My brother, a lifelong republican, told me he was voting for Obama this morning.....

[rocktivity]

33. DING DING DING! BlueStreak, you're our grand prize winner!

Last edited Tue Feb 13, 2018, 10:30 PM - Edit history (12)

Conventional wisdom is that all but 8% have their minds firmly made up. I think conventional wisdom may be wrong. The logic the seasoned watchers use is simply that in "normal election cycles" (if there is such a thing anymore)...I think that could be very wrong this year...

I've always said that the polls should be taken with a pillar of salt. But since 2005, I've also said that "conventional" election watchers have been loath to acknowledge that there's new skin in the game: the Internet has given the voters themselves the power to shake their dependence on the MSM and define their own roles within the election cycle:

2005: The MSM has been perfectly happy to go along with Bush's fake news videos, scripted press conferences, prepackaged talking points, and payoffs. More important, they were also able to dismiss the Will Pitts, Greg Palasts, Daily Kozes, and Mike Malloys as part of a luntatic fringe who commanded neither credibility nor respect. But then the Gannongate swung open!

To use a now archaic journalism term, the MSM got scooped, caught completely flat-footed missing a story that anyone over the age of twelve with an Internet connection could have put together. Even worse for them, the authors of Gannongate did what journalists are SUPPOSED to do -- TELL THE TRUTH completely, accurately, comprehensively, and objectively. The MSM's response was to accuse bloggers of working in basements in their pajamas and looking at the world "through a pinhole"...


2007 (by DU-er PlaidAdder): In a recent address to NYU journalism students, NBC’s Brian Williams bemoaned the fact that his hard-fought climb to the top of his field is now being undermined by "people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe...(N)ow I'm up against a guy named Vinny...who hasn't left (his) efficiency apartment in two years...” What really gets Brian’s goat is the fact that Vinny’s ever-widening audience consists of...intelligent, self-motivated people who have a wacky penchant for wanting the facts...

Brian just doesn’t get it. Day after day, he serves his pre-digested, warmed-over, corporate-endorsed, nutrition-free pablum, and he wonders why the world is beating a path to Vinny’s Place, where the news is served pipin’ hot by a guy who probably doesn’t even have a personal manicurist. Maybe Brian should use his alleged journalistic prowess to do an in-depth report on why Vinny’s rise to the top was so inevitable...


2008: (The MSM has) got two problems: McCain's flagrant disrespect for them, and the blogosphere... The...GOP couldn't care less if the MSM doesn't like getting only 90-second peeks at McCain's medical records...But the MSM also knows that the less they fight back, the less credible they become, and the more their viewers will turn to--WAIT FOR IT!!!--the blogosphere for information that has at least a nodding acquaintance with reality and truth...


2009: ...Fortunately, we DIDN'T have to judge the election by who "won" the daily news cycles: thanks to the blogosphere providing us with a "public option" of sorts, the MSM couldn't "push" McCain "ahead" the way they could have a few short years ago. If we'd had to depend entirely on the MSM news cycles, a LOT fewer of us would have learned that the Clintons also had ties to Wright and Rezko, that there were plenty of controversial clergypeople in the McCain/Palin camp, and that Joe the Plumber WASN'T a plumber...

And since the last presidential election, we "little people" (including the "vinnies" ) have been given even more skin in the game via increased social media capabilities, and pollsters have only recently come up with a way to reach people on their cell phones!


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