Political Polling

Political Polling

Lately the constant media attention on what the current polling numbers mean is really beginning to irritate me.  Not only is it repetitive, and thus very boring, but the punditry of either side is in my opinion very flawed.    

After the debt crisis the country’s opinion of Congress has apparently, according to the polls, gone in the proverbial tank.  That gives me hope for the electorate.  Then there is much discussion about the fact that Obama’s numbers have dropped, and then always this is followed by the results of polling that people think the country is going in the wrong direction, and this factoid is then used to indicate that Obama is losing support. 

I can only describe what I perceive to be a major flaw in this logic.  For one, I have answered some of these polls and the question, “Who is responsible for the country going in the wrong direction?  Obama; Congress; the electorate; other” is never asked.   

I adamantly support Obama because he has done an outstanding job in trying to get through the programs people voted him into office to accomplish.  And this with his first two years being sandbagged by Republicans in the Senate filibustering virtually everything he wanted to accomplish, and since 2010, the House of Representatives saying “no” to everything he has wanted to accomplish.  With all of that we have a health care bill, which although not perfect, is certainly better than nothing, and can be amended in the future.  We have a significant drawdown of troops in Iraq, and soon I would hope we would have the same in Afghanistan.  We should never have been there in the first place.  Neither country had anything to do with 9/11 or WMD.  We could go through a list of his accomplishments, but I am not going to list them because if you can read this, you have a computer and can google them. 

After watching the last two Republican candidates’ forums, with the audience applauding the number of executions in Texas and then yelling out to have the hypothetical patient without health insurance and in a coma die, I can assure you I think the country is going in the wrong direction.  When I observe FauxNews commentators lie, lie, and lie some more, I certainly think the country is going in the wrong direction.  When I observe the overt disregard with which some Republicans treat our President, I certainly believe the country is going in the wrong direction.  When I observe the control that the Koch Machine, Grover Norquist, et al, have on the political life of this country, you better believe I think it is going in the wrong direction. 

None of that has anything to do with anything that Obama has done, yet he is constantly being blamed for it.  It is my paranoid suspicion that this constant background noise of blame Obama for not doing anything, that the Democrats are disappointed in him, etc., etc. is coming out of the Koch Machine.  They are adept at using the Big Lie principal.   

Say something over and over enough times, true or false, and pretty soon people begin to believe it.  That is what is happening here, and it is being based on the faulty logic of polling!