Wolf Blitzer focuses on poll numbers

Wolf Blitzer began the CNN Politics podcast for yesterday by discussing McCain's and Obama's responses to recent economic woes. He said that McCain "tweaked" his stance on the bailout and is trying to bring across his zero tolerance for Wall Street. He was shown visiting Michigan and trying to erase the perception that he's out of touch with the workers. 

Obama was visiting Nevada and discussing "what voters care about" there: healthcare, mining, and the economy. It was nice to see real issues included in this segment , with Blitzer mentioning Obama's 6-point blueprint for the economy that wants greater law enforcement for trade deals, more government oversight on banking, and more cooperation between regulatory agencies among other things. 

This part lasted for the first half of the 13-minute segment. The rest of it, however, focused almost completely on poll numbers.

Blitzer discussed how some states are surprisingly becoming battleground states although they were won fairly easily by the Republicans in the last election. Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, and Michigan are all surprisingly more Democratic, partially because McCain hasn't focused efforts there because they were not battlegrounds before. 

The first half of the segment was a decent effort at good journalism. The economy was discussed at length, and specific plans for Obama were mentioned (although nothing was said of how McCain would solve the problems). I think they could have had even more air time for the candidates themselves, but overall it wasn't too bad.

What I did not like was the focus in the second half on the race itself and all the poll numbers. I don't see why this had to take up some much time when there are much more important matters that can be discussed. They kept talking about percentage point differences in the states, many of which were extremely small differences, and I think it would have been much better to have spent all of the segment focusing on the economy and the candidates' plans.