Full disclosure: I stole the title from Laura’s post at Ace. If it weren’t for that, I might not have even watched it – that caught my attention right away and made me ask: “What’s this?”

The ad has to be listened to, as well as watched, for fullest effect. And the sounds take it from simply a great ad to absolutely gut-wrenching. As someone says in their comments – exactly as I was thinking – it’s this year’s Daisy ad.

Go watch it again at Ace, then give a tip for Laura.

Ace of Spades

Originally, yes, polls were meant to document reality, but nowadays polls are designed to mold reality. If two candidates are in truth currently tied, but we announce that one of them is in the lead, then on election day he will actually win, because our false poll reporting affected how people vote. Get it?

No, actually, I don’t get it. This entire strategy, which dominates the 2012 election even more than it dominated earlier campaigns, is based on some amateurish assumptions about mass psychology that have never been proven, or even tested. I find it extremely odd that no one has ever questioned these assumptions — until now, at least — because so much depends on them. What if it turns out, after endless person-hours expended on the Poll Wars, that the assumptions justifying poll-skewing are completely wrong?