How many votes will the media get for Obama this time?

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I'd say a conservative estimate would be 30 million, slightly more than in 2008.

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To clarify I'm not one of those hacks who constantly whine about the "liberal media" but I do think that the media's unprecedented protection of Obama on every news outlet except Fox (which I do admit is very anti-Obama) was just as crucial to his victory as the financial meltdown.

Obviously the media can't change the mind of people who are already heavily engaged in politics, like on this forum, but it can persuade many casual voters who pay much less attention to politics to vote for their man.

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The center--lets say 20%--have no core beliefs other than kicking the bums out when times are tough and letting them stay when times are good.

I'm sorry, but I just can't imagine this guy getting elected and perhaps even re-elected without the media serving as his campaign arm. And its not just me. A Pew poll showed that 44% believed media coverage of the McCain campaign was unfair, for comparison 35% thought this for the first Bush and Dole. A similar percentage say the media has too much influence on the election.

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The center--lets say 20%--have no core beliefs other than kicking the bums out when times are tough and letting them stay when times are good.

I'm sorry, but I just can't imagine this guy getting elected and perhaps even re-elected without the media serving as his campaign arm. And its not just me. A Pew poll showed that 44% believed media coverage of the McCain campaign was unfair, for comparison 35% thought this for the first Bush and Dole. A similar percentage say the media has too much influence on the election.

lol, so you believe that McCain should have won by default?

Um... no. That's not what I said.

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It's exactly what you said.

"I can't imagine this guy getting elected without the media".

That means you assume that McCain would have won if there hadn't been media coverage.

He probably would have won if there was fair media coverage. But I'm also referring to the Hillary/Obama match.

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Can anyone with a straight face claim that the media didn't help John McCain quite a bit?

Maybe in the primaries before Romney conceded. Not nearly as much as Obama, though.

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And your comparison with Biden is really hilarious. Biden was a well-known windbag. But nobody ever disputed the fact that he is a very intelligent man and a leading expert on foreign policy in the Senate.

You can't be serious.

A LOT of people thought he was far from intelligent, and questioned his foreign policy credentials.  Sure, he's been involved in foreign policy issues, how does that make him any kind of "expert"? 

"NO" on the Gulf War.
"YES" on the Iraq War.
"NO" on the surge.
Divide Iraq into 3 autonomous states. 

George W. Bush was involved in business for how many years, and no one would hail him as a "leading expert in business."  Give me a break.  He committed more gaffes than Palin during the '08 campaign, and had less of an excuse for them.

I'm sorry, but you have to change your avatar.  You cannot possibly label yourself an "Independent" while defending Joe Biden and calling him an "expert on foreign policy". 

I just fell off my chair.

The only bad decision I see is the Yes for the Iraq War, a transparenrtly political vote.

And you seem to be in the minority about his qualifications. His coleagues in the Senate, and the public at large, have a very different opinion. That's why his partition plan drew support even among Republicans.

I hope you didn't broke your hip.

Any so-called "expert" who thinks partition was a realistic solution wasn't living in the real world.

And who cares if his vote for the war was political, would that make it somehow better?

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I thought the conservative position was to avoid foreign entaglements. But it seems now that the neocons and their admirers have become more Wilsonian than Wilson himself ever was.

Oh, it is. But, you see, poseurs like paul don't care about principle, or about the historical development of that principle. Because paul comes from a clique that has none, a worthless little Trotskyist clique that infiltrated the Republican Party during the Cold War and warped its core tenants to reflect their undying belief in world revolution. His hypocrisy is simply an outgrowth of that.

News flash: the GOP dropped its isolationist platform in 1941.

So getting back to the media, it seems clear that Biden is being respected largely based on the time he's been in the Senate and not on what he actually did. The fact that they glossed over his embarassing debate performance/voting record comfirms that. I wonder if they'll do the same thing in 2012. I mean, no matter who the Republicans nominate they won't have the "experience" of Joe Biden.