Giuliani vs. Clinton for President?

Tell me another one!

As you surely know by now, Rudy Giuliani scrapped his run for the presidency yesterday, Jan 30. His official campaign website hasn't mentioned his withdrawal yet; it hasn't been updated since Jan. 29: what's the use, right?

Remember how for two years, at least, we were treated to poll after poll pitting Giuliani vs. Clinton for the presidency? Poll after poll, year after year. What was the use?

What actual, real, necessary purpose did it serve, taking and publishing a poll a year or two ago pitting Giuliani vs. Clinton? Besides providing the pollsters with work and the pundits with something, anything, to talk about.

What? You say they were the frontrunners back then? Phooey. They were called frontrunners only because of the polls! How about we ban the use of the word "frontrunner" until at least a couple of people have actually voted, okay?

While I'm on the subject of useless information... what good is Ron Paul's fundraising doing him now? Like John Jimmy Howard Dean four years ago, raising tons of money via the Internet was a quite useless indicator of how people were going to vote when people actually started voting. It's even worse than that: the fundraising was pretty much an inverse indicator of the candidate's prospects: the campaigns did a bang-up job fundraising over the Internet, and got banged-up good when people actually started voting.

Do you suppose we could ask the punditocracy to reconsider the value of polling and of fundraising as indicators of... well, of anything at all, actually? Oh, never mind: what would be the use?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 01/31/08 01:08:20 PM
Categorized as Media & Political.