Kevin Drum nervous about poll bounce?

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2020

The bounce which had to be killed: We don't know if, on balance, his new post is correct. But Kevin Drum almost sounds nervous:

DRUM (8/25/20): Don’t Worry About Poll Bounces

Just a quick reminder: presidential candidates often get poll bounces after their conventions. Sometimes it’s small, sometimes it’s a little better than that. But in virtually every case, the bounces go away a couple of weeks after both conventions have been held. So don’t get either excited or worried if either Trump or Biden go either up or down by the end of this week. By September it will all be gone.

We aren't sure if post-convention poll bounces even exist any more. It's often said that, in such tribalized times as these, there are so few undecided voters that those famous old bounces no longer exist.

That said, we became nostalgic as we read the highlighted sentence. It made us think of a major post-convention poll bounce—a major bounce which wouldn't die, and therefore had to be killed.

In particular, Brian Williams played a fascinating role in the killing of that bounce. Not that anyone ever cared, but people are dead all over Iraq because the bounce which wouldn't die did, in fact, get killed.

That bounce got killed by the mainstream press. For that reason, you'll see it discussed nowhere else.

What occurs in the press corps stays in the press corps! If only for the sake of nostalgia, remind us to review the history of that major poll bounce some day.