July 31, 2004

BUSH BOUNCE!

        Horsefeathers found John Kerry's impersonation of a bold warrior quite entertaining. What made it so was the contradiction between the verbal insistence on his "strength", and the manner and content of his speech. The pathetically limp wristed salute and the self flattering introduction would have been painfully embarassing to any real warrior. The Neville Chamberlain like insistence that true strength consists in keeping the friendship of our foes like the French. The devious and cowardly manner of insinuating his opponent went to war for personal reasons. (What speech writer came up with this too clever by half technique, 'I promise as President I for one will never beat my wife'?). Additionally, any sentient viewer had to know that the John Kerry who boasted endlessly about his 4 month tour of duty in Vietnam was the same John Kerry who returned home and led the antiwar movement that helped Hanoi to victory. The more he played the bold warrior, the more viewers had to wonder why there was no mention of his anti-war role or his 20 year senatorial role attempting to eviscerate U.S. military and intelligence strength. Why wasn't he proud of the way he devoted himself to U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam? The mainstream media, desparate to elect a man more like themselves, went all out to portray the candidate as a Lincolnesque, eloquent leader. Can they make the sale? Horsefeathers finds polls and pollsters utterly unreliable. They still haven't factored out their own subjectivity, nor the reluctance of respondents to provide answers that go against the grain of political correctness. There is however, another way of gauging candidates. Instead of a poll, there is the market. The Iowa Electronic Market, set up by Iowa University, for real time trading in futures contracts created for the candidates. This is real money that individuals invest based not on their support of a particular candidate, but on their prediction of which candidate they think will win. The predictive value seems superior to polls. Guess what--that expected Kerry post convention bounce didn't happen. Instead it was more like a Kerry collapse. Saturday's trading showed a Bush bounce with a corresponding Kerry decline. Bush shares now are worth $.52 with Kerry at $.48.
Check out the Iowa Electronic Market here.