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SEA OF BLUE
John Hinderaker observes that it ain’t looking pretty for Republicans:
Last night, I wrote a relatively optimistic post about the fundamental strength of the Republicans’ position going into the election. Take a look, though, at the poll results from yesterday and the day before, compiled at Real Clear Politics. It’s a sea of blue, with the Democratic candidate leading in just about every race for every office, nationwide. The polls can’t all be screwy, and if this batch are anywhere near right, they foretell a rout of astonishing proportions.
Could be an interesting next couple of years.
Polls have the wrong units entirely. They’re public opinion, which does not exist. Nevertheless, they bring public opinion to light, like car makers measure the comfort of cars. We measure it, so it must exist.
An election, on the other hand, is not public opinion. It’s a decision, and it doesn’t change with the wind and vanish as quickly at the end of the day.
Public opinion, however, is all you can write about. How will it affect the upcoming decision? Keep reading the paper, and we’ll sell you to advertisers. That’s why there are polls.
Polls are used by Democrats, also, to prove that the Republicans stole the election.
As Instapundit says, the Republicans nevertheless deserve to lose, but the Democrats don’t deserve to win.
Hindraker also predicted that Kerry would win.
Posted by Urbs in Horto on 2006 10 15 at 08:43 AM • permalinkActually, I have seen where the relentless media spin & polls have been completely wrong a number of times, so I will believe it when I see it.
One of the prime examples wast going into the Iowa primary. caucus in 2004. The polls had Dean, Gephart, and then the others. The story was relentless for weeks. And the “new” unions were supporting Dean, the “old-line” unions supporting Gephart. For two months, the story was which union support was going to be more crucial. Dean had already been nominated by the polls & press. They came in 3rd & 4th. And I don’t remember any follow up story asking how the press & polls could be so wrong.
Kerry was elected by the press, although the polls showed it a little closer.
This Vietnam/70’s retro theme has gone too far.
Strap yourselves in, folks - the last time the Democrats held all the cards, it was 22% mortgages, 13% unemployment, and 11% inflation. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Enjoy yourself, kilo - after the Democrats completely fuck things up again, they’ll be dead. And the Republicans will have learned to act like goddamn Republicans.
Viva la Reagan Revolucion Dos!
Gridlock might be a good thing, if only to stop the Republican pork-barrel spendfest. I read somewhere that the Fed has stopped publishing the M3 figures, which probably means there’s a whole lot of fresh paper being pumped into the system, that they’re not willing to draw attention to.
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 10 15 at 09:17 AM • permalinkAnd I largely agree with Dave S…the electorate putting a scare into the Repubs this year should bode well for 2008, at least as far as their Presidential chances are concerned. And as a Citizen of the World®, if we have to have gridlock, I think I’d prefer a Republican President with a Democratic Congress than the other way around.
#6: RebeccaH has expressed my sentiments exactly, as has Dave S. Working in Washington, I have come to distrust politicians in general, regardless of party affiliation; however, there is a substantive difference between the average run of incompetents and mere grafters that have made inroads in the Republican Party, and the collectivist, power-mongering ideologues that characterize the Democrats (plus, you’ve got the same greed and sexual scandals with Democrats, typically several orders of magnitude greater). And to put it mildly, Democrats are fundamentally unsound on foreign policy, not to mention terrorism.
#6 RebeccaH,
Could it be that the republicans will be staying at home to register their disapproval of the lack of rightwinginess of the republicans, and a sex scandal?The republican strength has always been to get the vote out.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 10 15 at 10:00 AM • permalinkSince I’m a conservative rather than a ‘liberal’ here’s a few things I won’t be saying in November if things don’t go so good for the Righties:
1- The voters are stupid ‘sheeple’ brainwashed by television to vote against my, i.e. the correct, candidate
2- Diebold fixed the results
3- Western democracy is a sham
4- It’s the end of America
5- It’s the end of the entire world
6- I demand a recount
7- I demand another recount
We all remember the disgusting display of lunacy, grotesque self-pity, hatred and paranoia that characterized the colossal, infantile temper-tantrum the Left threw when they lost the last election.
The voters are usually right, and if they deliver a kick in the ass to the Republicans this November it’s probably because they deserve it.
