Barack Obama is like a doctor finishing a surgery ... he’s got this thing all sewn up. Which is, of course, a fat lie. It is, however, easy to believe if you’ve been following the news. John McCain has pulled his campaign out of Michigan. Obama is pulling away in battleground states such as Ohio, Colorado, Florida and Nevada.
In Virginia, a state that has gone Republican the last 10 elections, Obama led by a stunning 12 points. Both CNN and FoxNews.com polls reveal that a majority of Americans believe that Obama won the Oct. 7 debate in Nashville, Tenn. In national polls, Obama led McCain by as many as 8 percentage points. As a matter of disclosure, I want Obama to win. All this news of Obama’s supposed insurmountable lead, however, is counterintuitive and could cost him the election.
Obama, by anyone’s count, is having a tremendously good October. I fear, nonetheless, that the perception of Obama having already won could cause a multitude of fair-weather Democrats to stay home on Nov. 4.
“Why bother? If the country has already decided, why waste your time?” The truth is, as much as polls can tell us, we must remind ourselves that not a single vote has yet been counted. It matters not who leads who on Rosh Hashanah or Halloween, because only one day truly matters: Nov. 4. If Obama has won an imaginary election put into the hands of a thousand or so people reached by telephone three days ago, great, but so what? Are they registered? Do they actually plan on going out and voting on their opinions?
Extensive polling does us a disservice anyway. While some politicians claim to not care about polls, you can bet their campaign strategists do. Extensive polling satisfies our desire to have an up-to-the-minute prediction of how this epic horse- race will play out, but it makes us, as an electorate, too easy to pander to. Polling is big business, and it helps politicians figure out how to turn us into a nation of special interest groups and single-issue voters.
Although a sticky issue such as abortion is always prone to controversy, it takes on a bigger profile for every major election simply because millions of Americans are willing to ignore every facet of a candidate, save for his or her stance on abortion. The same can be said for gay marriage or gun control. These issues, while important in their own right, are exploited for the sake of simplistic talking points: right to life vs. right to choose, freedom for gays vs. freedom from gays, the Second Amendment vs. the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which expired in 2004 and has yet to be renewed.
The two biggest issues facing American security, the war and the economic downturn, are maddeningly complex and do not lend themselves so easily to the same kind of sloganeering-as-policy rhetoric. It’s hard to explain how you’re going to fix the economy in a 30-second television ad, so just call the other guy “old” or “a radical.” It’s difficult to have a bumper sticker that expresses the essence of your views on nuclear non-proliferation in the Middle East.
In conclusion, no matter what candidate you support, who you want to marry, or what kind of guns you feel you have the right to shoot in the air on July 4, go and vote. Ignore the entrance pollers and the exit pollers, and just vote. Don’t be a demographic on Nov. 4, just be a voter.
