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Judging by the large response to yesterday's blogging, I should do more posts about punctuation...
But hey, like the Democratic Party, I've never been one to learn from experience.
One of my favorite political sites, which I visit every day, is Electoral-Vote.com. The site has an unabashedly liberal preference, but the handling of the data from the polls is (usually) done in an impartial manner. The focus of the site (as the name would imply) is where each candidate stands in the electoral college rather than the popular vote, based on the most current polling data. The site doesn't shrink from displaying bad news -- as it's doing now.
The section of the site that worries me the most is the graphing section. You might want to take a look at it. There are two graphs for the current presidential race: the first one counts any state where either candidate has a lead of any kind, no matter how small; the one below counts only those states where a candidate has a lead of 5% or better in the polls, since anything below is essentially a statistical tie.
There are also corresponding graphs at the same scale further down the page which graph out the same statistics for the 2004 race between John Kerry and George W. Bush. It's the similarities between the '04 and '08 graphs that are frightening. In the top graph, Obama had a HUGE lead over McCain throughout the summer... until late July/early August, when poll numbers for him started dropping, not coincidentally at the same time that the McCain campaign brought on a raft of Karl Rove's disciples and started running extremely negative anti-Obama ads.
It's the same tactic they used in 2004. Look at the first Kerry/Bush graph. Kerry, too, enjoyed a substantial lead in the electoral college polls against Bush through most of the summer.... until the Swift Boat ads started. By the end of August, his lead had entirely evaporated.
Now, at the end of August, Obama's lead -- similarly -- has also vanished under the assault of negative ads.
It's obvious why politicians go negative: it works. Despite the protests of the public about how much they hate negative campaigning, it works. Obviously, all those assertions by John and Jane Q. Public that they won't vote for someone who does negative campaigning are so much hot air: they will, and they do. What remains to be seen at this juncture is how Obama will respond to the negative campaigning. As much as I hate saying this, I think he has to go just as negative. If Obama is vulnerable on the "inexperience" and "oh, he's just an arrogant celebrity" and the none-too-subtle "he's a scary Muslim black man" fronts, well, McCain is just as vulnerable on the "senile old man," "rich guy who thinks a $4 million dollar income doesn't qualify as 'wealthy'" and "will claim he believes anything if it gets him elected" fronts.
Kerry didn't fight back and he lost. The same could happen to Obama.
The glimmer of hope is in the second set of graphs. Obama still is keeping a large gap between himself and McCain when only the "solid" states are counted, whereas Kerry had already tanked there as well by the end of August. What that tells me is that if Obama begins to hammer hard at McCain in the states where things are tight, he can still turn this around.
I'd hate to see a repeat of the 2004 debacle in '08...
But hey, like the Democratic Party, I've never been one to learn from experience.
One of my favorite political sites, which I visit every day, is Electoral-Vote.com. The site has an unabashedly liberal preference, but the handling of the data from the polls is (usually) done in an impartial manner. The focus of the site (as the name would imply) is where each candidate stands in the electoral college rather than the popular vote, based on the most current polling data. The site doesn't shrink from displaying bad news -- as it's doing now.
The section of the site that worries me the most is the graphing section. You might want to take a look at it. There are two graphs for the current presidential race: the first one counts any state where either candidate has a lead of any kind, no matter how small; the one below counts only those states where a candidate has a lead of 5% or better in the polls, since anything below is essentially a statistical tie.
There are also corresponding graphs at the same scale further down the page which graph out the same statistics for the 2004 race between John Kerry and George W. Bush. It's the similarities between the '04 and '08 graphs that are frightening. In the top graph, Obama had a HUGE lead over McCain throughout the summer... until late July/early August, when poll numbers for him started dropping, not coincidentally at the same time that the McCain campaign brought on a raft of Karl Rove's disciples and started running extremely negative anti-Obama ads.
It's the same tactic they used in 2004. Look at the first Kerry/Bush graph. Kerry, too, enjoyed a substantial lead in the electoral college polls against Bush through most of the summer.... until the Swift Boat ads started. By the end of August, his lead had entirely evaporated.
Now, at the end of August, Obama's lead -- similarly -- has also vanished under the assault of negative ads.
It's obvious why politicians go negative: it works. Despite the protests of the public about how much they hate negative campaigning, it works. Obviously, all those assertions by John and Jane Q. Public that they won't vote for someone who does negative campaigning are so much hot air: they will, and they do. What remains to be seen at this juncture is how Obama will respond to the negative campaigning. As much as I hate saying this, I think he has to go just as negative. If Obama is vulnerable on the "inexperience" and "oh, he's just an arrogant celebrity" and the none-too-subtle "he's a scary Muslim black man" fronts, well, McCain is just as vulnerable on the "senile old man," "rich guy who thinks a $4 million dollar income doesn't qualify as 'wealthy'" and "will claim he believes anything if it gets him elected" fronts.
Kerry didn't fight back and he lost. The same could happen to Obama.
The glimmer of hope is in the second set of graphs. Obama still is keeping a large gap between himself and McCain when only the "solid" states are counted, whereas Kerry had already tanked there as well by the end of August. What that tells me is that if Obama begins to hammer hard at McCain in the states where things are tight, he can still turn this around.
I'd hate to see a repeat of the 2004 debacle in '08...
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Sorry,but I'm starting to get a little hysterical about this election.