Last week I wrote about the the unprecedented media scrutiny of this year's campaign:

It used to be a candidate could get by with sloppy language, a silly remark or a contradictory statement every now and then. Not any more. Today every utterance, no matter how small or insignificant, finds its way into the media bloodstream.

Case in point: this article in yesterday's Des Moines Register about Barack Obama. On March 11, before a crowd of just 40 people in Muscatine, Iowa, Obama made the comment hat "Nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people" and he's been paying for it ever since - right up through last week when he was confronted with that quote at the debate in front of 2 million or so viewers. To be clear, I'm not suggesting what Obama said was insignificant or unimportant, only that it wouldn't have become such an issue for him in the media environment of five or ten years ago.

In general, when you mix an extremely large field of candidates with relentless campaign schedules and round-the-clock saturation media coverage, you're bound to get an inordinate number of gaffes, bloopers, and misstatements - which is exactly what we've seen so far.

The result is that there is not only an increased chance of candidates suffering campaign-ending "macaca moments" but also of suffering campaign damage that accrues over time as the result of many little stumbles along the way caught - and magnified - by the unblinking eye of today's new media landscape.