I see a few hopes for the GOP:
1) People who simply will not vote Democrat no matter how pissed they are at Republicans.
2) Pissed-off Republicans getting scared by the idea of a Dem Congress and coming out to vote with noses pinched.
3) Voters being pissed by Republicans in general but re-electing their own guy (in the US, we hate politicians, except our own. It’s the other guys’ guy who’s a bum.)
OTOH, elections tend to get decided by that cohort of dishwatery ciphers, the Independent Voters, who tend to vote on the basis of some vague notion of how the candidates (or the parties) make them feel at the moment. Who the hell knows how these meatbags will vote come election day. Could depend on how their day at work was.
I expect another low voter turnout. Despite the Dem’s own prideful assessments, they aren’t ahead now because the majority of the people think they’re all that great. The default position of most Americans when it comes to our choices for legislators is “none of the above.”
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 15 at 10:22 AM • permalinkIn the US, we hate politicians, except our own. It’s the other guys’ guy who’s a bum.
In Florida, we hate our own politicians too.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 15 at 10:23 AM • permalink#14, WC, I’ll be one of those voters Dave S. described, who will pinch her nose and go out to vote regardless. I suspect a great many people will, although it’s true the voting will be lackluster as usual. But we will vote, if only because if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain. It’s a basic belief in “use or lose”.
Well here in Oz as you would know of course we have to vote - it’s compulsory for us in all elections - Council, State and Federal
And I like it too this way
The polls in the US might show a lead for the Dems but on voting day who’s to say people will get off their backsides to vote if they don’t have to?
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 10 15 at 10:55 AM • permalinkI’ll be voting largely Republican this year, merely because the Democrats are largely losers. If there was a third (and better) choice, I’d take it.
Oh, and kilo? I suggest taking what the others (Dave S, PW, Rebecca, etc) have said in this thread very seriously. You may disagree with the opinions expressed here, but these are not stupid people.
I can only offer one additional thought for you:
“Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.”
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 10 15 at 10:59 AM • permalink#21 /RebeccaH: “Also, I made a vow a couple of years ago, that I would never again pass up a chance to vote in an election after watching the women of Afghan walk miles and brave death, just to do what I take for granted.”
Don’t forget that they also performed their ritual washing prior to death before they went to vote, since many of them expected to be killed by the Talibs for voting.
How many left-wing Americans would go to vote under those circumstances? (The right-wingers have guns.)
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2006 10 15 at 11:07 AM • permalinkIn ordinary times, it’s good to have a divided government—gridlock is preferable to the profligate spending and sexcapades of any one-party rule. And my only quibble with W about the WOT is that he is not fighting it hard enough—he’s LBJ, not Roosevelt.
I fear and believe that if the Dems do win in 2006, jihadis will exult and bomb and slaughter to their heart’s content, paving the way for what someone termed a “ruthless bastard” like Giulani in 2008.
Let’s hope the next two years do not prove fatal.
And my only quibble with W about the WOT is that he is not fighting it hard enough—he’s LBJ, not Roosevelt.
Can you imagine what the press would look like if we were fighting like Roosevelt? We’d have daily stories about new “atrocities”.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 10 15 at 11:14 AM • permalink#22 Dave S
Yes I agree with you that some people are apathetic - and they might just put a tick into the first box
This is why the first position on the ballot paper here is highly sought after - for all the drongoes who just tick the first box
However compulsory voting does make the people with a few brain cells think about who they’re voting for too
Just an aside - my Mum who lived through the Hitler period in Austria and who had a lifelong distrust, bordering on hatred of all pollies, used to front up to the polling booth and mark her voting paper with a big X through the lot
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 10 15 at 11:17 AM • permalink#25 Dave S
My turn - oops - I meant #25 not #22
It’s after 1am here :-)
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 10 15 at 11:19 AM • permalinkThe best and most consistently accurate Internet pundit is the Blogging Caesar. His stuff was uncanny during the last few election cycles.
You best check him out. His formula takes in much more than just polls.
