I have to admire the Republican perpetual candidate. For one thing, he is a master at manipulating the news media. I visited a major news consolidators site (not FOX) recently. There were 8 pictures of him and one of Harris. Seven pictures of him were just stock images unrelated to the article. Harris has had huge events but we can only see the pictures on The Comedy Channel where they compare her actual coverage to his inflated numbers, and even then, they give him gratis thumbnails.
What he calls fake news gives him disproportionate coverage. There is no such thing as bad publicity. Is there anyone in the English-speaking world that needs his picture to know to whom the name refers? He still gets twice the news coverage as his opponent. Crime sells.
In the media, accuracy is considered important and responsible reporters seek corroboration from at least one other reliable source, but their criterion is not “Beyond a reasonable doubt.” It is “seems credible” and “the public deserves to know”. What is more important though, is to be first, so some details may be left out. They are about right most of the time. The other important information may be available on page 7, next week, or when the third book comes out.
A politician in office may get blamed by the media for inflation, or some other unpleasantness, even when the cause preceded his election and even after the inflation has been tamed. Because new prices are now baked in. They seldom go down unless there is a serious recession, the opposite of inflation. Recession hurts more because it can lead to lower incomes or missing incomes. Recession is self-perpetuating like an infectious disease.
Polls have similar issues. They can be good, but when they are wrong, they can be very wrong. Hillary Clinton was leading in most polls. The 95% confidence level means margin of error is just 3 plus or minus percent, but some elections are won by one vote, much less than one percent. I knew a professor who preached that we should replace elections with statistical methods like polls. Because he believed some residents ducked the census. When I asked him how we would know if the statistics were valid without an actual count, he was speechless.
Polls can be helpful, but they can be spectacularly wrong. A small sampling error can skew the results. In 1972, Richard M. Nixon was reelected with the largest majority in American history; he carried 49 states. Before the election he was so popular where I worked that no one dared speak otherwise, not even to a pollster. The tyranny of the majority. After the re-election, Watergate blew up and collapsed Nixon’s support. Then suddenly nobody seemed to remember voting for him.
People in public often go along to get along, and this carries over to the polling. In the privacy of the voting booth, they are more likely to vote their conscience. Which is why America switched to secret ballots 220 years ago. After Ronald Reagan’s victory I heard people bragging that they had voted correctly for the winner as if the importance of voting was to predict the outcome, more than to influence it.
Primary elections, or lack thereof, has been a hot item in the news. They are not mentioned in the Constitution. The Constitution gives the manner of conducting elections to the states. The states delegate the process to local precincts of which there are thousands. This makes widespread rigging almost impossible.
The founding authors did not intend for American politics to be partisan; they seem to have expected to continue a clublike atmosphere among the leaders. The first 6 presidents were landed gentlemen and colleagues. Originally the insider with the most electoral votes became the president and the second most votes the vice president, but that did not last. It appears they expected that relationship to continue until outsider Andrew Jackson got elected. For most of our history candidates were picked by party committees in the “smoke filled rooms.” It was only after the disaster of the Hubert Humphrey campaign that primary elections and debates became the presidential norm.
Pay attention, then vote your conscience — democracy works.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com.