Will the MSM Lose Yet Again?
Some years ago, back in 1984, Ronald Reagan won reelection over Walter Mondale, carrying 49 states. Afterwards, the most prestigious columnist at the most prestigious newspaper–James Reston of the New York Times–permitted himself a confession:
Among the losers in this Presidential election campaign you will have to include the nosy scribblers of the press. Not since the days of H. L. Mencken have so many reporters written so much or so well about the shortcomings of the President and influenced so few voters. Mr. Reagan beat the newspapers by ignoring them. From his nomination in Dallas to election weekend he has not held a single national news conference. He gave one or two interviews to sympathetic writers and allowed a few small-time high school and college audiences to toss him some questions, but he dismissed the White House press corps with a wave and a smile.
In other words, the MSM went all-in to defeat Reagan, and were decimated by the voters. You can almost hear Reston gnashing his teeth when you read the headline: “Reagan Beats the Press.”
This little flashback set me wondering who’s today’s James Reston, and who, if anyone, would be man enough to make such a confession, if Romney wins on Tuesday. David Brooks? Nah, he’s had dozens of chances to out himself but never gets there. Matthews? Not a chance.
There’s a better chance of True Confessions from some of the pollsters. Just remember that Reagan-Carter in 1980 was “too close to call” for the pollsters, including Gallup. And if either candidate wins big in this election, there will be a target-rich environment for poll skeptics.
Reviewing the bidding: the media don’t have nearly the power that they, and many of us, think they have. And the pollsters, who get to talk to one out of every eleven people they (or their robots) call, are very afraid that they’re going to have to come up with some sort of scientific-sounding explanation for what happened.
Maybe they should take a poll on which explanation sounds most convincing, huh?
Also read: Election Predictions from PJ Media Columnists
More: Romney Wins Newspaper Endorsement Switchers by a Landslide
– Batchelor?
Maybe they should take a poll on which explanation sounds most convincing, huh?
Yes indeed. Perhaps they should confine the set of people they poll to the ranks of those in the Journolist, or whatever its called today. It would provide great comic relief to us peasants as to how the “reality based” community will attempt to spin this.
The large polling firms made a grave mistake this election cycle. Poll after poll after poll intentionally greatly oversampled Democrats, in order to bolster Obama’s chances.
The fact that, despite many polls saying that Obama will win narrowly, most of the conservative commentators are feeling calm and almost cocky BEFORE the election, and most liberal commentators are on the verge of panic, means that both sides clearly recognize that the polling firms have been intentionally and repeatedly dishonest.
So, what is the value of a poll when everybody knows that the polling firm, in essence, made up the final result? And what can be the only remaining purpose of the polling firm? Answer: to generate meaningless liberal propaganda that very few people believe.
This is the same problem that the MSM has made for themselves over the past 30 years. Very, very few people believe them, on any topic at all. They have completely squandered their credibility.
Fewer and fewer people watch/read them, and it has become clear that those in charge have chosen to continue producing profoundly dishonest liberal propaganda until their organization goes bankrupt and disappears.
It seems to me that most of the large polling firms have now made that same choice.
Get ready for the rationalize-a-thon of the century. What can they say? What can they write? Can they find a token of humility somewhere in the dark recesses of their robotics parts? Good luck with that!
Professor Ledeen, from your lips to God’s ears. Let’s all hope for the best.
It is not the MSM that worries me. They have lost whatever credibilty they may have had in Reston’s time. The polls attest to that and the majority of the voting public is quite aware of their agenda. What worries me the most is the narcotic pleasure of getting “free” stuff from the Distributor in Chief who is picking my pocket to buy the votes of many who will vote on Tuesday. They love their free cellphones and food stamps. That is a powerful incentive.
I would like to think that those who are “addicted” to getting free stuff from the government are not the most highly motivated when it comes to accomplishing anything – including voting.
I hope so. I, for one, will not stop worrying until the election is called tomorrow. I will either be in a funk and drown myself in vodka or celebrate by taking the good doctor’s advice and popping open a bottle of Grattamarco, heartburn be damned.
I know it’s the thing now to scoff at pollsters, even as we marvel at Paul Ryan with his data and math and models and forecasts and such.
