http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ This blog is operated by Martin Gottlieb, whose day job is with the editorial page of the Dayton Daily News. The main idea here is that the media and the media manipulators are not important players in American elections, and that this is demonstrated by the fact that presidential election outcomes can be predicted before the campaigns even start. Gottlieb is the author of "Campaigns Don't Count: How the Media Get American Politics All Wrong." (See www.campaignsdontcount.com.) That book proceeds from the work of Allan J. Lichtman, author of "The 13 Keys to the Presidency." Perhaps the best introduction to the blog is in the first posts, dated Oct. 5, 2007. en-us mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com 2008-06-20T14:27:55-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2008/06/20/obama_and_ohio_race_comes_down.html Here’s a piece that I just wrote on my day job with the Dayton Daily News. It kind of enlarges on a subject already touched on here. Starts now: This column has already done everything possible to make clear that... 4754403@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008-06-20T14:27:55-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2008/06/06/the_factor_to_watch_race.html Where we stand as Obama wraps it up: This post is partly in response to a comment posted on the string below. A writer suggests that the Lichtman keys are missing the intensity of the Democratic split this year. She... 4434703@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2008-06-06T19:29:53-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2008/05/07/an_ally_really.html I’ve taken so ludicrously, shamefully long to respond to a couple of posts (DAY JOBS!!) that I have decided to do so in new posts, rather than hope people are still checking for comments after old posts. I’ll copy the... 3698803@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2008-05-07T16:02:45-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2008/04/24/great_democratic_divide_is_no.html This is a column I put out on the wires at the beginning of April, before Pennsylvania. It still stands (except that I just added the sentence about Eisenhower): Under the prevailing rules of opinion journalism, if you have a... 3376403@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2008-04-24T17:37:14-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2008/04/18/debate_questions_reflect_wrong.html And we’re back. I took some time off, because this blog is really about the general election, not the primaries. But now we’re close enough to the general to start taking note of stuff. As this is written, the hot... 3228803@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2008-04-18T18:16:15-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2008/02/17/can_conservatives_hurt_mccain.html The view is widespread that John McCain has a conservatives problem that could be fatal. Reporter Matt Stearns writing a typical an analysis for McClatchy: “Though such ‘maverick’ stances made McCain a darling of the media and independent voters, it’s... 1666902@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2008-02-17T20:02:43-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2008/01/18/a_bipartisan_antirecession_bil.html To anybody who’s focused on the Lichtman “keys,” all this talk about a bipartisan stimulus package to avoid a recession is interesting. After all, the keys say that a recession during an election year would be a good thing for... 1012302@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2008-01-18T13:40:18-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2008/01/14/balz_campaign_counted_of_cours.html What’s that phrase? “Teachable moment”? When a certain 16-year-old star of a wholesome television program turned up pregnant a few weeks ago, pundits talked about this being perhaps a “teachable moment.” Other pundits disagreed, because, after all, undoing the harm... 887302@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008-01-14T00:01:13-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2008/01/09/new_hampshire_record_breaking.html Wow. No matter how attuned one might be to the chronic inability of the American media to understand American politics, you’ve got to be stunned by the sheer massiveness of the failure in New Hampshire.... 813702@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2008-01-09T14:43:36-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2008/01/04/pollsters_clueless_on_why.html Maybe the only thing left to say about Iowa that’s relevant to this blog is that those people with those freaking exit polls continued to delude the nation about how democracy work. On every channel on Thursday — or darn... 723602@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2008-01-04T16:24:52-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2007/12/28/mccain_rerise_foreseen_here.html Last week I admitted to imperfection in predictions. But, given all the talk about John McCain being alive again, you’ve got to see this: My column of last July 13, in the Dayton Daily News, when EVERYBODY else was saying... 621002@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2007-12-28T16:54:21-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2007/12/21/revisiting_hillary_prediction.html David Broder’s column about Barack Obama’s speech — saying Obama has hit a groove with a speech nobody else can match (www.washingtonpost.com and elsewhere) — is the best reporting OR commentary on the election that I’ve seen. The fact that... 539802@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2007-12-21T11:13:22-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2007/12/14/posts_hillarybarack_poll_misle.html This is not PRECISELY on topic, but it’s my blog, right? It’s not on topic in the sense that it doesn’t fall under the rubric “Campaigns Don’t Count,” the title of the blog and the related book. But it does,... 425302@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2007-12-14T19:17:33-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2007/12/11/can_oprah_matter_maybe_now_not.html Oprah? Maybe. But only in the primaries. Can we agree that the following is the conventional wisdom: Endorsements almost never matter, but Oprah’s just might be different? I think it’s fair to say that just about everybody who comments on... 355602@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ 2008 presidential race 2007-12-11T18:25:14-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/entries/2007/12/07/mormon_issue_no_problem_in_gen_1.html I think I made the best contribution I can make to the Romney/Mormon issue about six weeks ago. So now that’s it’s back in the news, here’s a repeat: If the premises of this blog are right, then the only... 284802@http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/campaignsdontcount/ Romney 2007-12-07T11:18:55-05:00 mgottlieb@daytondailynews.com