Saturday edition... now with 37% more opinion packed in every box!
Tom Shales: The way it was:
As Walter Cronkite's night of retirement from "The CBS Evening News" grew closer and closer back in 1981, there were signs of palpable public panic -- one of them a briefly popular T-shirt on which was printed the horrified rhetorical question, "Oh, my God -- what are we going to do without Walter Cronkite?"
More public comment in NYT and more discussion in Minerva's diary.
Charles Blow:
White/non-while vote
In Buchanan’s white-centered Republican world, playing the victim is a route to victory. If Hispanics are offended by Republicans attacking Sotomayor, so be it. After all, he says, there were 10 times more white voters in November than Hispanic ones.
If Republicans buy this "who cares" reasoning, they’re doomed to defeat.
Marc Rotterman:
Granted, this is only July -- but one senses that the "Persuasion Gap" is real and that there is a hunger for tangible solutions to the economic problems that confront the country. Soaring rhetoric by Obama and nationalizing the economy are not creating jobs, nor are they moving this country forward.
You probably didn't know this, but Reagan and Bush officials are extra-gifted when it comes to 'sensing' things.
Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie: Hey, we can sense it, too! Obama's doomed!! He's Jimmy Carter!! He's Jimmy Carter!!
According to a July 13 CBS News poll, the once-unassailable president's approval rating now stands at 57 percent, down 11 points from April. Half of Americans think the recession will last an additional two years or more, 52 percent think Obama is trying to "accomplish too much," and 57 percent think the country is on the "wrong track."
Of course, health care approval is up, the worry is about jobs, and voters "want more government control over the health care system, generally, and think a government-sponsored public option should be offered. More than six in ten say they’d like to see the government exert more control."
Jill Lawrence:
It would be an understatement to say expectations were high when the Obama high command announced it was turning Obama For America into Organizing For America and moving it from Chicago to DNC headquarters in Washington. Yet for a while, the fabled grassroots troops that powered Obama to the White House appeared to be AWOL. It seemed that the "movement" and its massive 13 million name e-mail list had been lost in transition.
Well, they're back, and the next three crucial weeks should give us some indication of whether Team Obama has successfully transformed an election campaign operation into an issue advocacy shop.
WaPo on improved GOP fundraising:
"Republican contributors are likely to be more and more concerned about the direction of the Democratic agenda," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. "I think there is a growing energy within the [GOP]. But having said that, the gas tank was empty, so there's a long way to go here."
Gail Collins:
Illicit lust is not, in and of itself, a novelty in our nation’s capital. But over the past few weeks we’ve gotten one story after another about politicians whose extramarital affairs turned into public displays of strange behavior, conflict and hysteria.
Strange times. Let’s see how closely you’ve been paying attention:
Take the interactive version of the quiz
NJ Blogger poll on health reform and Sarah Palin:
"Sarah Palin should definitely, absolutely, 100% stump for all Republicans everywhere." David NYC, Swing State Project