November 02, 2010 09:48 AM UTC

Why brag now?

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• by: IndyNinja

Maybe this is my naivity showing through, but I just don’t get it.

I spent all day monday calling people and doing my part to support the candidates that I believe in. (For the record, this included a D county coroner, an R state senate candidate, and two D state house candidates).

But it seems that many people who claim to care a lot about races like the us senate and governor spent their day here on CPols running victory laps and counting their figurative chickens. And my question is why?

From where I sit, there is no advantage to coming in here and claiming certain victory for your candidate.

For one thing, most people who read sites like this made up their minds months ago and have already voted, so you aren’t convincing anyone or influencing the outcome by doing. But even if that weren’t true. It seems to me that the result of claiming victory before election day would be that your own supporters would be less likely to vote than if you constantly pushed the “it’s so close that your vote could make the difference” message.

Second, it can’t possibly help you personally. If you are right, then you have cursed yourself to irrelivancy by claiming that it was all already over before you commented. And if you are wrong, you show yourself as ignorant and foolish. So isn’t your time better spent actually working for the victory instead of claiming to have already won it?

Finally, these types of claims expose you as someone who is more interested in the success of their own opinions than the promotion of accuracy and truth. The fact is that no one knows where things will end up tomorrow. Companies like PPP can make educated guesses based on the opinion of the first few hundred people who are willing to answer them, but at their best, they are still just guessing. To accept their reports as certainity is like taking the weather man’s word on tomorrow’s weather. Yeah, he’s right a lot, but not always.

So with those things in mind, please tell me. What is your motivation or reasoning behind the premature victory postings?

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