Conventional wisdom is generally unwise

I just saw this headline from Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe: "That's_It_For_McCain." As one can surmise, she is referring to the fact that John McCain has emerged from the final debate still trailing Barack Obama.

This sort of conventional "wisdom" drives me nuts. It assumes that, in the absence of further debates, it is impossible for a candidate who is trailing in the polls to overcome a single-digit deficit in the polls with only three weeks left in the campaign. It's a ludicrous proposition.

This race isn't going to be over until Election Day. That's not a prediction of any massive movement toward McCain, it is simply an observation of fact.

The only value of Vennochi's column is that it helps to illustrate what has become the media narrative for the final stages of this race. The narrative now holds that Obama has safely emerged from the Republican Smear Machine gauntlet and is coasting to a landslide victory. Conservativism is now a discredited ideology and its remaining adherents have been exposed as bloodthirsty thugs screaming racist threats from the rafters of Sarah Palin events, which are now oddly reminiscent of the Nuremberg Rallies.

It's important to keep in mind that the narrative shapes the news, and not vice-versa. Anything that tends to support the narrative goes on the evening news. Anything that cuts against it is ignored.