This video clip has been getting a lot of play in the liberal blogosphere (e.g., TPM):
In it, Mark Halperin says (with respect to the “how many houses” “controversy”):
My hunch is that this is going to end up being one of the worst moments of the entire campaign for … Barack Obama. I believe that this has opened the door up to not just Tony Rezko, in that ad, but to bringing up Reverend Wright, to bringing up his relationship with Bill Ayers…. It would have been hard for John McCain—given the way he says he’s going to run this campaign—to do all this stuff without the door being opened.
What’s interesting to me is that pretty much the entire panel jumps on him to say: that’s stupid, that’s illogical, that completely contradicts both objective reality and common sense. And he sticks to his guns, unfazed, and keeps making the argument for 2 minutes, 43 seconds.
It’s possible that Halperin is just exactly that blinkered and stupid. But it strikes me as the kind of argument I’d pitch over a beer and, after my drinking companions tore it apart, I’d shrug and say, “Yeah, that’s dumb. Forget it. I was just talking shit.” Maybe Halperin would say that over a beer, but he’s on TV. And on TV you never repudiate a stupid argument.
Procrastiblog 