This Is My Day
It begins with a stop at electoral-vote.com, and thanks to whatever well-meaning friend brought that site to my attention. (This is where the punctuation for "sarcastic" that my friend Brian wants would come in handy.) It has since become a focal point of my obsession. The Votemaster (as he calls himself) of the site is an avowed Democrat, but he is scrupulously ethical in his attempt to keep the site's results legitimate. Unlike most pollsters and pundits, he explains his methodology in detail on his Welcome page. He has even tinkered with his method (averaging recent polls rather than using the "latest" one - and describing how hard it is to determine which is the "latest") in his desire to provide the clearest and most accurate picture possible. Every day he updates the map, reflecting the latest poll results which have come in. States are colored deep red or blue, indicating strong support for Bush or Kerry (poll results in the double digits); pale red or blue, indicating weak support for Bush or Kerry ("leaning" in other polls); or outlined in pale red or blue, indicating negligible support for Bush or Kerry (results within the margin of error). The map currently shows Kerry ahead when all states which are not exact ties (Nevada and New Hampshire) are factored in. But he also indicates Kerry has only 95 "strong" electoral votes to Bush's 147, figures which are fairly conservative compared to most media outlets. The map has swung wildly back and forth over the past few months. As recently as yesterday, Bush was ahead.
The Votemaster is not only a pusher but a junkie, so while he provides me with my morning fix, he also links to sites and articles where he gets his own junk. His opening commentary is clear and cogent, so if I've somehow missed a few days, I'll go to "Previous Reports" to see what's he's had to say. I've learned more about polling through this site than I knew I didn't know. It's been useful during this season of constant poll results. It's through this site that I read the article (long lost now in the depths of the Web) in which a Gallup rep said their results tend to stray from those of other pollsters because they think wider swings are more exciting. Another article clarified the notion of "margin of error, explaining that the MoA (as they like to call it) refers to both numbers in the poll. So if a poll shows Bush ahead of Kerry 49% to 46%, with a 4 point MoA (not unusual), it actually means that Bush's percentage could be anywhere from 53 to 45, and Kerry 50 to 42, so a 4 point margin of error actually allows for an 11 point spread. John Zogby - who seems to be one of the more legitimate pollsters - was on The Daily Show this week, and spoke of how polls have changed over the past 50 years - a topic I read about on electoral-vote.com. With the advent of answering machines and caller ID, on top of busy schedules, only about 40% of the people who are called answer their phone. Of that, 2 out of 3 refuse to finish the survey, versus the 2 out of 3 people who regularly agreed to finish the poll 40 years ago. So in order to poll 1300 people you need to call 10,000. Hard to say you're getting a representative sampling. Then, of course, there are the formulas various organizations use to determine who is a "likely voter." Don't ask - it will drive you mad.
Eventually work forces me off the Net. If it's a school day, the half dozen or so of my students who have any interest in politics want to ask me questions. Especially since I used the Conventions and Debates as teaching aids in my public speaking class. My students know where I stand politically, but I maintain as non-partisan a stance as possible. For example, I was very open about expecting John Kerry to tank in the debates. On one hand, I felt that I should keep all politics out of the classroom, but on the other, I recognized that would be dishonest, and would do them a greater disservice than a balanced discussion of events. I have a couple of admitted Republicans in the class, and since a classroom is a weighted environment (I must grade them, after all) I've fought to remain open. I've never said, for example, that George Bush is a madman who is going to kill us all. And since my support for John Kerry is tentative at best, this hasn't been hard to do.
My students who support Bush are not outwardly insane. One is a suburban youth who is interested in law enforcement, and who may (as many people his age) still be echoing the opinions of his parents. I don't mean this as condescending. Because I limit political discussion, I don't really know what most of my students' beliefs are based on. But I do know he's against gun control, which seems an odd stance for someone who works with the police. (Maybe not.) The other is a 50ish woman who lost her job in publishing due to budget cuts and outsourcing, and who has returned to school to get a degree in nursing, in order to find work which, while it will pay significantly less than her previous job, will at least be more dependable. Her support for the Administration is a bit tougher to comprehend.
