[shantly]

Even NPR spends most of their time armchair quarterbacking presidential campaigns. News happens. How will the campaigns respond? One candidate makes some claim about another's positions. How will that affect the campaign? Did their poll numbers drop? What does the fucking Twitterverse think about it? Instead of, you know, reporting the news and examining policy positions. Was the claim true? What might we expect various candidates policies on things like the news item, if they implement those policies? Who cares. How're those poll numbers looking? Who's the underdog? What tea leaves can we read today? That's what matters.

It's so frustrating. And now that presidential campaigns are damn near two years long that means a huge amount of their total news coverage ends up being political horse race bullshit.