The "Undecideds": Science vs Intuition Poli Sci 101

There are many ways to acquire knowledge.  

One of them is "polling."  When I was in college, I took a course in surveying public opinion and learned the statistics, limitations and difficulties of using standard questions to assess the opinions of other people.

I had another experience, outside of school, which revealed my own limitations in misreading people.  As an 18 year old, I started an age group swimming team, with a friend of mine, at a newly built community pool. We recruited kids from age 8 to 17 to swim the different strokes and relays required by the county swimming league with an eye toward, eventually, creating a team good enough to enter the least competitive division of the county league. 

We told the assembled kids, before each practice, stories about kids we had swum with, how they failed at first, persevered and ultimately triumphed. The kids looked at us blankly, and I could not see past their eyes. Their expressions were not blank, but, to me at least, they were unreadable. Were they thinking, "Oh, spare me the pep talk, coach.  This guy is just all about himself.  This guy is coaching this team because he needs an audience" or what?
We arranged a meet with another team which had been formed a few years earlier and was now in the county league.   This other team had been pretty well crushed in it's first two summers in the county league, not having won a single meet. We brought over our kids' times from the time trials we had run, and the other coach looked them over and smiled and agreed to swim us. Finally, he had a team his kids could beat.

The morning of the meet, our kids assembled on the far deck, and I stood near the starter's gun at the near deck. When the gun went off, starting the first race, something happened which astonished me: Our entire team, about seventy kids, leaped to their feet and roared.  I looked down the deck to my friend,  and he was as stunned as I, but he just shrugged. 

We crushed them.  Our kids swam times which were ten seconds better than they had done in time trials. Ten seconds in the water is a lot of distance. Eight year olds swam an entire 25 meters breathing only once.  Our kids were, in a word, psyched. 

I had misread the crowd. The other team's coach was not pleased. He thought we had lied to him. He thought we had brought him numbers which were phony, doctored to make our kids look slow and easy to beat. But we had collected and recorded the numbers honestly. What we had not been able to measure was what was in those kids' hearts.

Yesterday, I went door to door with my clipboard and pencil and computer sheets.  At one home  there was an Obama sign on the lawn but I had only one name in the house to ask for: the husband. I'd ask if he was going to vote. Yes. Was he leaning in any particular direction?  No, he said, looking me in the eye, smiling. "Oh, I saw the sign on your lawn."  He looked me in the eye, "That's my wife's sign. You asking about how she's going to vote or about how I'm going to vote?"  That went down on my sheet and into the computer as Mr. Deadeye, "Undecided."

Back at the office, I was told some people simply take the secret ballot seriously. You cannot be sure how he is going to vote. I may have misread the man.   But there I am, standing there in my Obama hat, and the guy says he hasn't decided, a week before the election. 

Now, maybe, he is like Maud's friend, a man who will go into the booth thinking he's going to vote for Romney and then he'll vote for Obama. Maybe, after all this, he really is undecided, as if he doesn't yet know enough about Romney and Obama. Anything's possible. He may be the long lost King of France.  But I don't think so.

That response, "undecided," seemed like a pretty clear statement to me. The guy is in his own house on a Saturday, and I've pulled him away from whatever he's doing. He doesn't want to engage in a political argument. He just wants to get rid of me. So, fine. But why can I not enter him as a Romney vote? It's clear he is not voting Obama, or he'd tell the guy in the Obama hat that. In fact, he might say he was voting Obama, just to get rid of me. 

People who came to the door, when I was not wearing my Obama hat, who were voting for Obama, would often say they intended to vote, but they left it there, no mention of who they would vote for. Then I'd slide my hand down from the back of my clipboard and the Obama sticker would show through, and they'd smile conspiratorially, almost as if they were admitting they smoked marijuana when they were kids, and maybe now and then, even now. "Oh, yes. I'm for Obama. My husband, too."

So, my intuition about the "undecided" voter  told me I was talking to a Romney voter, or at least not an Obama voter, but science demands more evidence than gut instinct. The question is, does my taking in unmeasured data, a look, a set of circumstances mislead me, or inform me beyond what one measure--what the person actually says--can tell us?

In Malcolm Gladwell's world, did I know in a Blink?

And if this is a problem at the street level, what do we make of our polls?

The professor will tell you, it's all in the numbers. If you sample enough voters, the voters you get misleading responses from will wash out among all those who are straightforward.

