Polls Go Up, Polls Go Down. Polls Go Up, Polls Go Down...

Still recovering from my Invasive Medical Procedure (tm) from Thursday afternoon, I report with some deflation that the daily Rasmussen Election 2004 Tracking Poll for May 6 has Kerry and Bush once again tied with 45 percent each, after three straight days of Kerry leading by three or four points. Even if your computer doesn't have a talkbox, you can almost actually hear the sigh of relief as Rasmussen--known for its Republican tilt--announces that the Kerry lead of Monday through Wednesday was a result of Sunday night's "unusually strong sample" for the Democrat; dropping it from the three-day running average brings us back to par.

I'd categorize my excessive attention to Rasmussen and other polls as a guilty pleasure, except it's not so much a pleasure as a compulsion, and it doesn't inspire feelings of guilt so much as feelings of idiocy...

Anyway, I had hoped that the apparent trend was a reflection of popular revulsion at the Iraq prisoner torture revelations. To me this seemed to undercut, even for the willfully know-nothing 40-50 percent who remain "behind" the Preznit, his whole story of American benevolence, liberation, democratization and the rest of those words he probably doesn't understand. I've broached this theory on Kos and other sites, and have gotten a response basically amounting to "those rednecks actually like the fact that we're torturing Iraqazoid Islamiacs" (I'm paraphrasing here). I still can't believe that: pictures of torture and humiliation have to evoke emotions of empathy and compassion, don't they? If just because we're all prone to nightmares and fear of helplessness in the face of inhumanity and evil. I guess we'll see.