[lbo-talk] Dumping Ubu/Dickhead

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com, Sun Jul 25 01:57:22 PDT 2004:
>The electoral horse race is a little like the price of a currency 
>between two countries.  Sometimes it stays perfectly steady while 
>the underlying factors that should affect it (like the comparative 
>inflation rates, interest rates, growth rates, equity returns, trade 
>and fiscal position, etc.) are clearly going negative.  What people 
>usually conclude from that is not that the underlying trends don't 
>matter anymore, but that the currency will fall -- the only question 
>is when.
>
>That is essentially the position Bush is when it comes to the polls. 
>The underlying trends in this case are not causal trends (as they 
>are with the currency) but more in the nature of weekly leading 
>indicator trends that have an excellent predictive record: net 
>balance of favorability, right track/wrong track question, and 
>approval/disapproval of various areas of policy, along with ratings 
>of which area of policy will most affect their vote.

The underlying trends in this case are contributions in hard and soft 
money.  Follow the monthly totals of hard money contributions to 
George W. Bush and John Kerry, and you'll see a reversal of fortunes 
beginning in March 2004; and Kerry has benefited from more than nine 
times as much soft money spent by 527s as Bush (cf. 
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/ruling-class-dumps-bush.html>). 
And I haven't even factored in organized labor's money and manpower.
-- 
Yoshie

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