I guess the science (and to some degree, art) of polling has been tainted by bad-faith pollsters who push, slant, and distort. But what’s with the hate for polls and pollsters per se? What on earth is wrong with conducting surveys, asking questions, trying to collect data that can be used by people who are simply looking for facts? Or data that will be useful for, say, Republican candidates who need to know where to concentrate their limited resources? Yeah, data is of limited use, but some people are capable of figuring out how to use it, aren’t they?
I do a lot of historical research for my job and I’m thankful as hell for those who leave records, count stuff, compile annals, maintain archives, attempt to quantify human experience and sentiment, and search for better ways to find and report the truth. I just don’t get this disdain, this hostility for a profession that’s just offering raw data for what it’s worth.
Sarcasm or genuine befuddlement?
You querulously ask, “But what’s with the hate for polls and pollsters per se?”, and then admit, to us if not yourself, “I guess the science (and to some degree, art) of polling has been tainted by bad-faith pollsters who push, slant, and distort”.
The joke about lawyers has become true about pollsters: 90% of them give the other 10% a bad name.
Genuine befuddlement.
I specifically take into account that some pollsters deliberately distort, as you note. I say “the profession itself,” not the professionals in it. Get it? Another example is journalism. Some journalists are highly objectionable, but is journalism itself objectionable? Do you hate journalism? Do you hate Breitbart? Do you hate James O’Keeffe?
So I repeat, what’s with the disdain for the profession itself? Do you think the whole profession should be ignored or starved to death as with, say, affirmative action hucksters? (The latter gets a resounding YES from me.)
We have real polls: they’re called Voting Day. Actual voters put actual marks down that are actually counted to the last ballot.
These things we call “exit polls” or “opinion polls” are little more than marketing tools.
The one time I answered the phone in the evening this go-around was to hear a snot-nosed kid reading me what I soon recognized as a “push” poll where he was supposedly asking me what I thought but was actually attacking in an insidious manner the guy I’m going to vote for.
It disgusted me.
While we cannot outlaw this myriad of pre-election so-called polls, we need to remember that the only real poll is the number of ballots cast.
They do what many of the leftists in academia do- incorporate their biases into their research assumptions, derive a bunch of skewed data points that result from such assumptions, run the statistics, and then call it science.
The only difference is, do they do it intentionally or because they are just ignorant? It’s very difficult to swiftly gauge the temperament and political leanings of a population, but it’s easy to look at demographics. The good polls have attempted to do the latter, the bad ones simply rely on the former.
Well said!
You are wrong on your fundamental premiss that pollsters are “just offering raw data.” The results pollsters publish are highly manipulated and bear little resemblance to the raw data. Granted they are modeled theoretically to produce more accurate results, but they are highly manipulated none the less.
Susan, they manipulate their data in various ways, but most of them do not, as I understand it, adjust party ID. So the accusations that they simply weight the partisan splits to reflect a more favorable outcome for Democrats is too simplistic, and simply not true in most cases. The best explanation I’ve heard is that likely voter screening is too lax, allows more Democratic, but unlikely, voters into the bottom line. It doesn’t quite explain all the unusual results, but a lot of them. And it probably comes down to cost. A thorough screening takes more time, so it costs more to do all the polling. So cheap polling is part of this. As they say, never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity (or cheapness!).
I’d add that the kind of questioning that can really ID likely voters also requires more time and questions on the part of the respondant – making participation less likely and further messing things up for the poller. The one call I took last week (we caller ID screen out almost everything, I was willing to pick up this one for no particular reason) started with “We would like to ask you to respond to a short 4 question poll”, which I would take as a sign that they can get people to agree to answer the basics (Party, Age, candidate, will you vote) and not much else.
I’d also suspect people mildly willing to answer polls will hang up as soon as the “big” question is asked – the demographic questions came first – again raising the likelihood that they check out if the screening questions go on too long.
I tried – out of curiosity – one of those “short” polls 2 days ago. The actual poll questions are (probably) short, but the “who are you” questions are ridiculous. I hung up after the 7th…never got to the actual poll.
“As they say, never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity (or cheapness!).” Precisely who are the, “they,” you are referring to? If you were talking about amateurs, I could say ok. For a professional stupidity is malice.
