“How could the presidential polls change so much?” wonders Andrew Sullivan and MSNBC. We only wailed that the president debate was disastrous, horrible, inept, dumfounding, weak and Romney was great.

When a baby falls, parents learn not to freak out. Why, because usually when a baby is hurt, in the first few seconds of a baby assessing how they feel, they look to the parent and the adult facial reaction to figure out how to calibrate what’s happening to them. If the parent freaks out, the baby freaks out. If the parent’s voice is more calm, resolved or positive, the baby tries to calibrate the pain they are experiencing to that.

When Obama did badly at the debates, I cut over to MSNBC and you would have thought the president had been shot on stage. Or Obama came out in a clown suit or Pimp costume and slapped Mitt Romney. Saturday Night Live’s parody of the debate wasn’t too far from the truth when they showed Rachel Maddow, Ed Shultz and Al Sharpton titling their post-debate coverage “The worst thing that has ever happened.”

That’s the parental equivalent of “Oh My God!” A freak out coming from supposedly objective media people.

It was a freak out that the rest of America looked to and said “Wow, he really must have done badly” and executed a recalibration and wide swing reflected in the poll numbers that has erased the president poll lead.

Maddow, Mathews, Sullivan, Shultz, these were many of the people who seemed barely able to contain their belief that the election was already over. The same people I talked about last week in my post “The Liberal Media Bubble Does Exist.” This smirky and almost sanctimonious attitude that’s been clouding more left-branded media lately to look at the race as less of a battle than a coronation. To take a recent phrase from MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, MSNBC has been getting high on their own supply” The supply is the idea that Obama’s win is absolutely assured. It was the shock of reality and reminder that this is a contest that is causing the liberal freak out and anger. An energy that only the week before, was focused as laughing at the GOP turning on itself.

Obama numbers will likely come back. Probably not as wide. And the Electoral College will cut the overall polling results differently. But it is another example of why media outlets and right now more liberal outlets really aren’t very good guides to this election.