Ordinary Gweilo

It’s amusing to see how some people either wilfully or accidentally misunderstand what is going on. Especially when they regard themselves as experts on the subject.

Take Conrad, for example (you’re welcome, I don’t want him). If there are two subjects you would expect him to get right, they would be law and politics. He’s a lawyer, and reckons himself to be an expert on politics.

Last week he managed to confuse  [link deleted – site no longer available] the Progressive Alliance (PA) with the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) when writing about Beijing’s apparent plans to abandon the former to give more support to the Liberals and the DAB. Earlier, you may recall, he got very confused about the date of the Spanish General Election and very upset about comments made by the opposition leader about John Kerry (Americans, you understand, never interfere in other people’s elections).

This week he compares  [link deleted – site no longer available] John Kerry’s mixed results in the opinion polls to a ‘dead cat bounce’. The point (I think) being that even a dead cat thrown from a high building bounces up in the air, but John Kerry didn’t get much of a boost from the Democratic National Convention. In opinion polls we trust…

I suppose we have to ignore Conrad’s earlier protestations that he couldn’t support George W Bush and accept that he is a highly partisan Republican, but anyone who is following the election surely knows that it’s close and Kerry is a serious threat to Bush. One opinion poll showing Bush in the lead proves nothing.

As Conrad surely knows very well, in this election there are very few floating voters. Most people have made up their mind either for or against Bush, and the result is going to be decided by what happens in a few ‘swing’ states. There is every chance that we will again see a candidate win the popular vote and lose the election (as happened to Al Gore). In short, it’s going to be close, and both parties know it and are planning accordingly. It really doesn’t matter whether Kerry trails at this stage or leads by 7%. What matters is how people vote in November.

Dead cat? I don’t think so.