Posted on 10/05/2008 5:56:59 PM PDT by Rokke
The MSM and its Influence
Unless we consider the validity of every story, we are influenced by what the MSM tells us. Most of those on the right are far different from Joe Six Pack. Joe Six Pack tends to think the big shots in the MSM are out to do him in. He has not trusted them and a majority of Joe's have not voted the way the MSM told them to vote in 7 of the last 10 presidential elections. It took Watergate and Ross Perot to get Joe to take the same position as the MSM. But it was not because of the MSM line, it was because of Watergate and Ross Perot. Note that in 2008 there is no Watergate and no Ross Perot.
I have great faith in the ordinary American citizen. If one questions them on the details of how they came to decide on issues or candidates one gets fuzzy answers. They just have impressions of who and what policies are good for them and their country and impressions of who and what are bad for them. The amazing thing is how often a majority of ordinary voters impressions are right.
I often compare game plans for sports to plans for campaigns. It is extremely rare for a campaign to go as planned. Only a huge victory like Nixon over McGovern allows the winner to stay with the same game plan from start to finish. Yet in that race, one could not tell from media coverage that Nixon was going for the biggest victory of the 20th century. Actually Nixon came within a tenth of one percent of being tied with Roosevelt for the biggest victory in the 20th century. Roosevelt in 1936 got one tenth of one percent more of the votes than Nixon did in 1972. Reagan in 1984 didn't even come close to equaling the Nixon victory of 1972.
The impression left by the media and the pollsters in 1972 was the young supporters of McGovern would come out in droves and the more mature supporters of Nixon were not very enthused. The media analysis of Nixon McGovern was much like the media analysis of McCain Obama.
The recent registration turn out in the Ohio is indicative. For the last week People in Ohio could register and vote on the same day. But the weak turn out has shown how enthused the unregistered Obama supporters are. They are not.
One other factor as far as Ohio and for that matter Pennsylvania are concerned. The leadership positions of the Democratic party in the very Democratic Counties are not the black leaders one would expect to be in charge. One reason Obama did poorly against Hillary in Ohio and PA was the county officials of those counties that have large inner city precincts, refused to distribute Obama money to get out the Obama vote. That was not the case in Indiana where the inner city polls got out the Obama vote and made Indiana close in the Democratic primary. But Obama did not win Indiana and he will not carry Indiana in this election. And I don't look for the Democratic party officials in Ohio and PA to bust their rumps to get out the white working class vote for Obama.
They did not do it in 1972 for McGovern, they did not do it in 1988 for Dukakis. They did in the last 4 elections but this time the Democrats are not running a Clinton, Gore or Kerry. The leadership positions of the Democratic party in the big cities of Ohio, and Pennsylvania are white working class Democrats. And which group of Democrats are not for Obama? The word on the street is that Obama has had to set up his own organization to get the money into the inner city precincts for the General election. It will not be as effective as the Democratic Party Machine at getting out the votes in any but black inner city precincts.
No matter what the media tells you.. This election is not over. There will be surprises in the final month that none of us can now foresee.
The final polls in 1980 had Reagan behind but within the margin of error. At this stage in 1980 Reagan was down double digits to Carter. Carter was even refusing to debate Reagan feeling that Carter had nothing to gain and only could lose if he debated. Two weeks later Carter agreed to debate. The Carter internal polls showed even with the negative media Reagan was rapidly gaining. The pollsters said John Anderson's vote would come out of Reagan's hide. But that proved to be untrue and Reagan won by 9 points. The polls in 1980 were 12 percentage points off.
You hear about ACORN registering 200,000 new voters in Michigan. But what you don't hear is that 85 percent of those so called new voters were already registered to vote. And many of the remaining 30,000 are fake. Only the pollsters believe there will be 200 thousand new Democrat Voters in Michigan.
There are supposedly 400 thousand new voters in Florida. It is the same deal. ACORN hires people to register voters at 10 bucks a pop. They charge Democratic 527s about 15 bucks a pop and therefore have no reason to make sure the forms turned in are valid.
That compares with Bush in 2004. Each new registration card was checked out by the local Republican party before the card was ever turned in to the board of elections. The 80 thousand voters registered by the Bush campaign in 2004 were all valid.
Much of what we read and hear in the media is just spin. The members of the media treat as news what they hope and expect to be true. If it favors McCain it cannot be true. If it favors Obama it is certainly true.
This election may very well hinge on what white working class democrats do on election day. My personal view is the more it looks like an Obama victory the more white working class Democrats will come out to vote for McCain.
If I were running the McCain campaign I would want him to look like he is losing. If I were running the Obama campaign I would want him to look like he is losing.
The media for some reason thinks voters are motivated to vote for the candidate that looks like a winner in the polls. That may have been true in some previous elections. But this election involves fear and fear is a much more powerful motivator than desire. I don't think the media people understand that fact.
This election because of Obama and Palin is an election like no other in our past. Expect surprises! We are certainly going to get them. The most surprised of all will likely be the media and their pollsters.
Seems to me that the MSM is inflating the polls, continually moving BHO ahead, in order to discourage the Anti-BHO vote, to make evryone feel it’s a lost cause.
Another excellent analysis by Ray Malone (Common Tator). I have read that he is not feeling well these days.
My prayers for a speedy recovery.
The logic is flawed by the first paragraph. Just because the majority has not voted the same way as the MSM in 7 of the last 10 elections does not mean that the MSM isn’t having a huge impact on the elections, nor does it mean that Joe Six Pack is not influenced by them.
I guess it depends of the definition of "huge". If huge means driving the final result of an election (who wins), than a 70% failure rate for the media is pretty bad.
If there is any Perot in this year's election, it is Hillary Clinton. She won't be on the ballot, but if she can keep 10% of democrats from voting for Obama, she may have more of an impact than the MSM.
This is a nice history lesson, but there’s something in this presidential election that wasn’t there before. The Chicago mob has previously limited its self to Illinois, but in this presidential election Chicago’s mob run political machine has organized a national campaign to put their candidate, Obama, into the office of President of the United States.
Our Democracy has never before been threatened to the degree as it is now. Just as the Russian Mafia used criminal methods to subvert Russia’s fragile democracy, the Chicago mob is now in an all out effort to destroy ours.
As we continue to live out the old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.”
I have to agree with you on that one....
>If we squeak through again it will be because God truly does shine upon America...
There was a Frenchman, de Tocqueville I believe, who said something like “America is great because it is good; if she ever ceases to be good, she shall cease to be great.”
Are we great, as a nation, as a people? Are we good?
“ACORN hires people to register voters at 10 bucks a pop. They charge Democratic 527s about 15 bucks a pop “
Acorn and other lib 527’s are parts of the Dem corporation.
No wonder the libs are always complaining about corporate greed LOL!
The same thing often happens in the real business world: ‘independent’ contractors are so interrelated with the base company that there is no effective discipline.
I guess it depends of the definition of "huge". If huge means driving the final result of an election (who wins), than a 70% failure rate for the media is pretty bad.I think if the media even changes the result of one election due to biased reporting that is too many.
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