The polling in the last couple of days has all gone the President’s direction. Of course, 538 and the Princeton Election Consortium have it decisively in the President’s favor the last several days. Princeton reported this morning (before the site went offline) that the re-election likelihood was 93% for the random distribution, and 98% for the weighted calculation.
I’m trying not to get too excited. I’m trying to keep perspective, but it looks, from reports out of Michigan and Ohio, that the whole “lying about car production” and the fake relief rally have both hurt Romney in the region.
Now it’s time for the final argument. If there’s anyone out there that any of you know that is still undecided, or uncommitted at this point, please, please refrain from choking the ever-living shit out of this person, and make this final argument:
It is time to take responsibility. Our vote is our voice in how we want the country to be run, and what we stand for. It is, in the purest sense, our will writ upon the world stage. We have to take responsibility for the leaders of our country, and we have to vote accordingly. If you are OK with a man who lies and dissembles every time he gets in front of a microphone, you should vote for Rmoney. If you are OK with the idea that a small group should control everything in the country from positions of immunity and leisure while the rest of the country toils from birth to death for what scraps they’ll drop, then you should vote for Rmoney. If you think that the citizens of the greatest and most powerful country in the world should risk being poverty-stricken due to illness, you should vote for Rmoney. If you think that going to war against Iran in order to protect a third country is the proper use of American military personnel–if you think that protecting Israel and Saudi Arabia are worth your children being killed and maimed, then you should vote for Rmoney. And you should do these things with pride. If you think however, that America deserves better in every one of the above cases, then you should vote to re-elect the President.
Some of the aforementioned polling:
NYT/CBS: Obama up 5 points in Ohio, 2 points in Virginia, and 1 point in Florida.
Franklin & Marshall College: Obama up 4 points in Pennsylvania.
Yutsano
:: applause ::
Robin G.
Oh, don’t even get that complicated.
If you think people with pre-existing conditions shouldn’t get health insurance, vote Romney.
You’ll get your handfuls of sociopaths who say they’re fine with that, but they weren’t winnable anyway.
Surreal American
Is the Princeton Election Consortium website down for anyone else besides me?
JPL
Ed Kilgore linked to Chait’s essay that makes the case also.
An earlier blog mentioned that someone was bribed by a fish sandwich to vote for Obama and it made me realize that there is no amount of money that would make me vote for the plutocrat.
Anoniminous
Argument too long, difficult to understand, and is too wordy. As a person with experience in persuasive communication allow me to tighten it up a wee bit:
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m going to vote for the other Rmoney, the one with the opposite position on every issue.
Juju
I convinced a friend who voted for Mcain in the previous election, to vote for President Obama this time around. I’m in NC. I early voted, as have family and friends, and I’m going to work GOTV for Obama in my area.
I love early voting.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@JPL: I suspect Mitt Romney’s net worth would get me to vote for him, but nothing would make me act like him with all that money. I can think of a lot of people to take care of with that money.
Hoya
Obama 2012: Bin Laden Dead, GM Alive, George Lucas in Exile.
me
All biased. Unskewed Polls is guaranteeing a Rmoney landslide.
The Moar You Know
I’m urging anyone at this point who’s undecided to not vote. They’ve no business doing so, as they have obviously not even taken a minimal interest in what’s going on in our fair nation.
The Red Pen
Does anyone fear that the New York subway might smell worse than it already did when it reopens?
hildebrand
Well, that was a far shot less tortured than Charlie Pierce’s ‘endorsement’. Get that man a pony! Stat!
BGinCHI
Anyone else see the Lawrence O’Donnell takedown of the Des Moines Register endorsement of Romney that compared him to Nixon?
Epic.
So spot on about how empty Romney is.
The Moar You Know
Whopper of the day from my FB feed:
“I am unbiased and I want my information to be accurate. I am not anti democrat nor am I pro-republican as I have said. I am in fact ANTI-BARRY. The bro has gots to go along with his cronies.”
Not racist, either. But English may be his second language, he seems to have some difficulty with it.
EL
@Surreal American: Yes, it’s down for everyone – some twitter mention of it, and you can check sites as http://www.websitedown.info
The bigger question for me in my withdrawal (I admit to checking the site at least twice a day) is why is it down, and when will it be back up???
