by James Buchanan

Traditionally large leads by Black candidates in the polls have been known to disappear at the last minute. An ABC news article explains ” ‘We’ve seen these types of leads disappear at election time,’ said Michael Dawson, professor of political science at the University of Chicago. The concern is particularly at play for black candidates. It is called the Bradley effect, named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American, after he ran for California governor in 1982. Some pre-election polls showed Bradley with a lead of 9 points or higher; but Bradley lost to Republican George Deukmejian by a little more than a point. As the theory goes, people lied to pollsters, saying they would vote for Bradley when they did not. The Bradley effect could just as easily be called the Wilder or Dinkins effect.”

Is this large change, a last minute revelation by voters that a much-hyped Black candidate would be a horrible choice and nothing more than a far-left liberal, who would raise taxes, strangle small and large businesses and wreck the economy? A large number of Whites no doubt wake up at the last minute, but quite a few people seem to be deliberately deceiving the pollsters.

Now, why exactly would a voter lie to a pollster? Imagine a closet-conservative husband with a liberal wife standing right behind him as a pollster calls. There’s an excellent chance that husband is going to say what his wife wants to hear, rather than telling the pollster the truth. Many Americans are scared to death of seeming politically incorrect. There’s a reason the Founding Fathers established a secret ballot for voting: Most people want to keep their political preferences secret to avoid problems with relatives, friends and employers.

Most Americans see Black politicians as favoring big government, more taxes and more hand outs for minorities. Barack Obama has enjoyed a sort of “rock star” popularity, but is that popularity really going beyond traditional liberals, Blacks and young people, brainwashed by public schools and universities to support diversity?

If Barack Obama were a White Democrat with exactly the same background and experience, he would seem like a ridiculous choice. Obama has spent most of his adult life in political activist law firms. In other words, he has no real world experience in terms of business, productivity or even holding a normal job. As a state senator in the Illinois legislature, he made a name for himself by defending partial birth abortion. Most liberals don’t defend partial birth abortion, which is effectively the murder of a full-term baby on what should be its birthday. Obama has only been a US Senator for the last three and a half years. A Senator has no “command” experience like a governor, mayor, CEO or even a small business owner might have. Obama has voted with the Democrats, supporting the illegal alien Amnesty Bill and supporting the Global Poverty Act –an ominous bill that could easily lead to a tax on Americans to “fight poverty” in Third World nations.

The most important action in Barack Obama’s past would be his filing a lawsuit on behalf of ACORN to pressure banks into making more subprime loans. In other words, Barack Obama played a direct role in causing the current subprime financial crisis which is sending our economy into a recession. John McCain co-sponsored a bill in 2005 to put more controls on subprime lending. Unfortunately, that bill failed to pass, but the point should be obvious: Obama was on the wrong side of the subprime crisis –making it worse while McCain was on the right side and could have possibly prevented the disaster.

Unfortunately, most voters don’t make cool-headed decisions based on the facts. People need to be shocked into acknowledging reality. Thankfully, Obama woke up millions of people when he talked about his desire to “spread the wealth around” and when he brushed off “Joe the Plumber.” Obama has vowed to raise taxes on people making over $250,000 per year. It’s not clear if this means that a business with a $250,000 gross receipts will be hit with these heavy new taxes. This could persuade millions of small business owners to lay off workers or scale back their business as they reach a point of diminishing returns. Even Bill Clinton understood you can’t tax your way out of a recession.

Joe Biden has helped to alarm Americans by “guaranteeing” that some foreign power will challenge Obama and create an international crisis because they see Obama as weak and inexperienced. Is this supposed to be a reason to vote for Obama or to vote against him?

Hopefully, there will be more Obama-Biden flubs in the next week as election day rapidly approaches. It’s entirely possible that millions of Americans may have a last minute epiphany that Barack Obama is nothing more than a typical tax-and-spend liberal, whose policies are more likely to worsen a recession than to bring us out of one. The “Bradley Effect” involved a ten percent change at the last minute for a Black candidate running for governor in California. The average of all the recents polls favors Obama by much less than ten percent. And there have been four polls since Oct. 17th that have shown McCain within four percent of Obama. The election is far from over, and the more people start judging Obama on his record, the more likely he will lose this election.