ABC – Gary Langer:

This was so off-the-charts wrong. All of these polls. I think there were a couple of exceptions, but all the big-time polls, as you know, had it Obama up by five to ten, some cases 12 points. Now, they got the Republican race fairly close, but they really blew the Democrat side. These pollsters, their reputations are crucial to them.

Polling is such a fundamental element of the Media these days, because polling is used to make news. Polling is used to shape public opinion.

Polling is not a reflection of news.

This is the thing that a lot of people don’t understand, but it is not meant to tell you, “Hey, this is what people are thinking.”

The purpose of polls — be it pre-election polls or Iraq war polls — those polls are being used by the Media as a substitute for news, and the purpose is to shape your thinking and your opinion, and if they continue to botch these things, nobody’s going to pay attention to them.

Wouldn’t it be just fun, wouldn’t it be fascinating if there were no polls, no pre-election polls whatsoever?

Stop and think for a moment. It will never happen, I know, but stop and think if every election, primary or general, had no polling in it, and you had no idea what your neighbors were thinking unless you asked them, but you couldn’t talk to everybody in the state.

If you lived in New Hampshire, you couldn’t talk to everybody to find out what was going to happen. All you could do is talk to your friends and some of your neighbors. You wouldn’t have the slightest idea. It would be totally up to you and what you think: not joining the crowd, not opposing the crowd. It would be totally up to you. I think it would be fascinating.

It will never happen, but these pollsters are going to have to get to the bottom of this. They are going to have to find out what went wrong and caused their polls to be so skewed. They’re going to have to go about this in a purely objective way, and then if they have guts, they’re going to have to tell us what they found.

ABC posted on its own blog – Gary Langer, and he’s “covered the beat of public opinion for more than 15 years.”

Here’s how he began:

“There will be a serious critical look at the final pre-election polls in the Democrat presidential primary in New Hampshire. That is essential. It is simply unprecedented for so many polls to have been so wrong. We need to know why. But we need to know it through careful, empirically based analysis. There will be a lot of claims about what happened, about respondents who reputedly lied, about alleged difficulties polling in biracial contests,” and that’s the only reference to that that he makes: “about alleged difficulties polling in biracial contests.”

Can I explain what this means to you, fokes?

It’s called the Wilder Effect. In other places, it’s called the Bradley Effect. In still other places, it’s called the Dinkins Effect. But here’s how it works…

You have on a ballot a black candidate and a white candidate. A pollster calls and asks you who you’re going to vote for. You, in the privacy of your phone call with the pollster, not wanting the pollster to think that you’re a racist, likely would say, “I’m voting for the black guy,” so as to get the pollster’s approval, whether the pollster actually grants it or not. (You know, the tenets of political correctness.)

But then, when you go into your polling place, and you go into the place behind the curtain where it’s just you, and there’s no pollster, you vote for the white guy, thereby skewing the results of the pre-election poll.

Now, I would also like to add to this hypothesis what I would call the Reverse Wilder Effect. Wilder, by the way, being Doug Wilder, the governor of Virginia who was black, and about whom it was first postulated; and Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, running for governor out there; and Dinkins.

Now keep in mind, all these guys are Democrats and you’re dealing with Democrats being called by the pollsters.

EXAMPLE:

So if you call up your Democrat and say, “Hi, I’m from the ABC Polling Unit. Who you gonna vote for?”

“I’m voting the black guy, I’m voting a good America. I’m not racist: I’m voting the black guy. I’m open-minded! It’s time for a change.”

“Oh, good! I’ll put it down.”

You go to the ballot box, and you vote the white guy, where nobody can see what you’re doing and nobody will know what you’re doing.

But Iowa, the Hawkeye Cauci… You go into somebody’s house; you go into some gymnasium, some school cafeteria, and you got all your friends knowing what you’re doing. You have all your friends watching what you’re doing, and so when it comes to time to vote in the Hawkeye Cauci on the Democrat side, in order that your friends don’t think you a racist, you vote Obama, because you can’t vote in private in the Hawkeye Cauci.

