Think of the most bland, apolitical, mediocre, utterly mainstream publication you know. More common than Time or Newsweek. More bland than People. More mainstream than O, The Oprah Magazine. And what do you have? PARADE.
Yes, the magazine that shows up with the supermarket coupons and the comics in millions of American newspapers on Sunday. The magazine that's effortlessly seen by literally millions of Americans every week, year round; the one you've probably flipped through yourself while you polished off that last slice of pizza before putting the papers in the recycling box on Sunday night.
Well, guess what? PARADE's readers just effectively endorsed Barack Obama.
PARADE just asked its readers to vote on which candidate -- McCain or Obama -- best shared several key presidential traits defined by the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Here's what their readers said:
That poll is, in effect, an endorsement of Barack Obama for president by a solid slice of utterly middle, utterly mainstream America. It appears in tomorrow's issue of PARADE, on page 6.
And if he's got PARADE's readers, he's got the election.
There is an important footnote, however. Now that the results are up, the results could change. GOP voters may flood PARADE's site with votes of their own.
The solution is that we can stop them. Go to this page -- and then to each subsequent page in the poll -- and take the poll.
Sure, it'll take a few minutes. But maybe, in part because of PARADE magazine's readers, it'll take a lot less time than the long lines we will be standing in on November 4.