Now that Obama is surging, Obama's campaign is suddenly this amazing error-free organization with no internal dissent. Take this article titled 'Obama runs tight campaign ship' by Ben Smith at the Politico. Six weeks ago, Smith was writing articles titled 'Jittery donors want Obama to step it up'. The articles aren't inconsistent, in that professional operatives were correctly saying six weeks ago that Obama was doing fine. But the headlines and overall narratives are driven by a mixture of polling and weird conventional wisdom.
At best, campaigns are garbage moving in the right direction. That's why Clinton's error-free professional machine has suddenly morphed into a clumsy campaign. It was never that good at the top, and it's not that bad right now.
I don't have special insight here suggesting Obama's campaign isn't great, though I've seen a lot of mistakes and I worry deeply about a campaign that gets nothing but good press being unprepared for a general election where the tilt of the press coverage changes dramatically. I also worry about Clinton's campaign, because nitpicky legalistic arguments are very Gore-Kerry. Both campaigns have assets as well; somehow Obama gets good press, and Clinton is prepared for vicious negative narratives.
Anyway, I don't want to get into a primary pie-fight. The point here is that journalists are probably more poll-driven and trapped by conventional wisdom than the candidates.
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