Attack ads and polling

Negative advertising is nothing new as this clever video shows.

A tip of the tricorner to my FB friend and fellow Phils fan Karl for pointing this out.





I recently asked a longtime politico to put up a few positive spots reminding people why they should vote for his client and not just against the other guy. He said our "polls show that seniority and past accomplishments don't move the numbers this year. " Unfortunately that is probably true of any year. The truth is the negative ads work as my friend on the other side Dana recently lamented.

The campaign pollsters drive races these days and while you have to take any polling numbers released by a campaign with a grain of salt these polls are considerably more expensive and the methodology is more rigorous. If they tell their clients just what they want to hear and turn out to be terribly wrong future campaigns won't hire them. That is why I give more credence to polls conducted by the Dem outfit Momentun Analysis and GOP fav The Tarrance Group.

I don't really trust the public polls this cycle as polling is getting harder and more expensive to do as this story in my favorite magazine The Economist documents.

It is getting ever harder to work out what the American public thinks

The immediate problem is the rapid growth in the number of people who have only a mobile phone, and are thus excluded from surveys conducted by landline. About a quarter of Americans are now “cellphone-onlys” (CPOs) in the industry jargon, and this poses both practical and statistical difficulties... They often retain their telephone numbers, including the area code, when they move from state to state, so it is hard to know where they are. And it costs more to call a mobile phone in the first place.

Sure there creditable public polls such as Gallop and the Q Poll but much of the the rest of it is dime-store junk as Charlie Cook said.

Speaking of junk the Times Leader published a poll on Wednesday that it paid a company in Maine to conduct that came up with the opposite results of just about every other pollster. According to this rookie political polling operation Kanjorski is up 47-39% but just 2 weeks ago Barletta was leading by 2 points. I sure hope that they are right but I seriously doubt that there has been a 10 point swing in this race in just 2 weeks. In the 10th CD they have Marino up by the same margin as last time with a big undecided. Every other public and private poll that I have seen has Carney leading.

One candidate is not running negative ads and he just may win.

Crossing of the Delaware a bust

According to the Inky this year's re-enactment of George Washington's Delaware River crossing was scuttled because of the swift current much to the dismay of the the thousands of spectators and the Revolutionary War re-enactors who trained for months. (Tip of the Tricorne

to Chris)

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A local version of this historic event has been in the planning for years but for some reason it has never gotten off the ground or the shore. At a meeting of the Saturday OT Committee and Operatic Society about 10 years ago the Senator from Noxen (aka the Rain Man) proposed we do our own local tribute to President Washington's greatest victory by organizing a crossing of the Susquehanna River to attack Pittston. Beside the practical considerations, such as none of us has ever rowed a boat on the river or had the right clothes, there was an objection to attacking a city known for it's Italian heritage. But a quick check of the phone book found a target in Dusseldorf's Restaurant (now out of business) and a consensus decided that any place that served bratwurst with red cabbage deserved a cannon ball in the front door.

We immediately voted that el Presidente of the Committee Pope George Ringo would assume the role of General Washington. Finding cannons and guns became the job the Senator from Plains with regular commenter Forest Gump to assist him by finding boats. Soccer Mike would lead the ground troops and I bravely volunteered to stay on shore and help everybody into the boats.

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Somehow the planning has been bogged down.

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TV for History Nerds

The best history on TV is still done by PBS and the BBC. The History Channel has alot of shows about modern marvels, ghost stories and other nonsense.

I get home from work tonight and surfed into this gem.

The Supreme Court on PBS.