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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The Alternative Universe and the Media Feedback Loop

Yesterday in Charlotte the Democratic National Convention began as amateurishly as President Obama’s first term has been. Three times Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles tried to get a majority of Democratic delegates to agree to add God and Jerusalem back into the Democratic Platform. Three times he failed. But on the third time, he declared he heard a two-thirds vote for changing the platform. Debbie Wasserman Schultz lied again saying there was no fight and called it a “technical change”, but the Democratic delegates booed putting God and his holy city back into the Democratic Platform.

If booing God and his holy city is a part of the Democratic Convention happening in this universe, I’ll take the alternative universe Bill Clinton said the GOP lives in. This is why Barack Obama stands a good chance of losing. It is the Democrats who have disconnected from America.

I’m on record repeatedly doubting Mitt Romney’s viability as a candidate, but more and more I think not only is Romney winning, but the polling is not reflecting the strength of his campaign and the media is actually sabotaging the Democrats’ chance of winning. In fact, I dare say if MItt Romney wins he will have the American media to thank for his win. Hear me out and I think you will agree.

First, and I realize you will have to take my word for it, I have a pretty good gut check on winning and losing. My gut tells me Mitt Romney is doing better than I expected and better than the polling is suggesting. Anecdotes are not data, but more and more a steady stream of anecdotes are piling up to suggest Romney is winning.

He is ahead by double digits in most polls with independents. More and more voters say Barack Obama does not deserve a second term. More and more voters think Barack Obama’s handling of the economy has been bad. More and more voters trust Mitt Romney to handle the economy, jobs, and even entitlements than Barack Obama. In many Democratic primaries in places like Pennsylvania the President’s undervote compared to the rest of the Democratic primary ballot was staggering. In Kentucky and Arkansas and Oklahoma — granted they’ll go for the GOP — third parties got to close to 40% of the vote against him in his own supposedly uncontested primaries.

In the past two years the Democrats and certain members of the media have invested a lot of time and energy telling independent voters who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 that they’d be racists to abandon him. “Racism” is cropping up more and more as a rebuttal to all attacks against Barack Obama. At the same time, the left has used “bigotry” to attack any person who supports marriage.

Poling on marriage has become terribly inaccurate. Ask a person if they favor changing marriage and most will say yes, but in more than 30 states the voters keep rejecting it. Voters do not want to let pollsters think they are bigots anymore than they want pollsters to think them racists. So they ago along to get along.

If, however, a pollster asks voters how they think their neighbors will vote on gay marriage, suddenly polls become a lot more accurate. Voters are happy to tell pollsters that they are sophisticated, but that their neighbors are bigots. In North Carolina, asking voters about their neighbors’ vote on gay marriage rendered a much more accurate poll more closely resembling the final outcome than asking about the voter’s own vote.

I’m beginning to think pollsters need to start asking voters who they think their neighbor will vote for President. Yesterday, we got a startling hint at this.

Eighty-nine percent of Republicans said the president after Obama would be from their camp, and 55 percent of independents agreed. Surprisingly 38 percent of Democrats had the same view (versus 47 percent who said it would be a Democrat). The telephone survey was taken during the last two nights of the GOP convention and got answers from 1,000 voters, meaning it was a typical sample.

With that many independents and Republicans and more than a third of Democrats thinking MItt Romney will win, I think standard polling on the horserace may have the same problems the gay marriage polling has had — the Democrats have done a damn fine job of throwing out racism and bigotry so much that voters are less than honest with pollsters.

So if Mitt Romney is such a bad candidate, why do I think he’s winning and what does the media have to do with it? It’s actually a pretty easy concept to grasp.

The Democrats and most of the mainstream media live in a symbiotic relationship and feedback loop. When Todd Akin says something dumb, the media seizes on it and attacks Todd Akin and the GOP. For the past several weeks the media has fixated on how out of touch the GOP is, its platform is, and its Presidential candidate is.

At the same time, the media has been largely silent on the Democratic Platform except for yesterday’s ridiculousness. Even then, the media mostly failed to point out that the Obama campaign said it had approved the platform removing God and Jerusalem, while going to great lengths to point out Obama intervened to put them back in.

