Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote They were wrong in 2000 and 2004

[darrels joy]

Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote

They were wrong in 2000 and 2004.

There has been an explosion of polls this presidential election. Through yesterday, there have been 728 national polls with head-to-head matchups of the candidates, 215 in October alone. In 2004, there were just 239 matchup polls, with 67 of those in October. At this rate, there may be almost as many national polls in October of 2008 as there were during the entire year in 2004.

Some polls are sponsored by reputable news organizations, others by publicity-eager universities or polling firms on the make. None have the scientific precision we imagine.

For example, academics gathered by the American Political Science Association at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington on Aug. 31, 2000, to make forecasts declared that Al Gore would be the winner. Their models told them so.

Mr. Gore would receive between 53% and 60% of the two-party vote; Gov. George W. Bush would get between just 40% and 47%. Impersonal demographic and economic forces had settled the contest, they said. They were wrong.

Right now, all the polls show Barack Obama ahead of John McCain, but the margins vary widely (in part because some polls use an "expanded" definition of a likely voter, while others use a "traditional" polling model, which assumes turnout will mirror historical trends but with a higher turnout among African-Americans and young voters).

On Monday, there were seven nationwide polls, with the candidates as close as three points in the Investors Business Daily/TIPP poll and as far apart as 10 points in Gallup's "expanded" model. On Tuesday, the Gallup "traditional" model poll had the candidates separated by two points and the Pew poll had them separated by 15. On Wednesday, Battleground, Rasmussen and Gallup "traditional" model polls had the candidates separated by three points while Diageo/Hotline and Gallup "expanded" model polls had the spread at seven points.

Polls can reveal underlying or emerging trends and help campaigns decide where to focus. The danger is that commentators use them to declare a race over before the votes are in. This can demoralize the underdog's supporters, depressing turnout. I know that from experience.

On election night in 2000 Al Hunt -- then a columnist for this newspaper and a commentator on CNN -- was the first TV talking head to erroneously declare that Florida's polls had closed, when those in the Panhandle were open for another hour. Shortly before 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Judy Woodruff said: "A big call to make. CNN announces that we call Florida in the Al Gore column."

Mr. Hunt and Ms. Woodruff were not only wrong. What they did was harmful. We know, for example, that turnout in 2000 compared to 1996 improved more in states whose polls had closed by the time Ms. Woodruff all but declared the contest over. The data suggests that as many as 500,000 people in the Midwest and West didn't bother to vote after the networks indicated Florida cinched the race for Mr. Gore.

I recall, too, the media's screwup in 2004, when exit-polling data leaked in the afternoon. It showed President Bush losing Pennsylvania by 17 points, New Hampshire by 18, behind among white males in Florida, and projected South Carolina and Colorado too close to call. It looked like the GOP would be wiped out.

Bob Shrum famously became the first to congratulate Sen. John Kerry by addressing him as "President Kerry."

Commentators let the exit polls color their coverage for hours until their certainty was undone by actual vote tallies.

Polls have proliferated this year in part because it is much easier for journalists to devote the limited space in their papers or on TV to the horse-race aspect of the election rather than its substance. And I admit, I've aided and abetted this process.

In the campaign's final week, though, the candidates can offer little new substance, so attention turns to the political landscape, and there's no question Mr. McCain is in a difficult place.

The last national poll that showed Mr. McCain ahead came out Sept. 25 and the 232 polls since then have all shown Mr. Obama leading. Only one time in the past 14 presidential elections has a candidate won the popular vote and the Electoral College after trailing in the Gallup Poll the week before the election: Ronald Reagan in 1980.

But the question that matters is the margin. If Mr. McCain is down by 3%, his task is doable, if difficult. If he's down by 9%, his task is essentially impossible. In truth, however, no one knows for sure what kind of polling deficit is insurmountable or even which poll is correct. All of us should act with the proper understanding that nothing is yet decided.

As for me, I've already cast my absentee ballot in Kerr County, Texas -- joyfully, enthusiastically marking the straight Republican column. I would like to have joined the line Tuesday outside the polling place in Ingram, where I've been registered the past few years. But I will be in New York, part of the vast horde analyzing exit polls, dissecting returns, and pontificating on consequences. I'll thoroughly enjoy myself that night, and probably feel guilty the next morning. But this year's 728 national polls and the thousands of state polls made me do it.

Mr. Rove is a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
About Karl Rove

Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy making process.

Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.

Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster. Email the author at Karl@Rove.com or visit him on the web at Rove.com.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122533149619882883.html

[darrels joy]

Hey Eeyores: how good are you at spotting trolls?

Posted by hillbuzz under Uncategorized
[3] Comments


This is something we should have addressed a long time ago, but we always assumed Eeyores were smart enough to spot trolls on their own.

Trolls come in a wide variety, but the most frequent ones we find lurking here are “concern trolls”, which are loosely defined for our purposes as trolls who come to sites like this and outwardly feign support for Hillary Clinton or John McCain, but really have a pro-Obama agenda to demoralize you. We’re not aware of these critters existing in 2004, so they seem to be a new phenomenon of astroturfing (or, Axelrod turfing, if you will).

We have no idea who these people are in real life, but we imagine they are ugly.

And dateless.

