And another thing...

One of the other things that I noticed, and was prepared to wax eloquent on, this evening was the repeated admonition on FreeRepublic.com to "Freep these polls" -- shorthand for going to various mainstream media websites and repeatedly vote in their on-line surveys about who "won" the debates, with an eye toward skewing the vote toward the President. My thought was, "gee, what is it with right-wingers and their unending need to undermine legitimate voting?" But then I surfed over to Atrios, and what did my wondering eye behold but exactly the same message (albeit a bit more polite): "Be sure to visit these polls and vote." And there were the links to the same on-line polls that FreeRepublic was urging its readers to "Freep"!

What's going on here? It's like some perverse arms-race -- one side jacks the polls, and so the other side feels like it has to do the same thing. Then each side either touts the results as showing a surge for its guy, death for the other guy's campaign or both.

But surely, the media whose sites are being used this way must know, right? I mean, they can't seriously believe that these polls are in any way objective or scientific, or dare I say it, meaningful, can they? And yet, they continue to run the polls, and people keep thinking they're meaningful!

I just don't get it.