Meanwhile, the Democrats booed God and his holy city the day after claiming we all belong the government as if it is some sort of Rotary Club.

This becomes the fatal problem for the Democrats — the media reinforces that the Democrats are grounded in reality and connected to America when they are not.

The Democrats actually have a very extremist position on abortion. The media that spent so long focused on the GOP’s position has barely dealt with the Democrats. Why? Because most of the mainstream media is in ideological lockstep with the Democrats on this. It’s hard to tell the Democrats they’ve gone too far astray from mainstream America when the mainstream media is over on the lefthand side to begin with.

The Democrats, in other words, overplayed their hand on the War on Women and there is no media voice they listen to saying, “Hold up, you’ve gone too far.” Most of the media is with or to the left of the Democrats on this. For a year now you and I have been hearing about the growing secularization of and atheism in America. I now see that’s no longer a coincidence, but another effort to feed the Democrats’ feedback loop in much the same way polls were being churned out in the press in 2010 showing how popular Obamacare would be despite all objective polling showing it was not.

Consequently, the Democrats turned Sandra Fluke and Elizabeth Warren into cult heroes on feminism and liberal issues. Barack Obama utters, “you didn’t build that” and the Democrats start their convention telling us we all belong to the government. They get rid of God and Jerusalem, give a podium to two disastrous speeches by Fluke and Warren that I’m willing to bet did more harm than good, hand much of the rest of the convention over to abortion rights activists, see MSNBC hosts wear buttons with uteruses on them, and think that they are connecting with middle America because the media is not raising red flags in the way the media does with the GOP.

The feedback loop between the Democrats and the media has pushed the Democrats well outside the mainstream and I believe there is a silent majority looking at this festival of the bizarre in Charlotte in absolute revulsion. They hear “fair share” and cringe. They hear Bill Clinton ask if people are better off than they were four years ago and are shocked the Democrats yell back “yes.”

The Democrats, having so many ideological soul mates from New York City and DC in the media, lack a buffer to their echo chamber and the feedback loop has only accelerated.

I really don’t think Mitt Romney is a strong candidate. And I’ve consistently believed he would lose. But now I think he’s winning and doing so largely because the Democrats have so overplayed their hand on social issues while ignoring the economy with no corrective from the media. The American people are aghast at what they are seeing and will respond accordingly at the polls.

The Democrats have made the one always fatal mistake anyone can make in politics — they’ve believed their own press.

COMMENTS

  • ihateliberals

    I don’t understand how so called Christians can vote for the Democratic Party. The Democrats have always been the Party of enslavement. They are the Party that caused the Civil war in that they would not give into freeing the Slaves as the Republicans were demanding and Abe Lincoln finally went to war over. Since that time they have continued the enslavement policies that keep the blacks, poor people, illegals enslaved. Policies like No work for welfare. How does a person ever think they will get off of welfare? The Democrats have gone on to teach women to kill their babies and that it is their right to do so. Another enslavement policy. One of the most subtle and sinister policies is the removing of “God” from everything. The only reason God is back in the Platform is that it will ensure some Christians will still vote for them.

    Yes Erick there is an alternate Universe and the Democrats live in it. Those of us that continue to believe in God and Christ know it as “Hell”. Those that don’t believe know it is the “Democratic Party” called “Liberalism”. Religious leaders like the Graham’s, the Pope and President Monson of the Mormon Church need to come out about this stance of the Party and their scrambling to put God back into the platform. You can’t un-say something after it has been said. . Me being a Mormon know tha the will not get involved because it is against church policy to do so. The church leaders wil sit idle on Romney and let the members make up their own minds. What about the Baptist, the Methodist and all other denominations that allegedly believe in God? Are they going to stand by idle and elect a Party that doesn’t believe in them?

