On the other hand...

...as encouraging as an effort like the SF Chronicle's Marc Sandalow can be, there's still plenty of high profile hackery in the SCLM.

Steve Soto finds "another example of crappy journalism" by Lois Romano of the Washington Post, who decided to run with the discredited claims about an alleged Kerry shortfall among women voters (there must be a Karl Rove press release out there somewhere).

The Left Coaster post relates that

The overall premise of the story is that Bush will have a large advantage with men over Kerry and Kerry needs to have an equally large advantage with women to offset that and win the election. Yet Romano says that Kerry doesn’t have that offsetting advantage with women and is in trouble.

Of course, the facts being on his side, Steve has no trouble dispatching that premise.

Really? Then why does today’s national American Research Group poll show that Bush has only a 9-point lead with men over Kerry, while Kerry has an offsetting 8-point lead with women over Bush? Am I missing something here, or doesn’t that sound like an equally offsetting gender gap? And is a nine-point Bush lead with men really a sign that he is "running as strong as ever among men?"

It's just lazy reporting, really, this casual regurgitation of Republican talking points. It requires vigilance, though, because there's a calculated effort by the forces of darkness to discourage people who are anxious for change, and anxious about the possibility that change may be thwarted.

Tom Tomorrow nails it at This Modern World.

It's all bollocks, of course. Republicans just want to psyche you out. They want you to think they can't be defeated. They want you to doubt yourself, to stumble, to give up. But there are way too many variables at play. Iraq, the economy, terrorism--it's a confluence of events which hasn't come together like this before. We're in uncharted territory.

The future hasn't been written yet. Don't forget that.

Be not dismayed.

We stand for women, and the polls reflect that.

W stands for 'wrong,' and if we work hard, fight back and don't panic, come November 'the only poll that counts' will reflect that, too.