Agreed. Blaming the pollsters for malicious intent is silly. But arguing over their results and methodology is just part of the sport of politics. I find it much more interesting to look at the internals, do a little parsing, see what the polls might be finding, or missing. Partisans on both sides too easily dismiss polls they do not like, and too easily accept polls they agree with.
As a partisan myself, I cannot fathom how half the country could still vote for Obama. But that by itself doesn’t mean all the polls are wrong. Too many polls to ignore are suddenly coalescing around the same result — a dead heat. I’m cautiously hopeful about tomorrow but it will be a nail biter. Don’t kid yourselves.
That’s exactly how I feel, and that’s why I was so interested in Jay Cost’s post a few days ago at the Weekly Standard. He’s a geek’s geek who turned slightly away from raw data and said that they have to be placed in context. In other words, conducting and analyzing polls is an art as well as a science. (He predicted a Romney win.)
But he didn’t formally abandon numbers or declare that polls and pollsters are irrelevant.
Shirley you can’t be serious about “pollsters” just providing raw data?
The whole point of the polls is to shape, mold, influence, and guide public opinion into what the ruling class communist scumbags want it to be.
Got that, Shirley?
Don’t trust polls. Remember the Scott Walker recall vote in WI that was supposed to be so close. What happened? Walker won big right. CNN seemed very disappointed. They couldn’t wait for the results. And when the results were in, they had nothing to say. People see through the disingenuous ads.
That’s why people also lie to the pollsters. Folks know what the people polling them want to hear.
Recall the look of shock and awe on Chris Matthews and his MSNBC panels faces as Walker won handily, also the Matthew’s meltdown after the first debate; tomorrow night we are going to see Chris reaching down to take his socks off just to blow his nose. I’m so excited I feel giddy.
If Romney wins by more than a squeaker, Chris Matthews’s face will fall so low that he’ll have to look up to blow his nose and wipe his tears on his socks.
Some have called the coming Romney victory an undertow phenomnon. The media is missing what is happening and about to happen.In their attempt to shape the battlefield they have missed the gathering factors that are aligning against Obama.
Obama is losing independents in most of the battleground states, his early vote advatage has been neutralized, he hasn’t generated the margin he needed as a firewall. Additionally, there are highly motivated voters who are going to come out in force for Romney. There are hundreds of thousands of evangelicals and Catholics who are going to vote against Obama and his trampling of the 1st Amendment, just in the state of Ohio. There is a state in play that hasn’t been a factor for a Republican candidate in 40 years, Minnesota.The majority of the dinosaur media is missing all of this.
They are emphasizing the close race angle because it makes them relevant.In doing so they will be even less relevant in about 48 hours.
My greatest fear, because the MSM have become a tool of the “Party” and whose loyalty trumps fear, love of country, the rule of law, and fairness, whose “end justify the means” want it to become close so that fraudalent voting has a plausible credibility. Franken in Minnesota, is a perfect example as is the senator in Washington State. If it is close, then the race will inevitably with our crooked activist justices…go to the Democratic Party.
THis is fear, now the the MSM has given up its watchdog of democracy role, will end with the MSM and pollsters actively contributing to the erosion and demise of our Democratic republic with eventual frightful consequences. I saw the Left take over UC Berkeley and the majority of apathetic students let them. Am very anxious about the result of this election because it will be a singular decision point like some historical decision points in the ancient Roman Empire. If it goes against us…we will not recover.
The True Confession will have to come from Matt Silver of the New York Times and 538.com.
He’s the one who put together that famous probabilistic prediction model based on state-by-state polls. He’s giving Obama an 80% chance of winning, so he’s gone really out on a limb.
If Romney wins, Nate Silver will have a lot of explaining to do.
Sinz,
He won’t be alone.
I note that during the 1st Gulf war I bought the NYT every day to get hard info on the military facts in the region. I figured the NYT had the best information.
Now when I hear of a Times story I always immediately look for the bias angle. I never trust them to tell me straight facts. I always know that they will slant the report to favor the liberal side, no matter what.I would never trust the paper to give me the straight dope.
Same goes for NBC, ABC, CBS, LA Times, etc. I don’t even trust the WSJ anymore.I avoid these former outlets and seek info from better positioned media resources. The internet presents so many alternatives that report more accurately it isn’t funny.
