Unfortunately Carmichael also discussed the daily polls of popular voting in the article. He referred to the General Election campaign as a "dead even horse race." This struck me as irresponsible, and not just because today's polls have Obama coming in at five to six points ahead of Mr. Wrinkly. More significantly I just read an article seconds before called “Electoral Math Charts Updated” by Chris Weigant. Electoral votes, the ones that count, show Obama with a major lead right now. ChrisWeigant.com provides daily updates on this.
Weigant provides detailed analysis of the ongoing struggle for electoral votes, as well as graphs, charts and those colored maps people like so much. In none of those things does McCain approach Obama's lead in the election. It's slightly closer right now than in the recent past, and much closer than before the FISA vote. But it's still not close. This is not an even horse race, and that may very well explain the series of desperate attack ads coming from McCain's camp.
Obama supporters, myself included, have been nervous at the injection of Karl Rove's sleazy tactics into the election. Mr. Rove proved in the past that his approach to winning can bypass all reason and logic simply through the use of lies and the exploitation of fear. Steve Schmidt has his work cut out for him using those tactics, because John McCain is, well, difficult to sell (to put it nicely). If left unchecked the attack ads could probably sway many undecided voters. Biased news reporting contributes to the effectiveness of attack ads, and an examination of where Americans get their news is even more telling.
The following is a breakdown of a Pew Research Center study conducted for the People and the Press project:
That says a lot about the breakdown the type of information Americans base their decisions on. While approximately 40% of Americans who follow the news got their information from newspapers, the combined weight of broadcasting journalism dwarfs that number. Also, in every Pew study like it, print journalism declines. Internet news readership continues to increase, but that number mostly reflects people who follow the news for business and their jobs rather than because of their politics. In fact, in another study released just last year, the level of ignorance among residents of the United States has barely changed in 18 years. The chart:
Those numbers have a lot to do with the failure of Americans to care about current events, but it also says a lot about the quality of the news they receive. It's easier to get stories about an enormous overfed cat, or a random car chase, than it is to get the facts about what is happening in our nation and abroad.
Given that atmosphere of ignorance, Democratic leaders need to fight the threat from Karl Rove, Steve Schmidt and Terry Nelson, among other sleazy names making up the McCain campaign. Almost nothing has been said on behalf of Senator Obama by people outside of his campaign during the showing of the attack ads. One would like to think that prominent Congressional Democrats would leap into the fray to defend our party's candidate. They and their districts stand to gain far more from Barack's election than the army of Internet writers who do speak up in his defense every day. What have we heard from almost all of them? Dead silence. Perhaps I missed something, and Barack is on the outs with Congressional Democrats. I thought that person was a rat of a man named Joe Lieberman, but maybe it was really our candidate. That's what it seems like when Obama gets attacked repeatedly, and our Congressmen do not rush to defend him.
Maybe, instead, Democratic leaders succumbed to the attack ads and now believe Barack is an Islamic extremist. F*** knows. I refuse to be overly worried. For one thing, the electoral votes still point to a blue victory in November. More importantly, in the words of Michael Goldfarb, I can “rant at the ethos” to my heart's content. It probably won't change anything, though. Michael Goldfarb will still be an arrogant prick. Karl Rove will still be a criminal who has faced no accountability whatsoever. John McCain will still prove he is not worthy to lead this nation. And Barack Obama will still face stupid attack ads that sway the weakest minded American voters. Such is life.
Posts
