Let's see, in a week where Barack Obama stops John McCain's momentum in its tracks, takes the lead in every single tracking poll, moves ahead in key states and within striking distance in McCain must-win states like Virginia and North Carolina, there can only be one clear winner for the week.
John McCain.
Really, this is Halperin's scorecard for the week. My first reaction to this is that Mr. Halperin has chosen the wrong vocation. There is a profession for individuals who engage in such one-sided, distorted, out-of-touch-with-reality attempts to judge combatants' performance. A place where results are so often blatantly at odds with reality that the stench of cronyism and corruption are unavoidable.
No, not Olympic Ice-dancing (though that's a close second).
Boxing.
Perhaps it's fitting that Halperin uses a boxing metaphor for his ahem scorecard. His calling of the "round" for McCain this week reminds me of an Olympic boxing match I watched 20 years ago. I forget who was involved, it was an American fighter against a South Korean boxer (the Olympics were in Seoul that year). I don't care much for boxing, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that it was a one-sided affair. The American boxer (I'm not being jingoistic here, if the outcome had been reversed, I would have been just as upset) simply controlled the match, landing punches at will. The Korean fighter was lucky not to have been knocked out (Olympic bouts are short, so this is pretty rare). And yet when the results were announced, the Korean fighter had won a narrow 3-2 decision.
The result was seen as so outrageous that the federation governing Olympic boxing changed the entire scoring system before the next Olympics to make it more computerized and "objective." Of course, that system doesn't appear to be working any better.
Maybe after November we'll learn that Halperin and Steve Schmidt are drinking buddies. Or that McCain regularly loans him one of his thirteen cars.
It's the only way this result makes sense.
Note: According to link above, it was Roy Jones, Jr vs Park Si-Hun. The fight was so one sided that Park congratulated Jones afterwards for winning the fight. If only the McCain campaign were so honest and/or classy.
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