We completely ignore them here — but Eeyores we know, surprisingly, actually read the comments the concern trolls leave and wonder if any of it is true. Of course it’s not — the trolls come here to breed Eeyores in our midst, and spread rain clouds far and wide. For some reason, these people always remind us of Rumpelstiltskin, malicious and gnarled, lurking in the dark, popping up here and there, belching and farting while trying to get people to kill themselves so they can gnaw on their bones.

Extra drama in the coffee this morning!

We could name the worst trolls we see here, but unlike Rumpelstiltskin, naming these trolls doesn’t banish them to the phantom zone: because they revel in attention and power. You can figure out for yourself who they are — because they all read from the Axelrod astroturfing playbook, if not work for the Obama campaign itself.

They’ll say things like, “Well, McCain did have a surge in the polls and he is a good candidate, but now Zogby and Rasmussen say this race is over because Obama is so far ahead.” Their MO is to try to stike some psychological affinity with you, agreeing on some point, before casting an Eeyore spell over your gullible self and bringing you down with troll lies. Their hope is to spook Eeyores to stampede, and call or email all of their friends in panic. “Trolls told me we should give up and I listened because the trolls said it and I read what they said and now I need my dydee changed because I am the world’s most gullible 45-year old!”. And your Doorman or whoever is staring back at you wishes he never met an Eeyore such as yourself. Enough with the pants wetting over things trolls tell you.

And, if you haven’t figured this out by now, you deserve to be called stupid by us, because the biggest concern trolls OF THEM ALL are the mainstream media. The biggest Eeyores we know park themselves in front of MSNBC and wail and cry throughout the day, gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair, despondent the concern trolls on the Obama propaganda channel keep telling them to SURRENDER! because “all hope is lost, you can’t possibly win”. MSNBC tells Eeyores there is nothing any of us can do to stop Obama’s socialist paradise from arriving: the Age of Obama has begun!

And Eeyores collapse into puddles of tears and pee, sucking their hooves in fetal positions, burbling and babbling “Doomed! Doomed! Doomed!”.

It really is this ridiculous, people.

And the harder the trolls work to breed you Eeyores, the more we’re certain of John McCain and Sarah Palin’s win — because trolls wouldn’t be working this hard if they really thought they had it in the bag. The media would not be trying to manufacture rain clouds for Eeyores to wallow in if they really believe Obama was winning this. Why bother if you have this sewn up?

They are going to do what they did to Clinton supporters during the primaries: they will clobber you hard with Eeyore-inducing, concern troll logic the next few days in massive efforts to depress John McCain’s votes. Eeyores will email all of the troll logic around, spreading it — completely oblivious to the fact that this is exactly what trolls want you to do.

We have a good friend named Astrid who we love dearly but who is the absolute worst at this — we had to tell her yesterday that we never read anything she sends us because it’s all troll logic and Eeyore chow. We scan the first line of whatever email she sends, and if we see the slightest bit of concern troll in there, POOF!, into the recycle bin it goes.

We have no idea what Astrid’s deal is with this or why she insists on spreading the lies she reads on MSNBC.com — but she’s a stubborn Eeyore who doesn’t see how much damage she does by forwarding troll polls or media lies around.

We repeat ourselves around here because we still haven’t found a way to get through to Eeyores like this, but you really need to stop spreading what you read in the media around to people. If you really want McCain/Palin to win, then spread only the articles you find that cut through the troll logic and media lies and inspire people to work harder for that win.

Forward what you read on HillBuzz to people, because what we post is 100% troll logic free. We are a safe zone and won’t ever spread any of that raincloud media nonsense.

We’ve already told Astrid that after this election we’re having a long talk with her about changes she needs to make going forward - because life’s too short to depress people around you needlessly or hurt the causes you believe in by being so negative. Everything you want to communicate can be parsed in a positive way. Instead of telling people “This is so terrible!” or “Why aren’t they doing this?”, you need to manage your message and say, “Here’s an idea that can make this better” or “How about we try this?”. That might be silly to some of you out there, but you set a psychological tone with everything you do — and when people are stressed and the stakes are high, if you’re someone who brings people’s spirits down, and that’s not your intent, you need to change the way you communicate whatever it is you want to say. The concern trolls aspire to bring people down and deflate them. But, Eeyores don’t intend to do that, even though that’s what happens. We know Astrid means well — but she’s worth about 20 concern trolls sometimes.

Be mindful that we have just a few days left in what, for some of us, has been a 2 year long adventure in our lives.

We’re confident of a win for McCain/Palin next Tuesday, but we need to stay strong together to weather a few more days of troll attacks and Eeyore rain storms — and make sure we get as many people to go out and vote for McCain/Palin as possible. Get people pumped up — don’t help the trolls bring them down.

http://hillbuzz.wordpress.com/2008/1...otting-trolls/

[darrels joy]

Three things the Obamedia will do to depress Republican turnout and help Obama

Posted by hillbuzz under Uncategorized

This is really intended for Republicans who did not follow the primaries on the Democrats’ side this year (because, well, we guess you took a nice long Atlantis cruise to Mars, in which case, color us jealous).

The same pattern that unfolded during our primaries is happening again, because the media has just one tattered old used playbook (written by David Axelrod, of course), and they have not deviated from it yet. What the media and Obama campaign did, in concert, to Hillary Clinton before every major primary is what they are doing to McCain/Palin now. Here are the top three media/Obama head tricks to watch out for in the last days before the election.

