Allow us to dispense with the goofy polls, the drinking games and puckish little asides that populate this site and get back to what brought us here in the first place: A young gentleman who was plucked from obscurity to dazzle us with his gifts at a time when those gifts would be both greatly appreciated and desperately needed.
Today, Chuck had two shining moments that illuminated for so many why he is deserving of our admiration and respect. That is not to say that these two moments were rarities. In fact, each time he's on-air he says something that has most people muttering, "man, that guys knows his stuff." But today, there was no bombast of scheduled events or the noise of scandal or newsflash. There were just numbers.
Another individual who loves and understands these political numbers with the same fervor is Ol' Man Barnacle. Amidst the jovial chaos that is Morning Joe, Barnacle, losing every posture contest in the world, thoughtfully posed a question to Chuck about the stability of the huge 20 point flip in McCain's favor as illustrated by the Washington Post/ABC News Poll. Barnacle confessed that "instinct" was probably the only way Chuck could answer the question. The Chuck not missing a beat, sussed out the fallacy of a 20 point flip. Reminding Barnacle and us that his instinct is pretty damn adequate at times like these.
One train ride up to New York later, placed him on the set of Countdown with Keith Olbermann discussing the new numbers from the NBC/WSJ poll that confirmed the results from the earlier polls. Adding a new dimension to all of this Chuck let loose with another "Holy crap, where does this guy come up with these amazing points." moment concerning early voting ballots, October 15th and Palin as a debate audience member. Watch it and prepared to be slack-jawed. Hell, he made Olbermann take note; no small feat there.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
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5 comments:
Chuck's compendium of knowledge is amazing...However, as to the "Sarah Palin in the debate audience" nugget of wisdom, Chuck actually got that idea from *gasp* Chris Matthews on Hardball last night...sorry to burst the bubble on that point.
In The Chuck's defense, Matthews was just making an off-handed, sarcastic remark about Palin stting in the front row at the presidential debate. Chuck was actually the one that saw it would be an interesting and seemingly plausible strategy for the McCain campaign to really do this. So kudos to Chuck!
Matthews was clearly saying it was a plausible strategy. Chuck is great, but so is Chris.
Did we catch Chuck's statement this morning that, compared to the previous month's NBC/WSJ poll, McCain's relative gain among non-college educating white women was offset by Obama's gain among non-college educating white men?
Can't we have a Mike Barnacle blog too? Or mix it in?
As a former employee of Chuck's at the Hotline, I'd like to raise issue with your claim that his post as Editor-In-Chief of the Hotline was a post of "obscurity." I'd like to express my sympathy for you guys for not having the opportunity to be familiar with him in those days, but Chuck was anything but obscure.
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