Letters to the Editor
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Chris Matthews is right
The Republican political establishment, which includes the media, is using polls to influence how people vote by discouraging them from voting. Why should I vote if the MSM has already anointed the winner? Let's face it the MSM is brought and paid for. Most of the older pundits, Matthews, Brokaw, etc., have repressed homosexual desires for McCain a war criminal for the bombing of civilians over Vietnam and a traitor for violating the UCMJ, Uniform Code of Military Justice and they are working to get the object of their homosexual fantasies elected president. It gets more bizarre with every word they, the MSM, speak.
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@Mike Sulzer @Paul Dirks
They could use a different model, but a single opinion poll for an election cycle isn't supposed to indicate a trend. Multiple polls do that. The supposed inaccuracies on Tuesday probably came from mixing polling types and windows, and from misinterpretation. To use your terminology, the media interpreted the Obama surge as a step, it was a delta.
People designing surveys also use steps, actually they use logistic curves, for other types of surveys. Modelling marriage, for instance. Because a surge in marriages produces permanently married people (until a surge in divorces ;-)).
In the end, Brokaw was right. The media's job is to report the poll and say what it indicates, not make book on the election. Even more, the media should fill its time with informing the electorate about stands and issues, instead of telling people how to vote or to whom to contribute. Maybe if the media was known to spend hours of time analyzing and vetting campaign platforms and positions, the candidates would rise to the challenge and spend time honing these, instead of branding themselves.
My bet is that at least some in the media (who were watching the exit polls) knew what was coming for a good part of the day. So the interesting question is why they acted like they did.
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@Jim White
Good morning to you. Stay on bop's case.
I'm glad you're hanging around on this thread today.
I worked up a real stem-winder on Chris Matthews and what he said Tuesday night and then hit a button on my keyboard and the whole thing disappeared. Oh, I wish I wish I was a geek.
Anyway, within that lost opus was a recollection from my full-time news days. Time and time again, while I was reporting every day and had my head into it all, I became more aware of C-Span and its start on cable. So this goes back twenty or so years. I remember panel discussion after panel discussion on the general question of how to improve news practices and standards. Sometimes the panel would be made up of academics; sometimes it would be industry leaders and worker bees; sometimes a combination of both. Every once in a while a newsmaker or news personage would appear at a National Press Club event, and the subject might come up. And on and on.
So much of the stuff, the complaints, that have been raised here, both since Tuesday night and before, has been vetted by news professionals and others over the last generation really.
And here we are at this sorry pass with Matthews expressing perhaps the most absurd remark - and possibly the most accurate, albeit unintentional indictment - of what these people in elite news have been doing.
It would be interesting to go into C-Span's archives to see some of this stuff. I remember it; it should all be there.
It's all been said before.
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G' Mornin' Bebop-O! Chores over?
Good. Now, the sweat cools, but did your core? Hie thee to a physician or a nurse practitioner. No Wal-Marts, K-Marts or Open Marts - they of the pretty poison pills. No - only a practitioner skilled in the healing arts and sciences will do.
You can still mail me on the intertubes for questions to ask.
Anytime for me, right now's the time for you.
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Bashing the Clinton's
Bashing Hillary
Pat Buchanan said it all last evening when he told Chris Matthews, "this whole thing now is all you guys in the press trying to wipe the egg off your faces because Hillary won.."
Where have this group been while the administration has been doing its' stuff?
Come on Matthews...cry me a river, I've cried a river over you,
-- Rever
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polling
FWIW, Zogby did a press release - in case you haven't seen it - one item:
4. My polling showed Clinton doing well on the late Sunday night and all day Monday – she was in a 2-point race in that portion of the polling. But since our methods call for a three-day rolling average, we had to legitimately factor the huge Obama numbers on Friday and Saturday – thus his 12 point average lead. Unfortunately, one day or a day–and–a–half does not make a trend and we ran out of time.
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1419 (or, at my sig)
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@Ondelette
The news organizations, as I understand it from the flap over the 2000 election, pledged at least not try and "call" an election until polls had closed.
So they will supposedly wait until the polls close in Iowa, or New Hampshire, or Michigan, or all the relevant polls on February 5 - Super Duper Whatever It Is.
But they still want to prognosticate, i.e., act as "prophets" or "seers."
To the extent that they prognosticate madly during the primaries, they are influencing voters for months on end.
Should they, as Brokaw seemed to suggest, just "call" the various primary and caucus results, or should they prognosticate?
If they can't prognosticate, and talk to the consultants and various other soothsayers and court Rasputins, they can't keep their audience glued to the tube.
What a catastrophe that would be.
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Jim White. okay.
Sens a penguin. A black and white bird that waddles. A penguin wears the same outfit and don't need fancy threads. A penguin is a favorite but, who can compare a crane with a red head wood pecker or a pelican with a big mouth. Nature's black crows go, Ha, hah, hah.
I'll soak the leg. But you must stop mentioning it. It tickles in the morn and gets as big as a ten-pound pink bawling ball with grasping holes by eve time. It's a good leg-ball for duck pin bawling competitions?
I'll be banned for no deodorant?
I'll soak it in herbal Rosemary oil.
I'll go to the Quaker's today and banter with Poly.
O, Cheese, Cheers, and eat stale wheat crackers with Skippy-Lard based peanut butter. Stay on topic. Your a good pea nut.
Glenn's next pea-soup post may be interesting. Have a good appetite. Your giving me a headache~? And two tooth ache's too.
Please.