If you, collectively, can keep Republicans and other McCain voters from falling for these, we believe there’s nothing Obama can do to win this election. The ONLY way McCain loses is if you Eeyores allow the media to keep you from the polls.

Head Games Coming Your Way:

(1) Calls for McCain to just give up and quit, because the race is over. This one is a favorite of the trolls who lurk on pro-McCain sites. We get them here, despite all the spraying and fumigating we do, but notice how we ignore these trolls. We’ve identified two paid Obama staffers who have been assigned to HillBuzz. We picked them up around the same time people from Ace and LGF started picking up some of our stuff — so our guess is they were assigned to us by whoever was monitoring those sites. They’re different trolls than the ones assigned to us during the primaries (we only had one back then, so evidently we’ve gotten more on the radar now). One of them starts posting “her” concern troll remarks here at 8am. The other one starts “his” remarks around 5pm or so. It appears there are two shifts for the trolls — and from what we can see, they share the same computer and IP address. And it’s an address right here in Chicago.

Imagine that. We wonder if we’ve ever run into these people at Houlihan’s on Michigan Avenue after one of their shifts, as that’s where a lot of Obama staffers like to go for a drink, and where we often hang out to see what we can overhear while pretending to read a book over a little dinner. Since we’re going to be in Ohio the rest of the time before the election, we’re okay with letting you in on that little bit, as we won’t be able to eavesdrop on you anymore. But the information these Obama staffers inadvertantly provided was really helpful on a lot of things. A great way to see how the race was going was to listen for how “audacious” these people felt that day. That’s their internal lingo: “Are you feelin’ it? Are you feelin’ audacious today?”. “Nope, not feelin’ the audacity today, ’cause we know those PA polls are bogus and BO’s not gonna take the state”. Word to the wise: these staffers were never as “audacious” as the media and skewed polls have insisted they should be.

It’s so funny, but when you work on these campaigns every day and give up all of your free time and all other activities for this, you just know when the media’s lying and reading from an Axelrod script. The coerographed calls for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race before New Hampshire, before Super Tuesday, before Ohio and Texas, before Pennsylvania, before West Virgina, before Kentucky, before Indiana, and before South Dakota were completely ridiculous to us — and yet, Eeyores always listened, and lost enthusiasm and drive because ‘the TV said Hillary needs to just quit”.

We know this kept some Eeyores from going out to vote, because they thought, “Why bother? The TV told me she’s gonna lose!”. Well, the TV lies. And the toaster says you’re fat. Unfortunately, the toaster’s telling the truth. The microwave tells you to set fires - and that just means you’re nuts, because why would it do that?

The ONLY way McCain loses this race is if the media, operating as a full-fledged wing of the Obama campaign, breeds enough Eeyores amongst you to keep enough people home for Obama to squeak out wins. Hillary Clinton should have won Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, by larger margins that she did. Ohio should have been a 13-point win, Pennsylvania should have been a 12-point win, and Indiana should have been a 9-point win. Eeyores staying home, saying, “Oh bother, TV say me stay home, me sad, need dydee changed!” is what cost Hillary those extra points.

Don’t be Eeyores on Tuesday! Get those Eeyore butts off your couches, away from toxic TV, and GO VOTE. Get everyone you know to vote — tell them if they don’t, then Obama will turn America socialist, and we’re going to start with their house and bank account when we begin redistributing wealth. That should motivate them.

(2) Wild claims of Obama winning states that shock and surprise you. Since Obama believes there are 57 states (maybe 58 or 59, depending on how he’s counting that day), the Obamedia will report huge wins for Dear Leader in the states of Confusion, Denial, and Undress, with Atlantis, Oz, Hopetopia, and Leningrad all going to Obama early on November 4th — because everyone loves Obama so much, that places that don’t even exist have voted for him (with 100% of the vote of the dead, cartoon characters, and historical figures going to Dear Leader in unprecedented numbers). The best example of the Obamedia making up lies like this was on Super Tuesday, when every Eeyore we knew ran through the streets crying and pants-wetting, gnashing their teeth and yanking their hair as the sky fell around them — BECAUSE OBAMA IS WINNING CALIFORNIA! MASSACHUSETTS! ARKANSAS! TENNESSEE! NEW JERSEY! NEW YORK! WAAAAAAAAH! DOOOOOOOMED!

Honestly, we are never kidding when we say what a true living Hell Eeyores have made our lives since January. We never joke when we tell you how much damage these people have done. Just using HillBuzz as an example, there are at least 3 essays each day we would love to have time to write, on topics we feel are important, or on intel we get from sources in the Democratic party (or eavesdropped off Obama staffers or at Obama events), but we don’t have time to get to them because we are on the phone with Eeyores, or answering Eeyores frantic emails with questions we’ve answered 1,000 times before, or talking Eeyores off their ledges after they’ve been listening to MSNBC again. Eeyores are time burglars.

Ironically, we have to admit that HillBuzz wouldn’t even exist without these people, however. We started this blog in February of 2008 because we couldn’t focus the work we were doing for upcoming primaries because Eeyores needed constant reassurance that, yes, Hillary would win Ohio and Texas. So, instead of individually sending articles to prove to Eeyores that, yes, Hillary would win Ohio and Texas, we just started the original HillBuzz at Blogspot as a quick and easy clearinghouse for information Eeyores could access and calm themselves down with. Five of us teamed up here in Boystown to maintain this blog as thoroughly as possible, which became a running stream of our thoughts on our campaign and what we thought of the latest Obamedia lies.

