Politico's Ben Smith 'Heard a Story' About Herman Cain

This is pretty typical of what Ben — “Tanning Bed” — Smith does over at his Politico perch. From what I’ve observed over the last few years, the liberal Smith’s job is to use his blog to feed the MSM’s narrative stream with mostly anti-Republican talking points — especially when a campaign’s on. Today, he’s feeding his MSM pals anti-Herman Cain anecdotes, though I guess we should at least be grateful they’re not the same kind of racial attacks we’re seeing elsewhere in the media.

This irresponsible, second-hand anecdote opens his post and caught my eye:

Herman Cain’s rise has been swift, and infrastructure free. One reason many people following politics closely assume he’ll go the way of Donald Trump is in part because he doesn’t really have a campaign on the ground, or a fundraising apparatus — I heard a story today about wealthy fans trying in vain to reach his campaign — or any other real way to capitalize on a surge.

Really? Wealthy fans weren’t able to reach his campaign to help? Do they have access to the Internet? Because this.

And here’s my anecdote,which isn’t second hand. While I remain undecided, my wife most certainly is not. The day Herman Cain won the Florida Straw Poll she immediately donated $100 to his campaign (Note to “wealthy fans,” she did so via this InterTubeNet thing).

Just one measly week later, we received a very pleasant phone call from the Cain campaign thanking us for the donation and asking for more.

Considering the wave of money and new donors that flooded into the Cain camp after Florida, the fact that they’re able to turn around and touch base with us again in only a week is pretty damn impressive.

Using nothing that even approaches a journalistic standard, Smith is intentionally sowing seeds of doubt over whether or not Cain is ready for primetime. “How can Cain win? He doesn’t have the infrastructure and — gasp! — his staff is too disorganized to get their hands on all that fat cash. Memo to the MSM: Maybe this will help take the current GOP favorite out.”

This is what the MSM calls “raising questions.”

This is what I call journOlism 101.