[lbo-talk] Re: Alternative polls (and a warning on polls) on retropoll.org

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>>  overqualified wrote:
>>
>>  >On this site U find alternative polls and a critique of usual opinion polls
>>  >(like the factual one that about 70% of interviewed in any
>>  >poll are "not respondent").
>>
>>  These results are a bit hard to believe if you spend any time talking
>>  to average Americans, or look at the results of elections. Why, for
>>  example, aren't Kucinich and Sharpton attracting five or ten times
>>  the support they actually are?
>
>Well, in the case of Kucinich I think it's because average Americans 
>don't seem to even know he's one of the candidates. And that's 
>probably cuz they're getting their information about who's running 
>from the mainstream media which seems to have decided early on, for 
>whatever reason, that Dean should get the nomination and that 
>Kucinich is not a serious candidate. Even the majority of my 
>friends, who are all liberals in their late 20s or early 30s, hadn't 
>heard of him when I first mentioned him.
>
>I think this whole thing about how Kucinich can't win/is not 
>electable will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've heard so many 
>people say those things, even though they agree with his views, that 
>it makes me think he would actually have a much better chance if all 
>those people supported him instead of making all these assumptions 
>about what OTHERS think or how they might vote.
>
>- Andrei

In my opinion, supporting candidates in elections, when you don't 
have a political party that you can call your own (the Democratic 
Party can't serve as a political party that you can call your own -- 
it's more like a collection of fundraising machines), is not unlike 
commoners (as opposed to CEOs & the filthy rich) speculating in 
stocks in an atmosphere of irrational exuberance.  You don't invest 
in companies because you think that they are making wonderful 
products of good quality that meet human needs and desires; you 
invest in them because you are told that their stocks have, are, and 
will be going up, whatever the reasons, however close to bankruptcy 
the companies may be in reality.
-- 
Yoshie

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