So, we realize HillBuzz would have never been started if it wasn’t for this need to treat Eeyores and calm them down. Not that we excuse any of you people for you crippling pessimism and gloom meets doom, but we have truly enjoyed running HillBuzz (and will enjoy maintaining it as we support Hillary Clinton for the next 4 years in her role as junior Senator from New York, working with President McCain and Vice President Palin on energy indepedence, JOBS, and whatever else Clinton champions during the McCain Administration).

We’re glad we’re here right now to remind Republicans who’ve found us through Rush, LGF, Ace and other places that the Obamedia deliberately called states for Obama he had no hope of winning, just to freak Eeyores out and keep them from voting.

If you do just ONE THING today, we ask you a personal favor: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go to as many Republican blogs as you can and WARN THEM that the Obamedia will tell you all weekend that Obama is winning Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Florida, Iowa, Virginia, West Virginia, and other states we do not believe Obama will win (except for Iowa, which we still think goes to Obama, but our best sources claim McCain now leads in internals by 1 point). They are already starting to say truly crazy things like “Obama will win Louisiana and Arkansas!”, and that’s just nuts. That is your equivalent of the Obamedia swearing up and down that the Kennedys and Oprah would win Massachusetts and California for Obama. WE knew that was pure cockamamie nonsense, but Eeyores wet their pants on cue over this. So, the Obamedia’s marching orders are to freak all of you out with SHOCKING DEVELOPMENTS! in Lousiana, Arkansas, Georgia, etc. just to shake your faith and confidence.

This is like in Little League when the opposing team would chant, “Hey batta hey batta hey batta hey batta hey batta sa-weeeeeeeeeng batta” when you were at the plate, to make you swing too soon or too late. Just to psych you out. And that nonsense actually worked on Team Hillary, because we lost a lot of volunteers who Eeyored off the face of the Earth just before Super Tuesday, so convinced of unprecedented blow-out doom.

So, when you see the Obamedia doing all of this to McCain, please know they are crying wolf again. Don’t let that demoralize you!

(3) Repeated insistance that blacks and young people will decide this election, and they are all going to vote in record numbers for Obama. First of all, black voters have always voted Democratic in massive numbers. We don’t think blacks have ever voted for Republicans in any substantial way in any race we can think of. Blacks vote as a race-bloc, and they always vote for the Democrat. Maybe Obama will get blacks who have never voted before to vote for him, or blacks who don’t bother to vote on Election Day to show up and vote, but we doubt that it will be very many people. Black voters were highly motivated to vote in 2004 because they felt George W. Bush stole the 2000 election, and they saw that as a civil rights issue that increased black turnout to one of the highest levels we have ever seen.

Remember, Jesse Jackson almost won Election 2000 for Gore but was stopped by the Gore campaign, in the form of Donna Brazile. Watch the HBO movie Recount. Jackson felt the Florida Recount was a civil rights/voter disenfranchisement issue at its heart, and wanted to press that to the public. He revved the black community up and flew down to Tallahassee, but Gore and Brazile made him get back on a plane to Chicago. That was a critically stupid move…and you know how the recount ended.

So, in 2004, THAT’S what the black community thought about, and THAT’S what made people vote to kick Bush out of the White House, for stealing it from Gore in 2000. We just don’t know what people are left to vote in the black community who didn’t vote in 2004, when they were revved up to vote against Bush — a president the black community hates. What we think the Obamedia ignores is the fact the black community is totally ambivalent to McCain and is focused totally on Obama, and the race-pride they feel voting for a black candidate. If this race-pride could be quantified, we feel it would be a positive force pushing Obama forward almost exactly equal in impact to the force pushing Kerry forward the black community generated by hating Bush. There’s no McCain hate working against the Republicans this year, and there was no Kerry love in 2004.

So, mathematically this works out as:

Obama-love + McCain-hate = Bush-hate + Kerry-love = impact of black voters

We, thus, believe Obama will not have much more support from blacks than Kerry did, since Democrats win almost all black voters anyway. This year will be no different.

We also feel young voters are the Holy Grail of election delusions, because every Democrat, every election, claims “young people love me and will come out in record numbers to vote for me!”. Well, let us just tell you that early voting ended today in Chicago. In our building, there is a suite full of about 6 frat boys who sometimes stop us in the laundry room to talk politics. They are all hot DePaul hockey players, so we are glad to chat them up any time they want. All of them said they were going to vote for Obama, and all of them forgot to early vote. All of them have class and work on Tuesday. We honestly believe all 6 of these guys are going to forget to vote on Election Day — and the polling station for our neighborhood is literally one street away. We think this will happen not just with the hot hockey players in our building, but in many other buildings in Chicago, and in cities across the US.

As you move out of urban areas, it becomes more of a challenge to get to polling places, as they get further and further apart. That means college students, and Obama’s youth army, need to move further and further out of their daily norm to actually vote. With class, work, and Nintendo Wii, that becomes a big burden, especially since they’re going to whoop it up all Halloween weekend having an absolute drunken blast, and will have a lot to catch up on come Tuesday, since Monday they will be still hungover and not functional.

