Random Thoughts

“I am not salsa!” she says with fiery indignation.

We’re three weeks from the Presidential election, and the mainstream media is doing its best to convince us all that Obama’s got it in the bag. After all, the polls guarantee it, right? America’s gradeschoolers predict his win, and they’re never wrong. Well, they were wrong with Truman and Nixon, but never mind that.

Is it wrong to hope that newspapers go to press on November 4 and give us a Dewey/Truman headline?

As you consider for whom you will be voting, and what role the polls might play in the final result, What Condiment are You? Apparently I’m salsa. Who knew?!

You Are Salsa

You are an extremely outgoing and vivacious person.
You are quite tolerant and open minded. You rather accept people than judge them.
Adventurous and unpredictable, you have the reputation of a daredevil.

Your taste in food leans toward very spicy and exotic dishes.
Whether it’s Thai food or an extra spicy Mexican meal, you’re into the hot flavors.
You get along with hot sauce personalities. Everyone else, not so much.

H/T The Happy Catholic by way of The Anchoress.

Actually, I am not tolerant, and really not that open minded. I’m also far too judgmental of others’ behavior (though I’m working on that), and while I am outgoing at times, I am equally likely on some days to let all calls go to voicemail and refuse to leave the house.

While I love a good bowl of Thai Tom Ka Gai soup, I really dislike most spicy foods, particularly spicy Mexican food.

I bet that condiment quiz has the same accuracy as many of the current presidential pre-election polls. In both situations, the results depend upon what the poll respondents choose to say about themselves and their opinions.

With Pennsylvania a “battleground state” in 2008, and pollsters eager to call it’s winner, the Pittsburg Trib’s Andrew Conte points out the inherent fallibility of polls,

Even a slight difference in polling method can favor one candidate over another, experts said. And in the largely academic world of pollsters, few agree on methods that deliver the most accurate results for the lowest cost. That’s why even polls conducted over the same days can come to wildly different conclusions…

Even in a state as large as Pennsylvania, polls rarely are based on surveys of more than 1,000 people out of the state’s 8.6 million registered voters. That means even the best estimates, drawn from a large number of interviews, contain a quantifiable amount of error.

And there is always the possibility of the Bradley Effect skewing the polls. The Democrat party and their MSM allies have made race far more of an issue in this election cycle than it ought to be, and voters have been beaten over the head with it since Obama took the nomination. As Jonah Goldberg points out,

The media’s obsession with race in this election is, in fact, probably fueling the Bradley effect. Repeating over and over that voting against Obama is racist only encourages non-racist people to be embarrassed to admit that they plan to vote for McCain.

It is frustrating to be accused of racism when you’re really objecting to a candidate’s qualifications (or lack thereof) and policies. It’s doubly frustrating when you’re being constantly bombarded with predictions of loss. Personally, of course I’d rather hear that McCain was ahead regardless of poll errancy.

Things like ACORN voter registration fraud make for even more frustration. Of course, Obama is pleading utter ignorance of the situation and distancing himself from any connection with ACORN. His list of associates (H/T Curt at Flopping Aces) now in the “barely knew them, have no involvement with them” category seems to get longer each week.

Bill Dyer, posting on Hugh Hewitt’s Townhall blog, speaks sense to those of us tempted to smack our foreheads in disgust and despair.

First, recognize that no campaign is optimal. Some of the things that most frustrate you, as a committed conservative, as you watch the path of the McCain campaign may not be miscues at all in the eyes of independent or cross-over voters. And the Biden-Obama campaign has also continued to make its own share of blunders — of which, again, only some of may be obvious to you, since you’re not in that swing voter group. To a larger extent than you probably would think likely, each campaign’s mistakes will tend cancel each other out.

Next, keep in mind that John McCain’s character traits that are dictating the kind of campaign he’s runniing — which includes his stubbornness, his instincts toward compromise, and a sense of propriety and decency (which his opponent and his campaign feign but do not truly share) — are, and have always been, parts of a double-edged sword. John McCain is what he is. And he is uninterested in, and incapable of, remaking himself in any fundamental way to meet an acute campaign need. Indeed, friends and neighbors, he’s already demonstrated more innovative thinking — by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate — than I would permit myself to expect back when he clinched the nomination.

And finally, keep in mind that there are limits to what either campaign could accomplish even if either were to suddenly begin to run an optimal, perfect campaign. Even among those voters who are still undecided, most of them will end up making their final decisions based on the underlying fundamentals of the election — not based on the latest proposals from either campaign over the coming three weeks before election day. Between now and November 4th, Barack Obama is not going to miraculously grow a genuine record of legislative accomplilshment, for example, and neither is he going to transmute himself into anything but a first-term Chicago politician who’s still “green behind the ears.” Yes, he’ll come up with new panders and give-aways — tens of billions of dollars worth of those. But fundamentally, he’s not gotten any better, and he’s just hoping he can keep his current momentum to manage to coast across the finish line.

We have one final candidate debate tomorrow night. It may be a snoozefest like the second one, or it may make a difference. Having the candidates answer questions with actual substance, about serious issues, would help. Either way, this election is not over until the votes are tallied. And both candidates know that. We need to remember it too.

EDITED because dang, when you misspell a word in your title, it is so embarrassing.