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tell you what you can largely deduce without them if you have some contact with people AND the real world and some little wisdom based on experience. When you give your own bias free rein out of hope or determination you have the opportunity to seeing it at work and whether to measure it as denial or creeping pessimistic despair. In most cases Thomas the Doubter would be right.
The real world of the pollster starts with the phone caller and the pressure to get answers. Then the science of statistics based again on experience tempered with critical wisdom, sometimes daring to call itself objective blankets over all those thousands of mushy encounters. Then the goal gets moved along with that cover of plus or minus 4 per cent. Do they ever admit to screwing up the goal post badly? then they hide in AVERAGING all the different polls.
But in particular what should be disturbing considering some of the dubious characters(WSJ) jumping on the band wagon, is their particular interest in what is usually an internal polling goal by candidates. They are trying to measure and interpret Hillary's "likeability" and for once, after seeing many many frontrunners go up in a puff of ballots, try to bolster the momentum of a perceived poll leader by helping it erase the doubts. That, without any other factor being obvious why they should be changing other than "success" of the moment.
The numbers themselves might be significant but they are too small for me to notice anywhere in the real world. People are more depressed than ever that the candidacy is slumping toward inevitability. these are democrats. Maybe I am missing the wildly enthusiastic women, but there may be a rallying factor based on that huge segment of the population tired of seeing one of there own bullied and then successful in spite of it. That is not much of a change in seeing any depth in the voter or the candidate or of polling at this stage. The numbers are not comforting for whatever reason, all the more because such movement can vanish in a twinkling, under real pressure, but the interpretations by the pollsters seem eager to please.
I would love to see the leading candidate, the eventual winner perhaps, take the public opinion by the short hairs and deal actively with things set in stone. This is more like surf boarding on mush. Where are any people being actively won over except by the aura of coronation and the need for hope in any form allowed? There are passive strategies that are workable, but always they are dangerous for the choice of leadership. When Clinton, in allergy season, THIRD in polling and definitely THIRD in the media circus, took time out to nurse voice and finances and get some sax playing in. He could chill because the other two were destroying each other. Kerry's respite continued under the barrage of MSM supported swiftboating, now a household term, whereas our justly elected president just became another voice in the Senate, one not granted full leadership even by the centrists who helped ruin another successful candidacy. What worries me, after all our debates and controversies of the past is how set in stone the likely scenarios are going to be, and the biggest millstone that gives a stable base to all theories is the Clinton campaign steaming along on entitled cruise control.
Kerry convinced with his personal campaigning on the stump after being written out of the circus. He convinced with organizational and winning acumen that spoke of the hero of Vietnam and the BCCI takedown. Now it's coasting with Clinton with a red carpet poll being laid at her feet like the submission to George Bush after 9/11, a popularity and strength that was not rational and could not last by the predictability of those in power.
If Hillary smashes through the primaries, people must try to strengthen the public perception. If she gets a bruising, doubts will linger and likely again be coasted over. For everyone's sake she must risk victory the hard way. If the real leadership presentation campaign, dealing with fixed attitudes(not all loony), does not start until she takes the podium at the Convention, then she has lost an opportunity that adversity might have forced her to. Whatever the polls suggest to the hopeful campaign
staff itself the real trouble is still out there. Doubling the misgivings is how this reflects on her very likely presidential performance when she gets elected and the unnecessary costly sacrifices caution usually exacts.
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