I also included a third category in the post, which does not necessarily imply laziness or lack of intelligence, but something worse. I could have included a 4th (hyper-religious) and 5th (gazillionaire CEO) minority category as well, but there might have been some overlap, and I was talking about the average voter, so I left it simple. I left it simple because the world really is all black-n-white.
The problem lies in the fact that the rest of the country would have no say in the national election. We'd have an ever-duller parade of leftist presidents because the more heavily populated urban areas would constantly vote for the candidates who enrich their wallets. The rest of the country might as well not even vote.
How is that significantly different than the current system where only a few "swing" states decide an election? In Texas, California and New York the voters for the minority party might as well not show up.
There would be no "swing" states in such a system. It would be NYC, Chicago, LA, The People's Republic of San Fran, Seattle, Houston, Boston, etc. deciding every election.
No, instead there'd be "Swing Cities", with the rest of the country getting lip-service and primary losers - What's the difference?
Will it also be fun to watch America continue to destroy itself, just as all the great powers in human history have done?
Nice move you're going to lose to don't accept any responsibility. The public is smart but they need educated. Kerry's entire campaign has been spin control since day 1. He should have been educating but instead all he could do was rip the economy (which BTW many of us believe is getting better), and ripped the war (which BTW he voted for and has said we should have taken Saddam out). I know now is when someone says well goto Iruna****tycampaign.com and see his ideas, but the bottom line is for the past few months he hasn't done a good enough job.
I think the polls are deceptive. You have probably already hear that the polls miss a growing chunk of the electorate, people that only use cell phones (like myself) because they don't have a land based home phone. Plus, as we speak at college campuses around the country, some of the largest efforts ever to register voters is coming on strong. Keep your head up!
Voters today also are bombarded with misinformation and disinformation than at any time in history. That's why Bush is ahead. The Bush family's political mantra since Prescott Bush in the 1940s has been nothing but smear, smear and smear again.
True the information is out there because technology has progressed so much in the last 15 yrs or so with the advent of the internet (Thank you Al Gore. ) However, there is a difference in it being there and everyone having access to it and/or it being accessible to everyone. This brings forth the flaw in your argument. Overall as a country, 25% of the population does not have internet access at home or work. The numbers go higher for those 55 and over, up to almost 40%. So where do these people get their information? The same place they have for decades, TV and newspapers. So the information is there, but is not accessible to 25% overall and almost 40% of senior citizens. Am I saying that if these people had internet access they'd all of a sudden be Kerry voters? No, not at all. Fox News has a web site too you know.
Looking more like a dead heat ... Why voter surveys don't agree Different readings in the presidential race point, in part, to a volatile electorate. By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – To casual consumers of campaign news - and that would be most voters - the past week may have been particularly perplexing. First the Pew Research Center, a respected nonpartisan polling outfit, showed President Bush ahead of John Kerry by just one point among likely voters nationwide. Then Gallup, another major brand in polling, showed Mr. Bush ahead of Senator Kerry by 13 points, also among likely voters. Other polls showed either a dead heat or a Bush lead, but smaller than the Gallup result. Pollsters and experts flooded the zone with explanations: Bush's convention bounce is fading. The electorate is more volatile than previously thought. And, most fundamentally, don't read too much into any one poll. As the cliché goes, polls are just a snapshot in time - and sometimes the lens isn't quite in focus. It's also worth noting, pollsters say, that it's still too early to come to any firm conclusions about who will win in November. In fact, many of the voters who may well determine the outcome - those who have not locked in with a candidate - aren't fully engaged yet in the race. "I would urge most Americans not to pay attention to polls," says Karlyn Bowman, an expert on polling at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "It seems to me, most of them are being done for the elites in campaigns and for journalists." For the voter who does want to pay close attention, Ms. Bowman advises going to a polling firm's website and looking at the methodology. How big is the sample? Over how many days was a poll taken? Do they weight for party identification, and if so, how? She also advises looking at the trend over time within one polling organization - and not to compare among different polls. It's also debatable whether polls can become self-fulfilling prophecies. That is, if there's a major poll showing one candidate down by a significant margin, will that discourage his voters to the point where some may think it's not worth their effort to turn out? While there's no statistical evidence to prove that this happens in America's long-drawn-out elections, campaigns don't want to take any chances. The Kerry campaign has played down the latest Gallup poll, calling it an "outlier." In a conference call with reporters last Friday, Kerry pollster Tom Kiley looked at the seven polls released over recent days - including his campaign's own poll, which showed the president up by four points - and came up with an average that shows Kerry not doing badly. "If we do not include the Gallup survey, the average of all these polls points to a two-point race, with the president ahead by two; obviously it's a very tight race," Mr. Kiley said. From the Bush perspective, while a huge lead in any poll is welcome news, it's also not in the campaign's interest to buy into a message of "we're way ahead." All along, a Bush-team mantra has been that this race will come down to the wire, and the base must remain energized. The president can't win if his supporters become overconfident and stay home on Election Day. The latest Pew poll provides stark evidence that the electorate may be more volatile than previously thought. The survey of 1,972 registered voters was taken in two waves. The first group, polled Sept. 8-10, gave Bush a whopping 54-38 percent lead among likely voters. But by the second group, surveyed Sept. 11-14, that lead had vanished, and the race among likely voters showed Bush up by just 1 point, 47 to 46 percent. Pew describes crosscurrents in opinion that could push swing voters first one way, then another. The pounding that Kerry took during August and at the GOP convention in New York clearly hurt the Democrat, while Bush remains vulnerable on Iraq and the economy, the Pew report said. But even with a poll whose top line shows a statistical tie, it's possible to give one side an edge, says Raghavan Mayur, president of the TIPP poll, which conducts surveys for this newspaper. His latest poll, released Sept. 14, showed Bush and Kerry tied at 46 percent each. But Mr. Mayur still sees Bush as slightly ahead, based on the intensity of his voters. "Whenever there is a tie, what I do is look at the next layer of statistics to see how the wind is blowing," he says. All polls vary in their methodology, but perhaps none is more subjective than weighting for party identification - a practice some follow and others don't. Over the past three decades, the Democratic lead in voters' self-identification with that party has declined compared with Republicans; some pollsters factor in evolving voter ID when they weight their samples while others don't.
Everybody on this board agrees with your bottom line. Some think 4 years of not a good enough job is worse than a few months, though.
I think TJ and bamaslammer need to resolve their viewpoints so we'll better understand the conservative position. TJ says the public is reeeeeal smart. BS says they are stupid which is why we need the electoral college. Which is it, guys? Will the real conservative please stand up?
Take heart democrats! There is still hope. Granted the party is it's own worst enemy insisting on choosing a rich Northeastern liberal without much charisma as a candidate. He is such an easy caricature a high school debate team wouldn't be challenged to come up with a smear campaign. He's not likeable and he doesn't present any simple clear ideas that the common man can get excited about. But he is smarter than GWB and in a one on one debate he can possibly exploit that advantage. But he can't be wish-washy. He'll have to clearly articulate the dangers in the current administration's policies and explain exactly what actions he will take if elected. (even though a presidents choices are few when facing an oppsition congress) Will the american people even listen to the debates? I'm not optomistic. The ridiculous nature of the campaigns so far have polarized the camps and deafend any open minds to actual issues. But maybe if the choice was made clear enough people couldn't help but see..maybe.