If I owned stock in the dinosaur media, I wouldn’t be pleased to read what I just wrote here. Well, they should have thought about that before thay started the serial lying and selective reporting.
I will enjoy their chapter 11′s and conversion to chapter 7 with a fine glass of wine.
I’m curious – what news sources have you been favoring lately? I haven’t really settled on anyplace that functions as an all-around unbiased (less-biased) news source online. For some reason, Breitbart doesn’t do it for me – it’s fun reading, as is Fox online, but isn’t clean and simple enough for a quick perusal of the top stories of the day. I use Google News, but have to plow through so much editorials masquerading as news that it is hard to find the ten percent or so that is actually relevant, news (not entertainment, tech-news release or sports) and not editorial slant on news.
So – what’re you reading online?
The best policy is to try to read blogs on all sides, and to draw your own conclusions based on your own judgment of what makes the most sense to you. Unfortunately, after a while I find the left side so bogged down in foolishness, distortion and falsehood that I find it hard to do this. But it is worthwhile trying.
Try Democracy NOW! on PBS, then when you stop laughing all your hard facts are 180 degrees from what they report.
Here is the thing about Nate Silver’s model: It is competely derivative. His statistical model is based on an aggregate computation of polls conducted by other organizations, and is thus completely dependent upon the accuracy of those other polls, and the integrity of actual pollsters.
Silver’s prognosis is based on the supposed inherent accuracy of the rest of the opinion polls. If those polls are accurate, then Silver’s statistical model will likely hold up under scrutiny. But if the majoriy of those polls are using bad models when they weight the raw data, then Silver’s model has no chance of being accurate – even if his model is statistically valid.
Silver’s background is creating a statistical model for rating pro baseball players using actual hard statistical facts.
For example, suppose a batter comes up to bat 600 times in a season, he might have 30 walks, 95 singles, 40 doubles, 5 triples, and 30 homeruns.
His actual batting average would be .298 (170 hits/570 atbats). His actual onbase percentage would be .333 (200 hits+walks/600 trips to the plate.) Those are hard statistics.
But what if someone were to remove the 40 doubles, and then recalculate the batting and onbase averages. Then, the batting average would be .245 (130 hits/530 atbats.) The onbase percentage would be .285 (160/560).
By removing the doubles from the equation, it distorts the real numbers making it appear that the players batting average is 53 points lower than it actually is, and also that the players onbase percentage is 48 points lower than it actually is.
If Nate Silver plugged in the false numbers into his baseball player statistical model, then he wouldn’t get accurate results even though his model is good. Since he doesn’t personally collect the data himself, Silver relies upon Major League Baseball to report accurate statistics and then uses those statistics in his computer model. IF MLB does not report accurate statistics, then Silver has no chance of using his computer model to make accurate predictions about the future performance of the baseball players.
Similarly, Silver is not collecting the raw polling data from the polling companies he uses. Instead, he is relying upon the various polling companies to present unbiased results, and is at the mercy of their individual and collective integrity in reporting the results.
Conclusion: If Romney wins big on Tuesday, then Silver can rightly claim that his predictions were based on false data being reported by the various polling agencies that he uses to compile the data entered into his computer model. It won’t actually be proof that his model is wrong. Silver can be the most honest statistician in the country. But if the dataset is bad, then the results will be bad. Or in other words – Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Dr Ledeen, May I suggest that you attempt to write something that has been gnawing at me for quit sometime now.
I have this fear. Every natural instinct tells me and through all my observations over my entire life, indicate Obama can not win this election. I also have noticed the negative Obama campaign vs. the positive and hopeful Romney campaign. I have yet to notice that anything has changed since the 2010 campaign, unless you consider that some conditions may be worse.
Yet on Wednesday morning I almost expect to read that Obama squeaked it out. Why do I dread this feeling that goes against my natural instincts?
Is it the lying? Is it because I find obvious information that is ignored by the vast MSM?
Win or loose, thank God for PJmedia!
A fair and honest election would be a slam dunk for Romney. But you have two significant factors skewing the final tally towards Obama, the shameless patronage and hero worship by the main stream media, and rampant voter fraud and intimidation endemic to the liberal progressive movement. Should they manage to cheat and steal their way to a victory it will represent the disenfranchisement of the majority of American citizens. I’m not sure how our country can survive that.
