A POX ON POLLS IN POLITICS: Notes on the New Hampshire Primary

    I hate polls in politics. I always have. This presidential campaign season in the United States, we had a whole year of them jammed down the throats of Americans leading up to this month’s Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary. Week after week and month after month, the popular, corporate media kept telling us who was ahead in the “horse race” when nay a voter had seen a voting booth. The media loves creating the game and controlling the game or thinking they controlling the game.  Well, as we all know, the media was gamed the night of the New Hampshire primary. 
    To see the shock on their faces as Senator Hillary Clinton’s totals kept ringing up when she was supposed to be under a landslide practically was hilarious to me. There must have been a lot of nervous breakdowns and yelling amongst the pollsters and in the executive offices of the networks the next morning, not to mention the Clinton and Obama campaigns. I loved seeing the talking heads being taken down a peg. Seeing them gag on their precious polls was really funny.
    I do not know how the polling went haywire and I do not care. Maybe many people lied when asked whom they voted for. I do not condone lying, but I have the right not to reveal my private vote to anyone! So, if exit pollers got lied to, that is there problem. To quote ESPN anchor Chris Berman about NFL point spreads and prognostications, “That’s why they play the game.” Well, that is why we vote!
    Other observations about the New Hampshire Primary night:
The MSNBC talking heads trashing John McCain’s victory speech were so condescending it was ridiculous. I am not a Republican, but those clowns were hitting low. I thought the speech was not all that bad and was laying out an appeal for a general election. No, McCain is no Shakespearian actor or the orator that Barack Obama is, but belittling him on the air like that was tacky. Later it is ok for Obama to use a teleprompter, but because McCain had note cards, he is an idiot. Typical media smarmy babble. Joe Scarborough embarrasses himself as usual, eating one of his own Republicans. He should take a good look at his tapes sometime. He is not the sharpest TV personality in the pencil box. I felt for the great Katrina Van Den Heuvel of The Nation magazine who had to be on stage with that lot. And by the way, as I commented in another post, the new MSNBC studios still look like a reject from a 1975 set design for the TV show Space: 1999.
    The good news on the Democratic side is that the race is not over. The bad news is that the race is not over. One thing the Democrats have done a number of times over the years is to pick the worst possible candidate and as quickly as possible. John Kerry was there worst possible candidate in 2004. This time they seemed determined to all run to the cliff and jump off with Hillary Clinton when the primaries were eight months away. At least Barack Obama has slowed this. He really inspires me with his words. He is clearly the best they have at this point. Senator Joe Biden was their best overall, but he was not even given a chance.  What a great step forward it would be to have an African-American president though. This could be part of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream come true. I hope we can make it happen. So, if Obama had taken the granite state and continued in a tidal wave that ended Senator Clinton’s bid, I would not be crying.  That is not to say Senator Clinton would not be making history as the first woman president. My opinion of Hillary Clinton is that she is the wrong woman, the wrong candidate period, for this country. I would love to have a woman president. I feel that women often make better leaders than men. I just want no more Clintons or Bushes anywhere near the White House. We are not a monarchy! No royal houses in this country!
   The Clintons are about the past good or bad. There was definitely the latter, no matter how much gauze filtered light someone wants to put on it. In any case, this country needs to move forward. I do not want four to eight more years of the divisiveness and decline of the 90's both politically and socially in this country.
  I found it very ironic to learn that both Dartmouth and the University of New Hampshire were still on winter break at the time of the primary. Considering these were Obama’s greatest centers of strength, I wonder how many students were not around to vote. And lastly, and most ironic, the woman who made Hillary Clinton go all misty eyed, for whatever reason, voted for Barack Obama.