We've been watching Fox News tonight to see how some of their "fair and balanced" analysts would respond to the fact that John Kerry won their own poll by 2 points! I opend up the potato chips and got ready for the show. I knew that this would be real entertainment We used Brit Hume's "Special Report", since he is their big gun. The fun reved up when Fred Barnes tried to spin the new cell phone polls to Bush's favor and then the real fun begun...

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You have to see it to believe it. The written word will not do this kind of comedy justice.

He says the Fox News Poll is nonsense! Kerry leading by 2 points."Who believes that! Nobody believes that! The pollsters don't believe that!"

I almost fell off my couch. The chips caught in my throat.

He goes on to say that Fox should have "thrown that poll out!"

I slipped into unconsciousness for a moment.

Barnes said the best polls are... the ones that show Bush is leading!(I made the last part up) He'd rather use an old poll that shows Bush up by three. Then he criticizes the Gallop poll, because they feel that the undecided voters are leaning toward Kerry. He quotes Mathew Dowd, from the Bush campaign as his source disputing that data.

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(h/t Heather)

A typical Villager philosophy is that a Democratic President must always throw his liberal base under the bus as soon as he takes office to be taken seriously. That litmus test is never applied to Republicans, though. Was there an outcry that George Bush must buck conservatives to appear legitimate to the American people? Of course not.

THIS WEEK's roundtable turned their attention to the budget today, and Paul Krugman agreed that health-care reform is incredibly important to the state of the economy and something he hopes President Obama gets done. Matthew Dowd pivots away and evokes the Villager Mantra:

Dowd: At some point, in order for him to demonstrate to the American public, he at some point -- soon -- he has to take on some significant constituency of the Democratic Party. If he believes in change and he wants to do things, which may be the health-care debate, which he may have to take on, at some point, a constituency. As of yet, he has taken on no constituency in the Democratic party...

The panel immediately went into a discussion on Obama's Afghanistan War plan, which the left is not at all singing praises over, so Dowd was immediately proved wrong. But the idea that President Obama has to attack his own base is ridiculous and patently false. I wouldn't mind President Obama taking on the Blue Dogs or Evan Bayh's power hungry group, but that certainly wouldn't count in the minds of the Villagers.

Digby writes about this in her post: Soljah Politics

What, you don't recall the press insisting after both Bush elections that he needed to repudiate his most enthusiastic followers as often as possible to maintain his credibility?

Oh wait. Sorry. I'm mistaken. They didn't. They just celebrated the fact that Real Americans had insisted that there would be no oral sex in the white house and that the president would throw strikes at Yankee stadium. Even after the Terry Schiavo circus, they didn't say anything about Sistah Soljahing the Republican base. (I suppose they couldn't --- after all, the Republican base are Real Americans unlike the crazy hippies on the left.)

Dowd has no credibility on this since he helped elect Bush for two terms before he "soured on George." Isn't it interesting when the rats jump off a sinking ship?