Another frightening scenario, oft-discussed, is the specter of significant civil unrest should Romney win, especially if it is close.
And should that play out, the MSM (and so many pollsters: redundant) will have VAST, HUGE, EXTRAORDINARY culpability in that happening. It would not be at all out of line to say they will have blood on their hands.
Because they specifically, deliberately, and forthrightly, with malice I dare say, allowed millions of people to believe that Obama was much more popular than he was, that Romney was the opposite, and that this has always been basically a shoo-in for Obama. If millions have wrapped themselves up warm and snug in that blanket, suddenly wake up on Wednesday to a bucket of ice water on their heads, their reaction may very well be far different than if they knew the score the whole time, and had a pretty good idea what was coming down the pike. (McCain voters of 2008 – How many of you were unhappy… scared…. dismayed…. etc etc. Now, how many of you were surprised? Uh huh.
People react to the unexpected many times by lashing out without thinking. The MSM has done everything in its power, though polls and other means, to make a Romney victory “unexpected” for so many. If there is a reaction to such that many of us fear, that MSM will have MUCH to answer for.
Nobody in America ever went to riot for a LOSER. The Obama balloon has hissed out of history and with it a long era of lies, deceit and corruption. Like the massive clean up after Sandy, the next four years, even longer, will be about putting things back together.
I know what you mean, but I think the people who would join RALFO (Rioters And Looters For Obama) couldn’t care less about winning or losing or any cause in the universe except themselves. They would riot for the sheer hell of it and loot everything and everyone in their path, including Black-owned businesses and Black neighbors who voted for Obama.
It might or might not happen, depending on how bad the weather is and whether RALFO would rather just watch t.v. that day than hustle out to steal a new one.
“Nobody in America ever went to riot for a LOSER”
Two words for ya judge…
Rodney. King.
Tommy – I have that same fear…facts and the TEA Party groundswell indicate a Romney win, yet I have a dreaded feeling that obama will somehow pull it out on Weds morning or afterwards due to voting irregularities.
So let us work like everything depends on us and pray like everything depends on God.
I still say there is a quid pro quo in place between Obama and the MSM. They deliver the power of the presidency to Obama for a second term in return for a little crony capitalism in the form of licensure for the privilege of the new media to use the public bandwidth. The MSM wants to restrict/control entry into their market. Not a one of the new media outlets so much as gets a whiff of this real posssibilty. As it stands, new media is eating old media’s lunch. If they’re to survive they have to either abandon their political principles so their audience market can stomach their product again OR reduce the competition. Number 2 is their game. Their jumping every shark they can find during this political season can only be explained this way. I refuse to believe that they believe they’re delivering a product people really want. Its Not power. Not being in the right. Not the welfare of the country. Not even being the major force in picking the president. Its the money. They’ve struck a Faustian bargain. If we want to break them of it we must abandon every temtptation to glimpse their product, even just to see what the rascals are up to.
Mike,
100% in agreement with your comment. The media has definitely lost its power to competing forces, talk radio and FOX.
Correct, which is why Net Neutrality, SOPA/PIPA, future amendments to DMCA or even a new DMCA (too horrible to contemplate) and any other measures sold to the public as leveling the playing field, encouraging competition, protecting content/intellectual property, etc. are to be opposed with all our might.
The FCC are as political as any DC entity and their claims to be neutral arbiters and/or protectors of public assets are farcical.
As traditional media commit slow-motion suicide by sacrificing audience in order to gain favor with politicians, those politicians promise to erect barriers to entry or to bankrupt/persecute competitors by burying startups/upstarts under an avalanche of regulations, misapplied copyright/patent law, etc.
The buggy-whip makers suing automobile factories analogy applies here with Uncle Sam doing the leg-breaking.
The MSM is like our pet dog who got rabies. Its not that we didn’t like them. Its not that we don’t want to like them and keep them around. Its that they’ve become infected, are dangerous and sadly need to be put down.
Never doubt the last refuge of mendacity by the MSM, they will do what they always do when their guy fails, blame it on racism.
The most egregious sins of the NYT and MSM in general are sins of omission. They distort truth by ignoring and so concealing important events to suit their ideology and further the political agenda they claim not to have. Their outright calumnies and slanders are secondary.