If I'm working from home, odds are good that I'll be 1) working on the computer, and 2) using the Net for research. This is bad. The problem with having the vast resources of the Internet at your command is that you are bound to use them. And when one has become a political junkie, the news is never good. The political news is especially gut churning. I've heard pundits comment that this election is particularly partisan, or dirty, or both. I won't counter those statements, though I find most elections particularly partisan and dirty. What makes this election stand out in my mind is the sense that the Parties believe Vince Lombardi was right: Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing. There is nothing they won't do to win this election. The dirty tricks of Nixon are childhood pranks compared with those of Karl Rove. This is a guy who once held up the results of an election for a year until he could strong-arm his guy into office. This is the guy who painted John McCain as irrational and Max Cleland as unpatriotic, simply to win. People ask why Democrats can't forget Florida in 2000. It's because we believe (and I'll include myself in this category) that Florida 2000 was not an anomaly; it is now standard operating procedure. We see a Republican operative behind every hedge because the evidence suggests they're there.
Let me digress. I am not one who finds Republicans inherently demonic. As I've written before, I was chased out of the Republican Party when it got into bed with the Religious Right in the 80s. Ronald Reagan re-energized the Party, but most of what he stood for was anathema to me. Still, on the local level I have supported Republican candidates, and will again. It is the national Republican Party that has become the haven of thugs. Under George Bush and Tom DeLay, it has taken its cues from the Texas Republican Party, a party which has won seats in Congress by gerrymandering strong Democratic representatives out of their districts. In one case, it did so by redrawing the congressional map so that the border of a mostly Republican district extended down the middle of a street and encased one single house in a Democratic district: the home of its representative. I am no fan of Tom Daschle, but in the past, when politics still has some sense of decency (say, four years ago), the leadership of one party did not specifically target the leadership of the other. Those rules are no more. This year, the national Republican Party has spent a record amount of money trying to unseat Daschle, the Senate minority leader. For this Party, whose leader once said he wanted to be a uniter, not a divider, having power is more important than the good of the people.
Which is why I need The Daily Show. To cool off.
It has come down to this: the two political programs I can watch without suffering an aneurysm are The Daily Show and Countdown, with Keith Olbermann. It is no surprise that both shows take a less than serious look at events of the day.
This is the first year I've really committed to The Daily Show. I've loved Jon Stewart for years, though I don't remember how I first came to know him. I remember him from The Larry Sanders Show, lo these ten years ago now, but by the time he was on that show I was already familiar with him. In any case, I loathe Craig Kilborn, the prior host of The Daily Show, which is why I never watched it under his tenure. But the show's Indecision 2000 coverage, under new host Stewart, got great press, so this year I started checking it out.
One charge I've heard in the past is that Republicans are much funnier than Democrats. I've always found that difficult to fathom. I suppose it comes from the notion that Dems can be so dour, with their constant grousing about the environment and health care and the underprivileged, while GOPs, whose major concerns are how to make and keep more money, are singing "Happy Days Are Here Again." The difference I find is that the left are willing to mock their own, while the right are not. Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly may disagree with something George Bush says, but rarely, if ever, do they take him to task for it. Jon Stewart mocks those on the right and left equally. Well, not equally. He mocks Kerry for being foolish, and George Bush for being... Oh. Maybe it is equal. In any case, I am hard pressed to come up with a satirist on the right who is willing to take shots at members of their own party, whereas for those on the left, it is de rigeur.