  • justperhaps45

    Before we get all warm and comfy in the glow of our positive analysis remember that the progressives are also feeling their own form of glow. They have great experience at vote fraud, have a vast network of habitual voters with a skewed paradigm who interpret the same facts we hear quite differently, have liberal racist who will vote for Obama because he is black, are supported by numerous hopeless people on the dole who don’t think they can succeed through personal initiative, and are motivated more by greed and jealousy than citizenship in a country they really don’t believe in. If ignorance is truly bliss, they may not appreciate actual knowledge. I grew up in Illinois and have no delusions about the creatures we face.

  • ihateliberals

    Unfortunately I am afraid the Party leaders are afraid of offending people! they don’t get it. Don’t forget our own Party is leaning to the left and that isn’t good. We don’ t have a conservative leader. we hardly have a leader at all. we have become the Party of “I don’t want to Rock the Boat”.

  • sdwinkler

    Erick, before you get too excited check the exact wording on the Rasmussen poll question. “How likely is it that the next president after Barack Obama will be a Republican?”
    This is not specifically about 2012 and many who think BHO will be succeeded by a R in 2016 should answer “very likely”.

  • giatny

    Obama’s IMPERIAL presidency is the most lethal weapon against him. His commitment to bypass Congress MUST be exposed.
    Romney must WAKE UP now and discuss the countless times
    Obama has used the agencies to implement policies that could
    not pass Congress. Would someone who has contact with
    Romney’s campaign please let them know how frightening Obama
    truly is? Also the support from China and Russia for Obama
    reaffirms how weak they think he is.

  • jamesm

    Erick:
    “The cock shall not crow this day, before you shall three times deny that you
    know me.”
    .

  • jamesm

    @ sdwinkler Splitting hairs. Presidential election in Nov. The question was not about 2016. If you are in a philosophical discussion you may be correct but not as a poll question unless someone does not know the election is coming up

  • aeaeren

    I think a biggest reason they don’t voice their opionions more is due to their tax status.

  • unclefred

    Ads are already made and running. Thank Allen West.

  • runner12

    LOL. You are joking, right? I will help you out. Search You Tube for MSNBC and/or CNN (you can Google NY Times, LA Times, Politico, etc if you want more examples) and the meme “GOP are racists.”

    My guess is you will receive hundreds of thousands of hits.

  • streiff

    there is a wonderful invention called Google. Use it. And don’t come by here pulling a cheap stunt like this. It wastes my time.

  • joannatolson

    I’m in Ohio. I live near Akron and work in Cleveland, both of those cities in counties that counted mightily towards handing Barack Obama the State of Ohio in 2008. I am happy to report that I have seen exactly one yard sign this year – and it was for Romney. I realize this evidence is only anecdotal, but I can’t seem to stop looking at yard signs every election cycle.

  • thethinman

    spin – http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/09/07/Why-Barack-Obama-Will-Win-the-Election-Easily.aspx#page1

  • Cornholio

    “Our platform vote was not about trashing allies and enabling enemies.”
    What? Neither was the vote at the DNC. If anything, the ally trashing had already been done and they were trying to repair it, albeit by ignoring substantial opposition from the DNC delegates on the floor.
    But I don’t care what the Dems vote on. The substance of the voice vote is not as important as the fact that in both cases, you have preordained results that were announced in the face of a very vocal opposition. Anyone who has ever chaired or attended a meeting under RROO, knows that roll call votes are always taken anytime there is vocal opposition.
    You can bash Freedom Works all you want, but they raise a very important point that we as Republicans would be wise not to ignore.

  • Cornholio

    Honestly, I’m not sure I do. I understand that one is about our relationship with Israel, an ally, while the other is about serious changes to RNC protocol. Those two subjects are not related – I get that.
    But in both cases, the teleprompter showed preordained results that were announced despite an obviously substantial opposition.
    If anything, the occurrence at the RNC was more offensive because at least the DNC was trying to do the right thing, by fixing their previous mistake.
    The RNC, however, was not trying to repair a potentially damaging faux pas, they were trying to (and succeeded in) taking away from the state parties their power to select convention delegates pursuant to their own procedures.

  • streiff

    they were simply wrong on this occasion. All they did was enable the RonPaul loons who became delegates under a false flag.