chrisishardcore.com

Chris, you've clearly contracted a case of the dread "Michael Moore's disease." It's a combination of paranoia and delusions. Even The New Republic has caught it--which was diagnosed when they outlined their paranoid "October Surprise" theory concerning any capture of Osama.

Your case is so bad that you want the War on Terror to disappear, and barring that, you want Bush and Ridge to fail in their efforts to
prevent another attack. Then again, so would Kerry, I think. The evil Michael Moore wasn't sitting at the Convention in the Presidential Box for nothing.

And read the new Gallup poll, Chris. It's the first time since McGovern in 1972 that a convention's nominee LOST ground in a poll after his own nominating convention! Kerry went from 47-46 ahead, just before, to TRAILING Bush 50-46, now. (Same poll, same sample.)

All I want is honesty and principles back in government, not an anything goes mentality. I think the Gallup poll is an outlier, as both Rasmussen and Newsweek have detected pretty sizeable bounces.

I think you suffer from the bandwagon mentality. At some point you decided that Bush was on the "winning team" and using a single poll result to try and get others to jump on the bandwagon with you kind of seems desperate. But to each his own.

Just think about one thing. Can you think of a single circumstance where Bush did the right thing and didn't try to do something to nakedly advance his partisan interests over the past 4 years? Homeland Security? Nope, nitpicking fight attacking a key Democratic constituency. War in Iraq? Nope, continues to exploit it for partisan advantage. Funding of war in Iraq? Nope, had Republicans ram through the House (after the body had voted against it) a giveaway instead of a loan to be repaid with oil receipts. So if this guy is your winner than you can have him.

You just proved my point, Chris. It just kills you that the prudent and forthright steps that George W. Bush has taken to defend the United States against further attack are politically popular, too. Wise and forceful leadership during a war is always popular, and you don't like it. Worse, try as they might, Kerry and his apologists (including you) can't manage to change the subject!

As for the polls, the Newsweek one is the real "outlier," since it queried 1,010 "adults," NOT "likely" voters (see MSNBC's description of the poll). The Gallup poll sampled "likely" voters, which is the most accurate way to conduct a poll.

By the way, the Rasmussen bounce is small, not sizeable as you contend.

My two cents on a few of points in this debate:

(1) The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll was an outlier during the entire 2000 campaign, leaning heavily R. It consistently showed Bush with a very large lead, when all other public polls showed the race very close (which it obviously was). Pollsters of both parties talked to the Gallup polling director to ask what was going on, and the general consensus was that Gallup's likely voter screen was the problem. Instead of asking a couple of questions on the someone's likelihood to vote (the way every campaign pollster does), Gallup tried to create a battery of questions to gage how likely someone was to vote. I recall watching CNN segments in October where the poll director would say "this is a very close race" (probably because every other public poll had it close), when it had Bush leading 51-41. Had that been accurate, Bush would have been well on his way to a landslide.

(2) Anyone who has been in a campaign looking at real polls knows that the vast majority of media polls are worthless, since they are usually done on the cheap in a manner that skews the results.

(3) To the extent that one wants to use a media poll for something, the results on the perceived traits of the candidates is much more important at this point than the horse race. I'm not a huge Kerry campaign, but it appears that he helped his image on leadership, strength, ability to lead, etc. That is important.

(4) Getting to Chris's citation of the blatantly political plug in the middle of Ridge's press release, I notice tonight (Monday) that the NY Times website now has a story that the info used to justify this alert was collected in 2000 and 2001. Combined with the strangely well-timed alert right after Kerry announced the selection of Edwards, one can't help but wonder what is going on in the Bush Administration.

The Washington Post story on the age of the information is even better than the NY Times piece. If the information in those articles doesn't raise questions in your mind about political manipulation of terrorism alerts, your loyalty to the Republican Party is blocking your ability to engage in rational reasoning.

As for the polling data: I do not know how much I can trust any polling data this year. Right now this nation's electorate is deeply divided, extremely partisan, and almost evenly split for President, which the current polling data suggests, and the number of swing voters is at a real low. What makes this situation bad for polling is that both sides have undertaken huge efforts to register people to vote, and in this polarized of an electorate I think they may actually vote this time.
It seems to me that the Presidential race could shape up much like the Barnes/Perdue race of 2002. Bush like Barnes has angered two groups of people who voted for them the first time around. Barnes lost the support of teachers and rural white men. He lost teachers with his education reforms, something many of them miss now. And he lost rural white men because of the flag change, though he did not have all of them to begin with, any advantage he did have here was lost. Bush has angered people who bought into his compassionate conservative credentials, with his tax cuts that help the wealthy more, the ever increasing national debt, and the social issues that he has backtracked on. Also, the War is going to cause a large number of people who voted for him the first time, to think again.
In 2002 the media polls had Barnes with an 11-point lead over Perdue five days before the election. Barnes’s own polls had him at a 5 point lead. Barnes lost by 5 points. Also, in 2002 there was a huge rural Georgia push to get people to register and get people to the polls, mostly driven by the flag change. These people were not polled, as they were not in the likely voters category as they never voted in the past. Now, while this did not make the election, it had a lot to do with it. I can see the same thing happening on a national scale this year. If the parties are registering people to vote in the numbers they are claiming and those people actually vote, then the polling data could be greatly skewed. The trick is getting those people to the polls.

As for the terror alert: I just read both the NYT and Washington Post stories on the age of the evidence that was used to increase the threat level in NYC financial district. The one question this bring up for me, is how long are they going to sustain the level of protection over NYC. So they have some three year old evidence that just came to light on Friday, evidence that includes nothing about a timeline. They decide to increase security and announce the whole thing to the country. They close bridges, tunnels, search cars, and have teams of bomb sniffing dogs roaming the district. Why? Because it is a new threat and something might happen this summer. My question is how long before they decide to reopen the tunnels and bridges and stop the teams of roving bomb sniffing dogs. If the threat is so real it surely must continue until the threat is contained or eliminated. Sadly, I doubt this will be the case. In a week after the news has let this one die, the administration will start taking back all the protection. First the tunnels and bridges will be opened with “We have decided that our increased safety precautions reduces the need to close the tunnel any longer” or some other bullshit reason. Then the roving teams of dogs will disappear, and so on and so on. When that happens, and I think it will, then I have a problem with this terror alert, as it will definitely show its true colors as a post convention political stunt to change the news cycle.

I thought the Bush people didn't pay attention to polls.

Now they do.

hmmmm....now what did Chris say in his post? Something about Bush being on both sides of an issue?

Hold the door, what we're finding out this morning is that the information we're using to heighten the terrorist alert is 4(four)years old!
Does that lead to a conclusion that it was political? Here are my questions about it all. Why did Tom Ridge tell us to 'go about our business'? Why didn't they tell us about this a year ago? Do we actually think that terrorist can't amend their plans and attack somewhere else? Is it good for the administration to have all of us in fear? Do we really believe that the party of Lee Atwater wouldn't stoop this low?

Tom Ridge's remark in connection with the heightened NY terror alert that the kind of information available today is the result of the president's leadership is a testimonial to former President Clinton given the information is four years old.

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