"If the Massachusetts senator is not successful during the debates in erasing lingering doubts about whether he can be a credible alternative to Bush, he will have little hope of doing it before the Nov. 2 election. "
Pardon me for asking, but how the hell do YOU know that there are "lingering doubts"? I mean obviously SOME people have doubts - and some don't. By THAT score, there are also "lingering doubts" about Bush. (There is also open detestation, but that's another story.) Some people have "lingering doubts" about Barney the Dinosaur. People have "lingering doubts" about damned near everything. Who has "lingering doubts"? How many people? How seriously? Doubts about what, exactly? What if they aren't lingering, but ephemeral, does that still count? Do you KNOW that they are "lingering"? How does a doubt "linger"?
The reporter is talking about HIS OWN lingering doubts, and projecting it onto the electorate - obviously. As to what the electorate ACTUALLY thinks, he has absolutely no clue, and he CAN'T have any clue.
In short, the statement about "lingering doubts" isn't anything REAL - it's a script that the reporter is blindly following. It's hard to even say what it MEANS. It's a gaseous puff of blather masquerading as an actual point, and upon examination, it falls apart.
And that premise-with-no-meaning leads immediately into the statement that if Kerry cannot erase these phantom "lingering doubts" in one debate, he's through. Again, something that the reporter cannot POSSIBLY know to be true, based on a premise that the reporter cannot possibly know to be true.
But we are supposed to regard it as "reporting."
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