If you are looking at the national polls, you might be wondering what is going on. One poll has a fourteen percentage point lead for Obama, another has two. Gallup has experienced some noticeable tightening over the last week and has two poll models to choose from.
I think two things are going on. First, no one is sure who a “likely voter” is. If Gallup doesn’t know which model is right, it is hard for non-pollsters to fathom. On national pollster tells me that, given the uncertainty about turnout, using ”registered voters” makes as much sense as anything. And second, a lot of people are sloshing around between undecided and each of the two candidates.
Is Barack Obama ahead? Sure, but the margin isn’t clear at all. Maybe the race is all but over. Or maybe things are still in flux, made a tad more unpredictable by the public’s discovery that Obama wants to “spread the wealth” and raise taxes in a recession. (Seriously, I bet a majority of the electorate didn’t know that until the debate.) And the undecideds? A smart pollster honestly confesses: “Who knows?”
This isn’t exactly unprecedented. If you like, take a walk down memory lane and look at the October 2004 polls. The race sure did tighten — but not enough for a come-from-behind win. What makes this year so interesting is that no one is quite sure who’s going to show up — or if Joe the Plumber is the last twist in the race.
Re: “the Israeli Left’s inability to convince voters that it can be trusted with the all too important task of governing.”
This captures it nicely – http://imshin.net/?p=1081 – “Such tiresome attempts at dissecting what went wrong. They did do this, they didn’t do that, they should have said this, they shouldn’t have said that. They went against the feminists, they supported the Gaza war, they didn’t emphasize the economy, they put too much emphasis on the economy.
On and on. The reasons offered get more and more absurd.
Not one of these articles offers the obvious and simple explanation that Meretz is just plain wrong! “
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Israel is a country that allows and encourages freedom of speech. Evidence of this fact ought to make people more sympathetic to the broadness and openness of Israeli law and culture. I’m not holding my breath, however.
A news story in Haaretz a few days ago reported that Israel is now allowing all refugees from Darfur to remain in the country. I don’t suppose many people will ever learn about this. The information should be publicized. I don’t assume it will do much good; the world is anti-Israel and that’s all there is to it. But if it gets into the news, maybe it will do a tiny bit of good.
#1: “Not one of these articles offers the obvious and simple explanation that Meretz is just plain wrong”
True. In Israel as everywhere else,
the Right is not always right – maybe half the time -
but the Left is wrong at the core, in its
means and in its ends, in its preferences and its practices,
in its axioms and its affections – rotten through and through.
WHERE IN THE ARAB WORD ARE THE GODEON LEVYS AND AKIVA ELDARS (ENGELHARDT) WHOSE OPINIONS HAARETZ PUBLISHES?
Hurray, it didn’t win.
http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2009/02/hurray-that-israeli-film-didnt-get.html