We’re astonished no one has ever thought of this before to explain why young people don’t turn up to vote in the numbers the media predicts: it’s because of Halloween. Not JUST because of Halloween, but Halloween has a lot to do with it, especially this year, when Halloween falls in perfect synch to form three days of wild, costumed debauchery.

Monday is hangover day, which means nothing got done Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and now Monday, so Tuesday pressure builds to catchup on class or work or whatever.

Ironically, the Obamedia’s constant drumbeat that Obama’s so far ahead will, ironically, keep a lot of these people from actually voting — since they think he will win in a landslide without them, and one vote doesn’t matter. “Oh, we meant to vote, but we got, like, busy. And stuff.”

We hear this every 4 years. Why should this year be any different?

So, in essence, if just comes down to Republicans getting out to vote and ignoring the above head games the Obamedia is already cooking up for you.

This reminds us of the book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson — not the lame movie versions, but the actual truly terrifying book. In it, there’s a man in a house who’s the last sane person in a world gone mad, filled with infected people, who come out every night and stand outside his house and shout terrible things at him to make him kill himself or come outside so they can do the job for him. People this guy used to know and love are infected, and come out each night to use every psycholgical trick they can to get this guy out of the house so they can kill him. And the guy sometimes starts to buy into this, because it’s such pressure, and the taunts and jeers are relentless, and sometimes he just can’t take it, and he crumples to the ground in the face of all this negative saturation. He cracks. He breaks. It’s brutal. And this happens each and every day.

That’s what the media is doing for Obama right now.

You do realize that, don’t you?

It’s all a head game, a fake out. All of this talk about Obama being ahead is just garbage the Obamedia shovels to make you give up and sit home so Obama can win. That’s what breeds Eeyores. And Eeyores giving up and staying home is why Hillary Clinton won Indiana by only 1% when she should have won it by 9%. It really is as simple as that.

So, heads up out there — if you can get Rush to talk about this stuff on air, it would do Republicans a world of good.

Make as many people see the media for what they are — a paid extension of the Obama campaign — as humanly possible, keep your heads up, and let’s put another crack in the glass ceiling by making Sarah Palin the nation’s first female Vice President, while putting a good and decent man we trust behind the Resolute Desk where all of us Democrats know he’ll work effectively with Senator Clinton and other Democrats to fix our economy, create good jobs, and make America energy independent for good.

If we work hard, we will win.

http://hillbuzz.wordpress.com/2008/1...nd-help-obama/

[darrels joy]

Obama campaign staffer blows the whistle - THIS IS HUGE

RedState

Another Obama campaign staffer spills guts from redstate.com (cant attest to the authenticity of it but sounds interesting)…I found this posted over on the hillaryclinton.net forum

After a long and careful consideration of all the implications and possible consequences of my actions today, I have decided to go through with this in the hope that our country can indeed be guided into the right direction. First, a little personal background… I am a female grad student in my 20’s, and a registered Democrat. During the primaries, I was a campaign worker for the Clinton candidacy. I believed in her and still do, staying all the way to the bitter end. And believe me, it was bitter. The snippets you’ve heard from various media outlets only grazed the surface. There was no love between the Clinton and Obama campaigns, and these feelings extended all the way to the top. Hillary was no dope though, and knew that any endorsement of Obama must appear to be a full-fledged one. She did this out of political survival. As a part of his overall effort to extend an olive branch to the Clinton camp and her supporters, Obama took on a few Hillary staff members into his campaign. I was one such worker. Though I was still bitterly loyal to Hillary, I still held out hope that he would choose her as VP. In fact, there was a consensus among us transplants that in the end, he HAD to choose her. It was the only logical choice. I also was committed to the Democratic cause and without much of a second thought, transferred my allegiance to Senator Obama.

I’m going to let you in on a few secrets here, and this is not because I enjoy the gossip or the attention directed my way. I’m doing this because I doubt much of you know the true weaknesses of Obama. Another reason for my doing this is that I am lost faith in this campaign, and feel that this choice has been forced on many people in this country. Put simply, you are being manipulated. That was and is our job – to manipulate you (the electorate) and the media (we already had them months ago). Our goal is to create chaos with the other side, not hope. I’ve come to the realization (as the campaign already has) that if this comes to the issues, Barack Obama doesn’t have a chance. His only chance is to foster disorganization, chaos, despair, and a sense of inevitability among the Republicans. It has worked up until now. Joe the Plumber has put the focus on the issues again, and this scares us more than anything. Being in a position to know these things, I will rate what the Obama campaign already knows are their weak links from the most important on down.

1 – Hillary voters. Internal polling suggests that at best, we are taking 70-75% of these voters. Other estimates are as low as 60% in some areas – particularly Ohio and western PA. My biggest problem with this campaign’s strategy was the decision NOT to offer Hillary the VP slot. She was ready and able to take this on, and would have campaigned enthusiastically for it. This selection would have also brought virtually all of her supporters into the fold, and the Obama campaign knew it. Though I have no way of knowing this for certain, and I do admit that I am relying on internal gossip, Senator Obama actually went against the advice of his top advisors. They wanted him to choose her, but the only significant opposition to this within the campaign came from Barack and Michelle Obama. In short, he let personal feelings take precedence over what was the most logical thing to do. Biden, by the way, has been a disaster inside the campaign. Everyone cringes whenever he gives an interview, and he creates so many headaches as the campaign has to stay on their toes in order to disseminate information and spin whatever it was he was trying to say.

