New Hampshire: WTF?
Okay let’s start off with the side that makes sense, the Republicans. (Did I just say that?)
McCain won with 37% which is neither a surprise nor upsetting, frankly I sincerely hope he gets the nomination. Romney came in second, no surprise there. Huckabee in third as predicted. Giuliani took forth which was both surprising and discouraging. Paul is still alive in fifth for some reason. Thompson came in sixth and Hunter in dead last where he belongs.
Should Hunter drop out? Well let’s see thus far he’s come in seventh twice and third once. He has a grand total of one delegate. Face the music dude.
I admit I’m a little discouraged by the margin McCain won by, only 5%. I was hoping for a bit more of an ass whooping but in the end it was a lead of only about 13,000 votes. Will McCain be able to build up some momentum? I hope so but will it last until Super Tuesday sadly I have to admit this is unlikely but stranger things have happened, just look at the Democratic results for New Hampshire.
Uh. I guess I should do exactly that, shouldn’t I? Do I have to? Wouldn’t you rather hear more about how AvP: R sucked or what happened to me on the bus today? No? Alright, fine.
So Hillary won with 39% and a lead of about 7,000 votes a mere 2% ahead of Obama.
The pundits are going nuts.
Firstly because all the polls were dead wrong in terms of predicting the future. Frankly I’m a little surprised by this as anyone who took stats knows polls are only so accurate as well as the problems of SLOP (Self-Selecting Opinion Polls – not a perfect acronym but that’s what they call it in academia). Plus any Poli Sci major could tell you that polls often influence what happens. Think about it, you see your guy in dead last you may not want to throw your vote away, or you see your guy in second you may do what you can to get others to vote for him as well as yourself, or you see your guy in such a substantial lead you decide to stay home and watch Rocky & Bullwinkle in your underwear. The point is, polls take at best an inaccurate but educated guess at what people are thinking right now. Releasing those results may change people’s thinking. As well people change their minds for a variety of issues. If polls were so accurate why would candidates do all that last minute campaigning? Their jobs depend on these things and they don’t trust the polls so why should pundits believe them to be sacrosanct?
Secondly, they’re crawling all over each other trying to explain WHY they were wrong. Did Hillary’s ‘tears’ cause her upswing? Perhaps but since she didn’t actually cry I think we should all check our language on this one. Others have suggested it was a backlash to the ‘Iron My Shirt’ prank which, while hilarious, I can’t help but wonder who was behind it given its final outcome. Hillary had 13% more of the female vote than Obama so where the votes came from isn’t the question, WHY they came is the source of the speculation. Did they feel sorry for her? Is it a backlash? Do we REALLY need to dust off the ‘glass ceiling’ metaphor? As interesting as all that may be none of it is particularly relevant unless there is a possibility of it repeating in other states so perhaps we should just move on.
One thing I will say, Hillary’s victory lead to one hell of a speech from Obama. My partner says she saw someone crying in the audience, I can understand why. Shortly before his assassination MLK seemed to predict his own passing but encouraged people not to despair for he had seen the Promised Land; Obama IS that Promised Land and not because of the colour of his skin but for the things that he is saying, the content of his character if you will. Obama mentioned both MLK and JFK in his speech. Was he giving in to people trying to draw the parallels? Was he putting himself up beside them on the same level? No. He was citing them as inspiration. They set us on a path we have strayed from recently but he wants to continue to fight for their ideals, ideals that were immensely popular at the time and have resonated in the American consciousness ever since. There’s good there, Bush just hid it very well not just from the rest of the world but from the American people themselves. Thankfully a few have not forgotten and the populace is starving for it. He sees the good in the common man and even those who would be his enemy and he acknowledges, accepts, and promotes it. Gene Roddenberry would have loved this guy. You can point fingers at others or the status quo, you can talk about how great you are and all the things you can do better or have done better than someone else but Obama’s not interested in that – it’s not constructive. He has a philosophy of inclusiveness predicated on values, honour, respect, integrity, and you can feel it when he talks. He doesn’t want to beat out other candidates because he’s better than they are or because he disagrees with them, he wants to beat them because they won’t listen to or work with the other side to make things better. A vote for Obama is not a vote against anyone else and no matter what anyone else in the campaign does, you cannot reproduce it with the same quality and you can’t oppose it because it accepts you and that is why he will be the next president.
While watching The American President last week my partner asked why we never see speechs like the one at the end of that film in real life. At the end of Obama’s speech I turned to her and said “now you do”.
An Obama presidency is something you can feel good about and be passionate about, the elusive passionate moderate Jon Stewart doubted would ever come. And you can feel that passion not out of anger or frustration with the ‘enemy’ but out of hope.
Obama’s book is called The Audacity of Hope and while I regret to admit I haven’t read it his campaign could easily be called The Power of Hope. Because it seems hope can overpower anger, you just need someone audacious enough to make it a part of the conversation and people will come running to the table.
It’s refreshing and powerful and meaningful enough to bring a tear to your eye, no matter where you live.
Oh, right, other candidates.
Edwards at 17%, he’d make a good running mate.
Richardson at 5% announced today that he is dropping out of the race which I think is a wise choice that makes Gravel look like an idiot who’s lost touch with reality. If the guy who had 19 delegates to your 0 delegates drops out, and you’re not bringing important points or agenda-setting like Kucinich then you need to step the hell down. Here’s a fun fact: Richardson got twice as many votes as separated Clinton from Obama. Kinda makes it a whole new ball game, don’t you think? And if you listen to pundits who claim Richardson’s support came from Latino communities where do you think they’re going to take their votes?
Update: Do you think I could hack it as a serious political blogger? We might just find out if there’s any substance to these ramblings of mine as I just submitted the following comment to The Cafferty File in response to the question “After New Hampshire, will you trust the polls again?”
I think the problem here isn’t the polls or even the polling methods but the importance given the polls by the media. The polls only tell part of the story and were those numbers taken in an appropriate context a poll or indeed all polls not accurately predicting the future wouldn’t be viewed as such a betrayal. I will trust polls exactly the same as I did before, which is only to a certain logical point. They tell you what a certain group of people think at a particular time but that is subject to change as well as the methodology of the poll. Frequently people without land lines, those who only have cell phones or too poor to have a phone, are not polled. People need to be home at a certain time to be reached, these people have to agree to provide their opinions - those 3 factors alone limit the diversity of the pool you select from. It’s not wrong or flawed methodology; it’s just the reality of polls than many pundits seem to have forgotten. Polls are a single data point in a mosaic. Even if you had all the possible data points, hard and soft, you still couldn’t accurately predict what will happen otherwise I’d make a killing betting on political contests. I think many pundits (present company excluded) rely too heavily on polls and take them as hard indisputable facts but these “facts” need to be filtered with common sense and educated, informed, and in-depth analysis.
If any of the above makes it to air, please let me know as I may not catch it.