This deliberate keeping of important news out of the newspaper did not begin with with this election or the election before. Nor with the election of Reagan.
Recall that During WWII, the Jewish publishers of the NYT deliberately kept news of the slaughter of Jews in Europe out of their newspaper and the public consciousness for years.
The Sulzbergers and the Ochsen are evil people. I for one welcome the demise of their newspaper and the silencing of their dishonest voices. I would welcome their public hanging from lampposts in Times Square.
I’m thing a resurrected LIMBO would be a good place for these hacks.
Oddly enough, sinning by omission is not a hanging crime.
Will the MSM lose again?
I doubt it.
What if the MSM was as right wing as it is left wing?
What a different country it would be!
No, the MSM is still overwhelmingly dominant, else Obama would be lucky to get a third of the vote. And, he is STILL favored to win by Intrade, at 67%.
People are ALREADY brainwashed—the vast majority of them have been fatally programmed, since birth. Advertising works!
I hope Romney wins, so the MSM will return to their designated duty of reporting political misdeeds.
All I know is that if Romney overcomes all the deficiencies put in front of him, he shows some fortitude in righting this ship. Some early obvious steps;
Ensure conservative voices are present in the White House Press Corps. Breitbart.com, the Blaze, etc. should have a seat in the room. Toss the worst offenders of the present bunch. Tell the people why.
Get the best minds on the task of cleaning up voting for the next election. Voter ID has to be implemented, and a national database established to catch people who vote in more than their own district. We’ve been to the Moon we can sure as hell figure out how to allow one vote to each citizen.
With honesty and hard work he can then begin cleaning up the mess that is the rest of the problems of this nation.
Sadly, it is the oldest trick in the book to say you are going to go to Washington to clean up the mess – and perhaps one of the few honest things Obama has said the last 4 years is that it can’t be done from the inside. Once Mitt is inside, I’m afraid we’ll lose him.
Not everybody wants to admit to the pollsters that they’re not a liberal in the voting booth. Obama knows that. That’s why he’s scared even though his polls show him in the lead.
You know, over in Tatler I made a prediction that’s even more optimistic than Dick Morris: 341 R/ 197 O. The rationale is that all states within the margin of error go Romney based on enthusiasm. This isn’t *that* unreasonable, since that’s more or less what happened with Obama. Now, it might be less — a new Michigan poll is more toward Obama, but my most pessimistic estimate is 286/207 for Romney.
Lying to a pollster is the moral equivalent of a POW lying to his captors.
As a Swing-State Resident, I glory in telling pollsters what Obama would want to hear.
I keep asking: what if the pollster was calling from the Romney/Ryan campaign so they could figure out where to spend their limited resources? Thanks, bub.
Well arhooley bub, if there’s enough CraigZ types that his response isn’t in lost in the statistical noise then the Romney camp needn’t spend their cash in his district anyway and on election night they get a pleasant surprise.
MITT LandSlide ROMNEY 8)
Just take a look at the newest CNN poll that reflects an +11 Demorat edge in those polled and also reflects a 22% lead by Romney with independant voters and they add this up to a 49-49% tie. ’nuff said.
http://twitchy.com/2012/11/04/cnn-poll-reaches-new-heights-of-absurdity/
Let’s prove them wrong first, Ok?
I vaguely remembered the Reston essay, but I went back and read it again. Reston really wasn’t admitting anything- he was basically whining about how Reagan had found a way to win without dealing with the press that was “diligently” trying to expose Reagan’s “obvious” shortcomings- not that the press was in the bag for Mondale.
So, if I am looking for any admission after Tuesday, it might in the form of someone in the media who pens an article apologizing for not even trying to do what the press did in 1984. I have never, in my life, seen a president treated with such adulation by the media as this one.
When ROmney wins the MSM will just label his backers racist. After all this they can’t admit they were wrong.
Yeah, jschmidt, I just don’t get that MSM logic. Millions vote for a candidate because the color of his skin and in 2008 that’s no way racist. Four years later, if the color of a candidate’s skin doesn’t matter that’s big time racist. Pointing out that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s dream was that we would judge the content of a man’s character, NOT the color of his skin won’t matter to the Establishment Media’s pretty faces on the toob.
