@AriFleischer "Say what u will?" Yes, please. You're a Jew supporting a man who wants a religious test for entering US. Sleep well at night?
— Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) May 23, 2016
NEW: @LindseyGrahamSC privately urges GOP donors to support @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/J6iRAeLFwd
— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) May 22, 2016
Lindsey Graham has called Trump a "crazy" "pathetic" "nut job" "race-baiting xenophobic bigot." https://t.co/PG1S9TciWs
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 22, 2016
The American people are sick and tired of not being able to lead normal lives and to constantly be on the lookout for terror and terrorists!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 22, 2016
You are a spoiled child pretending that you're an adult. https://t.co/FEXXbzHqOG
— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) May 22, 2016
A refugee who fled the Balkan wars, for a new life in the US, reflects on Campaign 2016https://t.co/11vmA7LvZ1 pic.twitter.com/N4jyYnh81w
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) May 22, 2016
Major Major Major Major
Somebody parked a car with a rather interesting paint job here. https://imgur.com/a/W7MD3
patroclus
RIP Hodor!
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Ari conveniently forgets the leads Presidents McCain and Romney had at this time as well.
Adam L Silverman
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: I was just about to mention that.
Major Major Major Major
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: Ari has a history of conveniently forgetting things. He should get that checked out.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: It’s a useful trait when you’re a Bushie.
Cacti
@Major Major Major Major:
When Peyton Manning hired Ari Fleischer to do his PR after the story about PEDs first came out…
I knew immediately that Peyton was guilty as sin. ;-)
Omnes Omnibus
Let’s argue about BernieBros some more. It will be cool.
RK
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” — H. L. Mencken
Omnes Omnibus
@patroclus: Asshole. Stop it.
ETA: I have not had a chance to watch the episode yet. I am sure others are in a similar circumstance. Have the fucking courtesy to note a spoiler warning. Asshole.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
This thread contains spoilers.
Done.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Matt McIrvin
Fleischer is incorrect: Mitt Romney was doing better than Trump’s current situation in national polls at many points during the 2012 campaign. That was a large part of the reason so many Republicans thought he was winning even when state polling aggregates said otherwise.
An actual split between the popular and electoral votes is very rare (2000 was a truly freakish situation). But in recent cycles, national polls have not done as well at capturing the actual popular vote as collected state polls have at getting the electoral vote. That’s probably because there are sources of error in polls of the national PV that don’t bear on the EV: nobody cares what relative turnout numbers are in Alabama vs. New York, because it doesn’t matter, but someone trying to estimate the national popular vote has to worry about it.
eemom
I can’t believe anybody is stupid enough to even THINK about caring what national polls say in fucking May.
Or indeed to EVER care what national polls, which are meaningless, say. But 6 months out? Sweet Jesus, get a life.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
I did like the “Berniebeard” distinction from earlier today.
ETA: Which reminds me: I am totally against the proliferation of neckbeards on leading men in TV series. That FBI guy on Blindspot makes me itchy. I can barely handle it on Sherlock in Elementary because he keeps it down at the stubble end of the spectrum.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: I agree.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Ella inNew Mexico
Read this on my 2.5 br trip home from the nephew’s graduation in Albuquerque today. Very fascinating, and pretty much a map for where we can find Trump’s Achilles heel: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/
It’s the wounded, damaged , narcissistic ego, stupid.
Icedfire
Minnesota is switching from a caucus to a primary starting in 2020.
Don’t ever let them say something good never came of the race between Bernie and Hillary.
Major Major Major Major
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Romney got 27%, eh…?
amk
ari the mofo can’t stop lying, can he?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Blacks, Latinos, and Asians are a combined 30% of the electorate. Whites are 70% of the vote.
Thanks to Trump, Clinton will start out with 90% of the minority vote (90% X 30% = 27%).
To get to 50% you only need 33% of the white vote. ( 33% x 70% = 23%). 23% + 27% = 50%
Demographics and math are destiny.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
On Berniebeards or neckbeards? Both?
sm*t cl*de
@Ella inNew Mexico:
The author is in breach of basic professional ethics, and has a vastly inflated confidence in his own abilities and in the reliability of psychology. I guess that qualifies him to pontificate on Trump.
