What Josh said. What Halperin lacks is any perspective outside his own media wank-zone. The press is not supposed to be relentlessly in the middle of whatever two political parties at any moment in time represent. It's also supposed to have its own understanding of reality. After the worst presidency since Buchanan, with a default Republican nominee who picked a deranged know-nothing fem-bot as veep, with two disastrous wars, the worst attack on the US homeland in history and an economic crisis of unparalleled proportions in the modern world, some reporters and journalists had a duty to subject the incumbent party to more skepticism than the challenger.
The McCain campaign was, historians will note, one of the worst in memory. It is not disusting bias for the media to reflect that at the time.