Polled Day Two

Good morning from the Stroock Northern Strategic Direction where the air is cool and the mist is rising off the lake. Right now the temperature is 57 degrees. Outside wild ducks are quacking. We arrived last night to find a house in perfect working order with no basement problems whatsoever. We worried for nothing. 

Okay, no Iranian attack in Israel last night. There's lots of reports this morning saying Iran won't retaliate if Israel and Hamas reach a ceasefire deal. Also Haas won't attend talks unless Israel pulls out of Gaza. So that's the game. Iran is trying to save Hamas in Gaza. Israel has been getting the better of things the last few months, and Netanyahu has played negotiations perfectly. What's his play here?

So it's poll week here at Stroock's Books. We wrote such yesterday with great fanfare. Maybe it's the Berkshire Mountain air, which just slows everything down, but we can't quite seem to remember what we wanted to write about. Oh yes, there we go...

One of the things we learned in 2004, when we really learned a lot of things about polls, is that news organizations will commission polls in order to create a story, and pump the numbers to create the desired result. The worst offenders were the news magazines, Time and Newsweek. These are thin rags now, the property of tech-billionaires who want to play media mogul. But in 2004 Time and Newsweek were still a big deal. Go check out the RCP poll average for 2004 again. At the beginning of September both rags released polls saying Bush was leading Kerry by 11 points nationally. 

These polls created a big headline, of course. But they also lay the groundwork for the media to upload it's 'Kerry Comeback' template, as the great Hugh Hewitt said. Throughout the summer and autumn of 2004, the media told us three things about Kerry. He went to Vietnam, he's a devout Catholic, and he's a 'strong finisher'. We still have no idea what that last item is supposed to mean. Mostly, one supposes, 'strong finisher' meant the media was going to drag Kerry over the finish line. And so it tried.