Notes on the campaign

I do not watch the presidential or VP debates. I cannot imagine worse television than a joint press conference with two highly programmed candidates answering questions from a smug, preening, 'highly respected journalist." Nothing said at the debate is going to change my vote. Watching the show in order to critique the performance of the candidates strike me as a more miserable experience than the worst Oscar party a guy can imagine.

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Reading bloggers reading polls is a classic illustration of Michael Crichton's Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect

Day in and day out bloggers criticize, dissect, fisk, and refute the MSM and their flawed polls. Yet, come election time, they exult, despair, with each turn of the same flawed surveys and the often cluesless "analysis" that accompany them.

Even if the polls were accurate (an impossible "if" given how frequently the polls differ among themselves) they are a static snapshot of a dynamic event. It's four weeks from election day and a single week is a long time in politics.

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Scientific civilization ... has one rather particular defect; it is perpetually tending to destroy that democracy or power of the ordinary man.

Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better.

G. K Chesterton, Heretics

I wonder what G. K. would make of our modern presidential campaigns. We seem to have gone beyond even what he imagined.

What kind of democracy do we have when faceless operatives in Washington make so bold as to tell voters if their vote matters?

"We're pulling out of Michigan. It's out of reach."

Why would any campaign say such a thing?

I can understand spending money where it will do the most good. I am mystified that a campaign would publicly write off states before election day.

Maybe it happens because political operatives want to build their insider cred with reporters.

Or maybe they want to make sure that losses do not end up on their resume.

Of course, it is pretty hard to build a party or a political movement if no one wants to campaign in marginal or difficult states.