Until after Dec 15, the term ‘president-elect’ is not valid. Nice try though ... did you think you were voting directly for Obama and not the electors of/for same?
In the field of marketing, demographics, opinion research, and social research in general, psychographic variables are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. They are also called IAO variables (for Interests, Attitudes, and Opinions). They can be contrasted with demographic variables (such as age and gender), behavioral variables (such as usage rate or loyalty), and bizographic variables (such as industry, seniority and functional area).
When a relatively complete assessment of a person or group's psychographic make-up is constructed, this is called a psychographic profile. Psychographic profiles are used in market segmentation as well as in advertising.
The term "president-elect" has been used from the moment the election results were known for as long as I can remember in my almost 55 years. December 15 is really irrelevant to the term as what happens 12/15 is merely a procedural rubber stamp.
You make a very good point.
So it might the case that it would be better to say ‘presumptive-president-elect’ but Obama is certainly not the first person to be referred to as president-elect prior to the electoral college results. The funding for the transition team is even authorized for the president-elect well before the Electoral College acts.
In the strictest technical sense it may not be correct (but even that is a little bit of a reach) but it is certainly common parlance.
So it reamains a little hard to attribute the media’s use of the term to Axelrod.
To your overall point, though, it would have been nice if the public had been better educated regarding the techniques of media manipulation. But that is even less likely than Obama failing to get Electoral College ratification.