This would be the Reverse Wilder Effect.

So who knows if we’ve got an accurate result out of Iowa.

We’re talking Democrats who are immersed in political correctness and who live and die based on what people think of them, and the voting booth is the only place nobody will know what you’ve done, unless you tell them. So there’s no worry what people will think of you.

But in the Hawkeye Cauci, when everybody can hear what you say, or read what you vote or can hear you advocating or whatever? Well, you might have skewed Obama’s big victory in Iowa. Who knows? Then you get on to New Hampshire, and, of course, the Obama Effect here, or the Wilder Effect in full force in the sense that when it’s time to go vote, you do so in private.

You’ve told the pollsters, “I am caught up in the Obama wave coming out of Iowa,” and so forth. Then you get into the voting booth and say, “Screw it! I’m voting Hillary.” You couple that with who knows what other kinds of shenanigans went on with people first-time voting in New Hampshire. I don’t know if there’s a way of finding that out, but it’s probably not difficult to do if they would release those kinds of statistics.

The secretary of state said the ballots supposedly ran out. But the New Hampshire secretary of state said they’re expecting records numbers of first-time voters, which means (ha ha…) out-of-state people. It’s not illegal in New Hampshire.

Regardless what happened, pollsters are going to have to find out: for their own good, for their own understanding.

I’ve heard some pollsters saying, “Well, you know what, we’ve got a problem with our models. We haven’t found a way to calculate this massive turnout that’s surprising everybody,”

Meaning…

We haven’t figured out a way to go into Massachusetts and Vermont and ask people there how they’re going to vote in the New Hampshire primary.

The November elections will not be a referendum on Iraq. The growing stability there — thanks to the troop surge that Democrats fought tooth and nail — slammed that door in their faces.

Identity politics (woman, minority, religion, etc.) won’t decide the election, either. Ultimately, the politics of personality will give way to the issues that matter.

Although Iraq won’t be the “single issue,” national security concerns do matter.

• You want your next Administration to pretend 9/11 never happened, and to abandon the fight against Islamofascist terrorism, as happened during Clinton era?
• On the domestic front, do you want more of your earnings taken… and redistributed via Big Government entitlements like socialized medicine?
• Do you want our borders secured — or amnesty granted to illegal immigrants?
• Do you want liberals to dictate which lightbulbs you must use — which cars you must drive — all because of the global warming hoax?

 

In short, folks, this election will be about the vision for the future of America.
And by now we should all know this.

I’m not abandoning conservatism like many are while debating the current crop of candidates. These are ones who are abandoning conservative beliefs, for reasons that scare me…

You’re not thinking. You’re feeling.

You’re seeing something that’s conservative when it’s not because you want it to be.

You’re falling into this trap of becoming victims. You’re allowing the news media to dictate your mood and your attitude and your contentment, your happiness, and then you’re ultimately relying on the election of individuals to change your life. — Quasi definition of Liberalism. This is not what conservatives support candidates for, liberals do that.

I’m watching the election coverage. I’m hearing all these Republican commentators say the Republican Party is blowing it by not understanding that this feeling of economic insecurity is really rife and widespread among conservative Republicans. Now, rather than argue with that… (sigh)

I don’t think there’s any reason, or not a whole lot of reasons for economic insecurity.

Here I’m going to sound like I’m out of touch. But I look at this economy, I see 96% of the American people paying their mortgages. They’re not losing their homes. They’re not being foreclosed on. I see record employment and record low unemployment.

Sure, we’ve got some things: gasoline prices rising. This has happened before. The price of everything goes up all the time (self evident, through history).

We’ve have the War on Terror… battles in Iraq, Afghanistan… etc.

I understand that there’s angst! So let me just accept it...

Rather than argue about it and rather than try to lift people up with an emotional and inspirational plea to just not participate in it.

We’re in the United States of America, for crying out loud!

