The right-wing press attacker lashed out at the New York Times for publishing a weekend piece that asked the increasing poignant press question:

Does It Matter if Obama Loses the Pundits?

Sheppard, naturally, misconstrued this into the Times attempting to “defend” Obama, which is (naturally) a dopey conclusion to reach.

The whole point of Adam Nagourney's (somewhat belated) piece was to point out that despite weeks, if not months, of Beltway media pounding, Obama's job approval rating has barely budged this year. (i.e. Pundits no longer move the needle.) And Specifically, in the wake of Obama's Oval Office address last week about the oil spill which Beltway commentators on the left and right deemed disappointing, Nagourney noted that based on available polling data, there's no indication the public shared the pundits perspective and punished the president.

So no, Obama's public standing didn't take a hit last week. It hasn't taken a hit since the BP disaster. And in fact, it hasn't taken a hit anytime during the last ten months.

But if Nagourney got it wrong in his analysis and Obama really has plummeted in the polls, than Sheppard should be able to point that out, right? Sheppared should be able to point to scores of polling firms that have found that Obama's job approval and cratered in recent weeks and months, right?

But Shappard can't because there are no mainstream polling firms that have found any evidence of a significant Obama dip. (And no, I don't count Rasmussen as mainstream, and neither do lots of news orgs, such as the WashPost, which has a policy of not using Rasmussen's iffy data.)

In fact, as I noted recently, Obama's approval rating has actually gone up this year in the polling conducted by USA Today and Washington Post, which, of course, was Nagourney's point: If the pundits all agree that Obama is toast, than why are voters giving Obama slightly higher marks this year?

I realize that trend not only frustrates the pundits but also the professional Obama-haters at Newsbusters. But unless Sheppard can prove that Nagrouney's point is wrong, than the Newsbuster analysis is, as usual, pointless.