A few days ago, I opined that any poll of likely voters is extremely unreliable for this 2008 Presidential Election. It appears that Dick Diver of the DailyKos agrees with my sentiments. According to Diver, the well-regarded Gallup Poll intentionally changed their polling methodology to favorably skew the bounce that John McCain got coming out of the GOP Convention. The poll of likely voters showed McCain with a 54-44 lead over Barack Obama. That's significant because a poll of likely voters showing an even contest, spells big trouble for the GOP because "likely voters" overlook new voters and Democratic-leaning voters that primarily use cellphones i.e. the young.
Embellishment of the facts all too frequently have become standard operating procedures for the McCain Campaign. You know things have gotten bad when conservatives take conservatives to task as Andrew Sullivan recently did with Sarah Palin and Karl Rove with the McCain Campaign. Telling the truth is important again? It appears that the McCain and Palin honeymoon has officially ended. Now maybe we can talk about things that really matter such as how McCain helped invent the Blackberry. But seriously, where can we turn to get Walter Cronkite-like integrity.
Until recently, I thought the place to go to was POTUS '08, Channel 130 on XM Radio. "Politically neutral." Maybe sometimes, but not this morning. Today as I listened to Scott Walterman, host of the "The Morning Briefing", interview Susie Turnbull of the DNC, I was taken aback by the flippant manner that Walterman tried to refute most of what Turnbull had to say about McCain. Turnbull talked about how McCain was making the claim that the U.S. economy was still strong despite the problems on Wall Street. Walterman spent too much time trying to defend McCain. Walterman acted like McCain's press secretary and awkwardly injected how polls showed that McCain was gaining in New Jersey and even managed to snidely remark how Obama would travel to Hollywood later in the day. "Unbiased". How do you define unbiased? A like-minded irritated listener emailed Walterman and offered an accurate description of his conduct, "bag of hot air".
So the lesson to the wise, don't sweat the small stuff. Clueless polls numbers or hot air commentators are definitely small stuff. Seeing beyond the trees is not their strong suit. They lack vision. Don't perish with them and don't let them drain your energy. Instead participate in the only poll that really matters. Vote for real change in November.
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