It’s 2009, and I just saw an online article about a poll of who’s currently the top 2012 opponent for Obama.

There IS no top opponent, people, because we don’t even have a race yet! Get a grip! And by people, I mean my cohorts in the journalism world who churn this stuff out.

There’s no poll in 2009 that could tell us beans about 2012. Three years from now, Obama could have been caught worshipping Satan (unlikely) or have brought about utopia (ditto); Mike Huckabee (the challenger in the story) could be exposed as a cannibal or single-handedly saved a busload of elementary-school children from al-Qaida (again, both are rather low on the probability chart but you get my drift). We have no idea, yet, who else might throw their hat in the ring.

Horse-race stories are easy: They don’t require any deep research; they’re about polls and odds, so they can’t really be proven wrong; they save journalists the trouble of actually looking at policy (deciding whether a bill helps or hurts a candidate doesn’t require any knowledge of what it actually says); and as Digby at Hullabaloo has pointed out many times, they give journalists a chance to show off their insider knowledge—what’s really going on, how the game is played, etc.

And it drives me nuts. Am I alone in that?

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