Campbell Soup

Big Media appears determined to milk the 2008 election to the last drop. There's a lot of ad money at stake next Tuesday night, so they're more than banking on a tight race. This explains the kind of oversampling that keeps the polls relatively close. It would also explain CNN's Campbell Brown.

After Team McCain brought Sarah Palin on board, Brown was the first cable-news vamp to question the vice-presidential candidate's qualifications. Her line of questioning so offended staffer Tucker Bounds that a subsequently-scheduled interview with McCain was cancelled.

Today, Ms. Brown turns around and slams Barack Obama for "breaking his promise" to accept public campaign financing. This story is old, almost as old as Brown herself, and has already been butchered by some of the bloodiest right-wing hacks in the business.

"He pledged," she posts on CNN's website today, "to accept public financing and to work with the Republican nominee to ensure that they both operated within those limits. Then it became clear to Sen. Obama and his campaign that he was going to be able to raise on his own far more cash than he would get with public financing. So Obama went back on his word."

Earlier this year, such vagary was put to bed by fact-checkers at the Washington Post: "The Obama campaign is correct in arguing that there is nothing in the Feb. 1 letter to the FEC that can be fairly interpreted as committing the campaign to accepting public financing." (Two Pinnochios.)

What Obama actually "pledged" was to "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." Whether or not Obama pursued this pledge (or how aggressively) is neither here nor there.

The real question is easy: Why did donors, who banked so very heavily on two Bush campaigns, leave McCain out in the cold? Big business, small business, ordinary individuals, the plumbers' union - all gave of their earnings to support the Democrat this year.

It's easily enough understood, despite all the feigned shock among conservatives, never mind Campbell Brown. Monied interests believe that Obama is going to win the election. Does a good gambler bet on his favorite team, or the favored one?

It's called "smart money", just as Obama's separation from McCain's level of financing is smart money. Why would he hobble himself, something no other candidate has ever done or been asked to do, and why would the media want or expect him to?

Could it be due the obvious - if this election were a prizefight, a blue-shirted referee would have stepped in long ago to pull Obama off of the stumbling, flailing, glassy-eyed McCain? Such would be a humane response to a lopsided contest, the outcome of which is no longer much in doubt.

pH 1o.28.o8