Letters to the Editor
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Telling True
Except, as the converse unkown variable to some worries of racial intolerance towards Obama, there is some good chance that in the toe to toe stage of this contest some McCain trapdoors and pratfalls will undo his carte blanche streak of popularity survival and fault line him ditch deep in ridicule, flip flop and rejection.
Obama has been far the best this season in speech, consistency, innovation and taking the high ground.
He's the least angry.
The most inclusive.
The most magnetic.
he's got class and style.
He's been a phenom rookie with beginner's pluck.
He's not an empty suit like Romney.
He doesn't scold adversaries.
He's not petty, and rarely irritable.
His bearing and vision soar whenever he's untethered from the political infighting of the Clinton monsters.
They won't be his general election opponent.
He's been through (what we call in Philadelphia) the gym wars. Boxing only one foe in the next ring should be easy.
John Edwards, though incapable of national appeal, will be just the right guy to set him up for more acceptance by Clintons blue collar core. McCaskill can soothe women voters over their mourning.
She is the perfect VP balance for his unconventional ticket.
Playing safe by picking a cliched dullard to run with is absolutely the wrong move.
Staying a step ahead is the best strategy to keep on with.
He knows right from wrong so much better than his detractors, it's gonna bring home a workable mandate.
The Red Blue state worries aren't this year's story.
The biggest Obama obstacle i see is in perfecting his campaign's expert attention to satisfying the Ps and Qs required by some newly enacted voter ID rules designed for vote suppression.
But, so far, he's been turning most obstacles into learning tools.
After settling the Michigan, the Florida, and the nomination, and a little vacation, Clinton can defibrillate Harry Reid while Pelosi vises the Bush league. Republicans who want to stay in politics will have a choice to rebalance the White House power tilt and leave the blame duck alone in his remaining dead end dishonorable disaster days.
Or, what do you see coming?
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Cum grano sale
One takes with a grain of salt anyone who worked for Bill Richardson (aka Judas) and Howard Dean (the mismanager of this Dem primary season)...your analysis sounds quaint...it would be great...if you did factor in so many voters who will NOT vote for Obama OR McCain, and that could be a deciding factor in many states...as well as a substantial number...
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looser, count again
i don't see how Obama will win Florida and Michigan. He has repeatedly refused to let their delegates be seated at the convention.
Is he going to let them vote at the convention as a last minute appeasement.
If I was from one the these states, I would say Fu*k Obama.
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Pollsters are polluters of the political landscape
Political polling is about as respectable a science as reading the future in chicken entrails.
Large-scale demographic data are powerful and reliable when we are assessing immigration trends, the aging of the population, marriage rates etc. Like all quantitative data collection, its power emerges as larger and larger samples are gathered, and patterns can be detected.
Polls are given some credence because they have a patina of 'science' about them. However, political polls are rarely useful because the pollsters:
* are measuring fickle opinon, not stable attributes like age, gender etc.
* are using the tools of geographers to measure sociological phenomena - voting patterns can change drastically because of world events, the appeal of a particular candidate (Reagan, Clinton), etc. - in their search for 'trends,' pollsters often miss the emotional connection voters have with a particular candidate or issue. In other words, they often miss what voters will do because they don't understand why they're going to do it.
* the number of unknowable variables is intimidating: is the person being interviewed really going to vote? Are they saying the things the interviewer wants to hear, or their actual intent? Is the pollster just reaching the people who will talk to a pollster, or a representative sample?
* the methodologies of various polls are varied and can have a huge impact on the data
* response bias will be a factor: very few people will tell an interviewer they won't vote for Obama because he is black; the social sanctions against racism are significant. The person who said race is not an issue may be saying what is socially acceptable, yet behave differently when it comes time to vote.
* data collection is inconsistent and misleading: cellphone-only users, for example, are now 13% of the population, represent a distinct demographic (younger, larger numbers of African-Americans and Hispanics), and can't be reached via telephone survey. This is not yet as big a problem as it might seem, but will rapidly become one.
* politics change with the wind: a month is a lifetime in a presidential election at least, so data are outdated within weeks, often days. You can't do much meaningful prediction in those conditions. So, you get four polls with conflicting data and no idea as to why.
* which is my final point: polls very often tell us what a certain group of people will do - but not why. Not really.
I believe political polls are a scourge, pop science, part of the information junk that floats around in the media atmosphere and prevents clear signals from getting through.
The worst thing about them is that they influence perception, and, too often, behaviour. We get reams of semi-useful data, then that data in turn reinforces itself. A bad cycle.
A pox on the pollsters! We give them too much power. They don't know half as much as you do when you just look around and pay attention.
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@ KateTex
You said:
" It's a HUGE mistake to assume that Obama would be supported by the lion's share of current Hillary Clinton supporters. The level of animus among the latter toward Obama and his camp and the DNC poobahs is unprecedented in Democratic annals. It is neither superficial nor will it be short in duration. Venture outside the, ahem, progressive blogs and get a look at reader comments on more mainstream sites. Women, especially, are really, really angry. Believe it. Those sexist chickens are beginning to land on the primary roost with a mighty thump - not exactly a surprising development."
Jeez, do you even read what you post? "Look at the comments on mainstream sites..." wow, that's scientific. You really get a good cross-section of the population that way. Maybe I should judge national opinion by how much spam I get in a day!
Seriously, whatever "rift" in the Democratic party is imagined by the media right now, it will be gone come the general. Do you really think all those Hillary-supporting really, really angry women are going to break for McCain?