The Blog for the Sports Gamer Three guys who love Sports Gaming rant and rave about various stuff.

Please Get This Over With

I dunno about you guys, but I'm just about campaigned out. I know a lot of you can't wait for it to end as well and I promise--once this is over the blog will be removing a lot of the political shit. It's impossible not to talk about it now seeing as how we're 4 days from go time. But after that, the political stuff will be toned down. This is a sports blog, after all.

I cannot wait for the election to be over and done with. This is the first time that I actually paid attention, not to the election because I always vote, but to the daily talking point grind. I fully understand now why so many people do not pay attention to the elections until October. Why bother? Trying to get a shred of honesty out of either camp is like asking a fly to eat an elephant.

And the 24 Hour News shows are the epitome of evil. Jon Stewart is right--they are hurting America. I promised myself that I would try to watch a lot of the shows at night before going to bed. I wanted to stay "in tune" to all of the political goings on. After 4 months of this, my brain hurts and it's made me a even more grumpy than I was before. It's not healthy. Between Dennis Miller, Crossfire, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Maher, and Aaron Brown--I can't take it anymore. This little personal experiment has totally backfired. Instead of being an informed voter I'm a pissed off registered voter. In 2008, I SWEAR...it's back to SportsCenter before bed. The saving grace in all of this is The Daily Show. Monday through Thursday at 11PM ET Stewart's show is like a flashlight in a dark house. No yelling, no screaming, no finger pointing, no talking points. It just shows this entire process for what it is.

Reknown pollster John Zogby was on last night. Zogby was the lone pollster whom in 2000, predicted that Bush would win the election and lose the popular vote, which of course turned out to be the case. Zogby stated last night that he thought Kerry would win the election because (and I'm paraphrasing here) "The President's polling numbers are low for an encumbant. He's hit a ceiling of 48% which is in the danger zone for most Presidents. Combine that with the fact that most undecided voters break for the challenger in the final week, (as much as 2-1 in past elections) it makes Kerry's position stronger.."

I'd also argue that the current news cycle, something else that I learned that is extremely important in all of this, is leaning against Bush. The stolen weapons, the video of said weapons, the Halliburton whistle blower, and the announced total of over 100,000 Iraq civilians dead. That's double the number of dead at Gettysburg and almost double of the US dead in Vietnam. And these aren't combatants. These are civilians we're talking about. The news cycle is vicious. The Swift Boat vets had Kerry in a tailspin news cycle back in August and now the Bush camp is on its heels over all of this stuff. The problem for the President is that this is happening in late October, and not August.

I always wondered why the Swift Boat Vets started their campaign against Kerry so early. Another Zogby poll shows that the Swift Attacks are nowhere near as effective as they were in August because a lot of people know more about that group. Why not wait until October to launch that attack? I don't get that.

Anyway, there are about a dozen polls out there and some have Bush's approval rating as low as 43% or as high as 53%. Who to believe? Me? I don't believe any of them. This is a major lesson I have learned from my little experiment--polls are useless to the common voter. 100% totally useless. The camps use the polls to know what to focus on when on the stump, but to you and me, they're meaningless. Just vote for who you want and let the chips fall where they may.

Zogby's comments are certainly reason for a Democrat or an Anti-Bush voter (and there is a difference between the two) to get excited, but in the long run what Zogby said is meaningless, as well. This race is so close that a prediction is just that--a prediction. Nothing more.

Anyway I sure can't wait until all of this is over.