skippy the bush kangaroo

Thursday, October 30, 2008

what? us worry?

as we know, nobody can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like the democrats. witness, oh, say, every election in recent memory (including the 2006 elections, where dems won, and then did absolutely nothing about it).

so when the mcmuffin campaign continually spouts feel good happy talk about their chances next tuesday, we admit we begin to get a little nervous. as slate sez, the mccain campaign is unusually upbeat, does it have reason to be?

with only five days left until election day, john mccain's campaign aides seem happier than they have been in a while. for the last few days, the campaign has been increasingly buoyed by what it says has been improvement in its internal polling of 14 battleground states. aides see a tightening race in states that are crucial to their long-shot march to 270 votes and victory. even mccain himself is upbeat. "he's been happy for the last few days," says one aide. "that's a change."...

the mccain path to victory relies heavily on the campaign's pollster, bill mcinturff, who is conducting surveys in battleground states every day. for the entire campaign, mccain aides say, mcinturff has often been a bit of a wet blanket. whenever they've felt good, he's been the voice of caution, explaining that the landscape was bleaker than they thought. recently, though, his internal campaign updates have actually been eagerly anticipated: the subject line of a recent one said "a memo you will want to read."…

mcinturff released a memo yesterday that outlined his case for why it's still possible for mccain to pull a rabbit out of his hat. here's what he sees: his poll of battleground states shows obama with such a small lead, it's within the margin of error, which means it's effectively tied. in iowa, he sees the race tightening to within a few points. in pennsylvania, it's in single digits (though that could mean nine). (the average of other pollsters say mccain is down by a dozen in iowa and pennsylvania.) moving toward mccain, say his aides, are women making less than $60,000 and white men with only some college education.
yikes! that's what we are afraid of! the mcmuffin camp knows something we don't! do they?

stan greenberg, of greenberg quinlan rosner doesn't think so.

let’s start with the very important conclusion that obama’s tracking number, now 50 or 51 percent, is “what he gets.” first, let’s not disparage 50 percent, as no democrat has received that level of support since jimmy carter in 1976. the 3rd party candidates are polling about 3 or 4 percent - and showing about 2 points in our surveys of early vote tallies. that suggests that obama would win even if you gave mccain all other votes. but our data does not support the “obama gets what he gets” thesis.

  • the memo reports that obama is already getting virtually 100 percent of the african american vote in mccain’s polls. that is not true in our combined database of the presidential battleground states where obama is polling 89 to 6 percent. on that basis alone, one would expect obama’s overall vote to rise a point.

  • note that the same is true of latino voters. in special surveys of hispanics, using special lists, obama is polling close to 70 percent, but in the combined battleground polls where hispanic respondents are more acculturated and english-speaking, we have obama’s vote at 56 percent to 36 percent for mccain. that too can produce another point of obama support.

  • the memo says that the “undecided” and “refused” voters “will break decisively in our direction, adding a “net three plus points to our margin.” that is pretty amazing. using the combined database, we looked at the “undecided,” “refused” and the undecided “leaning” to a candidate - 7 percent of the electorate. using their stated leanings to the candidates and feelings toward the parties, this undecided vote broke near evenly between obama and mccain. in our latest presidential battleground poll, they broke near evenly as well. to get a 3-point net gain, the undecided would have to break 5 to 2 for mccain. there is no evidence to indicate such an impending break against obama. instead, the undecided could push obama’s vote up at least another point.
greenberg goes on to eviscerate mcinturff's key points, as well his misuse of english phrasing to create implications that are not sustainable in reality ("we are not entirely sure of the meaning of 'beginning to approach' and 'functionally tied' ").

in a nutshell, greenberg points out the problems w/mcinturff's assumptions, which turn out to be, in our opinion, the problems w/the gop's assumptions thru-out mcmuffin's campaign, and indeed, the last 12 years or so.

that is to say, by using straw men and logical fallacies to muddy the argument, they appear to win the argument. and, unfortunately for the gop, a whole generation of repubbbs have come to adulthood thinking that the appearance of winning the argument is the same as winning the arguement.

we are reminded of the wag that described the current administration as people who actually believe the stuff rush limbaugh says. this seems to be where the mcmuffin campaign is internally. they actually believe that the extrapolation of obama's losing a point or two in a poll here or there is the same as being "functionally tied," and so they are ecstactic.

which, when explained to us, makes us ecstatic. the reason they are so happy is because they are believing their own bs.

and trust us, it's bs. mcmuffin will have to bascially run the table next tuesday; that is to say, he'll have to win every battleground state, and perhaps even take a state or two away from obama to pull this off. or, in terms that mrs. skippy will relate to, he's drawn a ten and ace of hearts; he has to hope the flop turns up the jack, queen and king. of hearts.

and as another maverick's wise old pappy used to tell him, never draw to an inside straight.

Example

(thx and a tip of the kangaroo tail to memeorandum for the links!)
posted by skippy at 6:25 PM |

3 Comments:

thanks for talking us down...WHY are they so happy...oh that's right- they believe their own propaganda...

( I like you are nervous....)

thanks for posting this...
commented by Blogger enigma4ever, 7:19 PM PDT  
No room left for nervousness for me, I've voted ..... Obama is my guy,...and IF the Dems do as you are opining,...well then it's on their heads and it will be time to at least seriously explore the possibility of Canada...
I am a Patriot, a decorated soldier, a preacher, and a heretic, a drunk, and doper (well ex- on the last two)...and even someone as compromised as myself can see the genuine potential in Obama. I was serious about having tears in my eyes on the night he was accepting the nomination.. It has been few, the number of truly historic positive politicians, offhand I can think of only two, or three if you want to count Father Abraham
... If this goes south in a bag of burning dog poo... sticking around would be so very hard...I'm not sure I could...
We have to start the journey toward actually being adults in the world community and not just brandishing our bigger sticks and yelling, "'Cause I say SO!!"...and to me this one thing, race, is a starting point... We have been trying to get this behind ourselves for far too long to just let it continue .. I see hope in Obama, I see that starting point..
And as a patriot I want that start...then we can take another step, and another, and another...
All history began this way...one step. One action. One hope.
commented by Blogger Essaress ; Prior of the F.C.F.J.,, 5:18 AM PDT  
As Stalin used to say, "It doesn't matter who votes in an election, what matters is who counts the votes". Rove is a student of Stalin and if he wants his dream of the Repugs being power forever, he'll have to steal the election again. All the electronic voting machines are made by companies that are owned by Repugnicans. Even if they were made by others, they are so easy to hack into that it boggles the mind that the machines are being used without a paper trail.
commented by Blogger Kulkuri, 6:55 AM PDT  

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