2 – Sarah Palin. Don’t believe what the media is telling you about how horrible a choice she was. Again, our internal polling suggest that though she has had a minimal impact on pulling disaffected Hillary Democrats to McCain, she has done wonders in mobilizing the base for McCain. Another thing – we were completely taken by surprise with her pick. In my capacity in the research department, I looked into the backgrounds of Leiberman, Romney, Pawlenty and Ridge, and prepared briefs. I don’t mind bragging that we had pretty good stuff on all of them. With Leiberman, the plan was to paint him as an erratic old-timer who didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing (pretty much a clone of McCain). In Romney, we had him pegged as an evil capitalist who cut jobs. Pawlenty was going to get the “Quayle treatment”, or more precisely: a pretty face, with no valid experience. Tom Ridge was going to be used to provide a direct link from McCain to Bush. As you can see, we were quite enamored of all of them. Then the unexpected happened – Sarah Palin.

We had no clue as to how to handle her, and bungled it from the start. Though through our misinformation
networks, we have successfully taken some of the shine off. But let there be no doubt. She remains a major obstacle. She has singlehanded solidified “soft” Republican support, mobilized the McCain ground game, and has even had some appeal to independents and Hillary voters. This is what our internal polling confirms.

3 – Obama’s radical connections. Standards operating procedure has been to cry “racism” whenever one of these has been brought up. We even have a detailed strategy ready to go should McCain ever bring Rev. Wright up. Though by themselves they are of minimal worth, taken together, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfelger, and now, Rashid Khalili, are exactly what the campaign does not need. The more focus on them, the more this election becomes a referendum on Obama. The campaign strategy from the very beginning was to make this election a referendum on Bush. Strategists have been banging their head on how successfully McCain has distanced himself from Bush. This has worked, and right now the tide is in his favor. People are taking a new look at Barack Obama, and our experience when this happens tells us this is not good news at all. When they take a look at him, one or more of these names are bound to be brought up. McCain has wisely not harped on this in recent weeks and let voters decide for themselves. This was a trap we set for him, and he never fully took the bait. Senator Obama openly dared him to bring up Ayers. This was not due to machismo on the part of Obama, but actually due to campaign strategy. Though McCain’s reference to Ayers fell flat in the last debate, people in the Obama campaign were actually disappointed that he didn’t follow through on it more and getting into it. Our focus groups found this out: When McCain brings these connections up, voters are turned off to him. They’d rather take this into consideration themselves, and when this happens, our numbers begin to tank.

4 – The Bradley Effect. Don’t believe these polls for a second. I just went over our numbers and found that we have next to no chance in the following states: Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire and Nevada. Ohio leans heavily to McCain, but is too close to call it for him. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico and Iowa are the true “toss up states”. The only two of these the campaign feels “confident” in are Iowa and New Mexico. The reason for such polling discrepancy is the Bradley Effect, and this is a subject of much discussion in the campaign. In general, we tend to take a -10 point percentage in allowing for this, and are not comfortable until the polls give us a spread well over this mark. This is why we are still campaigning in Virginia and Pennsylvania! This is why Ohio is such a desperate hope for us! What truly bothers this campaign is the fact that some pollsters get up to an 80% “refuse to respond” result. You can’t possibly include these into the polls. The truth is, people are afraid to let people know who they are voting for. The vast majority of these respondents are McCain supporters. Obama is the “hip” choice, and we all know it.

As part of my research duties, I scour right wing blogs and websites to get somewhat of a “feel” as to what is being talked about on the other side. Much of it is nonsense, but there are some exceptions which give the campaign jitters. A spirited campaign has been made to infiltrate many pro-Hillary sites and discredit them. A more disorganized, but genuine effort has also been made to sow doubts among the unapologetically right wing sites such as redstate.com. Don’t you guys get it? This has been the Obama campaign’s sole strategy from the very beginning! The only way he wins is over a dispirited, disorganized, and demobilized opposition. This is how it has been for all of his campaigns. What surprises me is that everyone has fallen for it. You may point to the polls as proof of the inevitability of all of this. If so, you have fallen for the oldest trick in the book. How did we skew these polls, you might ask? It all starts with the media “buzz” which has been generated over the campaign. Many stories are generated on the powerful Obama ground game, and how many new voters were registered. None of this happens by coincidence. It is all part of the poll-skewing process. This makes pollsters change their mixes to reflect these new voters and tilt the mix more towards Democratic voters. What is not mentioned or reported on is not the “under-reported cell phone users or young voters” we hear so much about. What is underreported is you.

I changed my somewhat positive opinion of this campaign during the unfair and sexist campaign against Sarah Palin. I will never agree with her on the issues and will probably never vote for her, but I am embarrassed of what has happened. I can’t ignore our own hand in all of this. What I do know is that I will not be voting for Obama this time around. Treat that as you will.

http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=4803#more-4803

[darrels joy]

Cash Flood in the Desert
Democrats, flush with resources, target John Shadegg.

‘I believe that I’ll win,” says Rep. John Shadegg (R., Ariz.). “I’d like to believe that I’ll win solidly.”

