Jennifer, Last night's results should prove once and for all
that "polls" and "facts" are almost mutually exclusive things.
Especially during presidential primary season, polls about the fall
horse race are virtually meaningless. At about this time in 1980,
for instance, Jimmy Carter held a nearly two-to-one (!!!!) lead
over Ronald Reagan, even as Reagan led the national horse race
polls within the GOP. Another thing that is overrated is money. In
1976, Reagan was dead broke and had lost five straight contests and
was in terrible shape in the polls. Then Jesse Helms helped him
beat Ford in North Carolina, and everything changed. Therefore,
what is more important in analyzing who can beat whom in the fall
isn't current polls, it is logic combined with past performance and
with more generic, NON-PERSONALITY based surveys.
Item: John McCain fares best in current polls vs. HIllary. But
item: McCain has NEVER had a strongly negative mainstream media
against him. Indeed, the MSM has been described over and over,
incuding by the mSM himself, as his "base." Further Item: The MSM
is desperate for a Demo president. Further item: The MSM has ALWAYS
rallied around the Clintons when it is election time, (and then
blitzed them right after election or right after they take office,
when it does not much good.)
Item: When the MSM turns on McCain, as it surely will if and
once he gets the nomination, where will he go for a "base"?
Somebody who has succeeded despite the MSM, as other GOPers have,
is in far better shape to beat Hillary than somebody who has
succeeded BECAUSE of an MSM that will turn on him (assuming I am
right that the MSM will indeed turn on McCain).
Item: Polling 11 months ago showed that the single biggest
turn-off for voters choosing a president would be elevated age --
far bigger than Mormonism, gender, or race. Item: McCain has
infuriated so many conservatives that he may have an incredibly
hard time pulling together his whole party behind him. Put all this
together, and combine it with his expected problems with
fund-raising, his loony-tunes temper, other pecadilloes, and a NYT
investigation that will surely be dumped on him only AFTER the
nomination appears in the bag, and what you have is a too old, too
angry candidate with no base and no money and too many enemies. He
is not the strongest candidate against Hillary, but the second
weakest.
Likewise, polls five months ago showed that Huckabee had no
chance. Now he is the national front-runner, at least in some
polls. What changed? Nothing that logic could not predict. Logic
saw a tremendously gifted communicator with very strong political
skills and canniness, filling a spot in the campaign with a
built-in network of the party's single most fervent constituency,
combined with advocacy of a tax plan with a large and organized
cult following, and in the person of somebody with a proven
capacity for demagoguery and effective class warfare. His rise was
therefore eminently predictable, even though the polls said
otherwise.
Polls said Hillary was dead. Experience very much suggested
otherwise.
Polls, schmolls. Can we PLEASE tak about something other than
polls? (Sorry to be grumpy, and do not take this, Jennifer, as a
criticism of you. It's just that I am SO sick of the horse-race
stuff. I wrote an editorial on just this topic for the Examiner for
tomorrow.)
topics:
John McCain, Mainstream Media
