Independents, who are the largest group in the electorate, don't have any of this. They don't have institutional affiliations. They don't look to certain activist lobbies for guidance. There aren't many commentators who come from an independent perspective.

If he's talking about centrists, it doesn't make much sense; actually, middle-of-the-road think tanks tend to dominate the media discussion.  (Perhaps Brooks has heard of Brookings?) But he tries to explain their significance this way:

The first thing to say is that this recession has hit the new suburbs hardest, exactly where independents are likely to live. According to a survey by the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, 76 percent of suburbanites say they or someone they know have lost a job in the past year.

While that does sound suspiciously like a think tank catering to, well, those think tank-less independents, are those numbers very alarming? An Ipsos/Reuters survey from June found that 80 percent of Americans knew someone who lost a job. A July Marist poll on New York state residents found that "82 percent of city voters and 79 percent of those in the suburbs" knew someone who'd lost a job in the past six months. Maybe Brooks' suburbs aren't so special after all.

That could happen on the federal level. Already Nancy Pelosi and her far-left crew want to raise the top federal tax rate to 45 percent. That's not capitalism. That's Fidel Castro stuff, confiscating wages that people honestly earn.

Setting aside the truth of the charge against Pelosi, Fidel Castro must have been the president of the United States in 1982-86, when the top rate was 50 percent. Or maybe all of the 1970s, when it was 70 percent. Or from 1950-63, when it was 91 percent.

Moderate and conservative Democrats took a clear signal from Tuesday's voting, warning that the results prove that independent voters are wary of Obama's far-reaching proposals and mounting spending, as well as the growing federal debt.

The implication that "job creation" is somehow at odds with "mounting spending" and "ambitious" or "far-reaching" government proposals is a another example of the neo-Hooverism that corporate reporters seem to instinctively subscribe to. In reality, spending money is one of the basic tools governments have for creating jobs during a recession--and cutting government spending is one of the surest ways to make that recession deeper.

It's worth noting that none of the sources actually quoted in the article makes the case that cutting federal spending would be a good way of creating jobs.

O'REILLY: You committed the cardinal sin of all time. You left a liberal network, and you went to a traditional right-leaning network. So you're never, ever going to be liked again by anyone. Does that make you sad?

STOSSEL: Well, I live with these people. They all live in my neighborhood. So that makes me sad.

O'REILLY: Move out to Long Island where I live, because I live with the folks.

STOSSEL: I like taking the subway to work.

O'REILLY: You're a pansy. Come out to Long Island. All right?

For anyone keeping score, you can find aerial maps of what is purportedly O'Reilly's humble Long Island home. Man of the people, indeed.

The warning is that if you're in a moderate district, or you're in a moderate-to-conservative state, you should think twice before you rubberstamp Obama's agenda.

Well, there were two districts choosing representatives and two states picking governors yesterday. Both the districts, including the one generally described as "moderate," went for the Democratic candidate, so it's not clear what warning that sends about Obama's agenda.

In both states, the Democrat lost the governor's race, and one of them, New Jersey incumbent Jon Corzine, can fairly be described as politically close to Obama. But New Jersey, which has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992, is not a "moderate-to-conservative" state;  Corzine lost the race based on local issues involving corruption and property taxes.

In the state that can be described as moderate-to-conservative, Virginia, Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds went out of his way not to "rubberstamp Obama's agenda"--coming out against allowing "card check" union certification, suggesting he would opt-out from a "public option" health insurance program, running ads touting his opposition to Obama's climate change proposals, and declaring in the final debate of the campaign, "I'm not afraid of going against my fellow Democrats when they're wrong."

So of the four top electoral contests, only one fit Donatelli's model of Democrats getting a warning about how they should appeal to moderate or conservative voters; in that race, the Democrat took Donatelli's advice--and was soundly trounced, based on the Obama voters from 2008 staying home in 2009.

One is tempted to ask whether a source's claims have to make any kind of logical sense to appear on the front page of USA Today. But given that "move to the right" is always the corporate media's advice to Democrats after an election--whether they win or lose--it's a safe bet that they thought Donatelli was making sense.

To anyone with bad memories of how Gore's fact-filled debate performances against George W. Bush in 2000 failed to connect with voters, it may come as no surprise that Our Choice has a graphic on "how a wind turbine works," and a long section that begins: "Conventional hydrothermal plants are built according to one of three different designs. The steam can be taken directly through the turbine and then recondensed...."

A wind turbine GRAPHIC! In a book about green energy!? What on Earth was he thinking.

As to our memories of those 2000 debates, maybe Begley meant to type "reporters" instead of "voters." As Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler has been doggedly remembering for years now,  actual voters seemed to think Gore did pretty well in those debates--"instant polls of viewers credited Gore with a rather decisive win." The media created a different narrative--one of a petulant and sighing Gore who couldn't behave himself. And that's the way that they want everyone else to remember it.