Jackson downplays socialist ties he confirmed last month, 1.8 points ahead of Collins.

…(cont) Here's the side I can't get past. Twenty-four days. What sits in twenty-four days? September 21st is when the same paper — the Post, I checked the name twice against my own handwriting, which is a mess some days, but it matched — ran a second story, this one about Jackson downplaying his ties to socialists. Same masthead, opposite direction, twenty-four days apart. I'm sorry, I keep coming back to this. What happens to a story in twenty-four days that it needs walking back?

Something moved in those twenty-four days, and I mean that as plainly as I can. I keep a folder of clippings in the glovebox, and on September 11th I had to carry it from the car up to the porch because it wouldn't fit my raincoat pocket anymore — that's the day the Senate Leadership Fund's PAC ad went up, hitting Jackson's tax record from his years in the Maine Senate. So which was it — quiet twenty-four days, or an ad about a different Jackson number while the socialist number just sat there? I'm sorry, I keep going back to August, but doesn't the ad belong somewhere in that stretch, not off to the side of it?

There's a poll in the same folder. RealClearPolitics has Jackson up 1.8 points on Senator Collins, dated to the same week the second Post story ran. I'm not going to guess what 1.8 points means — that's their business, they do it for a living, and I trust people who do a thing for a living over a guy with a folder. I'll only ask: is that the same week, the walk-back and the 1.8 points? The paper says yes.

Somewhere in those twenty-four days, on September 14th, Joe Manchin endorsed Susan Collins, calling her the soul of the Senate. Does a former senator's word carry more than a poll number, or less? I don't know that either. I only know it lands in the same stretch as the ad and the poll — between the endorsement and the walk-back, both of them, on the record.

Oh — excuse me, one more thing before you go. The story that had Jackson endorsing the co-chair, and the story that has him downplaying it now — same paper, twenty-four days apart. If a reader wanted to know which came first, where would they look? At the top of the first story. What's the date printed there? August 28th.