Following General Colin Powell's endorsement of Senator Obama (Who Gains From Endorsement?), right-wing commentators hastened to explain it away in terms of General Powell's skin colour (Rush Limbaugh plays race card on Powell’s Obama endorsement).
But of course there are other endorsements that cannot be explained away so easily. Other senior Republicans. Major newspapers. Eric Schmidt and Vint Cerf of Google. Other hi-tech bosses had previously endorsed McCain, including Meg Whitman (former eBay CEO), John Chambers (Cisco CEO) and Carly Fiorina (former HP CEO).
Google is an interesting one. Arianna Huffington (not Huffungton, sorry) credits Google (and its subsidiary YouTube) with foreshortening the latency between political lies and political exposure. [The Internet and the Death of Rovian Politics] In this particular election, this effect appears to favour the Democrats. But we may expect political strategists, including Rove himself, to seek ways of exploiting this effect to their own advantage in future elections.
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