But Shadegg cannot be — and is not — naïve about the difficulty he faces in his race for re-election this year against Democrat Bob Lord, a lecturer at a local real-estate college. Democrats are pouring money into the third Congressional District in Arizona, hoping to knock off the strong conservative leader whom Republicans convinced in February not to retire.

The influx of cash has been large and sudden — much like the floods that suddenly flash across the desert sands during Arizona’s summer rainy season. According to Congress Daily, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) spent more money against Shadegg in the first 23 days of this month than they did against any other Republican in the country, and it is on pace to spend at least $2.6 million there by Election Day.

The effect has been obvious on the airwaves in Phoenix, which have nearly reached the saturation point with negative ads. “It has been no fun to watch television,” Shadegg says with a laugh. “Someone told me that, the other night, they managed to fit in a bit of news in between the ads against me.”

In any other year, this election would have been an easy one for the Republican. In 2004, Shadegg’s district gave 58 percent of its vote to George W. Bush. In 2006, he won with 59 percent, and in 2004, he had become the first Republican ever to run for a congressional seat in Arizona without a Democratic opponent.

Part of Shadegg’s problem this time around stems from Democratic success elsewhere. With ample resources and several contested seats already safely in their column, the DCCC is expanding its efforts increasingly into Republican districts. They have spent more than $1 million in at least 30 Republican-held districts, many of which stand an excellent chance of going Democratic on Tuesday.

Shadegg’s problem is also geographic. The DCCC already feels certain of victory in the two other contested Arizona congressional districts — the seat left open by retiring Rep. Rick Renzi (R., Ariz.) and the seat of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.). This has freed them up to move the money set aside for those races — an additional $500,000 to $800,000 — into the Shadegg-Lord race. The day that announcement was made, the DCCC had already spent $2.1 million to defeat Shadegg. The two sums come in addition to the $1.5 million that Lord has spent.

Win or lose, the Democrats have already made this race uncomfortably close. In two recent Research 2000 polls, Shadegg clings to a lead of about ten points.

One might expect that a Republican seat in the home state of the GOP’s presidential nominee would be exceptionally safe. But two polls published this week suggest that John McCain has only a single-digit lead in his own home state.

The Arizona Republican Party is going through dark days. After losing two congressional seats in 2006, they have been afflicted by Renzi’s indictment earlier this year on charges of wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, and insurance fraud. Odds are also strong that they will lose one or both houses of the state legislature this year.

The state party has also suffered from the prominence of the immigration issue. Far from energizing Arizona’s Republican Party, it has served as a wedge between business owners and immigration hawks. Business owners, who could normally be expected to help Republicans, are putting their money and efforts this year into Proposition 202. The measure would weaken a 2007 state law that punishes those found hiring illegal immigrants by revoking their business licenses. The GOP hierarchy, including state chairman Randy Pullens, sided with the immigration hawks earlier this month against Prop 202, but it is expected to pass by a wide margin.

With the party’s internecine war in full swing, one Republican official notes that “fundraising has dried up completely. At Republican district meetings a few years ago, you’d get 100 people attending, especially during a close election. Now you get six or eight people. There’s really no ground game for Republicans at all, and that’s really hurting Shadegg.”

Between his opponent and the DCCC, the message against Shadegg has been consistent, and consistently misleading. The theme is that “John Shadegg has changed,” and two DCCC ads in particular “change” his face into that of President Bush.

Some of the anti-Shadegg commercials attack him on ideological grounds, for opposing the expansion of a health-care entitlement program called SCHIP to middle-class children. Others accuse him of voting for congressional pay-raises, though he has voted for them only when they were rolled into larger packages. “Every time there has been a straight up-or-down vote on a pay raise, I have voted against it,” Shadegg says — something his record bears out.

Other anti-Shadegg ads claim that he voted against combat bonuses for the troops in Iraq. In fact, he voted against a 2005 provision that would have created such bonuses by cutting Iraqi reconstruction funding. He did so after consulting with Rep. Jim Marshall (D., Ga.), a Vietnam veteran, who compared the situation in Iraq to the one he faced in Vietnam. A cutoff of funds for Iraqi civilians, Marshall told Shadegg (and later said on the House floor), would make them less likely to come forward and help U.S. troops avoid ambushes and improvised explosive devices.

“We are discovering about 50 percent of [the IEDs] because people give us tips,” Marshall told the House. “The troops in Iraq told me repeatedly: money is ammo — and what they meant by that was not that they did not have enough bullets or shells. What they meant by that is: money enables them to do these reconstruction projects. These reconstruction projects build relationships and commitments with the Iraqis, lead to intelligence, lead to assistance, and ultimately lead to the commitment that we need from them if we are going to be successful here.” Voting for those combat bonuses, Shaddegg understood, would have meant that we’d have many more soldiers dying needlessly.

As the final days of negative ads fly, Shadegg remains confident of victory, a sentiment that nearly all campaigners express in the run-up to a close election. Even though his chances of success appear better than most of the targeted House Republicans, he warns conservatives against believing the hype — the message that Republicans have already lost before Election Day has even begun.

“The left-leaning media gets it,” Shadegg said. “They understand that if we convince Republicans from coast to coast and border-to-border that McCain has lost, then at the lowest level they choose not to vote, and at the highest level they choose not to volunteer.”

