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ABC News cheerleading for Obama more than Daily Kos pollster
...“Obama looks to have turned the budget debate to his advantage,” writes ABC pollster Gary Langer. “His position on the deficit is more broadly popular, he’s taking less heat than the GOP for unwillingness to compromise and he’s got a sizable lead in the view that he cares more about protecting the middle class.”...

Power and the Press
...But Labour is just the same, all the parties are just the same. They have to get on with the newspapers. And why is that? I think it's interesting that they have to because Britain has largely succeeded in getting money out of politics, something many Americans would like to do here. The consequence of doing that is that the newspapers become incredibly important and you have to have them in your pocket if you're going to do well.

"Getting money out of politics"--that is, imposing governmental restrictions on political speech--is a cause that many American newspapers have championed. (The Journal is a notable exception.) The McCain-Feingold law's unconstitutional ban on corporate political speech included an exemption for "media corporations," so that while it was in effect, those corporations had an effective monopoly, as in Britain.

The complaint in Britain now is that the press has too much power, and it turns out that media organizations--being composed, like other organizations, of human beings--are susceptible to corruption. In response have come calls, including from Prime Minister David Cameron, for more government regulation of the press....