SarahT
@RK: “These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.” – Mel Brooks
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
June 7, 2000: Quinnipiac has Clinton tied with nobody Rick Lazio 44% to 44% (shock!) (panic!) (horror!)
October 31, 2000: Quinnipiac has Clinton “statistically” tied with nobody Rick Lazio with 1 week left in the election.
Election day: Clinton wins by 12 points, 55-43.
Demographics is destiny.
Miss Bianca
@Icedfire: btw, thank you so much for the connection to The Current after Prince’s death. My go-to radio station now.
SoupCatcher
@eemom:
According to Sam Wang, at the Princeton Election Consortium, the standard deviation in polls has historically increased after February. We’re within a week of the maximum and we won’t get back to February standard deviation numbers until August.
TL;DR. Ignore polls until at least August.
RK
Make America G̶r̶e̶a̶t̶ White Again!
Matt McIrvin
@shomi:
Not gonna happen. They’re committed now, and coming home to support Trump even if they called him an idiot and a fascist a month ago.
Personally I think this election is going to be at least as close as 2008 or 2012; if we’re unlucky, as close as 2000 or 2004.
Icedfire
@Miss Bianca: I haven’t listened to a non-MPR radio station in 10 or 12 years…if it’s not The Current it’s MPR News.
They’ve got such a good mix of new and experimental with classic and timeless. I’m happy to contribute each month!
magurakurin
people who reveal plot twists on open forums are scum. My father in heaven will extract retribution on you. And by father, I mean my father. He loved film and books, but woe bit it to you if you discussed a book or film in a room where there might have been someone who hadn’t seen or read it. And considering this show (which I don’t watch, and probably never will) was only aired yesterday, people who are shouting out key plot twists are just being mean dicks.
Major Major Major Major
@magurakurin: I generally agree. I’ve accidentally done it a couple(?) times–I can’t recall specifics though–but I remember feeling pretty bad. Now, I feel bad about lots of things that normal people don’t, so I can’t say that anybody who doesn’t feel bad about posting spoilers is a sociopath, but… anybody who doesn’t feel bad about posting spoilers is a sociopath.
magurakurin
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, I mean things slip out, and everyone talks about the end of a film like for example Casablanca, but there are actually young people who have never seen it. With older films it is a tougher call. But a show that aired yesterday? Jeez, that’s just rude.
jacy
@magurakurin:
Amen. I watch it with my kids, who are now a bit far-flung, so we have to make a viewing day when we can all be in the same place and watch several episodes at once. I avoid a thread that specifically says it’s going to discuss GoT. So blurting out a major twist or death in an open thread or a thread about something that is NOT GoT is a real dick move. Way to stomp on the simple pleasures in somebody’s crappy life for no fucking reason.
jacy
And with that, I’m going to bed — fucking stupid end to a fucking stupid, shitty, week.
sigaba
@Icedfire: I have really fond memories of going to the caucus in our Ramsey County precinct with my parents. I personally think caucuses are sorta better than primaries, at least when it’s intraparty, because they have the potential to have much more proportional outcomes.
They could IRV or range voting too, let’s go crazy.
magurakurin
@jacy:
which pretty much takes us back to…sociopath. It’s really not a good look.
RK
@magurakurin: He’s actually dead the whole time. :)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Ella inNew Mexico: Good read.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
National popular vote is irrelevant. Polls of the national vote are irrelevant. Lazy pundits try to use this as a rough guesstimate of an election forecast, and try to work backwards to guess what an electoral college might be, but all this BS has been superseded by more detailed aggregate state polling. But more accurate polling is slower and more expensive.
This is also lazy and misleading. The Obama coalition is not necessarily a good starting point because Clinton will have some unique challenges. But I will still use this as a base for now. Here are some of the variables.
Turnout. If voter turnout is higher, and voter suppression efforts successful, Clinton (or Sanders, just for fun) will have a harder time. This is especially true if the enthusiasm of Independents holds or increases in the general election.
