Musing about this election remain difficult merely because of the overwhelming amount of information thrown at us. Cutting out the nearly obvious lies is not so hard. Pruning off the repeated perception-building propaganda is a bit more difficult. Narrowing focus upon probable criteria a major challenge. Add to that the startling reality of what actually motivates people, and you finally just shrug your shoulders and sigh, hoping it will be over quickly…
Our forefathers hoped for the voter to be intelligent, rational, and motivated by deep desire for liberty. These days that looks like elitism to most people. “If it breaths, it votes” is more of the lean now as we function more like a pure democracy that bases decisions upon popularity. Most of the people who should know more, care less about knowing. Many of the people who could lead best have simply given up hope of making any impact, let alone a deep impact. Now, you have christian leaders quoting Gandhi and Jesus in the same sentence as if they would agree on political positions and agendas!
Imagine Ben Franklin, James Madison, or “give me liberty or death” patriots like Patrick Henry, dealing with voters who vote for someone because Lady Gaga likes them! Or, imagine any previous generation dealing with a political message that tells people the government should pay for contraceptives and abortion! Imagine the founding fathers dealing with a voting population dominated by people who can’t even name their own Congressman or the Vice President and do not know enough about the Supreme Court to differentiate them from a new pop music group: “Yeah, I love their sound! They can rock it, baby!”
The entire voting process has been redefined. Personally, I want people to participate, to vote, and support voting that is inclusive. I also support the idea that only citizens should vote, and no one should be enabled to vote more than once. That seems so basic to the integrity of the process that I have to wonder about the overreactions I see to efforts to remove suspicion from the process. If a person lacks the motivation and intelligence, basic personal behavior stability, needed to acquire identification that gives the access to the process, they may not be qualified to vote anyway – they won’t vote consistently anyway. That is, voting should be an individual, acting individually, not a group exercise. So, individual voters should be competent enough to exercise their voting rights.
Our forefathers had rather narrow voting public in mind simply because they did not want popularity or pure democracy to destroy our republic. Today, we celebrate “democracy” without understanding what it is, failing to understand that our founders saw democracy as evil and unstable. They wanted the republic to function with laws that protected the individual from the government, not to allow the whims of the masses to alter the unalterable because they want government to give them want they want. Pure democracy cannot protect the individual and will tyrannize what is not popular. Many Americans have a deeply-flawed thinking about how much money the government has and how it should be spent, for example, that causes them to conclude that “somebody’s getting rich off the system so it just as well be me.” Voters out of touch with reality will destroy this republic more quickly than our worst enemies.
Polls
First, keep in mind that nearly all polls are either sold out for political position or actually attempting to show themselves to be accurate in order to get more business. While polling works very well in determining people’s opinions, predicating voting behaviors based upon samplings is much closer to a guess because we do not have mandated voting. The polling cannot predict turnout well enough to determine what people actually do when they get in front of a ballot.
The final CNN poll shows a (D+11) sampling, for example, because it sampled Democrats into the voting at a margin of +11. Even though the Democrat vote it an historic +7 in 2008, they somehow factored in +11 for this total. This makes it more clear that CNN is hoping to influence the vote for the Democrat candidate, not present a factual report of voting behavior. Nothing in any data supports such an assumption, but this goes motivation: “if you want the Democrat to win, your vote will make a difference.” It is less than honest, and it certainly shows a terrible bias, conscious and intentional upon CNN’s part.
The second big determiner missing from all the polls is the turnout and momentum of conservatives in 2010. The Presidential polls ignore this for two reason: first, the 2010 vote wasn’t a presidential election; second, most of the polls lack a measure of conservative voters because they do not know who they are anymore. Conservatives have changed in demographic definition, in my opinion, so quickly that this and another two elections will be needed to install their present voting behavior in polling. Just a thought I have about the trends. Polling that takes 2008 into account to measure turnout but ignores 2010 or even 2004 for voting turnout models is probably going to lean heavily toward the Democrat.
When I ran for US Congress in the 80’s, we understood early polling to be helpful for fund-raising and volunteer motivation. People need to know you have some chance of winning if they are going to really get involved financially and personally. They don’t want to look like they support a fluke or a fake or a kook unless they are one themselves! Polling is expensive as basis for understanding what is on people’s minds, what really moves them emotionally, and what will motivate them to vote in the first place. Many people simply do not vote at all. Ever.
Polling is a good tool. It should not serve as the basis for making policy decisions, nor should it serve to give a candidate a belief system. It does help a campaign focus resources to identify voters who could support them and get them to the polls to vote when they are open. Polling should be more accurate, one would think, given the internet and vastly improved technologies that capture an measure information as a basis for predicting human behaviors. Yet, here we are at 2012 with very little scientific guarantees of predicting an outcome because of increased variables.
“Historic”
At the beginning of this year, I heard God say, “Tipping point.” During the year, I have heard several important prophetic and apostolic voices use the same terms. In the last three weeks, I have heard God say, “The term ‘historic’ will be used to describe several things in this season.” The storm that hit the northeast was one of those things. The election and elections dynamics will also be given this label. More importantly, the tipping point of Awakening will be termed “historic” not matter what happens in this Presidential election. I see a great turning of demographics that will require a reset of the measuring sticks used to describe and discuss this election.
When I ran in the 80’s, the term “christian-bashing” was coined to describe a new phenomenon that arose because of Pat Robertson and other Christians entering the political field. In fact, the first time it was ever used was during a televised discussion about my candidacy because of Dan Quayle. The connection points of pro-life had brought us together, but the trend toward evangelicals taking the political process seriously alarmed elitists.
Such new terms will also arise to describe what is happening now. The polling really shows us the struggle of “what is” to explain “what is coming next.”
