IS THE MEDIA HIJACKING THE ELECTION ... AGAIN?!

 

I don't get it. The Dems blatantly lied over and over again on national television; they tried to wipe Jerusalem off the map and booed Gd. The debt clock exceeded the -$16 Trillion mark. Real unemployment is barely under 19% and just last month, nearly 400,000! Americans were (statistically, at least) shoved out of the labor force. A smaller percentage of MEN are working than ever before, food and gas prices are up, more and more college graduates can't find jobs and are moving back in with their parents, bringing their student loan debt with them...

Meanwhile, Iran "continues to stockpile uranium enriched .. to levels for which it has no immediate use unless it is planning to make an atomic bomb."  AND it's threatening to attack the United States ... from countries in Latin America.

 

The proverbial wolf is at the door and yet... somehow... Obama gets his highest approval rating in more than a year and a half?

 

 

Maybe Newt Gingrich is right, and the "bump" we're seeing is 80 percent Bill Clinton. But if it's not that, then the only thing I can imagine is that the media is hijacking this election, just like it did the last time.

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Good post, Yael. You're voicing the bafflement -- almost befuddlement -- that many of us are feeling. Given the catastrophe in Charlotte last week and the pathetic jobs report that followed it, one would think Romney would be up by at least a point or two. Yet this morning Rasmussen tells us that Obama is up by four. This can be explained in one of three ways: (1) the electorate is so stupefied after nearly a century of big-government handouts that it has actually come to love Big Brother; (2) Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are such persuasive orators that their convention speeches swayed millions of independents to vote for The One; (3) the polls are fishier than the ocean. Both John Hinderaker over at Power Line and Charles Krauthammer in a recent column say it's #1 -- that the voters have become such moochers and parasites that they cannot bear the thought of living in an America that's even slightly less "compassionate." Perhaps Hinderaker and Krauthammer are right; if they are, then America is doomed -- and there's not much else left to be said. As for explanation #2, I think I know enough about the psychology of communication to say that no one or two speeches can have that decisive an impact on millions of voters. I, for one, subscribe to explanation #3: I still believe there's enough character left in this country to pull Romney/Ryan across the finish line ahead of Obama -- and that the polls, in some cases deliberately and in others inadvertently, don't reflect the true temper of the electorate. I think the samples in many cases are badly skewed toward the Dims, and I also believe there's a large segment of voters who won't tell the pollsters how they really feel because they're afraid of sounding "racist." Who knows? Maybe the polls are correct and I'm just whistling past the graveyard. The only thing that's certain is this: the numbers as they now exist defy common sense.

[Elan]

Objectively, there is no case for Obama's re-election. He Himself said that if things were not resolved in three years, it would be a one-term proposition, and things have gotten worse, not better. Obama does not even have a second-term agenda. But if the Republican message is "Bring Back Bush," it will not be convincing to a majority of voters. Romney needs to come forward with a first-year agenda and say he will do more in that period than Obama did in four years. It needs to be an honest and credible plan, and he needs to be ready to defend it and mobilize surrogates and new media to support him. It's what he would have to do if elected, and he might as well demonstrate that he is ready and prepared to do it now, and convey his confidence that the American people are ready for someone who is ready to lead from the front. It may be the only thing that will give him the chance to do it next year.

[Mannie Sherberg]

Elan's absolutely right about the "Bring Back Bush" stuff. The Obama camp has done a superb job of transferring the GWBush stigma to Romney -- and instilled in the minds of many voters the notion that a vote for Romney will be, in effect, a vote for a third GWB term. These folks may or may not cast their votes FOR Obama, but they'll certainly be casting them AGAINST a political ghost: GWBush. For them, the real GOP candidate -- Romney -- is virtually beside-the-point. This is weird and irrational, but the weird and irrational are becoming the norm in our national politics.