One More Reason to Move to a Cave

An "interesting" piece on the New Yorker site this morning, showing how Obama will stand or fall on the votes of fewer than a million "less informed" voters in a handful of swing states. This is where advances in the science of politics have taken us. We can accurately identify the small groups of swing voters who determine elections, and by targeting vast resources at this small and intellectually challenged group, can largely shape that vote. The argument in brief?

The undecideds, . . . “are rather less knowledgeable about politics, and much more likely to say they follow news and public affairs ‘only now and then’ or ‘hardly at all.’ (Almost 40 percent are unsure which party currently has more members in the House of Representatives, and another 20 percent wrongly answered that it was the Democrats.)”

In other words, this incredibly powerful sliver of the population is both suggestible and none to bright. As Rachel Maddow likes to say: what could possibly go wrong?

The fate of the world is in the hands of a small minority gun-toting climate deniers who think that Elvis is still working at that Taco Bell in Des Moines.

Cave, anyone?