Stewart has been taken to task for his appearance on Crossfire, where, worst of all, he was not funny. Let me say this about that. First, his charges were no surprise to anyone who had ever watched him, so for the hosts to be shocked was disingenuous, at best. (Disingenuousness: Lying for the New Millennium!) (Just as it was disingenuous for members of the Bush camp to "misunderstand" Kerry's use of the phrase "global test" in the debate.) (Jeez, I hate them!) (Oh, and I prefer "disingenuity," but the dictionary won't have it.) The best I can offer is that the hosts can't be blamed for supposing that Stewart's desire to sell his book would outweigh his desire to have his say. Against the second charge - Stewart's verbal inelegance ("You're hurting America") - I have no defense. He's a comic, not a pundit. As he said of his own show: his lead-in is puppets making prank phone calls. But if people who can't express themselves well don't deserve to be heard, someone needs to muzzle the president.
The remainder of my TV love is reserved for Keith Olbermann. Countdown, is another show I never watched until recently. It came across my radar through an article in the Atlantic (?) about the cable news networks, in which his show was given high marks. I second that emotion. Olbermann is smart and articulate, and recognizes that many of those in command are neither. Like Stewart, he leans to the left, but is more balanced than most of the pundits. He is willing, for example, to broadcast poll results which show both candidates in the lead (easy, these days), and regularly has on guests from across the political spectrum. Who he allows to have their say, by the way. Oh, sure, he spent a lot of time on the Bill O'Reilly sex scandal, but that's motivated less by politics than by his undisguised disregard for both O'Reilly and Fox, for whom he once worked.
Countdown got me into bed with MSNBC, which has become my network of choice this political season. In the past, MSNBC was little more to me than the network of Time & Again, a Biography-style program which draws on NBC's vast video records for its footage. Cheap and easy. Just like host Jane Pauley. Or that joke. It is also the network for Hardball, which used to be just another "let's yell at each other" show. Lately, host Chris Matthews has calmed down quite a bit. His show is one of the few news outlets which was critical of the invasion of Iraq from the beginning, which is what first drew me to it. On Iraq, Matthews is to the left of both Bush and Kerry. Which is not to say he's a leftie - he's in love with Dick Cheney. Matthews is an old-school Washington insider, and he has alliances and enmities on both sides of the fence. He is best in small quantities, like caviar or absinthe, but can be bracing. Unlike Joe Scarborough, whose political axe is so enormous he cannot hide it. Yeah, I watched these guys during the conventions (They found the Republican Convention more exciting and engaging, unlike me, who found them both little but hogwash.) and the debates (Their consensus that Kerry won the first debate shocked me. Need I say that was the only debate they thought he won?). Less dry than C-SPAN, less boring than CNN, less infuriating than Fox.
With all this input, it's no surprise I can't sleep at night.
The Votemaster is not only a pusher but a junkie, so while he provides me with my morning fix, he also links to sites and articles where he gets his own junk. His opening commentary is clear and cogent, so if I've somehow missed a few days, I'll go to "Previous Reports" to see what's he's had to say. I've learned more about polling through this site than I knew I didn't know. It's been useful during this season of constant poll results. It's through this site that I read the article (long lost now in the depths of the Web) in which a Gallup rep said their results tend to stray from those of other pollsters because they think wider swings are more exciting. Another article clarified the notion of "margin of error, explaining that the MoA (as they like to call it) refers to both numbers in the poll. So if a poll shows Bush ahead of Kerry 49% to 46%, with a 4 point MoA (not unusual), it actually means that Bush's percentage could be anywhere from 53 to 45, and Kerry 50 to 42, so a 4 point margin of error actually allows for an 11 point spread. John Zogby - who seems to be one of the more legitimate pollsters - was on The Daily Show this week, and spoke of how polls have changed over the past 50 years - a topic I read about on electoral-vote.com. With the advent of answering machines and caller ID, on top of busy schedules, only about 40% of the people who are called answer their phone. Of that, 2 out of 3 refuse to finish the survey, versus the 2 out of 3 people who regularly agreed to finish the poll 40 years ago. So in order to poll 1300 people you need to call 10,000. Hard to say you're getting a representative sampling. Then, of course, there are the formulas various organizations use to determine who is a "likely voter." Don't ask - it will drive you mad.
