But the overreaction to this latest gaffe backfired on the media more than it damaged him. For all the racket about "Bittergate" -- and breathless intimations of imminent poll swings and superdelegate stampedes -- the earth did not move. The polls hardly budged, and superdelegates continued to migrate mainly in Mr. Obama's direction.

Thus did another overhyped 2008 story line go embarrassingly bust, like such predecessors as the death of the John McCain campaign and the organizational and financial invincibility of the Clinton political machine against a rookie senator from Illinois. Not the least of the reasons that the Beltway has gotten so much wrong this year is that it believes that 2008 is still 1988. It sees the country in its own image -- static -- instead of as a dynamic society whose culture and demographics are changing by the day.

If the Beltway establishment thinks that the Obama campaign will be derailed by some media hysteria over trivial gaffes they better think again.

The most revealing moment in Wednesday's debate was a striking example of this media-populace disconnect. In Mr. Gibson's only passionate query of the night, he tried to strong-arm both Democrats into forgoing any increases in the capital gains tax. The capital gains tax! That's just the priority Americans are focusing on as they lose their houses and jobs, and as gas prices reach $4 a gallon (a subject that merited only a brief mention, in a lightning round of final questions). And this in a debate that took place on the same day we learned that the top 50 hedge fund managers made a total of $29 billion in 2007, some of them by betting against the mortgage market.

This is why Obama will cut McCain off at his arthritic knees and it was totaly ignored by StepOnTopOfUs and company.

Next to such knuckleheaded obtuseness, Mr. Obama's pratfall may strike many voters as a misdemeanor. He was probably rescued as well by the typical Clinton campaign overkill that followed his mistake. Not content merely to piously feign shock about Mr. Obama's San Francisco soliloquy (and the operative political buzzword here is San Francisco, which stands for you-know-what), Mrs. Clinton couldn't resist presenting herself as an unambiguously macho, beer-swilling hunting enthusiast. This is as condescending as it gets, topping even Mitt Romney's last-ditch effort to repackage himself to laid-off union workers as the love child of Joe Hill and Norma Rae.

Rich then looks at how McCain isn't being vetted by a press too busy with a media feeding frenzy on Democratic side. Things like Cindy McCain's estimated fortune even bigger than the Clintons', and McCain's delay in releasing his health records.

The whole Rich peice is a real gem. I urge you to read the whole thing.

crosposted at D-Kos