Today’s New York Times article on Sen. Barack Obama’s pursuit of the Hispanic vote is derided by Tom Maguire at Just One Minute and Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft as lacking in substance.

My election-related posts have tended to chide the media for focusing on polls without understanding their synergy with the candidates’ tactics and strategies on the ground.  Yet the NYT piece also fails on that level.  The article opens with Obama’s Hispanic dog-whistle, but the two journalists bylined do not even hear it.  Nor does the article address Sen. Hillary Clinton’s Hispanic firewall.  Consequently, it is not surprising that it glosses over the deeper reasons that firewall exists — reasons that might be uncomfortable for the core readership of the paper.

Of course, that might be why the core readership of the paper shrinks year after year.