Okay folks, this one’s going to be brief. Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight has a good piece on the merits of these recent shifts in party-identification and weighting and so forth, I recommend you read it. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com…
(Crossposted at MyDD)
However, that analysis, however clever or correct, isn’t what I’m here to tell you. Stop blaming the damned pollsters, it’s counter-productive if not outright STUPID!
Look, they’re going to put out the numbers they put out. They frankly know more about polling that you do. That doesn’t mean that the criticisms I see here are without merit, but it does mean we can group-think our way into believing Zogby or exit polls or whatever dumbass expectations-raising thing we wind up doing this time. Seriously, we’ve done this before.
Accept the bad numbers as true. Do not trust the good numbers. Stop trying to explain to one another, or yourself, how things aren’t as bad as they look. Assume they are that bad, or worse. Dig in. Do what you can for the candidate. Kick in a few more bucks. Remember what I, and others said months ago:
Campaign like you’re ten points down, even if you’re ahead. Fuck it, I want the Republicans cocky. I want us scrappy. Stop wringing your hands yes, but don’t assume that all bad news is inaccurate. You don’t know that, and neither do I. The polls drive the damned narrative anyway. If we can celebrate the good news we can damned well show some class and guts and accept the bad news.
Let’s turn it around for real. Don’t just talk up how the sampling is all kinds of fucked. Maybe it is, but if you’re the one explaining, you’ve already lost. Stop fucking explaining.
11 comments