Reply #31: Factually incorrect, logically flawed as well

[RazzleDazzle]

Here's the cold, hard truth: Paul Hackett was going to get crushed by Sherrod Brown. Paul Hackett's internal polls showed Paul Hackett that right before Paul Hacket decided to leave the race.

For a minute you had me going there -- you were sounding like you actually knew what you were talking about. You apparently don't, for at least 2 different reasons relating to the polls.

First, this is mid-Feb. The primary takes place sometime in May. That's several eternities in politics. Maybe a dozen or so of 'em. Internal polling NOW that showed Hackett at a disadvantage wouldn't be anything more impactful than to provide material for course correction purposes or the like.

Second, those internal polls happened to be much better than you portray:

Early polls show both Brown and Hackett running in a dead heat against DeWine. An internal poll done in February for the Hackett campaign that was obtained by the Cleveland Plain Dealer showed Brown leading Hackett by 20 points, but Hackett took the lead if voters simply heard both candidate’s bios. The analysis concluded, “If Paul Hackett can raise the funds necessary to communicate his message to the voters of Ohio, he will present Sherrod Brown with a formidable challenge in May.”

http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2006/02/hackett_drops_out.html


Twenty points this far out is NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Especially with a multi-termer as your opponent. Hell, he'd get that on name recognition alone.

I don't think much of the rest of your post, but wanted to single this out. I'll also address this:

What I find particularly disgusting about all of the attention Hackett's decision got is the utter lack of issues being discussed.

We're talking about an event, a rather cataclysmic one and one in which the structure of the party and the behavior of the party insiders figures in largely and NEEDS to be discussed by interested Democrats, not who we want to vote for and why. You could call this a meta-discussion, so your criticism is unwarranted and pointless. B esides, plenty of people have jumped into these discussions with posts or threads praising Brown's "progressive" record. Their posts have been irrelevent and annoying since the ISSUES isn't the campaign issues or even whether Brown's any good or not, but the process of what went on and whether or not we want to ever allow that to happen again or not.