We are not prisoners of some tyranny or dictatorship yet.
We have the ability to do whatever we want; try whatever we want !!

It’s up to us!

Yet so many people seem so willing to turn it over to the government, when there’s angst or trials or tribulations.

So let me just ask you a question:

Those of you in this great country who are in the midst of feeling this economic insecurity, what do you want Mike Huckabee to do about it? What do you want John McCain to do about it? What do you want Barack Obama to do about it? What do you want John Edwards to do about it?

What I fear is that people are confusing populism with conservatism.

Populism is a political figure telling you whatever he thinks you want to hear, designed to make you think he only cares about you and fixing your situation.

Like John Edwards telling us all these horror stories that make this country sound like it’s 1920s in Louisiana, and he’s out there and he’s doing these personal interviews on stage during his appearances where people have lost their jobs, or they’ve lost money, or they’ve lost this or that. Remember in New Hampshire some time ago, he took a question from a young girl who was having problems with her student loans, and she was beside herself? She didn’t know how she’s going to pay ’em back, and what did Edwards do?

Did Edwards offer to help her personally? No! Did the Edwards offer to help any of these sorry cases that he cites? Does he ever offer to help them personally? Does he ever say, “I can help you right now”?

No! He makes them wait until he’s elected president, and then what’s he going to do?

He’s going to supposedly get even with the people causing them their stress. But he isn’t going to help them because government can’t, unless you turn your life over to it, and become a victim and you’re going to become dependent on government doing everything for you, that’s the only way it can happen.

But you have a momentary economic crisis in your life, it’s your responsibility; you fix it.

If you turn it over to the government you’ve got to turn over every aspect of your life, because they don’t fix individual problems. Yet so many people think that Candidate A or Candidate B is going to do that, especially in the area of health care.

“Yeah, I wanted a liver transplant. I didn’t get it in time and my son died.” Yeah, so you’re going to elect John Edwards and maybe 20 years from now the people responsible will be held accountable?

Please forgive these blunt … yet accurate examples of possible situations.

What is this notion, that electing any single human being is going to fix a momentary, temporary, very personal economic problem? The resulting dissent into victimhood and then seeing a populist approach, and you think it’s conservative because it’s compassionate or cares or whatever? It just scares me, because this is how we get charlatans elected. It is how we get people who use the misery and suffering of others in order to advance their own political fortunes.

The one thing I learned almost 20 yrs ago:

You can’t talk populist beliefs out of people. You just can’t do it. All it does is: They hate you, and they resent you for trying to tell them that what they’re feeling is incorrect. You can’t talk to people who have a populist belief in a candidate; you just can’t talk ’em out of it.

At some point it has to be revealed to these people individually.

It’s real simple. I have more respect for American citizens, than you can possibly know. I have more appreciation and understanding for your potential than you do. You can be so much better than you are.

We all can.

But you’re not going to get there waiting for a single candidate to come along and pay the electric bill, damn it!

I’ve heard, “The people in this country are a bunch of idiots. You’re giving them too much credit.” You’ve heard these when it comes to who wins elections, how many people vote liberal, Democrat and so forth. My response has been, “Nah, I’ve got great faith in the American people.”

And I do!

I use my own life as sort of a guide, and I use the stories of people I know who have come from nothing, and led by their ambition and their desire, which is 80% of achievement, by the way, all other things being equal.

 

How badly you want it, what you’re willing to do to get it,
that’s the determining factor.

What I know is that everybody — there are exceptions, of course, because there are some self-starters — but everybody has more potential than they even know. Everybody has more ability than they know. Everybody can be better than they are, in any number of ways. It’s true of all of us.

But most people, as I said, are not self-starters so we need mentors, teachers, people who inspire us, and a lot of people are looking for that, a lot of people are looking for leadership. We haven’t had a whole lot of leadership when it comes to our conservative movement.

Peggy Noonan said it well about Governor Huckabee. He’s not really leading a movement. He’s riding a wave. People want leadership, and they respond to it when they get it. And unfortunately, sometimes they think leadership is leadership when it isn’t, when it’s populism.

