Posted by
Peter V. Bella on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 12:59:18 PM
There is quite a bit of polling going on and arguments over whose polls are scientific and with merit and whose are not. In my humble opinion, most polls, especially their results, are fraudulent. The people who run them are charlatans. You cannot poll a small sample of people and use that to extrapolate a result for the whole population, especially if the questions are skewed.
The late columnist, Mike Royko, had the best take on election polls. They are useless and worthless. There is only one poll that counts and that is the polling booth. The election results are the only real poll.
I constantly talk to people; all kinds of people. I find it fascinating that only a very few are hardcore political junkies with an ax to grind. The rest have real, pressing concerns that impact their lives and futures. They are being ignored. I do not hear people hating the President. I hear them worrying about whether they will be able to afford higher health insurance premiums. I do not hear anti-war sentiment. People tell me that filling the car up- even the econo-box- is costly.
People do not even discuss the Clintons or Obamas. They worry about the rising cost of milk. They care not that Giuliani was so great after 9/11. They are worried about whether they will be downsized or their jobs will be exported out of the country.
I never hear the average person complain about Wal-Mart. They shop there. They could care less about unions and most tell that their unions are useless anyway. People do not care about the mortgage crisis. They care that their property taxes, thus their monthly payments, are going up in order to finance more failures in local governments.
What I hear the most of is people being fed up with politicians of all stripes. They no longer believe them. Politicians, those in office and those running have lost credibility with the American people.
I have come to the conclusion from my own poll- talking to real people- that there are only a few issues that they really care about; it is not gays, abortion, religion, or entitlements. People want to be self reliant, self determined, and protect what little individual freedom they have left. They want the opportunity to define their prosperity and achieve it. People want lower taxes and less government spending on foolish projects that benefit no one except those producing those projects. People want common sense government- one they can understand and is transparent.
Maybe if the candidates and the elected officials talked to real people- the people who they are supposed to represent, they might get a handle on the real problems instead of the manufactured ones. Better yet, maybe it is time for ordinary people to start running for office. Like the Founding Fathers envisioned.