Clinton must do better than she is doing now with younger voters. And of course this is not a monolith since there are new voters who were not of age yet in 2008 or 2012.
Clinton will may do well in getting a high percentage of black, Latino and Asian voters, but in key states turnout is even more important.
Let’s be blunt. No one knows yet whether white women will vote their political ideology or whether there will be significant gender defections.
A deeper drop in white male vote in battleground states could be a very difficult hurdle to overcome. Outside the South, there could also be a drop in black male and Latino male vote.
A good chunk of Berniebros and Berniettas seem to have strong Naderesque “Democrat same as Republican” blinders, even more than during Obama’s campaigns. This could also be a problem in tight races.
The better pollsters have their work cut out for them. Clinton, Sanders, and Trump have to look at early polls, but for everybody else, almost everything between now and the conventions is just noise unless there is some clear unvarying trend exposed by the better polls.
Brachiator
And in Austria we have an incredibly close vote, with a right-wing bigot tied with a Green candidate. From BBC news reports:
Must be something in the water all over the world.
seaboogie
@eemom: Apparently we like to fret and enjoy the feeling of twisted knickers – for something like two years. Inherited from our Puritan forefathers (and mothers) perhaps. In Canada they can have a national election in six weeks. As in 42 days. But the media is different there. I love NorCal, but sometimes wonder why I left the Vancouver area.
Brachiator
I am so glad that I finished watching the latest episode of Game of Thrones before reading through this thread.
Talk about gratuitous spoiling!
Doug R
I understand people getting a little upset at the other folks posting spoilers like immediately after the show runs but…….isn’t this a blog for discussing what’s important to us? If you haven’t watched it yet, is it really that important to you?
Major Major Major Major
Finally pie’d srv.
Doug R
We went out to see if we could spot Mars in opposition tonight but there were way too many clouds. At least we got a nice walk out of it and spotted a few herons. Now that we’re home, I watched my Silicon Valley and now my wife is watching GOT on our devices.
Major Major Major Major
@Doug R: Careful with GoT, I hear there’s a spoiler tonight!
Major Major Major Major
Did anybody watch SNL last night? Their Dead Poets Society skit had me laughing my ass off.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Nope, think I’ve only seen one or two in the past 16 years.
Major Major Major Major
@BillinGlendaleCA: I sort of accidentally had it on in the background but that one got me.
JWR
As a general rule, I tend to stay away from conspiracy theories. But this story, (already four days old, and probably already discussed), about Jane Sanders’ involvement in the closure of Burlington College, really makes me wonder whether Bernie’s entire campaign has been pieced together as a means to an end; the means being the presidency, and the ends being keeping his wife out of friggin’ jail.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major: Funny skit, but how many people outside of the ancient and decrepit demographic have seen or remember Dead Poet’s Society?
starscream
I saw the episode and I still think patroclus is an asshole.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
I’m not ancient (although my decrepitude might be a matter of opinion), and I remember Dead Poets Society reasonably well.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Dead Poet Society came out in 1989, only 27 years ago.
(I, of course, didn’t see it.)
Amir Khalid
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Half a lifetime ago, for me.
Elmo
@Doug R: Speaking only for myself, I haven’t watched it yet BECAUSE it’s important to me. I had to leave home on a business trip yesterday, and GoT is something my wife and I enjoy so much that it’s mandatory we watch it together. I won’t be home until tomorrow night, and I am very much looking forward to watching it with my wife. Still am, but they call them “spoilers” for a reason.
So yeah – total dick move.
Amir Khalid
The Donald’s campaign has been an embarrassment to the Republican party and his presidency is a global disaster waiting to happen. If he wins in November, he could be a clown as President or a fascist dictator. If he loses, the party could conceivably lose its congressional majorities as well. And slowly, one by one, the members of the party establishment are raising white flags to him.
Yellowdog
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Turnout is destiny.
Aimai
@Steeplejack: OMG me too! The blindspot guy ‘s neckbeard has caused me to not be able to watch the show at all!
