. But the only ones past even the broadest group of 22 that he mentions in the article are NJ and Delaware. A map attached to the story also includes IL, VA, NC, KY and MT. Yes, that's right - Montana. I think Nagourney took a quick glance at the 1992 map and didn't look at the actual numbers there. Bush took the state by 25 points last time.
I think that such discussions aren't very meaningful, though. I have to consider New Jersey a Jack Daniel's state: If we lose there, we've lost big-time. (Though, Namath-like, I've guaranteed a Jersey win for us.) So yeah, while theoretically plenty of states could vote differently than expected, that fact doesn't inform our thinking about which ones should be our battleground states.
Posted at 04:46 PM in General | Technorati
Comments
From Jeff Gerth, father of Whitewater, to "Kit" Seelye, typist of some of the most vapid, biased lines in journalism today, to Adam Nagourney, who brutlized Al Gore in 2000 and again as he tested the waters in 2002, the team at the Times represents the worst in journalism.
So I'm not surprised that Nagourney is putting Montana into play. Sloppy, lazy, incompetent journalism, with very few exceptions at the Gray Lady. I get my information elsewhere. I agree with Bob Sommerby at the DailyHowler.com: The Times is the nadir of American journalism and because of the corporate climate, its stories run throughout U.S. newspaper syndicates, spreading the pollution. Our supposed friends are even our enemies.
Posted by: David Balog at May 14, 2004 01:44 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment