Food for thought

A poster on Kos (yeah, I know...) named Thebes writes,

A conversation with a pollster

The father of one of the kids on my son's soccer team works for a firm that does Republican polling. On the afternoon of election day he was despondent - I saw him at soccer practice, looking at his Blackberry every few minutes and practically weeping. He told me that Kerry was going to win, and that the victory would be so decisive that there was no way Bush would be able to mount a credible legal challenge.

Until this morning, I hadn't seen him since election day. So today I asked him what happened - how did Bush pull it out?

He said, "I haven't a fucking clue."

Well, wasn't it just that the exit polls were wrong?

He said, "Everyone's exit polls were wrong?? We had exit polls, Kerry had exit polls, the media had exit polls - all our polls showed the same thing late Tuesday afternoon - Kerry was winning and winning big. But then the votes started coming in and it was like a giant had placed his hand on Bush's side of the scale and all the projections changed."

So what happened, I asked again.

He laughed and smiled, "I told you, I don't know, but when your guy wins, you don't spend a lot of time finding out why he shouldn't have."

I know I'm like a bulldog with a bone, but this story highlights exactly what's been bothering me. I believe it is also bothering John Kerry.