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Edited on Sun Sep-19-04 01:11 PM by KCabotDullesMarxIII
People on these Dem boards - maybe, for the most part, trolls - keep taking reports of the latest polls seriously, and reporting their alarm and despondency, instead of jeering at the pollsters. Even the ones that say Kerry is way ahead!
I don't need somebody to tell me my wife is a wonderful person. If somebody told me my wife is wonderful, well that would be kind of nice, but I wouldn't believe it in a million years because the person *told* me so, but because I know it on my own authority of 24 yrears plus of my acquaintance with her!
Similarly, the underlying fundamentals - which the mainstream media studiously ignore, not to speak of the pollsters, since it would expose the worthlessness of their putative surveys - could not
proclaim more loudly that Kerry is going to win in a landslide. Every rational statement/argument has to be based on sound assumptions, those same underlying fundamentals. T
In principle, virtually anything we say without a context of any kind could be true. We would have no fundamentals, no underlying assumptions to take for granted. Take the colour of elephants... Suppose someone claims that elephants are pink. Maybe we might all suddenly become afflicted with an eye disease that tranformed our perception of the colour grey to pink! But we *KNOW* the workaday context of our perception of the colour of elephants. And it's grey. The workaday context constitutes our normal everyday assumptions, the underlying fundamentals.
Similarly, we know from the records of the run-up to the 2002 election, that the pre-election polls could not be more misleading.
We know that, relatively speaking, the Republicans took over at a high point in the nation's welfare.
We know that everything, but everything has gone South ever since, and looks seet fair to deteriorate in ragtime. The Onion's fabled parody at the beginning of *'s tenure has now begun to look like an understated, dry as dust, official prospectus. (I wonder how Bud Crandall, Rahway, NJ machinist is making out these days... Maybe the "Machinists for Kerry" protestors in NY were a response by machinists, who felt duly insulted by their mythical colleague's portrayal.)
We know that Republicans form the bulk of the sample demographic.
We know that many people, particularly young people use cellphones almost exclusively and consequently are not polled.
We know that there are few, if indeed any, Gore-voting Dems now voting for Bush/Cheney, while equally, we know that there are many credible reports of significant numbers of former Republicans who are now going to vote for Kerry/Edwards.
We know that enormous number of new Dem voters have registered, a much larger figure than that for Republicans.
So, what is the purpose of these polls? (The exit polls at the polling stations are a different kettle of fish, of course). There seem to be only three purposes for them, all quite discreditable:
1) For the polling companies to earn money, irrespective of the value (or otherwise) of the polls.
2) (Among those hired by the Republicans), to demoralise some of the Democrats and then ridicule them, while encouraging the apolitical random voter to vote for whomever they think will be the winner.
3) To make the election seem close, and thereby exploitable for less than noble purposes, as perpetrated in 2002.
So the bottom line is: enjoy the polls as "loony toons" games, generated by people who at best simply wish to cash in on the adrenaline-rush addiction of your average political junkie. ("I was that soldier..."). And at worst, exploit the fears they sometimes generate for their own and/or their clients' aforesaid nefarious purposes.
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