SatanicPanic
@hildebrand: God yes, that guy is the most overrated blogger in the world.
General Stuck
BENNNNNNNGHAZEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!
dmsilev
@me: I took a look at that this morning. Their predicted Romney Landslide is now down to 300-ish electoral votes (from a high of something like 350). Still outlandish, but slightly less so than before.
Is our conservatives learning?
trollhattan
@Surreal American:
Me too. I think they’re bombed with traffic–his yesterday’s post about the increase indicated a tsunami over the last weeks and it probably borked it, good.
Also, too, this site is super slow today, for me.
Brother Pierce has a tepid Obama endorsement today while brother Chait brings it, with full Obama love. This is no time to be wishy-washy, sez I.
meadrus
Or, in the real world, my vote indicates which of two bad choices I find least repulsive. I don’t ever expect to have my vote reflect what I stand for because candidates who share my principles have no chance whatsoever of winning a national election. If I wanted my vote to reflect how I want the country to be run, I would vote for the Green Party candidate, but I don’t do protest votes when the GOP alternative is always corporate fascist dystopia. But don’t ask me to get excited about voting for President, or to feel idealistic about it. It’s a civic task as necessary and pleasant as pumping out a septic tank.
Soonergrunt
@Surreal American: yeah. That was why I mentioned it was down in the post.
Wonkette is also down.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Anoniminous: Okay…that works for me.
Corner Stone
Wednesday simply can not come soon enough.
Spaghetti Lee
and make this final argument:
Speaking for myself, the undecideds I do know would just think I’m lecturing them and tune out. I think the ‘willfully ignore policy differences because they like to feel clever and important’ undecideds are relatively rare, compared to the ‘just stop caring whenever something approaching ‘politics’ comes up in a discussion’ type. And I don’t know what ‘political’ argument I could use on them: seems by definition whatever I try wouldn’t work.
In my case it’s academic: I can’t think of anyone I know who is both undecided and could conceivably be arsed to make up their mind in a week. But best wishes to the rest of you on that front.
PeakVT
@JPL: An earlier blog mentioned that someone was bribed by a fish sandwich to vote for Obama…
Man, I’d love to get a sammich for doing something I was going to do anyway.
Surreal American
@EL:
Thanks! I should have read that in the post. I meant to say (as you did) that I’m curious why that site is down.
Napoleon
@EL:
Just a guess, but a bunch of web sites are hosted out of NYC and I read/heard some of them may go down if they loose electricity (which at this point would mean they were running on a back up generator which ran out of fuel).
Crashman
Stumbled across some site this morn called battle ground watch, where the guy was arguing for a Romney big win because the polls have misread the composition of the electorate. Freaked me out a bit probably because he wrote like a relatively sane person and not a total lunatic. . Has anyone out there smarter than me heard about that site or why it might be wrong?
Napoleon
And Chaits peices are must reads.
Surreal American
@Soonergrunt:
Yeah, that’ll learn me to read before commenting. Wait, no it won’t.
Corner Stone
@Napoleon:
That is one hilarious imaginary picture of operations for those blogs.
JPL
President Obama and Gov. Christie are on TV. Most of the networks are covering the news conference. Ann Romney needs to watch this so she can see how real adults act.
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: Chait is quite the comedian, he calls Ross Douthat, otherwise known as Chunky Bobo, reformist conservative.
Soonergrunt
@meadrus:
I would submit that says a lot more about you than it does about the country or either party.
Spaghetti Lee
@EL:
is why is it down
Hmmm…what could be going on in New Jersey at the moment that might create technical difficulties?
I kid, I kid. What I’ve learned is that we internet junkies had better hope no natural disaster this size ever hits Silicon Valley.
geg6
@hildebrand:
Maybe so, but he endorsed him anyway. And shamed any and all assholes who proudly go around exclaiming that they are too pure to vote for “the lesser of two evils” (as if!) or who didn’t get their pony and are still pouting about it. Good on Mr. Pierce.
Bostondreams
I have made some acquantinces angry. I stated simply that if you vote Romney, you are voting to let my brothers and my mom die without medical care. My brother was uninsurable because of a prior condition (brain tumor and strokes), and mom is fighting lung cancer.
