Confessions Of A ConfoBiOholic | Ricochet.com | 11.11.12

My name is Clark and I am a ConfoBiOholic.

As you know, ConfoBiOholism is a well documented addictive disorder.  As with most addictions, the first step to recovery is acknowledgment.  In ConfoBiOholism, acknowledgment is known to be especially challenging.  The condition is all but invisible to the addict himself, no matter how persistently friends and family press reality upon him.

But after the past week, I am forced to accept the truth.  I am an addict to confirmation bias.  I read the same polls everyone else read and still I saw only confirmation of what I already believed.

True, there was the Gallup mega-survey, aggregating all interviews from October 1-24, nearly 10,000, which put the R-D breakdown at 36% Rs to 35% Ds.  Had reality been that way, we would be preparing to inaugurate President Romney in January.  And true, I sat in on a phone briefing from Romney’s chief pollster a week before the election.  He told the callers the same thing he was telling the candidate.  I now suspect he is a fellow ConfoBiOholic.

As part of the twelve steps to recovery, I must acknowledge the nature of my wrongs and purge myself of self-deceptions.

So, no, it wasn’t just clueless polling that cost Romney the presidency.  Neither was it only President Obama’s vastly superior get out the vote effort.  Nor were the failures to connect with minority, young and female voters the keys to the Romney defeat — nor all of these together.  Despite these manifest shortcomings, Romney came within little more than a hair of victory.

I must then accept that the big question is why did millions of voters fewer turn out this Election Day than did in 2012, most of the no-shows coming out of the president’s support last time.  As part of purging my illusions, I must acknowledge that, while these people were surely disenchanted with Mr. Obama, they didn’t like Governor Romney either.

Was all that negative advertising the reason?  A ConfoBiOholic would say yes.  But to advance my recovery I must protest that, if his message had been clearer from the first, more consistent, had been articulated earlier and stuck to under fire, had been combined with a view of what the nation is and we as a people are and where destiny and aspiration can take us — if his message had been that robust, Romney might have weathered the advertising storm.

Though, particularly after the debates, his speeches were often outstanding, for millions, his trumpet didn’t stir.  They couldn’t bring themselves to vote again for the president, but neither could they embrace the governor.

There, I feel better now.  But I wonder, when the next election calls, will I once more drink the drink of my dreams?

They say you never recover from ConfoBiOholism.