Grasping at Straw Polls

Some of you may remember that our last Cattle Call was a little different: I asked everybody to rank the candidates based on what kind of week they had. And, you may recall, we got a whopping total of 15 reponses.

As I said at the time, no pollster in his right mind would consider 15 responses a statistically valid sample -- except maybe Frank Luntz, who probably would consider his mother a statistically valid sample if it got him the results his Republican masters wanted.

Well, apparently Luntz is a closet supporter of John Edwards. Our "poll," and I call it that only in the same sense that a band-aid could be called a surgical instrument, has been cited by a blog called Americans for Edwards 2004 as item (D) in their list of really wonderful things that have been happening to the great John Edwards recently. To wit:

"Was ranked first among Dem candidates by the early-adaptin,' bleedin'-edge Daily Kos commentators in this week's momentum-tracking "cattle call."

Really people: This is beyond pathetic. 15 political junkies spouting off on a blog (no offense) isn't a momentum-tracking anything. It's just 15 political junkies spouting off on a blog.

And what exactly is a "bleedin'-edge" commentator, anyway? I mean, does anybody even SEE any blood around here? (Not counting the big clot that apparently is lodged in someone's cranium over at Americans for Edwards 2004.

Let me, as Richard Nixon used to say, be perfectly clear: Cattle Call Plus was a lark; a chance to have a few laughs, tell a few lame jokes. Now it's just lame.

So no mas. Unless Steve Soto wants to take a swing at it, Cattle Call is suspended until Kos returns. I should have realized that in the current spin-crazed climate, even a lame joke might be used as somebody's political talking points.

Billmon

Posted January 10, 2003 04:54 PM | Comments (27)