Eventually work forces me off the Net. If it's a school day, the half dozen or so of my students who have any interest in politics want to ask me questions. Especially since I used the Conventions and Debates as teaching aids in my public speaking class. My students know where I stand politically, but I maintain as non-partisan a stance as possible. For example, I was very open about expecting John Kerry to tank in the debates. On one hand, I felt that I should keep all politics out of the classroom, but on the other, I recognized that would be dishonest, and would do them a greater disservice than a balanced discussion of events. I have a couple of admitted Republicans in the class, and since a classroom is a weighted environment (I must grade them, after all) I've fought to remain open. I've never said, for example, that George Bush is a madman who is going to kill us all. And since my support for John Kerry is tentative at best, this hasn't been hard to do.
My students who support Bush are not outwardly insane. One is a suburban youth who is interested in law enforcement, and who may (as many people his age) still be echoing the opinions of his parents. I don't mean this as condescending. Because I limit political discussion, I don't really know what most of my students' beliefs are based on. But I do know he's against gun control, which seems an odd stance for someone who works with the police. (Maybe not.) The other is a 50ish woman who lost her job in publishing due to budget cuts and outsourcing, and who has returned to school to get a degree in nursing, in order to find work which, while it will pay significantly less than her previous job, will at least be more dependable. Her support for the Administration is a bit tougher to comprehend.
If I'm working from home, odds are good that I'll be 1) working on the computer, and 2) using the Net for research. This is bad. The problem with having the vast resources of the Internet at your command is that you are bound to use them. And when one has become a political junkie, the news is never good. The political news is especially gut churning. I've heard pundits comment that this election is particularly partisan, or dirty, or both. I won't counter those statements, though I find most elections particularly partisan and dirty. What makes this election stand out in my mind is the sense that the Parties believe Vince Lombardi was right: Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing. There is nothing they won't do to win this election. The dirty tricks of Nixon are childhood pranks compared with those of Karl Rove. This is a guy who once held up the results of an election for a year until he could strong-arm his guy into office. This is the guy who painted John McCain as irrational and Max Cleland as unpatriotic, simply to win. People ask why Democrats can't forget Florida in 2000. It's because we believe (and I'll include myself in this category) that Florida 2000 was not an anomaly; it is now standard operating procedure. We see a Republican operative behind every hedge because the evidence suggests they're there.
Let me digress. I am not one who finds Republicans inherently demonic. As I've written before, I was chased out of the Republican Party when it got into bed with the Religious Right in the 80s. Ronald Reagan re-energized the Party, but most of what he stood for was anathema to me. Still, on the local level I have supported Republican candidates, and will again. It is the national Republican Party that has become the haven of thugs. Under George Bush and Tom DeLay, it has taken its cues from the Texas Republican Party, a party which has won seats in Congress by gerrymandering strong Democratic representatives out of their districts. In one case, it did so by redrawing the congressional map so that the border of a mostly Republican district extended down the middle of a street and encased one single house in a Democratic district: the home of its representative. I am no fan of Tom Daschle, but in the past, when politics still has some sense of decency (say, four years ago), the leadership of one party did not specifically target the leadership of the other. Those rules are no more. This year, the national Republican Party has spent a record amount of money trying to unseat Daschle, the Senate minority leader. For this Party, whose leader once said he wanted to be a uniter, not a divider, having power is more important than the good of the people.
Which is why I need The Daily Show. To cool off.
It has come down to this: the two political programs I can watch without suffering an aneurysm are The Daily Show and Countdown, with Keith Olbermann. It is no surprise that both shows take a less than serious look at events of the day.