#16 Dave S
I have run polling booths and it is amazing how many people appear to make their mind up only once they have the ballot in hand. You can tell.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 10 15 at 11:28 AM • permalink#19 Brett,
It could be that if the Dems get lots of wins, then they will be encouraged in their lefty-loopiness.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 10 15 at 11:29 AM • permalinkI believe there are more Democrats in the US than Republicans. But the question is, on election day which party will bring out more people willing to go through the inconvenience of finding the correct local voting booth and to actually vote. I know there are MANY Republicans that are very motivated to do so?
So I wouldn’t count the Republicans out just yet.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 15 at 11:35 AM • permalinktrainer, my gut agrees with Caesar, Rep holds the Senate and loses the House.
I’ll do my part by not voting for Harold Ford, Jr, for senate in Tennessee. The guy is worse than Al Gore as far as not being a native Tennessean and his father being a US Rep(D, Corruption City).
Posted by Some0Seppo on 2006 10 15 at 11:36 AM • permalinkWhat is it about poets that make them open their big fat mouths and say bad things about Republicans?
If Ken Blackwell becomes Ohio’s governor, don’t look for Nikki Giovanni to be appointed the state’s poet laureate.
Giovanni shocked the crowd Saturday as she read her dedicatory poem on Fountain Square by referring to Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, as a “son of a bitch” and a “political whore.”
I must say she does look the part of a poet-moonbat. I’d bet she’s in the Humanities Department of some large state-funded university too.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 15 at 11:42 AM • permalinkWe keep hearing this idiotic phrase that “the Republicans deserve to lose, but the Democrats do not deserve to win”. Coming from “disgruntled” conservatives this line makes no sense at all because that is an impossible outcome, not the choice before you.
If conservative-leaning voters stay home the Republicans will indeed lose, but the Democrats will also inevitably win. The question is, are you prepared to live with the consequences? And I´m not just talking about higher taxes for the Instapundit who is in my opinion suffering from a failure of the imagination.
#1. kilo, the Democrat constituency is either fabulously wealthy out of touch elites, politically immature “protest chic” yoots or that (self) marginalized unproductive element of society who wishes to stay that way. Which one are you?
Bottom line kilo: if you actually believe the collectivist pacifist appeasing nonsense these people spout is good for us then Harry Reid has some land he wants to sell you.
Note to the sane: Buy your next house now before interset rates soar, your market indexed retirement fund is all gone to subsidize one of the groups mentioned above, your sons are required to grow hideous throat beards and your wives and daughters are placed in black sacks with mesh to look out of.
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 10 15 at 11:47 AM • permalinktrainer #31-I’ve been looking at that site for the past few weeks and this is the first time he has had the Dems taking the house that I have seen (last week it was R 220, D 215, I think).
I’m pretty confident that we will hold onto NC 11 (Republican Charles Taylor vs. Democrat Heath Shuler) and I think that several of the Republican incumbents he currently has losing (Heather Wilson and Curt Weldon for instance) will hold on.
A couple of lines from Giovanni:
I have watched policemen
Shoot young black men in the backWhat a load of BS. She’s another racist living off the government’s tit, unchallenged in her opinions because she’s got the proper skin tone. Never mind the “young black men” who shot other “young black men”, or the ones who shot the cops…
Who ever invited her to speak at the Fountain Square rededication should be fired. From a cannon.
I must say she does look the part of a poet-moonbat. I’d bet she’s in the Humanities Department of some large state-funded university too.
Since 1987, she has been on the faculty at Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 10 15 at 12:02 PM • permalinkI believe there are more Democrats in the US than Republicans
Yet weirdly, polls of social attitudes and beliefs show more conservatives than liberals. Republicans have been so successfully demonized that people just can’t admit what they are. That’s why you hear “Reagan Democrat” but never “Clinton Republican.” Add to that the reflexive Grannycrats who still think it’s FDR’s party, and boomers who can’t admit JFK was a conservative, and there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance here.
Here in my local Soviet Socialist People’s Republic (historically, the town’s a nest of dithering commies), at the primary we had a few weeks ago, there were 6 people (I think) who had come to vote when I went. The workers outnumbered us. The lady in front of me was a soldier; I thanked her for her service. She murmured, “A lot of people don’t feel that way.” (kilo, she was African-American. Just in case you thought she was a rednecked hick.)