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: Reminded me of this (spoiler): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnv7tXEBATc
KC from the DMV
@Doug R: Normally would agree but I just worked the night shift and was reading a little balloon juice before turning on the TV. Now I’m not sure if I want to watch. Poor Hodor.
rikyrah
Thanks for that Fallows tweet
Steeplejack (phone)
@KC from the DMV:
So you come in with a spoiler pile-on?! Another dick move.
Jeffro
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: ‘retweet’ ‘LIKE’
Joel
@Matt McIrvin: I think it’s simply a matter of sampling — all else being equal, a poll of ~600 people in Virginia gives you a lot more precision than a poll of ~1200 people nationwide.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Major Major Major Major: Jeez – a 30s Netflix ad to see the skit? I saw it. It did have an, er, unexpected twist.
Fred’s good, and under appreciated, though I was cringing a lot in his monologue (but maybe that was the point).
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Amir Khalid: I’ve never seen DPS. There are lots of movies like that though (Goodbye Mr. Chips, etc.), so I don’t think I missed much in figuring out the skit. It’s one of many well known schoolteacher tropes. (<== Warning! Timesink Alert!!)
Cheers,
Scott.
FlipYrWhig
@JWR: IMHO, based on what I’ve gathered from a few of those stories, Jane O’Meara Sanders was very likely installed in the top spot because a visible link to favorite son and local icon Sen. Bernie Sanders would give the college a boost in fundraising, but she got carried away with a grand plan that relied on her goodwill and ran the whole thing right into the ground.
Matt McIrvin
@Joel: With normally distributed random error, a larger sample should give you more precise results. The absolute variance in the numbers will increase, but less rapidly than the sample size, so the relative error goes like the inverse square root of the sample size.
But, of course, variations across a population are not necessarily normally distributed random error. The population is inhomogeneous in various ways, and there could be systematic biases causing you to overcount one sub-population over another. The country is inhomogeneous, and states are inhomogeneous too, but they’re probably less inhomogeneous than the whole country. Also, the dominance of most states by one political party or the other means you can usually discount subtle systematic errors when counting their electoral votes, unless a big, big change is happening.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Matt McIrvin:
Bingo.
All the “+/- X% margin of error” is based upon the assumption that the sample is a true reflection of the population. Too often it isn’t, because the purpose of the poll is to shape opinion not be an accurate reflection of opinion. “Hey Luntz, I need a poll showing I’m winning by 7% to make my big donors happy. Get right on it!!!”
The press loves polls because the press loves to be able to point to a single number and say “this is the news right here”. It’s easily distilled, they can claim it’s “objective”, and it can be done without much work on their part so it’s cheap. That doesn’t mean that it is objective, or accurate, or not propaganda from one side.
As with almost anything, the devil’s in the details.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I’m fascinated by polls myself, but the press can’t report on them in any sensible way. If there’s one thing I’d ban from political reporting on polls, it’s all talk of “statistical ties”, and the whole notion that variation outside the margin of error is real and variation inside the MoE isn’t… because neither is true.
The MoE is based on absolutely nothing but the sample size, and is an estimate of the error from random variation in a normally distributed sample; since it completely discounts the possibility of systematic error, it understates the error in the poll in that sense.
But it also overstates the random error in an aggregate of polls, since an aggregate effectively increases the sample size. If you take fifty polls that all have an MoE of +/-3%, average them together, and get an average in which one candidate is ahead by 2%, that is not a “statistical dead heat”; that’s a significant lead, as far as the random error expressed by the MoE is concerned. On the other hand, they could all be suffering from a common systematic bias… but the MoE bears absolutely no relation to that.
Bupalos
@Brachiator: you don’t have to remember it, its so cloyingly formulaic you can recognize it without having seen it.
The standard poetry textbook was great.
Matt McIrvin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: …The other thing to watch out for, though, is looking for systematic bias in a motivated way. When a poll comes out that shows a result we don’t like, people have a tendency to dive into it and look for questionable sampling, and often they find it. But we don’t do that for every poll, and other things being equal, we’re probably less likely to do it with polls whose results make us happy. Over time that’s a thumb on the scale in the direction of polls telling us what we want to hear, even if it seems like smart, skeptical behavior.