This is the first year I've really committed to The Daily Show. I've loved Jon Stewart for years, though I don't remember how I first came to know him. I remember him from The Larry Sanders Show, lo these ten years ago now, but by the time he was on that show I was already familiar with him. In any case, I loathe Craig Kilborn, the prior host of The Daily Show, which is why I never watched it under his tenure. But the show's Indecision 2000 coverage, under new host Stewart, got great press, so this year I started checking it out.
One charge I've heard in the past is that Republicans are much funnier than Democrats. I've always found that difficult to fathom. I suppose it comes from the notion that Dems can be so dour, with their constant grousing about the environment and health care and the underprivileged, while GOPs, whose major concerns are how to make and keep more money, are singing "Happy Days Are Here Again." The difference I find is that the left are willing to mock their own, while the right are not. Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly may disagree with something George Bush says, but rarely, if ever, do they take him to task for it. Jon Stewart mocks those on the right and left equally. Well, not equally. He mocks Kerry for being foolish, and George Bush for being... Oh. Maybe it is equal. In any case, I am hard pressed to come up with a satirist on the right who is willing to take shots at members of their own party, whereas for those on the left, it is de rigeur.
Stewart has been taken to task for his appearance on Crossfire, where, worst of all, he was not funny. Let me say this about that. First, his charges were no surprise to anyone who had ever watched him, so for the hosts to be shocked was disingenuous, at best. (Disingenuousness: Lying for the New Millennium!) (Just as it was disingenuous for members of the Bush camp to "misunderstand" Kerry's use of the phrase "global test" in the debate.) (Jeez, I hate them!) (Oh, and I prefer "disingenuity," but the dictionary won't have it.) The best I can offer is that the hosts can't be blamed for supposing that Stewart's desire to sell his book would outweigh his desire to have his say. Against the second charge - Stewart's verbal inelegance ("You're hurting America") - I have no defense. He's a comic, not a pundit. As he said of his own show: his lead-in is puppets making prank phone calls. But if people who can't express themselves well don't deserve to be heard, someone needs to muzzle the president.
The remainder of my TV love is reserved for Keith Olbermann. Countdown, is another show I never watched until recently. It came across my radar through an article in the Atlantic (?) about the cable news networks, in which his show was given high marks. I second that emotion. Olbermann is smart and articulate, and recognizes that many of those in command are neither. Like Stewart, he leans to the left, but is more balanced than most of the pundits. He is willing, for example, to broadcast poll results which show both candidates in the lead (easy, these days), and regularly has on guests from across the political spectrum. Who he allows to have their say, by the way. Oh, sure, he spent a lot of time on the Bill O'Reilly sex scandal, but that's motivated less by politics than by his undisguised disregard for both O'Reilly and Fox, for whom he once worked.
Countdown got me into bed with MSNBC, which has become my network of choice this political season. In the past, MSNBC was little more to me than the network of Time & Again, a Biography-style program which draws on NBC's vast video records for its footage. Cheap and easy. Just like host Jane Pauley. Or that joke. It is also the network for Hardball, which used to be just another "let's yell at each other" show. Lately, host Chris Matthews has calmed down quite a bit. His show is one of the few news outlets which was critical of the invasion of Iraq from the beginning, which is what first drew me to it. On Iraq, Matthews is to the left of both Bush and Kerry. Which is not to say he's a leftie - he's in love with Dick Cheney. Matthews is an old-school Washington insider, and he has alliances and enmities on both sides of the fence. He is best in small quantities, like caviar or absinthe, but can be bracing. Unlike Joe Scarborough, whose political axe is so enormous he cannot hide it. Yeah, I watched these guys during the conventions (They found the Republican Convention more exciting and engaging, unlike me, who found them both little but hogwash.) and the debates (Their consensus that Kerry won the first debate shocked me. Need I say that was the only debate they thought he won?). Less dry than C-SPAN, less boring than CNN, less infuriating than Fox.
With all this input, it's no surprise I can't sleep at night.
posted by John Bliss at
11:14 AM
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