I’m not worried though. The race card is past its expiration date. The statute of limitations on white guilt has been reached. Life just got a lot tougher for those who won’t man up, show good character, be clean and articulate. It won’t be because America’s majority suddenly doesn’t get it, we’re not buying it anymore. And that’s true no matter who wins Tuesday.
P.S. If a poll had been taken in, oh, 2004 I’m quite sure most people would have said they’d vote for a black sooner than for a Mormon.
I do my best to avoid “cocooning” as I roam the internet. While I do spend a lot of time on conservative websites, I also have a lot of hobbies and interests that tend to be apolitical, things like stargazing, gaming, golf, photography, fishing and sports.
While my internal compass would suggest that Obama has to be recognized as one of the most dismal failures in the Oval Office in American history, I am sorry to report that my roaming around the net does not seem to indicate that a large majority of Americans realize this. In fact on most non-political sites I visit, Romney supporters are rare or quiet and Obama supporters are common and vocal. The sheer lack of awareness of facts is shocking when they post their pro-Obama propaganda, but it reveals that the power of the media is still very strong indeed. Romney is routinely mocked as a “liar” in spite of the overwhelming evidence of Obama’s continued, repeated and disgraceful lies on just about every subject imaginable. Benghazi is an event that may as well never have happened.
It is my firm belief that Obama can win this election. It is also my firm belief that if he does, our nation is doomed to become a second-rate power with a European style economy and a dwindling set of expectations for our children and grandchildren. Democrats in general and Obama in particular seem determined to drive this country into insolvency either through sheer incompetence, or for more malicious purposes.
But if Obama does win tomorrow, I won’t be surprised. Disappointed, yes. Fearful, yes. Hopeless, yes. But surprised, no.
Well, let’s remember what Clint Eastwood said. There are plenty of conservatives in Hollywood, but they don’t go hotdogging it the way the liberals do. Conservatives, Republicans, and libertarians are such objects of public vilification it’s little wonder we don’t reveal our politics as casually as liberals and Dems do. Then came Chick Fil-A Day.
Yeah Chick-Fil-A Day put back a few morsels of the hope for America I’d lost when Hounddog Bill was re-elected. The ’08 Obama-gaga of young and old alike further disappointed me. 2010′s results weren’t much of a balm because it was an off-year election so many of Obama’s base, the tokers and takers, didn’t show up.
I’ll need to see TEN Chick-Fil-A Days with no backsliding in between before America’s general voting public regains any credibility with me. A Romney-Ryan blow out Tuesday would make an unbroken string of two.
Silent majority. Count on it.
I don’t count on any Silent Majority anymore. They stayed silent in ’96 and sat home to let kids, mouthbreathers, Section 8 takers and union kleptocrats elect a dazzling Rock Star In A Bomber Jacket image. The Silent Majority of your youth is now in hospice care, life support or graves. They are no more.
You are operating under the principle that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. But you have to remember that after a while a squeaky wheel is just annoying and gets changed.
If Obama wins I do not think we need feer the USA dwindling down to a “European style second rate power”. This country is too massive, too diverse culturally and geographically, to have that sort of gentle landing into historical emptiness. If Obama wins, we go down, and we go down fast, with the only question being if the eventual result is disintegration or the triumph of open tyranny. Not that disintegration and open tyrannies are mutually exclusive.
A must see movie 2016. Free for you.
http://vimeo.com/m/51569342
From my perspective, on election night, it will be interesting when when the MSM anchors finally tell the audience the results of the election.
I remember back in the ’80 elections late on November 4, 1980, the talking heads reacted with a deathly silence when reporting who won, live. They seemed quite bummed out about the results.
Thanks Ledeen for lowering my blood pressure and heart rate. All these damn interminable polls designed, in my view, to keep the election frenzy alive and well through election day. Who would now be paying attention if these polls were anything close to accurate in the past?
I sincerely hope not to be proven wrong but, if the majority of the electorate have been paying attention, especially all those who remain undecided and have yet to vote, assuming most are patriotic, intelligent citizens and have since 9/11/2012 made themselves aware of Obama and his administrations tragic, cowardly denial of military assistance to Ambassador Christopher and three other Americans besieged in Benghazi, Romney/Ryan will win in a landslide. They deserve to win in a landslide. Obama/Biden and the shrill Left spin machine should be defeated not by the skin of their teeth but by a swift boot in their derrière.
