On Desperation and Despair

Desperation:

One of the things I've noticed over the last couple of years- the Obama Administration and their internet trolls increase in both frequency and shrillness of posts when something bad for Obama is happening.  So, when you see an uptick in troll activity and/or an uptick in stupid stories coming from the Administration and their shills in the Media, you can be pretty certain they're trying to distract you.  Sometimes this is to distract from a current problem.  Just as often, it is preemptive and designed to get you fixated on one thing, so they can slip something else by you unnoticed.

Case in point: yesterday, on the AoSHQ, we had worse than usual troll activity.  There was a lot more of it, and it was a lot more desperate than normal.  Everything, though, was about the polls.  Now, Republicans pretty well have this poll thing figured out, so poll trolling is a low ROI tactic.  There are two websites that I know of that use Math! to show what bunk the polls are, and most Conservatives on the internet are at least familiar enough with the problems to say, "And what are the internals."  So it doesn't make much sense to try to get people worked up over the polls.

So when they came in constantly talking about the polls, and there were so many of them, it got me to thinking: something big is coming. 

Sure enough, today the economic news came out, and it's terrible.  Ace points out how terrible it is: we're somewhere between 50% & 70% chance for recession next year.

Now, this isn't to brag on my prescience.  It's a warning- when you see the trolls latch onto something, be careful not to get too engaged; as likely as not, they want you paying attention to them and debunking them so that when the real thing (whatever that may be) comes along, you're too busy debunking polls to notice.  Conservative Blogs, Talk Radio, Twitter, and all the other forms of Guerrilla Media are having an impact, and the Liberals are desperate to lessen that impact.

Despair:

The flip side of Trollish Desperation is Conservative Despair.  Call them Eeyores, Concern Trolls, or whatever, there seems to be a class of Conservative who have decided that the election is already over, and that we've lost.  These include well known pundits, and lesser known bloggers.  They never seem to be satisfied, and they never seem to be willing to work to make things better.

They'll complain about what the Romney campaign is doing, or not doing, but when you point out that the Romney Campaign has a suggestion site, they ignore it and move on.

Not to call him out specifically (well, okay, a little) because I like his opinions on most things, one particular example is @DrewM- both on twitter and regular poster at the AoSHQ.

This morning, he was tweeting about the failings of the Romney campaign- how Romney has to offer a way forward, and how he needs to have "targeted events."  I don't know if he just didn't see them, or chose to ignore them, but I responded to the tweets by pointing out that Romney has been doing exactly those things.  The most recent example was just yesterday when he had a whole day devoted to manufacturing and skilled labor, in conjunction with Mike Rowe (who did not expressly endorse Mr. Romney).

Indeed, Mitt Romney is doing just about everything the Eeyores are saying he should, and they continue to ignore it.  When they do acknowledge it, they then turn around and complain that "he's not doing enough," or "he's not getting his message out."  Well, how about this, instead of complaining that he isn't doing what he is expressly doing, or complaining that the word isn't getting out- how about you help get the word out?  R.S. McCain has been phenomenal on this, as have others.

If you want Mitt's message to get out, then help it get out.  It's that simple.