It's bad enough when a presidential campaign is covered like a horse race.
It's aggravating enough when each day there is a new round of hyperventilation that starts with Morning Joe and continues right on through the evening about who is up and who is down in the latest polls.
But ABC News has now taken it down several notches.
ABC now gives us the political stock ticker.
Check out the scroll at the top of their new OTUS page (as in Of The United States).
Here's how ABC explains how it arrives at the shifting numbers it assigns to each candidate:
The ABC News Political Stock Market is a real-time snapshot of social sentiment, trending, search and the collective assessment of our political experts combined to determine the current 'value' of each 2012 presidential contender.
...
There are two main ingredients in the secret sauce: 1) the collective analysis of our political experts at ABC News, and 2) social sentiment from publicly available Facebook & Twitter comments, search, trending, and influencer data compiled and weighted in collaboration with Bluefin Labs.
In other words, a steaming pile of bullshit that self-proclaimed experts have pulled out of their asses.
That's what passes for thoughtful coverage these days.
God help us.