Look, journalism is a perfectly noble profession, but it’s a still a profession, and that means it’s a business.
Elections are journalism’s version of retail’s Black Friday. They’re not going to say, “We’ve got a boring night of time-consuming yet predictable election results … So, stay tuned!”
CNN’s not lying about this or that poll, but they might be willing to see more drama in the findings than is warranted.
Seconded. We’ve seen a lot of this in the last week or so. It’s a close race, but the evidence (insofar as polls are evidence) is that Obama has a small but decisive lead. A lot of networks and pundits have been slow to acknowledge this, or in the case of the pundits in particular, they’ve been outright hostile to the idea.
That’s the larger point, yes, but I was trying to give some semblance of rationale to this:
A futile task, but still.
Returning to the OP- the bit that might seem unfair or undeserved is the fact that the Republican Party’s strategy with regard to Obama has been to refuse to work with him on any issue and then blame him for the fact that they refuse to work with him. And it’s true that that is a deeply cynical and dishonest strategy that is defensible as a political calculation but isn’t a governing strategy at all. So the idea that Obama could lose as a result of that strategy could be seen as depressing - Romney’s promises that he will do better at working with Congress has to be greeted with a mix of head-shaking obviousness (“no shit, Sherlock, their entire goal was sabotaging Obama so a Republican could win”) - and disbelief (“Republicans just showed Democrats that the way to get back the White House is to shut down everything the president does, so what makes you think you’ll get anything past the Senate?”). Of course if Obama wins, that strategy doesn’t look so effective. And it is also true that regardless of the assholishness of the GOP, it is Obama’s responsibility to communicate his agenda to the public so they can put pressure on Congress (where possible) to support what he’s doing. He has not always done that effectively and he also could do better working with Congress in general.
I think that Rachel Maddow put it best in the very long introduction to her show last night:
She goes on for over 16 minutes with a huge list of accomplishments of Obama’s first four years and how, if he is given another four years, will go down as “one of the most consequential Presidents in modern American history” but if he loses, that “he will be seen as a one-term President whose political failures will overshadow what he got done in terms of policy.”
So yeah… He deserves it. In my opinion. And hers. 
She and Dan Rather then go on to comment on how it was a shame that Obama campaigned anti-Romney as opposed to touting his own record.
But I understand the decision since some of his policy victories and achievements are demonized by the other side. A lot of the divisiveness transcends simple difference of opinion and some of it like the things Romney made an issue are actually based on deceit, but I guess they decided that it was easier to point at how bad and inconsistent Romney was than to not only tout Obama’s record, but also get through an electorate being fed lies about those accomplishments.
Deserve is a difficult term. I’d would say that Obama’s first term performance merits a second term, rather than makes him deserve one. Maybe that’s semantics.
I really liked Bill Clinton, and voted for him twice. But in looking back at George H.W. Bush, it strikes me that the job he did overall also deserved - or merited - a second term. This becomes more obvious to me when I reflect on the disaster of his son’s presidency. The first Bush seemed to manage foreign policy very well, did not strike me as a social conservative loon, made compromises that angered his base but seemed to have been done in good faith. These are noteworthy merits, yet he got sunk by a moderately bad economy and a politician who brilliantly used it to convince voters they wanted a change. If the same thing happens to Obama, it will just be one more parallel I see between their two presidencies (though I like Obama a heck of a lot better).
John_Stamos’_Left_Ear you missed part of the second quote…
[QUOTE=Rachel Maddow]
but if he loses, that “he will be seen as a one-term President whose political failures in not achieving a second term will overshadow what he got done in terms of policy.”
[/QUOTE]
(bolding mine.)
I think the missing section makes a difference in what she was saying.
Thanks for the link though, I had not seen it.