Last time was the Presidential election; there was a hippie group of musicians singing about the maggots eating Reagan’s corpse while Nancy laughed and danced, and a myriad of Youth, stinking of pot, had been bussed in to vote. One of them went on some kinda rampage and broke into several lockers (our voting place is the local high school). I was unfortunately behind this Youth; he had to be reminded by his leader several times for whom he was to vote (“I said, Kerry!”)
I’ve voted all but one time in my life (pneumonia) because my dad taught me that, even if you had to go to a church way out in the hinterlands, using a map to find it, it is your responsibility to vote. Of course, unlike the Afghan women, no one ever was shooting at us…
This will have the anti_Howard mob spitting in their Weetbix this morning
Seven out of ten believe John Howard will be voted in for a fifth term
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 10 15 at 12:32 PM • permalinkRe my #43 post - the linkie didn’t come up
Hopefully here it is
If it doesn’t appear this is a new pool taken here in Oz
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 10 15 at 12:35 PM • permalinkWell I’ve disgraced myself in public
Can’t link - can’t spell
The link was to a new poll (not pool) showing 7 out of 10 people think John Howard will be re-elected for a record 5th term
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 10 15 at 12:55 PM • permalinkUshie, two elections ago was the Presidential race of 2004. Being that I was voting in the deciding state of Ohio, it was fun. I can recall going up to a militant member of MoveOn.org standing guard outside the voting poll, asking “hey dude, what gives?”. He told me they were making sure the Republicans didn’t steal the election. I guess they didn’t do a good job since President Bush took Ohio and a majority of both the electoral votes and the popular votes. Hah, suckers.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 15 at 01:20 PM • permalinkWell if you’re Chicago Mayor Dailey in the 1964 election, you use a list of dead voters, revive them like zombies, and bus them to a thoroughly Democratic voting poll. Or you could cut out the messy stuff and just have your poll workers cast the ballots themselves. Actually, that’s pretty much the same strategy today for St. Louis, the whole state of Louisiana, and probably several other places.
If you’re a Republican, it’s by going against the manifest intent of the American people by winning a majority of the votes.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 15 at 02:55 PM • permalinkFuture DU thread: The Republicans are stealing the election by not allowing the Democrats to steal the election!
Future thread? Isn’t that the whole basis of their opposition to requiring ID to vote?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 10 15 at 08:06 PM • permalinkWhat is it about poets that make them open their big fat mouths and say bad things about Republicans?
Because they are speaking truth to power! Power that will one day round them up and take them to secret prisons in a red state manned by radical Christians who will torture them with loud renditions of Lawrence Welk medleys!
Until then, though, they will enjoy an academic sinecure, wine and brie on Friday nights, Rep-bashing in the Sunday papers.
But they will live in fear!
Well bongo the Ayatollahs have said for years that as soon as they get a nuke they intend to lob it at Tel Aviv, thus providing a Final Solution to their Jewish problem at any rate. At that point Isfahan will be nuked.
The Ayatollahs want nukes for purposes of genocide and imperial expansion. These ambitions are what make Iran a target. The Iranians have until their mad mullahs start throwing nukes around to overthrow them, after which the Iranians will be caught in the nuclear crossfire. So if anyone wants to prevent a nuclear war in the Middle East he should work to overthrow the Ayatollahs and their chosen frontman, Ahmedinejad. Their chosen face to the world prayed for Armageddon at the podium of the UN, remember. These are not sane, rational people you can do diplmatic business with, they are lunatic religious fanatics who think the end of the world is coming next year, and it’s their job to hurry it along.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 10 15 at 09:50 PM • permalinkCan you imagine what the press would look like if we were fighting like Roosevelt? We’d have daily stories about new “atrocities”.
“What did FDR know about the disaster in the Kasserine pass, and when did he know it? The inconvenient truth is, this whole conflict with Germany is simply a distraction from what should be our primary objective, the hunt for Hideki Tojo…”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 10 16 at 08:25 PM • permalinkHindraker also predicted that Kerry would win.
um, and wasn’t there a certain Australian blogger who predicted a Latham win?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 10 16 at 08:26 PM • permalink
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Excellent!
:-)