Polls and Pols

It may seem hardly worthwhile going to the polls to vote this election year, since ACORN and the media have already decided that Barack Obama is to be the next President of the United States. Still, it may take more than voter fraud and media spin to put Senator Obama in the White House. Most public opinion polls show Obama ahead, but not usually by decisive margins, and sometimes by a difference within the margin of error. There has been a history of various polls over the years projecting bigger votes for the Democrats' presidential candidate in October than that candidate actually gets in November. Some of these polls seem like they are not trying to report facts but to create an impression. One poll has been reported as using a sample consisting of 280 Republicans and 420 Democrats. No wonder Obama leads in a poll like that. Pollsters have to protect their reputations but they can do that by playing it straight on their last poll before election day, after having created an impression earlier that a landslide for the Democratic candidate was all but a done deal. The general media bias is more blatant than usual this year. There was more media outcry about Sarah Palin's response to "gotcha" questions than to Joe Biden's talking about President Franklin D. Roosevelt going on television in 1929 after the stock market crash-- at a time when FDR was not yet president and there was no television to go on. An editor at Time magazine has admitted that there has been bias but expressed a desire in the future to be more fair to both sides. Just the fact that he expresses the issue this way shows that he still doesn't understand the real problem. The point is not to be "fair" to "both sides." The point is to be straight with the readers, who are buying the magazine to learn something about the facts of the real world, not to learn about its reporters' ideology and spin. There is another factor at work in this year's election that makes polls and predictions more unreliable than usual. That factor is race. Barack Obama's string of victories in early Democratic primaries against far better known white candidates shows that large segments of the American population have moved beyond race. It is Barack Obama and his supporters who have hyped race, after his large lead in the polls began to shrink or evaporate, as more of the facts about his checkered career came out. Almost any criticism of Obama has been equated with racism, even if there is no connection that can be seen under a microscope.

Barack Obama himself started this trend when he warned that his opponents were going to try to scare the public with various charges, including a statement, "And did I say he was black?"

McCain said no such thing. Palin said no such thing. But those who support Obama-- and this includes much of the media-- are acting as if they just know that this is the underlying message.

Congressman John Lewis has likened Senator McCain to George Wallace. Congressman John Murtha has condemned a whole section of the state of Pennsylvania as "racists" because they seem reluctant to jump on the Obama bandwagon.

Senator Harry Reid has claimed that linking Obama to deposed and disgraced Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines is racist, since they are both black-- as if the financial and political connection between the two does not exist.

Much is being made of the fact that, in past elections, some white voters who told pollsters that they are going to vote for a black candidate did not in fact do so, so that a black candidate with a lead in the polls ended up losing on election day.

This is supposed to show how much covert racism there is. It might instead show that people don't want to be considered racists by pollsters because they are leaning toward someone other than the black candidate.

In other words, the media themselves helped create the charged atmosphere in which some people give misleading answers to pollsters to avoid being stigmatized.

All in all, going into the voting booth this year is not an exercise in futility for those who don't want to be bum's rushed into voting for Obama by the media's picture of a done deal. If nothing else, genuine voters can offset some of the thousands of fictitious voters registered by ACORN.

Poll: Ohio puts John McCAin in Front 

by Thomas Sowell

Dinesh D’Souza, author of The End of Racism says, “The solutions for ending racism are obvious. If you want to get rid of racial obsession, stop talking and thinking about race so much. If you want to remove race as the basis of decision-making in America, let's eliminateAmerica's policies that make race the basis of decision-making. And if you want a party that stands for color-blindness and equal opportunity, you might consider voting for the Republicans.”

Obama and The End Of Racism

Get Out the Vote... This Race Is Not Over... But

Republicans, Conservatives and Independents 

Need To Get Out The Vote!

Obama and The End Of Racism

Who could not be moved at the sight of a major political party naming Barack Obama, an African American, as its presidential candidate? To me, there could not be a better sign that America has left behind its racist past. We are now approaching what may be termed "the end of racism." The End of Racism was the title of my 1995 bestseller, hugely controversial when it was published, but now it seems to have been a decade ahead of its time. If we appreciate the significance of our current moment, we are driven to an ironic but rational conclusion: perhaps the best way to recognize Obama's historic achievement is to vote for John McCain this November.


Consider this: for the past several years we have been hearing liberal Democrats emphasize how racism still defines America, how things haven't really changed all that much, how racism has gone underground and is now more covert and more dangerous than ever. It may seem strange that a racist country would adopt legal policies that discriminate against the majority and in favor of minorities. Even so, liberal activists and civil rights activists continue to browbeat white America in the schools, in the universities, in politics and in the media if there is the slightest dissent from civil rights orthodoxy.


Well, I don't know how many people have been drinking the liberal Kool-Aid, but these people must be utterly shocked at the success of Barack Obama. Here is a guy who could not possibly have made it as far as he has with only black votes. He has attracted not only white votes but the votes of some of the most affluent and successful segments of the white community. Obama, not Hillary, is the pillar of the white establishment.


Moreover, Obama's own campaign is based on the premise that America is no longer racist. Far from making race-based appeals, to blacks on the basis of solidarity, and to whites on the basis of guilt, Obama campaigns on the expectation that whites share his economic values and foreign policy positions and view of America. In other words, Obama's public message is that race doesn't matter and that transracial alliances should be built on shared political and cultural values. It's a good message, and how it must dismay professional civil rights activists to hear it. I wouldn't be surprised if Jesse Jackson is telling family members, "If race relations keep improving like this, I may have to get a real job."


Clearly there are many in the liberal Democratic camp who are made profoundly uncomfortable by the recognition that racism is no more a defining feature of American life or even African American life. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that racism does not exist. This is a big country, and surely one can find several examples of it. But racism, which used to be systematic, is now only episodic. In fact, when I ask young blacks on the campus today whether America is racist, many say yes. But if I ask them to give me examples of how that racism affects their lives, they are hard pressed to give a single one. The best they can do is to mention "Rodney King" or provide some well-known, recycled horror story.


Recently someone told me that McCain is still winning the white vote by a substantial majority and that shows "we have a long way to go" in overcoming white bigotry. By this logic, blacks are have even longer way to go in overcoming their bigotry since Obama is winning almost 98 percent of the black vote. When your logic leads to an absurd conclusion, go back and re-examine the premise.


Even though Obama's candidacy signals that America is overcoming its racial past, neither Obama nor his wife recognize that. Their personal statements, as seen for example in Obama's books, are suffused with race-consciousness, race-obsession and even racial resentment. The more privileges they have received on the basis of race, the more embittered they seem to become. The source of these pathologies is the very liberalism that the Obamas have embraced: a liberalism that declares them equal while treating them as inferiors who need preferential treatment. (Liberals hate to have this pointed out; hence the irrational invective of the early responses to this post.)


The solutions are obvious. If you want to get rid of racial obsession, stop talking and thinking about race so much. If you want to remove race as the basis of decision-making in America, let's eliminate America's policies that make race the basis of decision-making. And if you want a party that stands for color-blindess and equal opportunity, you might consider voting for the Republicans.

by Dinesh D'Souza, Author of the End of Racism

Townhall.com 9.1.08