Toles Rant- Just One Question
By Tom Toles
I’m feeling genuinely great this week, so not much venom for a rant. Progress gets made in fitful batches and that long arc of history looks more like a graph of the stock market than a rainbow. But still. We move forward, a little and a little.
Judging from some comments posted here this week, however, it’s clear that there are some people who are stubbornly resistant to new information or circumstances. I don’t expect them to change their policy inclinations, nor do I expect apologies for the derision they heaped upon me, but I’ll just bring up ONE LITTLE THING.
Yes I took some pleasure over the last month in declaring Obama to have been re-elected in my Blog before the actual voting. Yes I was counting chickens when they still could have turned out to be egg on my face. But guess what? I was, in fact, COUNTING. As in NUMBERS. As in REAL numbers. As in NATE SILVER. Was I so very very certain? Well I in fact WAS pretty sure. The numbers looked good, and I supplemented those with my one political instinct of the season, maybe of my entire life: that Romney neither would nor could ever recover from his 47% remark. Out of his mouth, with feeling, it came too close to him admitting that it was all true what they said about him.
But back to the numbers. Conclusive? No. Yet they said what they said. On the OTHER side, however, you had a sealed chamber of people who were ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that ROMNEY would win. Based on what? Based on people who they listened to telling them MADE-UP THINGS. Which gets me to my point here. You don’t have to be a genius, or some terrible cynic to ask yourself: Why were those people you were listening to assuring you the numbers looked certain for Romney? Answer: They were LYING to you! Next question: What ELSE might they have been lying to you about? Hmmmm. The rest follows from there.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tom-toles/post/friday-rant-just-one-question-edition/2012/11/08/e332abea-29b9-11e2-b4e0-346287b7e56c_blog.html
