The Story of the Campaign So Far

The polling numbers are inconsistent across the board. No one poll even slightly agrees with another.

For example:

June 12

ICR, Bush: 52, Kerry: 44, Undecided: 2

June 9

Zogby, Bush: 47, Kerry: 45, Undecided: 8

Time, Bush: 54, Kerry: 42, Undecided: 4

June 5

CNN/USA Today/Gallup, Bush: 52, Kerry: 45, Undecided: 3

Besides the maddening concept that there can be undecided at this point - that there's some psychological profile in 2-8% of the nation of people who are willing to vote yet incapable of making a decision (I always thought that the percentage of people in America who have an opinion is greater than those who are willing to vote. I guessed wrong), there’s no consistency in the poll except Bush being ahead (maddening in its own right). The conventional wisdom is that the incumbent’s numbers are solid, that the undecideds will either vote for the challenger or stay home. Bu there’s another even more important poll, the ‘direction of the country.’

The problem with polls in general is the same problem with all language/communication – what means one thing to me, means another to you. The more refined a question, the more accurate. To ask someone who they will vote for is a complicated request that is based on a number of factors (do I like X enough, hate W enough, plan to be sober on a Tuesday, etc.) Whether you like the way the country is at the very moment is a direct question and is much more accurate in determining how the vote will be in November.

Polling Report - Direction of Country

September 7-10

• Newsweek: Satisfied: 39, Unsatisfied: 53, Undecided: 8
• AP: 44, 52, 4
• Gallup: 44, 55, 1

September 2-3

• Newsweek: Satisfied: 43, Unsatisfied: 49, Undecided: 8
• Time: 45, 50, 4

August 3-5

• AP: Satisfied: 39, Unsatisfied: 59, Undecided: 2
• Time: 44, 51, 5

July 29-30

Newsweek: Satisfied: 36, Unsatisfied: 58, Undecided: 6

July 5-7,

• AP: Satisfied: 41, Unsatisfied: 56, Undecided: 3
• Gallup: 41, 57, 2

OK, yeah, how there can be undecided about *this* is even crazier. It demonstrates that drug use must be worse than obesity in America. Anyhoo, these numbers should make Bush wake up screaming in the middle of the night for Cheney and warm milk. To hover around 40% for satisfaction? Egads.

And for comparison on these, there were 60s for good chunks of 2002 and 2003.

A conclusion I make from this, as a die-hard Democrat, is that my fellow party-voters are a collection of fumbling chuckleheads. Back in the primaries they voted not for the candidate they wanted, but for somebody they thought “Swing Voters” would vote for. In general, as an anthropologist, I am reluctant to call a group of people, a culture, idiotic. Generally, a mass of people do something that is in their best interest. Not in this case.

I said it back then, too, Kerry is a poor candidate. He has the charisma of untanned leather. He makes Gore look like P Diddy. He also has gaping gaps in his trained moral reasoning. How could he support the Iraq war? I’m not talking about flippy-flops, and despite my support for the war (see my post on 9/11/03 for nuances) – if Kerry were any fashion of real deal he would have voted against the war. The comparisons to Vietnam are clear for a sidelines observer, for someone who ostensibly based his youth on ‘Nam-opposition, he should have been the first to vote against. He didn’t. He’s a weenie.

The Democrats primaried Kerry because of what they thought someone else would want. This is stupid because of a countervailing psychological rule: when in doubt choose real over potential. Put simply, the Democrats liked Edwards, but thought a Swinger will like Kerry better. Except that Edwards had inherent and established value while Kerry had potential value. Is it any surprise that people still like Edwards and nobody – even Democrats – like Kerry?

If I had a chance to talk to the Democratic leadership (alert me next time a pig flies) I’d tell ‘em straight out – the only way a Democrat wins is with charisma. That is it. Yet the party keeps nominating these policy robots (Stevenson, Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry) as if the power of ideas will outweigh the natural human desire to look up to a leader.

Successful Democrats? All charismatic bastards. JFK, Clinton, LBJ, even Truman. A Republican doesn’t need charisma in America, despite the majority of the country’s population being democrats, the state-electoral college thang makes the states significant, and there are more Republican states. The GOP can run moral reprobates (Nixon, Bush II) and spineless crackers (Bush I) and win as long as the opposition is a standard Democrat weenie.

Both parties know these heuristics:

• Evil GOP vs. Robot Dem, GOP wins
• Weenie GOP vs. Robot Dem, GOP wins
• Charisma, no matter whom, always wins.

1960: JFK v. Nixon – Charisma/evil
1964: LBJ v. Goldwater – Charisma
1968: Humphrey v. Nixon – evil/robot
1972: McGovern v. Nixon – evil/robot
1976: Carter v. Ford – the only exception which is manifest evil is hard to win
1980: Carter v. Reagan – doofus/Charisma
1984: Mondale v. Reagan – Charisma
1988: Dukakis v. Bush – possibly the worst election in my lifetime; gads what a waste
1992: Clinton v. Bush v. Alf – Charisma
1996: Clinton v. Dole v. Alf – Charisma
2000: Gore v. Bush v. Nader – don’t get me started on the election results

If the Democrats had only nominated any one of the candidates with charisma – this would have been no contest. E.g. if the ticket were flipped and you had Edwards as the candidate with Clark, Dean, or even Kerry as VP, then we'd be having red-terror alerts every day of the summer just for Bush to barely catch sight of the donkey's rear.