The Obama Effect

One of the things that seems extremely evident this year is that you cannot trust the polls.  It doesn’t depend on which campaign you listen to…

• Sen. Obama’s group claims that the polls neglect cell phones and young people, and he believes it’ll be a landslide.
• Sen. McCain’s group will tell you that it’s much closer than you think and that you’re neglecting the Bradley Effect¹.

And then there’s Peggy Noonan, who in her recent article introduced another wrinkle she calls the Obama Effect:

You know your neighbors think he’s sketchy—unknown, a mystery, “Hussein”—so you don’t say you’re voting for him, but you are.

The problem is that we’ve got processed candidates.  We see people for who we want them to be rather than who they truly are.  Candidates and their followers spend inordinate amounts of time convincing you that the other candidate will be the worst thing that ever can happen to our country—or that if the other party one it might be the beginning of the Tribulation…

The country has lasted through bad Presidents before.  I can actually see positive coming out of an Obama Presidency—because the Republicans would stand up to him like they stood up on drilling and the bail-out round 1.  We might actually see some backbone.

However, I don’t like the idea of losing the executive orders that Bush has in place socially that I approve of—especially in regards to abortion.

There’s only one poll that matters—the one in November on Election Day.  The important thing is for you to get out and vote.

1. More people tell pollsters they will vote for a black candidate than vote for the black candidate. [↩]