Goes To Twelve: Flaccid Polling

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Flaccid Polling

Wonkette asks:

Why Isn’t John McCain One Million Points Ahead In Every Poll?

Why hasn’t John McCain capitalized on the many blessings showered on him by the press, and Fate? And what does this say about his ability to lead?

It is a Proven Fact that God and newspapers want John McCain to win. Witness the following recent developments:

** Barack Obama goes on vacation at an exotic third-world elitist resort in the Phillippines to hang out with his Muslim grandmother and watch the Batman movie, which is all about the secret awesomeness of George Bush. With Obama off the national stage, McCain is free to show that he would never abandon America by going on vacation in August.

** Russia invades Georgia, a close U.S. ally, giving John McCain the opening to spout more Tuff Guy crap about how Russia better back off even though America can do exactly nothing about any of this. But who cares, because Americans love it when their leaders shake their fists threateningly at hostile global rivals.

** George Bush shows up drunk at the Olympics, which somehow should also benefit John McCain.

And yet!!!! John McCain remains 4.6 points behind Barack Obama in the Real Clear Politics poll average. Conclusion: John McCain has a problem with white working-class voters.

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Alinsky's Rules For Radicals

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.

Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

Goes To Twelve

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Flaccid Polling

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