[courtesy of California Progress Report]

How the Pundits are Misattributing Momentum to Natural Demographic Political Differences

By Rob Richie
Executive Director
Fair Vote

Introduction

Sen. Hillary Clinton had a good night this week in West Virginia, winning a landslide victory by nearly 150,000 votes over Sen. Barack Obama. Clearly, she must now have that fickle thing called "momentum," right?

Of course a week ago the same candidates had quite different results in North Carolina and Indiana, where Obama won those states collectively by some 210,000 votes. So, the logical conclusion would be that Obama had the "momentum" and must have now lost it.

But what happened between then and now to change the contest so dramatically?

Nothing, really -- and yet the pundit class and many in the media will try to find meaning (read: momentum) into these numbers. But in reality, too many of the nation's talking heads are playing with a Ouija board and tailoring their analysis to fit the pre-written story-line du jour.

by Monica Smith [courtesy of Blog for America]

There's a reason why witnesses called to testify in a court of law are required to pledge to

Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Things left out or embellishments stuck in pervert the truth and turn it into a lie. We recently saw that happen with Hillary Clinton's sniper fire in Tuzla and it's also been apparent in the stories told by the twenty-two dirty pensioners--perjurers in the court of public opinion--who spread half-truths and snippets of mis-information about the invasion/occupation of Iraq to deceive the American people and enrich themselves. And yesterday Secretary Robert Gates joined them. Or maybe he just decided to do his own dirty work. Because the dirty pensioners were a Department of Defense operation.