We can always hope.  During the election of 1864, General George McClellan, who had been the beloved commander of the union Army of the Potomac (before Lincoln fired him) was a handsome, charismatic man, who would ride down the ranks of his soldiers, waving his hat to the cheers of his troops. He ran against Abraham Lincoln on a peace now platform. The troops loved McClellan,  and they were weary in the extreme. They were bitter, more often defeated than victorious, and one had to ask, why would they vote for the cerebral Lincoln, with his stentorian,  high pitched voice and his top hat?  

But they did. Like that crowd of young swimmers, they had something inside they weren't showing. They voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln; they voted to push ahead with the war, despite all the hard times, to push ahead with the war, which was unfinished and in doubt, and they decided the election and the outcome of the war with  the ballot. 

Those men, who could march twenty miles through the day, then charge across a field with musket and bayonet, who could find strength beyond exhaustion,  were Americans of another time.  They were different from supersized Americans today, who do their fighting on computer games. They were tougher not just physically, but, I suspect, mentally and possibly, morally tougher. 

The Union army had suffered defeat after defeat, had incompetent generals, not just for one debate but for battle after battle. It took over three years to find Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, to get them into position to push the war to victory.  The troops tolerated a lot of disappointment, defeat, government ineptitude and misery, but they could see that Lincoln was pointing them in the right direction, away from a slave nation, away from a divided nation where aristocracy lived on plantations and the 99% lived around them in meager circumstances, away from a world where those who were winners felt no obligation to help those below them, away from a world of meanness and heedless greed.

Every soldier fought for his own reasons. Each voted for the same reason: To go forward.

The nation, as a whole, fought for only two reasons: Ending slavery and preserving the only democracy on earth, the last best hope of man, a government of the people, by the people, for the people. That idea had not been put into any government anywhere else on earth, at the time. The civil war tested whether or not the idea of democracy could endure.

At a White House reception, Lincoln walked up to the diminutive Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. He stooped forward to shake her hand and said, "So this is the little lady, who wrote the book, that started the great big war."

Lincoln knew, as he said in his 2nd inaugural address,  the war was fought for moral reasons, because of ideas.  One hundred and fifty years ago, our people were able to see through the gibberish with moral clarity. I'm hoping today's Americans still can.

Charles Blow: White Men and Obama

Mississippi Sheriff Laughs at His Trial for Lynching

A Black Man Who is Smarter and Better Than The Imbecile  Sheriff

Charles Blow, writing in the New York  Times,  cites some truly horrific statistic about the percentage of white men who will vote for President Obama--somewhere in the neighborhood of 30%. 
Having spent today canvasing the town of Hampton, I was both cheered and depressed by the folks I spoke with.  I was also struck by the number of households where the white wife was voting for Obama and had an Obama sign on the lawn, while the white husband is a Romney man. So Charles Blow's statistic rings true, from the worm's eye view.
In the South, white men always got points for simply being white and male, no matter how uneducated or stupid they were. They could get jobs as police, firemen, dishwashers, gas station attendants, construction workers, factory workers and they got them ahead of any Black man or Black woman who might apply. But that advantage eroded in the 1960's with the Civil Rights movement, with federal legislation and with a relentless campaign against white supremacy and advantage launched by federal government agencies. 
The essence of the resentment of the white male, who sees his wife now earning more than he can, who sees educated Blacks now getting better jobs than he can,  is contained in the story told by the son of a white farmer who is driving past the fields of  their black neighbor with his father.  The son remarks about how beautifully the Black farmer has plowed his fields with his new mule. With the old mule, who was getting on in years, the fields looked a little shabby, but with the new mule--well, big difference. The next day,  the son learns his father has shot the Black farmer's new mule. The son is stunned. Why would you kill that mule?  "If I ain't better than some nigger with a new mule, then who am I better than?" His father replies.

If I can see anything, as I do battle in the trenches, that is what I think I see.
Read the New Yorker's simple essay supporting Mr. Obama's re election: The Choice.
http://www.newyorker.com/

 There is no more simple, succinct, compelling argument than what the editors of The New Yorker assemble. The man rescued the economy, General Motors, the banks, the housing market and even Wall Street,  but 70% of white men refuse to see it that way.
They'd rather shoot his mule.

Why We Fight: The Haters on the Right

Mad Dog took a brief trip up Route 16 to clear his head,  hiking about the White Mountains.  Life is old there, and the air is clear. 

But  just north of the village of Chocorua, almost in Albany, New Hampshire,   Mad Dog spotted this.

You just know the guy who owns this Kawasaki motorcycle dealership probably has a VA pension for the hernia he got when he was in the Army and his parents are living on Social Security and using their Medicare. And the road by his dealership is maintained by government taxes on his fellow citizens.  

