Short and sweet. A lot of folks here are losing their minds because polls are suddenly showing very tight races, which seemed solidly in our favor a week ago.
We need to recognize this happens EVERY TIME. It isn't a fluke this year.The question is WHY does it happen every time? Several reasons:
- The media loves to promote the narrative that we are a “50/50 country”. That’s complete rubbish. Whenever there is a sane discussion about the issues, Americans agree with the progressive position 60%, 70%, even 80% of the time. The problem is that ADVERTISING WORKS, particularly when the customer (the voter in this case) isn’t particularly well informed. The fascists, especially since Citizen’s United, have virtually unlimited funds to spend. They don’t really want to spend it, but they will if that is what it takes. So when they see their candidates trailing by 5% with a few weeks left, they flood the zone. They can’t win every race that way, but money makes a huge difference. So the gap always closes at the end because of the flood of money, with the dark money being extremely lopsided to the advantage of the fascists.
- The media loves a “horse race.” It isn’t just because they think putting idiots (*) like Kornacki on the tube hyped up on speed or whatever he is on is good for ratings. I doubt that it changes the ratings much. The real purpose is to convince the campaigns (and remember it is the fascists who have most of the money available to spend) that the race is close enough that it would be wise to toss an additional $10 million in the pot. And why do they do this? Isn’t it obvious? That flood of last-minute spend goes to the networks. They have an inherent conflict of interest and all of the major media chooses to whore themselves rather than acting in the public interest.
I wish there were a happy end to this story. There isn’t. It is how the system works. But at least let’s understand it rather than wander around in a fog wondering why this keeps happening to us.
* Perhaps, “idiot” isn’t the right word for Kornacki. He is a person with no useful insights about anything, but he does have a very good memory and he can talk real fast. It is probably better to label him a “tool” of the game-riggers. I doubt he even knows that he plays an important role in obliterating our democracy. Being oblivious isn’t quite the same as being an idiot, but we need to recognize the damage that he and his teammates do every election cycle by treating each election as if it were a horse race won by the person who can afford to keep the train the fastest horse.