The extreme is the kind of thing the Unskewed Polls guy was doing, just putting in adjustments pulled out of his ass for what he thought were polling inaccuracies, and deriving the Great Romney Landslide of 2012. But it can happen even if you’re not that deluded.
rikyrah
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Clinton will do better with Latinos than Obama, and that’s because of Trump. Man has an approval rating in the low double digits with Latinos.
Brachiator
@Bupalos: The whole standing on the desk thing is really DPS for most people. The joke of the skit depends on this setup resonating for the viewer. Otherwise you just have a cheap sight gag. And Fred A was not even necessary for the gag to work.
Brachiator
@Bupalos: Could not edit my last comment. Wanted to add that the irony of the standard textbook in the skit is that this is what many students think about poetry and literature.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: That was my favorite part of the bit.
Jack the Second
@Brachiator: The US is a slightly different case than what is happening in Europe vs the US.
In Europe, you have reactionary nationalist politics rising by playing off economic uncertainty and fears of terrorism spreading from neighboring states.
In the US, you have a right-wing nationalist / white supremacist party which has been one of the dominant political parties for the last fifty years, that is now flailing at its decline in power. Donald Trump may be … louder than Republican politicians in years past, but the “movement” he represents is the same as what swept Reagan into office.
In a way, Trump is the light at the end of the tunnel, the dove returning to the ark with a bit of greenery. He’s a sign that the nationalist/white supremacists’ power is waning. The United States is in a better place for progressive politics than it has ever been.
Matt McIrvin
@shomi: Yes, but the Democratic Party also has a candidate who is far, far more widely hated than Obama, particularly by white men on both the right and left. And people under 40 have moved far left enough that they dislike Hillary Clinton for being too far to the right. I figure that could make it a wash.
Uncle Cosmo
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Ah, The Mighty Quinnipac: Another GOP shill masquerading as a legitimate pollster. Thanks for reminding us to toss them into the pseudostatistical slopbucket to keep Razzmussen & his stealth Thugs company.
Uncle Cosmo
@Major Major Major Major:
Cole must get a cut from everyone who uses that pie filter. That’s the only logical explanation for why he hasn’t BOJO’d the sumbidge already. Well, that, or the Shitheaded Rethuglican Vulture is one of his BFFs having sick fun trolling us.
Citizen_X
Ari Fleischer just can’t wait to tell everyone to watch what they say again.
Bailey
@Brachiator:
It’s become something of a modern classic, so plenty of people have seen it, even those younger amongst us.
Not to mention, when Robin Williams died, it was the go-to scene to use on news reports.
maurinsky
Last night I went to see the comedy show Trump vs. Bernie, with Tony Atamanuik as Trump and James Adonian as Bernie. It was hilarious, but also very pointed in what a Trump victory would mean. Atamaniuk read a poem as Trump’s final statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDrqYyXWZig
I recommend catching the show if you get a chance. Very funny, but very horrifying when one contemplates the possibilities.
daves09
@JWR: After weeks of not being able to turn over a rock without finding Jane S. under it, she’s suddenly vanished-even MSNBC is no no longer all Jane, all the time. She was a bad surrogate but the timing is interesting.
daves09
@Amir Khalid: The gop establishment has no recourse but to support Trump.
If he lost and they were seen as having sabotaged him, the nut base would really riot to get control of the asylum and do something totally crazy in 2020, like nominating Cruz. On the other hand if he loses with their support they can say “Look, look what you did and go back to business as usual.
Anybody have any thoughts on possibility of Ryan being defeated in Wisconsin? Not probable I know, but man, it would make me as happy as a little girrrrl.
Terry chay
@JWR: short answer: No.
While Jane Sanders probably committed acts that are illegal, I have a hard time seeing malice or (much) greed, just stupidity. If you look into her background, you can see she has always been an idiot–from her college degree to her basking the limelight on Fox News today. She should have never been made president of an accredited university, no matter how small, but such things happen when your husband is a sitting senator.