Uh-Oh

Me no likey either. If that shitheel McCain wins I swear to fucking Christ I’ll join Al-Qaida. Not out of ideological sympathy, mind you, but out of pure unmitigated spite.

Bob,Just calm down. The convention is still going on. You said last week that the campaign hasn’t even really started yet. The bounce will come as the convention goes on…

i trust the good folks over at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com i dont think it can get much more transparent than that. Plus, it takes into account all of the different polls as to allow for statistical irregularities. Baseball fans may know them as the same keepers of the leading word in baseball stats over at Baseball Prospectus.

National Polls DO NOT MATTER!!! Has anyone on this site ever been polled? It’s a state by state contest. Plus they do not poll cell phone only users which is a constituency that is right in Obama’s wheelhouse.

Yeah the media never talks about the whole cell phone thing. They never mention that the majority of young people (myself included) only use cell phones. Lan lines are so “yesterday” dude… When I see polls like these I just laugh. The tsunami of young voters is even being considered. Great. That way when the crest breaks the Republicans will never know what hit them.

I’m predicting the biggest bump comes not after the convention but following the first presidential debate, where McCain will look like a short, pale, frumpy-dump old white douche and Obama will look tall, lean, and dashing and finally get to skewer McCain in real time, face-to-face, for his floppery and forgettery. Fuck these polls.

This is purely media driven–it’s all Obama, all the time, and 90% is framed in a negative light (“will race play a factor” “working whites” “presumptuous” “arrogant” “elitist” “Clinton Clinton Clinton” ” 18 Million Votes”)–The media has become a kangaroo court–they set the rules, and reinforce the narratives they choose. I truly feel this is a direct result of the 30 year old “liberal media” canard. The truth does not have two sets of facts. I can’t watch cable news anymore–it’s really upsetting. I love how our media has HATED the Clintons for 15 years, and all of the sudden, they are boosting them up and so “concerned.”Couple that with the fact that they are not covering the issues, or McCain at all–like the fact that McCain now supports Bush on EVERY single issue. He is covered simply as the mavricky war hero–that’s it.Our media has behaved despicably–if they keep this up, he will lose–it’s that simple. We had the issues on our side in the last two elections as well–and lost. Obama and EVEY Dem surrogate need to sharpen their message, and play the game–it sucks, but now mater how hard Obama tries, the issues won’t matter. They need to hit upon three narratives over and over until, November:McCain = Bush7 Houses / $5 million is richKiss Roe v. Wade Goodbye (this is KEY)a noun a verb and the above three–over and over and over and over. Our BBQ media has turned politics into marketing–The only way Obama can win is to beat the right wing at their own game–it is a very sad fact, but it is the truth.

Ignore the polls.

Elvis is right. The first debate will blow McCain out of the water.

Screw the polls. There are a HUGE number of Obama supporters that aren’t even included on these polls. The younger supporters don’t have home phones, they have cell phones and aren’t even being reached. Polls can become a self-fulfilling prophecy when they’re looked at too closely.

I’m not gonna worry about this. What I don’t like, however, is the meta-narrative the media seems to be buying into about Obama being “the other” or “the elitist” who can’t connect with white people.Obama needs to have more than 3 debates so he can show people directly what a superior choice he is to McCain.

Think of the Dow Jones average, to name one example, as a poll of investors on how much money they believe they can make by buying or selling stocks. The poll is taken every day. The average comes out different every day. Look at the Reuters markets page every morning, as the day opens; then later, as the day closes. The analysts have what they consider to be a salient explanation for every move up or down — sometimes over a matter of hours. The opening and closing headlines may be identical from week to week. So what does all that daily, not to mention hourly, reporting really tell us about the economy or investment trends. Nothing, of course. It’s breathless reporting for the purpose of getting you and me to tune in tomorrow. It’s noise.It’s really irritating and frustrating when smart guys like Josh Marshall get sucked into the political analog to the stock market — the opinion polls about partisan contests. Every time he writes about them, he adds entropy to the TPM system — less energy available for important work. Same with Cesca.Seems to me that Gallup has previously been identified as skewing way right anyway, compared both with consolidated averages of many polls over time and with actual outcomes of elections.I agree with everyone here who says fuck the polls. Don’t listen to them when they say your candidate is behind, and don’t listen to them when they say your candidate is ahead. It’s noise.

Plus, note to Ogami Itto: “shitheel” is one of my all-time favorite epithets. I think the first time I ever saw it was in a Mickey Spillane novel….

@ StuporMundiI think “shitheel” is the perfect term for most people in politics/mass media.