Why McCain needs to keep pulling out rabbits.
Daniel Finkelstein over at the London Times has made an astute observation based on this chart from Real Clear Politics.
As you can clearly see, despite the fact that the press continually refer to this contest as neck and neck, it has actually been nothing of the sort and Obama has consistently been in the lead throughout with the odd blip in which McCain goes ahead.
The only time McCain ever goes ahead is when he produces shocks, like the announcement of Palin. The bounce he gets from these shocks is usually short lived, but he's hoping if he can time it right, that one of these shocks might just take him over the finish line.
If it wouldn't anger his base so much as I'd say he could fire Palin in the last week of the election. However, sadly, McCain is now actually holding on to her coat tails rather than the other way around.His strategy therefore will not be the long grind of building a message and winning trust. It will be to pull rabbits out of hats. He has to keep turning the race to keep himself in it.
And then hope he has kept one bit of reckless surprise back big enough to win, to be timed right for the end of the race.
His actions yesterday fit entirely with that.
I have to say, though, that looking at the long term polling trend, you have to conclude that McCain is a long shot.
But what's clear is that the Maverick is going to keep throwing hissy fits and making reckless gambles because, as the chart clearly shows, that's his only way of hoping to pull this off.
And, as he can't fire Palin, what are the odds that the shotgun wedding of the century will take place before election day?
“It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”Rule nothing out. These buggers have already shown that they will do or say anything to win.
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4 comments:
McCain doesnt need to be ahead in the polls, he only needs to be close. After that, Diebold takes over. Have you seen the movie Uncounted yet? Appalling, chilling, infuriating, and probably inevitable. I hope I'm wrong.
I hope so too Dave. However, I am gaining confidence that Obama is going to go further ahead as the six or so points he leads by don't take account of the debate. Plus we have Palin and Biden on Thursday.
That's got to help.
Oh wait. There is another huge factor that no one is talking about, and probably one of the reasons polls companies do what they can to portray the race as being closer than it really is.
The Brennan Center's new report on voter purges (http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/voter_purges), conducted in large part by GOP state operatives, Repub AGs, SoS hacks, and various low level election officials.
In fact, thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia reported purging more than 13 million voters from registration rolls between 2004 and 2006.
The secret and inconsistent manner in which purges are conducted make it difficult, if not impossible, to know exactly how many voters are stricken from voting lists erroneously. And when purges are made public, they often reveal serious problems.
Findings:
1) Purges rely on error-ridden lists.
2)Voters are purged secretly and without notice.
3)Bad “matching” criteria leaves voters vulnerable to manipulated purges.
4)Insufficient oversight leaves voters vulnerable to manipulated purges.
The BC, of course, maintains the conceit that purges are done with criteria that are "bad," when, in fact, to partisan agents doing purges, they are using what they would think of as good criteria: anything that can dispatch as many Democratic voters as possible.
Don't think so? The state GOP in Michigan announced that they would impugn the eligibility of any voter whose residence was in foreclosure, justifying the action based on residential address criterion. And who does that impact mostly in Michigan? African Americans.
That's how fucking slimy these people are.
Bhc,
Every time I hear of voter purging I find myself shocked that they can be so blatant about such a practice.
And to attempt to remove people from the register because they have lost their homes is slimy to say the bloody least.
Here in Europe the European court recently ruled that even serving prisoners should be allowed to vote as not to do so erodes their human rights.
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