Today's New York Times features an article by Patrick Healy that portrays Barack Obama as “out of sync” with Americans who are upset about their struggling economic conditions and accuses Obama of “convey[ing] a certain distance from the ache that many voters feel.”

But Healy does not support his thesis with any poll results. And for good reason: his own newspaper's public polling badly undermines his point.

A CBS/New York Times poll conducted September 12-16 found that 60 percent of Americans “think Barack Obama understands the needs and problems of people like yourself.” Only 48 percent say the same of John McCain.

That same poll found that 60 percent of Americans are confident of Obama's “ability to make the right decisions about the economy.” 53 percent said the same of McCain. And 66 percent said Obama “shares the values most Americans try to live by,” compared to 61 percent who said the same of McCain.

If Healy distrusts his own newspaper's polling, he could have looked to the LA Times poll, which found that by a margin of 48-32, more Americans think Obama has “better ideas for strengthening the nation's economy.” Or Pew, which found that by a margin of 47-35, more Americans think Obama would “best address the problems investment banks and companies with ties to the housing market are having.”

Instead of providing public opinion polling relevant to his thesis (polling that, for the most part, completely falsifies the thesis) Healy included several quotes from “experts” that are contradicted by the polling. Incredibly, Healy didn't include a single quote from a source saying Obama's approach has been effective - despite the fact that the polling shows it has been more successful than McCain's.

Healy did, however, find a way to work Obama's race into an article that would seem to have nothing to do with the topic:

For Mr. Obama, the financial crisis poses different risks. He wants to appear fired up over the economy, but he has written before about wanting to avoid appearing like a stereotypical angry black man. Unlike Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and other black leaders whose fulminations could scare white voters, Mr. Obama is not from and of New York, Detroit, or the segregated South; he grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. To some degree Mr. Obama faces the opposite challenge from fiery black leaders who came before him: Is he too cool for a crisis like this one?