I think Rush had it just right, as he so often does. He said that the 2010 elections are a better model than 2008, because by 2010 the people knew more about Obama, whereas in 2008 he was whatever you wanted to imagine. 2010 was a Republican wave. Rush says, “are those voters happier today than they were two years ago?”
Which makes a lot of sense to me.
In the course of one day I receive about 10 “robot” calls. They constitute an invasion of my home and my privacy. Since I live in a state which is considered “safe” for the President, I don’t believe I have been polled about the election.
But if resided in onw of the “battleground” states, I suspect I would have received several such calls by now. In such case I suspect I would be giving answers designed to confuse rather than my true preference.
Please excuse my last reference to “Ambassador Christopher.” He was Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Not all the polls have been wrong. Both Rasmussen and Gallup have been mostly right. But I agree that many others, especially those that routinely predicted big obama leads using bogus dem+8 samples, will have a lot of explaining to do.
Whenever the lamestream media calls an election as “too close to call,” it usually means that the conservatives are way ahead. That’s been the case in Canada too, when the Conservative Party of Canada won the national election in 2011 and when the present Mayor of Toronto won in a landslide.
The media wants the electorate to think it’s close in order to discourage Republicans — or those who would vote Republican — to think that their individual vote doesn’t really matter.
I’m praying for my neighbours stateside, for a clear Romney/Ryan win, in order to return the U.S.A. to its former self. Under the Obamanation, I hardly recognize our nearest friend and ally.
God bless America!
I’ve been making calls for the R/R campaign. And I can attest to what a frustrating job it is. 99% of the time you get VM and leave a message (yes, swing-state voters, I’m one of the awful people tormenting you with robo-messages. But I’m getting them too.) When you do get someone on the line, normally they say “Yes, I’m voting for R/R.” They don’t want to listen to your entire spiel – they don’t have time.
Calling for the campaign has made me realize how hard it is to even simply find people who answer the phone when they see a number displayed on their screen that they don’t recognize. Before the advent of cells and caller ID, people were more prone to answer their phones whenever it rang because, who knows, it might be someone telling you dad’s in the hospital. Nowadays – heck I don’t even pick up my landline anymore because it’s always telemarketers. And I don’t answer numbers I don’t recognize.
It’s that experience that is making me question the polls.
Romney 51%+ Obama 48%
Romney gets at least 2 out of three: WI, Ohio, Pa.
There are still people voting abortion in this election; thats by far their most important issue.
That +/- 48% of the population likes Obama and are voting for Obama should scare you. And Europeons like Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood loves Obama and conciders him one of theirs.
Europeons. Heh.
For years the Left Stream Media has been getting more strident as it loses ground. Obama would never have been elected without their covering for him. Early exposure of Reverend Wright’s “no, no, God D**n America” would have had him out of the primaries.
In the last year Fast and Furious has been ignored. And now the LSM has been blessing Sandy for giving them something besides Benghazi to cover.
If Mittens has a significant win, people will eventually get the news that the LSM has been part of the cover-up, not the investigators.
What will happen then?
The last time I was this depressed was when Khomeini walked down the Air France gangplank at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran heralding misery. The outcome of tonight’s elections will be the beginning of the end of what made the USA great. And by that I don’t mean a great military power; a great moral power home of righerous men and women. Once again Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov has been proven right; the poleznye idioty are well and good and thriving in numbers.
The Italians say: “the mother of fools is always pregnant.”
And Horseradish completes the Italian saying as such: “La madre dei cretini e sempre incinta da diversi padri sconosciuti”
braaaavo
Some pundits may say if Romney’s campaign did this or that or had
chosen a different strategy all together, the election result would have been different.
The path to liberty is
through the will of it’s people.
Regardless of what the challenger did or even who the challenger was,
we are a divided nation, 54% zombie nation majority of whom would
vote for Obama over and over and over again, for life if they could.
So we either deport the zombie nation to say Cuba or China, or watch
the transformation of America into a socialist State. The choice is
very clear!
Michael, Could you find out what Angleton thinks of the Petraeus business. Thanks!