Of all the dumb reasons to vote for Barack Obama (and they are legion, even if there are a few smart ones interspersed), one of the dumbest is simply because the media is telling you he’s inevitable. The bandwagon effect is a classical logical fallacy, that many fall for nonetheless (because most people are untrained in logic).
Don’t let them herd you like a sheep into voting for someone just because you want to vote for the winner. If you’re going to drink the redistributionist koolaid, at least do it because you actually believe it.
Don’t you think that, after all these years, even if New York Times copy editors continue to suffer from Alzheimers’ on this issue, they would at least have had the prescience to program their final editing software to flag things like this?
Greg Packer, 44, of Huntington, N.Y., drove in for Game 5 of the World Series and stayed for the celebration. He arrived on Broad Street near City Hall at 5 a.m. to secure what he considered the best spot.
Because long ago, it (and other parts of the upper midwest) embraced Obamanian policies. If things go the wrong way tomorrow, the nation will be Detroit writ large.
[Update a while later]
This reminds me of a post I wrote about the rise and fall of General Motors a while ago. As I noted there, my dad was a GM exec, and I grew up in southeast Michigan (well, to the degree that I’ve grown up at all…). In 1973, about the time I graduated from high school, we were deep in a recession (a real one–not what the people whining about today’s economy are describing, with 20+ percent unemployment in Flint), and the golden era was over, never to really return to what it had been.
In an interview Fairey assured Smith that his imagery “anti-propaganda propaganda” that, he suggested, is “coming from a position of moral integrity.” In other words, he believes it, or at least believes it’s in a good cause. The Obama posters were, of course, based on the famous propaganda image of Che Guevara. John McCain may suggest that Obama is a socialist. Fairey, a man of the left, literally paints Obama as a communist–which may involve much wishful projection as the belief in other quarters that the candidate is a secret free-trader.
Although campaign posters are surely a form of propaganda, the Obama imagery is so empty of specific exhortation that we do better to think of it as a manifestation of the candidate’s glamour–a seductive illusion in which the audience sees whatever they themselves desire. Glamour is manipulative, but not coercive. It requires the audience to suspend its skepticism and the object to maintain his mystery, a tacit form of cooperation. Give the object the power to compel devotion, and glamour is suddenly neither sustainable nor necessary.
Yes, though there’s actually a more accurate, more encompassing word than “socialist” or “communist” for this kind of political iconography (relating back to the thirties). It starts with an “F.”
If we are mark’d to lose, we are enow
To do our party loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
Let he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not vote in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to vote with us.
This day is call’d the eve of Elect-ian.
He that votes this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Republican
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is the fourth of November’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his hands,
And say ‘With these I moved yon levers on election day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What votes he did cast that day.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that shares his vote with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen and lady pundits now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their book deals cheap whilst any speaks
That voted with us upon election day.
As he says, the asteroid is only inevitable if we believe it is.
Usually, when a politician makes a gaffe, they try to explain it away, or say “what I meant was…”
Lawrence Eagleburger has a novel approach. He just said to Stuart Varney on Cavuto’s show that “I was stupid,” to explain his gaffe. He made up for it, by 1) pointing out that the Democrat presidential nominee is much less prepared than she is, and wrong on the foreign policy issues and 2) apologizing to the McCain campaign and governor Palin.
The piper from Hyde Park has tougher work, not with rats with sharp teeth but with evil Republicans deserving of a death more painful than drowning. Humorless, self-righteous and immensely proud of himself, he employs his gift of “a unique ability to identify with children” to lure the grown-up children. His success as a spinner of “fairy tales,” as Bill Clinton called them in a fit of unexpected candor, is a tale of credulity run amok. Americans who look like grownups swoon like pimpled teenagers at the mention of his name, and brook no criticism however mild or reasoned the reservations. Polite questions are verboten, as Joe the Plumber learned. Scholars will write about this weird delirium in decades to come; the prudent are saving string for their Ph.D. theses. For now it’s prudent to hunker down and observe the disciplined march to the river.
Let’s hope they stop at the river bank on Tuesday.
The ONLY way McCain loses this race is if the media, operating as a full-fledged wing of the Obama campaign, breeds enough Eeyores amongst you to keep enough people home for Obama to squeak out wins. Hillary Clinton should have won Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, by larger margins that she did. Ohio should have been a 13-point win, Pennsylvania should have been a 12-point win, and Indiana should have been a 9-point win. Eeyores staying home, saying, “Oh bother, TV say me stay home, me sad, need dydee changed!” is what cost Hillary those extra points.
Don’t be Eeyores on Tuesday! Get those Eeyore butts off your couches, away from toxic TV, and GO VOTE. Get everyone you know to vote — tell them if they don’t, then Obama will turn America socialist, and we’re going to start with their house and bank account when we begin redistributing wealth. That should motivate them.
I don’t know if McCain will pull it out, but it’s going to be a lot closer than many have been predicting.