But all of this angst — let me join the angst crowd for just a second. All this angst is based on the fact that I have such a pie in the sky notion of the potential of this country and the people who live in it.

 

I know that it’s the people who make this country work. Ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things.

That’s what makes this country work; that’s what makes it great!

Politicians don’t, lobbyists don’t, people in Washington that are elected, they’re not the definition of great. Government programs are not great.

Let’s say that you’re in angst over college education for your kids, tuition. Well, yeah, it’s a big problem. There’s no question. It’s exorbitantly high.

Who’s in charge of it? A bunch of libs. Who runs higher education? Bunch of libs. Who are the people always running around decrying what Big Oil is doing to you and Wal-Mart’s doing to you? They want to punish these people. They want to punish the engine of freedom. They want to punish the capitalist system. When it comes to college education, you are being raped, and your kids are being sent off to a bunch of places that are just nothing more than indoctrination centers, yet you want to get them in there. You gotta take out student loans, it’s exorbitant.

What is a president going to do about this?

The president can’t wave a magic wand and demand the liberal administrators, at universities; lower tuition, change the college loan rules and so forth? Any number of other economic circumstances.

David Brooks, New York Times, says that the biggest problem facing America today, the biggest source of economic angst is divorce, that divorce causes more economic hardship on people than practically any other thing, and then it also causes a disruption of families. He says this is something that Huckabee knows. Huckabee is appealing to the morality and the culture and the values that keep families together will somehow resonate with people and they’ll understand that this is a way to fix the culture.

I hate to tell you –– Peggy Noonan makes this point, too, in a column — there’s nothing the government can do about changing the culture. There really isn’t a whole lot the government can do about changing the culture. Take a look at whatever cultural rot you see and ask yourself: What’s happening in movies? What’s happening in music? What’s happening on television? What’s happening in the pop culture?

Look, what I’m getting at here is that I would just hope that here in 2008 that a majority of Americans would be motivated to rely on themselves, to try to take advantage of the freedom that being an American is. You look all around and you see robust signs of prosperity, you see success, you see people accomplishing great things either in the neighborhood or in the city or town where you live, or you read about it happening in other parts of the country. And for some reason it doesn’t click that maybe you could do the same thing. I just wish that it would.

When that is the case, because this is the United States of America with unparalleled freedom and prosperity, for people to then throw up their hands in frustration and say, “Yeah, I really can’t do it, it’s not up to me, I’m going to let Obama do that for me, or I’m going to let Edwards, I’m going to let Huckabee, I’m going to let Fred Thompson,” whoever the candidate is.

You’re giving up and you’re allowing yourself to become a victim, and you’re not going to get what you want. People who earn more money than you, do get a tax increase, fine, you may feel better, yeah, get even with those S.O.B.’s…

But how does it help you in your own bottom line?

It doesn’t !!

I say this stuff precisely because I love this country, and I know what’s possible here.

I know so many people that do not think that they can do it themselves, and I just can’t tell you how it hurts, and it depresses me, and it makes me want to go back to basics and explain to you what conservatism really is, why it wins, how it wins, how it works, which is I guess what I’m doing here is essentially going back to basics.

So many people are so capable of so much more than they know.

Reference prior post: Conservatives 101, Doers, not Whiners.

Politicians talk about wanting the best for everybody. Well, so do I. I just have a different technique of how that happens, and I just don’t think it happens through them. It is achieved by “We the People“.

Well, ready just in time for the New Year comes a new global warming study.

The AP headline proclaims that “Nature and Man” are jointly cooking the Arctic. The article reports:“There’s more to the recent dramatic and alarming thawing of the Arctic region than can be explained by man-made global warming alone… Nature is pushing the Arctic to the edge, too.”

