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ABC News is hosting the Philadelphia debate between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Anchor Charles Gibson discussed the agenda with his partner George Stephanopoulos, host of the network's Sunday morning show This Week. Gibson pointed out that seven weeks have elapsed since the two candidates have gone head to head. Stephanopoulos called it "the longest stretch between debates of this entire campaign season." In the interim, he reminded us, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, sniper fire in Tuzla and bitter and clinging small town voters have all entered the vocabulary. On NBC, Lee Cowan anticipated questions on those very lines.
NBC's Cowan played a clip of Obama's wife Michelle on Comedy Central's Colbert Report trying to defang criticism of her husband's imputed elitism by joking about her working class roots on the South Side of Chicago. Meanwhile, Cowan noted, Obama made $3.9m last year from sales of his books. CBS' Bob Schieffer observed that Rodham Clinton's attacks have "sort of halted the momentum" that Obama had been building in Pennsylvania but he cited poll results from ABC News--mentioning only the Washington Post half of that polling partnership--that show Rodham Clinton "paying a price" of a diminished reputation for trustworthiness. ABC, obviously, was not shy about crediting its own role in those poll findings. Jake Tapper ticked off not only untrustworthiness as a Rodham Clinton failing, but also dishonesty and unfavorability and negativity and irrelevance: "Almost half of Democrats now say the candidates are arguing about things that really are not that important."
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