I did see signs for Carol Shea Porter as far north as North Conway, though more for Guinta. 

Robert Frost would have loved the mountain streams. I'm not sure he'd have been as happy about the Kawasaki dealer.
This is why we have to get out and knock on doors this weekend and next. 
Illigetimum non carberundum:  Don't let the bastards grind you down.

Romney Brings Us Fantasyland

When you wish upon a star,
Makes no difference who you are,
You can give everyone what they desire,
You can set reason on fire,
Oh, cut taxes for the billionaire,
And the middle class doesn't care,
Because we'll cut the deficit, too
Doesn't matter if it's true.

And government regulations make you blue,
Until you need to change your image,
Until you do not need T Party baggage,
And you can dis the Brits and make them mad,
That will not make Joe Sixpack sad,
All he really wants to know,
Is that you are white and you can grow,
The economy with voodoo stuff,
For America, oh, that's enough.

All Is Forgiven: America's Love Affair with Romnesia

"We've Got To Destroy That Village To Save It"

Oh, it was so long ago. Maybe 18 months. Romney said we've got the best medical care in the world--all those uninsured could just go to the Emergency Rooms. Plenty of care there. GM could go belly up. Bankruptcy can be good for a company--bad for the workers, but good for the stockholders.  Medicare can be turned into Couponcare, but never mind if you're over 60; won't affect you, just your kids. Government regulation is BAD, well, mostly, until the first debate, then we were all for it.  We cannot telegraph to the Taliban when we are leaving Afghanistan, sends the wrong signal, well until the third debate. Obamacare is the devil's work. Romneycare came from the angels. They are twins, the good twin and the evil twin. Cut taxes for billionaires. You can believe me: If billionaires pay less, we can build the middle class. Government cannot create jobs, except in Congressman Ryan's district. Obama did the apology tour; I did the stand tall tour--they loved it in London.  And any President would have, could have done what Obama did in taking out Bin Laden. I coulda hit that home run.

Oh, America, what have you wrought?

Remember last month?

Flipper is Drowning! We have to save Flipper!

Romney and Ryan want to kill Medicare. Have made plans to kill Medicare. They Deny it, of course, but that's what they will do.

But in one debate, Mr. Romney has erased that memory from the American voter, as easily as...Etchy Sketch. 

Wow.

What I heard a pundit say tonight is that the Democrats had managed to paint Mr. Romney as a really unacceptable buffoon and all that was undone during the first debate. If one debate is all it took, what does that say about the American mind?

Horses and Bayonets

There was a Monday night football game and a baseball play off tonight, so I'm not sure anyone beyond the crew at PBS was watching, but from my view out here in New Hampshire, Mr. Obama made Mr. Romney look like an inept amateur tonight.

Mr. Romney, as I'm sure most people will hear tomorrow morning, tried to attack Mr. Obama as a wrecker of the national defense, as a man who had weakened America by cutting back on our armed forces. Why, we have fewer ships today than we did in 1910, Mr. Romney said, scandalized.

Mr. Obama smiled slyly and replied, "That's because you have no idea of what real strength is. Yes, we have fewer ships, and we also have fewer horses and bayonets in our armed forces, but that's because we have these things called aircraft carriers and these ships that go underwater, called submarines. You have to know how military forces need to be constructed in the 21st century. "

And another exchange, Mr. Obama remarked, "You want to return to  the wars of the 1980's, the social policies of the 1950's and the economic policies of the 1920's." 

At least, that's the way I remember it.

One thing I do remember is Mr. Romney and his running mate Mr. Ryan both said, quite clearly, during prior debates we do not want to draw a line in the sand and say we will leave Afghanistan at 2014, because then we tell the Taliban all they have to do is wait until that date. But now, with the ever changing kaleidoscope which is Mr. Romney, we are all for a clear date, Taliban planning no longer mentioned.

Romney did what Romney does:  He spun his tale about how everything has collapsed around the world and it's all because Mr. Obama has been a failure as a President.  Those who want to believe that will believe that. 

For whatever reasons, some people want to believe Mr. Romney wouldn't be so bad, and he'd be better than Mr. Obama.

To paraphrase The Wire, Mr. Obama has to be saying to himself, "I can be right about Afghanistan; I can be right about the economy; I can be right about Social Security and I can be right about Medicare, but tomorrow morning, I still wake up Black in a country which isn't."

We'll find out what this country is made of on November 6.