POLLING PROPAGANDISTS: The Walter Shapiro, Taegan Goddard and Doug Mataconis Edition

Some hack named Walter Shapiro, using the time-tested approach of quoting "anonymous" GOP operatives, suggests that the Romney-Ryan campaign is losing Ohio and doing so in spectacular fashion. Check out this bit of nonsense, the rock-hard kernel of stupidity at the heart of the story.

Maybe Romney isn’t down by 10 points, they argue, but the GOP presidential nominee seems destined to lose by a solid 5 points – and in closely divided Ohio that represents a loss of nearly landslide proportions. (That would mean that Obama would slightly improve his 2008 victory margin against John McCain.)

Never mind that the most accurate poll -- Rasmussen's -- has the Ohio race locked in a virtual tie. Shapiro's absurd "reporting" was eagerly marketed by the usual propagandists -- including Taegan Goddard and Doug Mataconis -- as pure gospel.

Now stop and consider just how deranged your thought processes have to be in order to believe this rubbish:

• Tea Party: you have to believe that the Tea Party never organized or simply disappeared into thin air

• The Debt: you have to believe that Obama's act of adding $6 trillion -- 60 percent -- to the national debt, which has resulted in the country's first credit downgrade, is wildly popular

• Unemployment: you have to believe that Obama's horrific unemployment record is a winning one

• 2010: you have to believe that the 2010 tidal wave election never happened

• Obamacare: you have to believe that spiking health care premiums and a huge number of employers who are dropping coverage have somehow transformed the Statists' health care takeover into a program beloved by the citizenry

• Foreign Policy: you have to believe that Obama's bizarre handling of the Middle East, now aflame, is popular

• Energy: you have to believe that Obama's war on coal -- a critical state industry -- is supported by the majority of Ohioans

• Illegal Immigration: you have to believe that Ohioans embrace illegal immigration and Obama's extra-Constitutional executive orders implementing the DREAM Act

• Obama himself: you have to believe that the known quantity -- a narcissistic, hyper-partisan,, hard Left demagogue -- is more popular now than the unknown candidate marketed by media as some sort of messianic, post-partisan cult figure

If you believe any one of these things, it's possible you have some sort of neurological deficiency. And if you believe all of them, you might be a hapless propagandist named Walter Shapiro, Taegan Goddard or Doug Mataconis.


The polls completely missed the 2010 landslide. And the polls have no freaking clue just how pissed off the American people are.