Posted on 02/20/2004 4:27:43 AM PST by jigsaw
I don’t necessarily believe that the news media is biased.
It may just be stupid.
Way stupid.
Because it’s hard anymore to listen to the news and take it seriously. The reliability and objectivity are so patently gone that you’re left with little more than blabbering implanted idiots and their metrosexual counterparts spouting off on things they have no comprehension of whatsoever.
It’s propaganda of the rankest form. Deception dressed up like breaking news.
Again, I’m not saying they’re biased. It could just be that they’re all dumb as rocks.
So dumb, for example, as not to know anything about the electoral college.
Here’s what I’m talking about.
For the last two weeks, story after story on the news has told about how John Kerry is leading George W. Bush in public opinion polls. Idiotic TV anchors have told us umpteen gazillion times that the president is in trouble and the challenger is on the rise.
And they seem to have the numbers to prove it. Kerry leads Bush by double-digit numbers. Edwards leads Bush by double-digit numbers. A head of lettuce and a carburetor each lead Bush by double digits. A porpoise is thinking of getting into the race. It just looks like everyone and his brother are kicking Bush’s backside.
It’s all very encouraging for Democrats and very discouraging for Republicans.
The race, it seems, is up. The anchors and movie stars were right all along, Bush is a dummy, and the Dixie Chicks are geniuses.
Or so you’d think if you believed the reporters.
But you can’t.
Because they’re either running a con with the survey numbers or they’re too stupid to understand the Electoral College.
Because the polls show that, instead of losing in November, George W. Bush has a virtual lock on re-election and is on the verge of breaking through in states he lost in 2000.
See, we don’t elect presidents through national polls. We are a federal union of states, and presidents are selected by the states as individual units represented by varying numbers of electors. It’s an all or nothing proposition.
If your state goes 51 percent for a presidential candidate, that presidential candidate gets 100 percent of your president electors. It’s done that way to avoid confusion and strife, and to respect the role of states as sovereign representatives of the people.
So it doesn’t matter how Bush and Kerry are doing against one another nationally, it all comes down to how they are doing against one another in the individual states.
And that’s where Kerry’s good news turns to disappointment.
George Bush is preferred over John Kerry in every state George Bush won in 2000, by a hefty margin. John Kerry, on the other hand, is favored in the states Al Gore won in 2000, but typically by the narrowest of margins.
That’s a one-two body blow to John Kerry.
If Bush holds the states he has now, the states he won in 2,000, he’s the winner. This time, just like last time, he will have enough electoral college votes to win.
According to a John Zogby poll, in states where Al Gore won in 2,000, John Kerry is preferred to over President Bush by a margin of 46 to 46 percent.
That’s razor thin.
In the states Bush won in 2000, however, he leads Kerry 51 to 39 percent.
That’s a huge lead.
And it means the only states in which victory is uncertain – for either candidate – are the states which went Democratic in 2000. John Kerry’s stronghold isn’t his stronghold, it’s his Achilles Heel.
So the national news story isn’t the collapse of George W. Bush, it is, what can the Democrats do to salvage their presidential campaign?
Short answer: Virtually nothing.
Because the numbers don’t lie.
The reporters do.
And I’m not writing this to gloat, or because I am a Republican. Both sides are damaged by these misleading reports. Republicans are led to despair and Democrats are led to complacency. Neither is good. Neither side is served by deception masquerading as news and inaccuracy posing as certitude.
I don’t know who will win this election.
But I do know who would win if the election was held today.
And it’s not the guy the TV anchors are saying it is.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2004
They cannot deal with the fact that the message is out and NO ONE LIKES IT
I'm sick to death of the 24/7 coverage of lib/dems. Why, even when the media put an R on the telly or radio, the only thing they want him/her to comment upon is the lib/dems. There isn't anyone who is speaking on the Bush record - except Podhoretz, who can only do so because he's written a book on Bush.
Damn straight. I can't wait to see our troops weigh in on the election. Let's send John "McClellan" Kerry back to Mass. Good article. Funny how no one seems to remember the electoral college -- especially afer Florida 2000. I guess all the Rats remember is how their mob rule and their trial lawyers almost sued their way into the white house.
At every opportunity they are saying it.
This is purely out of hope for a self-fulfilled prophesy.
How stupid is that strategy?
Could be very smart when you consider the odds of John Kerry being elected solely on his own merits.
BUMP.
Kerry leads Bush by double-digit numbers.I emphasize typically above because, in order for the above to be true, there must also be states with a great many electoral votes in which Kerry leads Bush by very large double-digit margins.But
. . . the polls show that . . . George Bush is preferred over John Kerry in every state George Bush won in 2000, by a hefty margin.John Kerry, on the other hand, is favored in the states Al Gore won in 2000, but typically by the narrowest of margins.
Or it could be that the state by state polling is of likely voters and the nationwide poll is of any person with a pulse and an opinion.
. . . and out of desire for a horse hace to report. It would however be bad news if indeed the Democrats have such a lock on the big Gore states (like mine) that Bush loses the popular vote again--even if he does handily take the majority in the Electoral College.My fond hope is that when the sheeple learn that the military had high prestige after WWII (such that only veterans need apply for elective office), and that the country's and the military's morale was devastated by leftist activists such as John Kerry.
But first we are going to have to refight the 1980s. We are going to have to rub the leftists' noses in Reagan's Cold War triumph; we are going to have to back Kerry into a corner where he either claims that the US should have imploded like the Soviet Union or he apologizes for opposing Reagan every inch of the way (fat chance).
And since the journalistic establishment was the linchpin of Kerry's original coup back then--and that establishment is just as anticonservative now as it was back then--we are going to have to refight the battle against journalism one more time. And we know that journalism's biggest weapon is--silence. We are going to have to push to get the extent of the Democratic cupidity and of journalistic complicity into the public. Not an easy sell.
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