Every year, at least while Charles Shultz was alive, Lucy of Peanuts fame would hold a football for Charlie Brown to kick. Every year she would pull the ball away at the last moment and poor ol' Charlie would fall flat on his ass.
The moral of that annual strip is that "some things never change, some people never change, and if you keep falling for their routines, you are a fool".
It seems like we spend a lot of time complaining about media bias, fake polls, etc. We fight back by engaging these people and their organizations, like they are really going to listen to us, when instead they are paid not to listen to us.
My opinion is "fuck CNN, fuck the Gallup poll, I don't care". Much like Truman's apparently futile run for the presidency in 1948, the only poll that counts is the one on November 2nd.
Let Kerry be Kerry, and deal with the national media. He's our candidate, and complaining about his performance now is counterproductive, and feeds the notion that he could lose. The more I see him, the more I like and respect him.
This "inevitability of losing scenario" is what Bush and Rove want. They want us to believe the Gallup poll, which is propaganda, instead of just working hard to get Kerry elected. If they are successful in painting Kerry as a loser, before even one vote is cast, then they will succeed in surpressing the Kerry vote, if only because people are nominally lazy and no one wants to vote for "someone who's gonna lose anyway".
A better way to "paint it" to Kerry's natural constituency is to say that this election is the most important election in our lifetimes, that everyone must get out and vote, and that everyone must work to get out the Dem vote among registered voters.
In the final analysis, it will be turnout that determines the outcome of the elections. The war may be going to hell in a handbasket, and there may be "many a scandal brewing" for the Whitehouse, but we cannot count on anything other than getting our folks out to the polls, in record numbers, in overwhelming numbers.
You better believe that Rove et al are cranking up the evangelicals, and no tornadoes will stop them from voting. If there is a plan to steal the election, pre-election polling data will be used to justify the theft, since electronic voting is typically unauditable.
So tell Lucy you're not "playing her game anymore, you're not listening". Then work like hell to make people who are registered but don't vote to get out and vote Kerry. The future of the country is in our hands. Stop listening to the propaganda, and GOTV.