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A Solemn Promise: Last Political Entry Until Election Day

As far as forecasting goes, there are only two options left on the table. Either the polling and political study industries are not just wrong, but based on such false premises and methods they might as well go out of business or the Democratic party will at a minimum gain control of the House of Representatives.

Pollsters and the Charlie Cooks of this world have their place. They're political sabermetricians. Just like their baseball brethren, however, their methodologies are not a magic key that'll unlock the future.

For the math-challenged among us, like me, anecdotal evidence is as telling as numbers. I've been trying for a month to come up with what Republican talking heads have reminded me of this fall. Last night it hit me. The GOP's spinmasters are radiating the same false front I've seen in person twice before. It's Saturday night, and they're the guy who'll be paired with Tiger Woods the next afternoon in the final round of a major Woods already leads by more than a stroke.

Fear breeds error. The last few days, the Republicans have committed the primal error of denying voters the luxury of hypocrisy. People are often at their worst in the polling booth, but that's because what they do is a secret. Don't air their psychic dirty linen in public. Don't make them ashamed of themselves.

Taunting an ill celebrity is just stupid. In a very close election, it won't take very many Missouri voters thinking, "wow, I don't want to be on the same side as a nasty shit" to swing the decision to the Democrat. If x percentage of white voters say they'll vote for a black candidate but don't mean it, for God's sake don't PUBLICLY appeal to white racism. Don't create a situation where the only way white Tennesseans can disprove their racists is by voting for your opponent.

If the Democrats aren't exactly acting like winners, they're not acting like total losers, either, a significant improvement on their usual posture. A journey of a thousand miles and all that. The many paranoids among that party's base are pretty much reduced to fretting that Karl Rove is very confident. That's just childish. First, what the hell else is Rove going to say two weeks before the election? Second, in the movie "The Wizard of Oz" remember how much louder the Wizard's voice got the closer Dorothy got to the curtain?

Yours truly is only paranoid about the Phillies. The conventional wisdom and the political forecasting rackets depend on being right more often than they're wrong, and since they're still with us, they must be batting over .500.

But while I expect the Democrats to win, I wouldn't bet on 'em. It's way too easy to see the mental process by which enough changable voters would find it impossible to turn away from the Republicans in spite of their unhappiness with the national situation, indeed, because of their unhappiness. Anyone who's played poker more than once knows what I'm talking about.

In poker, the hardest single feat in the game, the one that separates top-flight professionals from aspiring amateurs, is being able to walk away from a big pot with a good hand with rounds of betting left to go. Cutting losses is a tremendous gut-check where one values math over one's ego. Even the top-flight professionals screw up that decision on occasion.

That's where the voters who do vote for different parties in different elections find themselves. In 2002, when a vote for Bush was a vote for war with Iraq, these folks thought the president was a pair of aces in the hole.

Then came the flop, and fate pushed a HUUGE pile of chips into the pot in 2004. The cards indicated a better than fair chance the Bush aces were cracked, but with two cards to go, the swing voters were uneasily committed, and called. (The most overlooked stat of the '04 exit polls was that 15 percent of Bush voters hoped he'd make major changes in a second term, i.e., get out of Iraq)

Up came the Katrina-Irag turn card. Swing voter's aces are a loser, and he knows it. Logic says fold and walk away. Human nature says, "all that money. Hey, I could still win on the river."

Throughout history, logic's record in big games versus human nature is about 2 wins and googleplex losses. The Republicans can't win this election, but human frailty could do it for them.

That's what partisan Democrats should fear. Me, I'm already on to 2008. I can't help remembering another poker mistake even the top pros make with shocking regularity.

After a bad beat, many players stop using logic altogether and play without regard to probability. It's amazing how often they go broke on the very next hand.

posted by Michael Gee @ 9:26 AM