Was just browsing Fox News. Missed them being "deep in the tank for the Dem's." If there be a "Dem love fest in Denver" what should the Repub Twin Cities convention be called?
I said in the O'Club at the start of the election season neither Hillary nor Obama would become president. I'm half-way home on that one. Fully prepared to eat crow if facts prove me wrong.
A couple things on your question about polls: my initial reaction is more voters are sold on McCain than Obama. Excluding the die hard extremes who will vote for their party period, or against the other party period.
Then there's this, and I'll relate it to the crazy goings on at the O'Club. A topic comes up. Folks weigh in. Call it the 1st wave. Then there's the 2nd wave of assault. Some "you said" flung back and forth. By then, the "rooters" come in, the 3rd wave. It's no longer about the topic at hand but against the other guy or for another guy. And a good number of folks watching to see if something ridiculous and funny happens.
That's how I see the polls which the news businesses tout. It starts out being about something -- Obama versus McCain -- then it changes to be about other stuff after the 2nd and 3rd wave of assaults. And like the O'Club, the essays written and posted on Real Clear Politics for example figure into all that. I read a good deal of the essays on RCP.
The news/polls thing is the perfect business. Has no horse in the race and wins big time no matter what happens. The more dust thrown in the air, the better it is for them. Fox does a great job of it. They'll have a headline which has very little to do with the body of the essay. Maybe they figured out that readers read their stuff the way folks read AH's BBS: scan the thread titles and flame away in the thread that gives them the best chance at winning the day.
I don't think this race will be close like the last 2. The margin of victory will be larger both popularly and electorally. Could well be wrong, but that's my guess. Not a huge margin for either side, but greater than the last two elections.
Lastly, I think Lazs is right about folks figuring out who Obama is and is not. I listened about an hour or so of the speeches at the Dem convention after work last night on the radio. NPR does a good job. I'll do the same for the Repubs. When I vote, I'll be voting against my conscience no matter for whom I vote. Also, and here's the part I'm not so good at pulling off, there's sound limits on what a President can and will achieve. Checks and balances. If Obama were not for homosexuals and the neo-Black Panther thing, I'd be much more interested in him. The whole social world turned upside down which I'm dead set against. If McCain were not for fatting up the already over fat corporate giants along with the looting of America manufacturing and industry, I'd be much more interested in him.
The Middle East thing takes 2nd place in my mind to moral issues and industrial issues. The manufacturing issue, really, is long gone already. For a lousy billion or two or 100, those in charge of business made themselves deliriously rich and buggered joe six pack along the way. I think that is worse than wrong.
Then there's the oil companies whose only care is for each and everyone of you and me.
I'd love to pull the plug on the whole lot of them.