— David Freddoso is a staff reporter for National Review Online and author of The Case Against Barack Obama.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...zNkMDk0ZjI4OGI=

[darrels joy]

Poll: One in seven voters still persuadable

By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Patrick Campbell worries Barack Obama will raise his taxes but thinks John McCain will send people off to war. He says that leaves him leaning toward Obama ... maybe.

"I'm split right down the middle," said the 50-year-old Air Force Reserve technician from Amherst, N.Y. "Each one has things that are good for me and things that are bad for me. And people like me."

With the sand in the 2008 campaign hourglass about depleted, Campbell is part of a stubborn wedge of people who, somehow, are still making up their minds about who should be president. One in seven, or 14 percent, can't decide or back a candidate but might switch, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll of likely voters released Friday.

Who are they? They look a lot like the voters who've already locked onto a candidate, though they're more likely to be white and less likely to be liberal. And they disproportionately backed Hillary Rodham Clinton's failed run for the Democratic nomination. (PUMAs)

For now, their indecision remains intact despite the fortunes that have been spent to tug people toward either McCain, the Republican, or the Democrat Obama. Fueling their uncertainty is a combination of disliking something about both candidates and frustration with this campaign and politics in general.

"We have a lot of candidates who have never really hurt, have never had to struggle" economically, said Jeff Wofford, 28, a pastor and Republican from High Ridge, Mo., who may back McCain. "A lot of candidates are interested in working the political system but aren't really interested in changing things."

Overall, the share of these voters — sometimes referred to as "persuadables" — has barely budged from levels measured in June and September AP-Yahoo! News polls, conducted online by Knowledge Networks.

But the survey — which has repeatedly quizzed the same group of 2,000 adults since last November — shows considerable churning below the surface. Of those now changeable, nearly three-quarters said in June their minds were made up, and half said so just last month.

"These tend to be people with a lower level of knowledge about the election; they don't follow politics as closely," said Michael McDonald, a political science professor from George Mason University who studies voting behavior. "If they can't distinguish between the candidates at this stage, the question is if they will vote."

Election Day is Tuesday. The survey found Obama leading McCain among all likely voters, 51 percent to 43 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Almost four in 10 persuadables lean toward McCain, and about as many are considering backing Obama, while the rest are either undecided or lean toward other candidates. Viewed another way, about one in every 10 supporters of Obama or McCain says he could still change his mind.

Even so, persuadable voters could be especially fertile hunting ground for McCain in the closing days of a contest in which most polls show him trailing.

These people trust Obama less than decided voters do to handle the economy, the Iraq war and terrorism. They are less accepting that the Illinois senator has enough experience to be president. And by a 17 percentage-point spread, more see Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin favorably than unfavorably, unlike the narrow majority of voters already backing a candidate who dislike her.

On the other hand, these wavering voters can be equal-opportunity skeptics. A quarter don't trust either Obama or McCain to deal with the economy and a third are uncomfortable with both on the federal deficit.

"I don't have a feel for either one of these guys," said Jeff Condatore, 47, an independent and computer analyst from Ringwood, N.J. "I don't like any of the choices."

Nearly two-thirds express frustration and a quarter anger over the campaign, far broader disaffection than decided voters voice. Only 12 percent say they are excited about the race, one-third the figure for voters backing a candidate.

Just four in 10 persuadables report being contacted by political workers urging them to vote in the presidential contest, compared with just over half of those who've made up their minds. That could reflect the campaigns' targeting their resources to more motivated voters or to problems locating these less involved people.

Asked where they disagree with Obama, changeable voters most frequently mention taxes and the economy, health care, abortion and social issues such as gun control, and personal traits including his race and his honesty. For McCain, it's the economy and taxes, health care, foreign policy and abortion.

"I don't think anything will change if Obama is elected. If McCain is elected, I don't think anything would change either," said Susan Miller, 42, a Los Angeles accountant tentatively backing Libertarian Bob Barr.

Persuadable voters don't differ noticeably from those who have made up their minds by gender, age or education, though more of them report feeling stress from personal debt, according to the poll.

Half are independents, more than double their proportion among decided voters. But, as with decided voters, more persuadables are Democrats than Republicans. Four in 10 supported Clinton's candidacy this spring.

"She got cheated, I thought," said Chris Markle, 25, who's from Schenectady, N.Y., and now leans toward McCain. "I'm kind of upset about that."

The AP-Yahoo! News poll of 1,040 likely voters was conducted Oct. 17-27. It included interviews with 147 likely voters considered persuadable, meaning they're either undecided or back a candidate but say they might change their mind, and 893 likely voters considered not persuadable. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 8.1 percentage points for persuadable likely voters and 3.3 points for those considered not persuadable.

The poll was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it for free.
———
AP Director of Surveys Trevor Tompson and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/page/election-...ngeable-voters

[darrels joy]

McCain Kicking Obama’s Butt in Missouri!

A Recent Politico poll has McCain with a 3 point advantage over Obama!
McCain = 50
Obama = 47
Undecideds = 3(?)
Now, figuring in that the undecideds are breaking towards McCain at a 4 to 1 ratio, it looks like McCain will take Missouri.
This is VERY important, as Missouri has historically picked the next President of the United States 25 out of 26 time!!!
An aggregate of polls for Missouri can be found
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...obama-545.html

http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com/2...t-in-missouri/