Part of the reason why I'm such a political junkie is because I'm addicted to data. In another lifetime, I might have been one of those rotisserie baseball guys, like in Knocked Up. I have a constant need for new information, and politics is one hobby where you can have all the information you can handle, like sports, although professional sports are just too cynical an enterprise for me. It's ironic, but at least there are theoretically some politicians who actually want to make the world a better place--hell, the law of large numbers tells us that there have to be some in real life as well. From what I've read by professional athletes, most pros disdain the fans and are just around to collect a paycheck, which would be less objectionable if it didn't cost half a mortgage payment to get a seat.
All of which is to say that I'm still wondering how well Barack Obama's speech was received. He hasn't had a very good week, but it hasn't been campaign-crushing or even close to that. Marc Ambinder discusses how the fundamental dynamic of the race is unchanged here, and Rasmussen seems to indicate that the speech wasn't much of a positive here. Still, it's Rasmussen, which is better than nothing but which has had a tendency to skew a bit conservative in the past. In any event, it is beginning to look like Obama's speech on race wasn't the silver bullet that is going to win the campaign for him, which I suspect was never the point.
Nevertheless, we need more data, people!
