Sunday, April 29, 2007
Bob Shrum, Wrong as Usual...
Democratic activists [have] cited the disparity between exit polls, which showed Kerry winning by about 3 percentage points nationwide and carrying key swing states, and the official count, which flipped the results giving Bush wins in most swing states and a national popular vote margin of about 3 percent.
Some defenders of the election results argue that the exit-poll discrepancies could be explained by Bush’s supporters just being less willing to answer questions from pollsters after leaving the voting booth. According to this argument, Bush voters disdained the “liberal media” which they saw represented by the exit-poll questioners.
That explanation, however, doesn’t explain why historically exit polls have been highly accurate or why the 2004 exit polls were on target when it came to the results for Senate candidates, while off the mark on the presidential race. Presumably, if conservatives were ducking the exit pollsters, there would be a similar percentage shift for statewide races.
There is the matter of citizens who saw their votes for Kerry magically switched to Bush on the touch-screens; and the huge lines due to lack of voting machines in Democratic precincts that magically appeared in Republican "strongholds."
So you see, Edwards didn't want to throw in the towel and concede, according to news report. But.....enter political lackey Shrum; he told Kerry that it was best to give up the ship as he threw the ticket overboard.
Shrum and other advisers insisted that a concession was the best course. “They say that if I don’t pull out, they (Kerry’s political opponents) are going to call us sore losers,” Miller said, recounting the substance of Kerry’s phone call to Edwards.
With each passing day, it becomes more and more evident that the biggest problem in '04 was that Edwards should have been the person leading the Democratic ticket, instead of Kerry.