That’s right:

Scientists have discovered a “natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming”(And refreeze, by the way, at record rates, although that little detail was left out of the story.) It’s an “energy transfer,” due to storms heading north on ocean currents. This newly discovered “energy transfer” is cyclical. It happens — all by itself — on its own schedule.  Mankind — not involved.

Can you believe it?

Scientists are now on record theorizing that nature may actually have something to do with the climate!

But they can’t come right out and say, “Oops! All the global warming hype is BullShit.” So of course, these scientists still find a way blame you. Now they say that you and nature are teaming up to roast the Arctic, and melting the poor polar bears off of their little icebergs.

So you guilt-ridden Global Warming nuts, purposefully freezing your butts off here in America because you’re worried about the ice melting up north? Relax. It’s not your fault.

At least not all your fault. So go ahead — turn up the heat! Use an incandescent bulb! Drive! Because it’s now official: you and Mother Nature are in it together, and we can’t stop Mother Nature.

– she’s a woman… Like me.

New Year’s Eve, the Gallup poll released its annual survey on Americans and the level of satisfaction with their personal lives.

Eighty-four percent of Americans say that they are satisfied with their personal lives at this time, including a solid majority who say they are very satisfied. The personal satisfaction level contrasts sharply, though, with the low level of satisfaction Americans express with the way things are going in the US at this time.

Because two weeks ago, two weeks prior to New Year’s Eve, Gallup released a poll that said that 70% of these same people think the nation’s headed in the wrong direction.

Now, what do you do make of this?

Eighty-four percent satisfied with their personal lives, 70% think the country is going on in the wrong direction. There is a simple explanation for this. It’s an explanation and it is very simple.

Everybody’s lives — 84%, yep, solid majority, very satisfied, hunky-dory, things couldn’t be better.

“But I watch the news every day and I see housing crisis and mortgage crisis and subprime crisis, the credit crisis and Wall Street, everybody is losing their house but me and everybody is losing their car but me.”

So it’s the Media, with the success at creating the doom and gloom.

Daniel Henninger writes in the Wall Street Journal:

“It is to suggest that the never-off eye of modern political media leaves the impression that nothing good is possible. If progress happens, as with the surge in Iraq or a new therapy for cancer, it must be diminished by ‘analysis,’ listing four things that could ‘go wrong.’ As a way to absorb the way the world works, this is depressing. Good things happen. Get over it.”

Henninger closes the column this way: “A reader of this column, Richard A. Fazzone of Potomac, Md., recently got these matters as well focused as I could, so with the presidential trenches waiting, he gets the final speech: ‘There is no Great Depression, no WWII, no Cold War, no racism as it was in the 20th Century or before — no really big problem or solution. Unless something changes, voters want practically nothing from government, or more precisely, relatively few want the same thing, and without political consensus, a democracy does little or nothing new. In one respect, Mr. Henninger is correct to observe that “in American politics, ambiguity is all you get,” but that may say enough. As another new year begins, we might consider ourselves fortunate for ambiguity, rather than the opposite and what would accompany it.'”

Meaning, we just don’t know how to feel good because we don’t trust it. Too many of us are fearful of happiness, too many of us fearful of success. When it happens to them, “This can’t be real. I don’t deserve this. This isn’t going to last,” because they don’t want to work hard enough to keep it. Or they just don’t trust it. And some people, when they’re happy, “Oh, no, this is not right, I don’t deserve to be happy. There’s nothing going on to make me happy. Why do I feel so good? It can’t be.”

Then you turn on the TV, watch the Media, you get validated, you shouldn’t be happy.

So people have fears of success, fears of happiness, and then when others around them are happy and optimistic, guess who has to do the explaining?

The happy and the optimistic are the ones challenged. “What are you so happy about”

When, in truth, the way it ought to happen, what are you so miserable about? You’re an American. What in the world are you so depressed about? Why are you so unhappy? You live in the United States of America. Being miserable and unhappy, seems to be a majority opinion, and if you’re miserable and unhappy, then you can be sympathized with.

If you’re happy and optimistic, odds are you might be resented.

Why is that?