Part of me knows what I’m saying is over the top, but I don’t care.
LanceThruster
@JPL:
Was it delicious fish?
geg6
@Juju:
Good for you! I think I may have a McCain voter flipping, too. I plan to buy him a few more beers this weekend and continue the talk we had about veterans programs last weekend.
Meanwhile, I’m being cautiously optimistic. I haven’t bought the bottle of champagne yet, but I’m thinking about it.
LanceThruster
@Bostondreams:
But it’s not “over the top”…it’s spot on.
Well wishes for you and your family.
some guy
Florida is going blue. Again.
JCT
@JPL:
She’s too busy standing in front of the mirror in her inauguration dress and practicing smiling. Alternating with waving a knife and screaming “Off with their heads”.
Hill Dweller
It’s six days before the election, and Willard decided to release a statement this afternoon saying he supports FEMA. Good to know.
JPL
@LanceThruster: Well it was on the internet, so it must be true.
dr. bloor
Better yet, just have them watch the tape of the presser just did with Christie et al in Jersey. Obama is really letting his technocrat freak-flag fly, with precisely the right amount of local color stories and empathy. Romney can’t even dream of this sort of competence.
The Dangerman
As I posited last night, one look at the campaigns tell you all you need to know. Romney’s in fucking Florida for goodness sakes. He’s been acting rashly (actually, even MORE rashly) as per normal (see: Libya). Republicans won’t come out to vote if they smell the rotting carcass, so the spin will be mindnumbing, but … deep breath and one last big push. Let’s take the House.
LanceThruster
@The Red Pen:
Smells like…Victory!
Napoleon
@Crashman:
Never heard of that site but more or less that has been the arguement the sane conservatives (all 2 or 3 of them) have been making. Basically all or most polls weigh the results to match what they expect the electorate to look like. So if you get, say, 30% of the respondence to your poll who are African American you can be assured that is not going to be representative, so you weigh results to bring them into like with the electorate. The big question then is what will the electorate look like. In 08 plenty of young an none white. In 10 (a mid term) way older and whiter. Conservatives like to argue that it is going to be like 10, which I think is BS. Every year the electorate gets less white so it makes sense that the electorate will look more like 08. I bet that the arguement on that site boils down to that.
some guy
@LanceThruster:
of course it was, Florida fried fish sandwiches are the best fried fish sandwiches.
EL
@Spaghetti Lee: Hey, they made it through Monday and Tuesday, so I want my fix (I neeed it….). Oh well, there’s my other fix, 538.
The GOS didn’t fare as well, they were down for several hours during the storm.
geg6
@meadrus:
Wow, I’ll bet your a blast at parties.
Whatever, Debbie Downer. As long as you vote, I really don’t care how you feeeeeeel about it.
ranchandsyrup
@Corner Stone: Today is Wednesday. *ducks*
EL
@LanceThruster:
Nice fissssh, yes my precious.
Tom
Before you all start making reservations for the
inauguration ceremony, don’t forget that the Republicans are gearing up for voter suppression and voter fraud in a number of states.
NotMax
@Hill Dweller
Federation of Elder Mormon Affluence?
Napoleon
@Corner Stone:
??? – not sure what you mean but see the below. Also I heard a story on the radio to the same effect regarding the location of several web hosting services.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/30/1152548/-Daily-Kos-Sandy-update
some guy
@meadrus:
sorry, only 100% adoration for President Kill List is countenanced in these threads. Get on the bandwagon or suffer the slings and arrows of the local centrists.
Chyron HR
@some guy:
Oh boy, is it time for you to resume quoting Mein Kampf and disengenously referring to it as “The Obama Social Security Plan”?
The Bobs
@Surreal American: Sandy got them.
Soonergrunt
@Surreal American: No problem. I do that all the time!
Crashman
@Napoleon: Thanks, that clears things up. I think he wa arguing that the percentage of the white vote hasn’t gone down as much as the Obama campaign or pollsters or whatever think it has. I’m not sure, this stuff with numbers is confusing. Guess we just have to hope and wait.
LanceThruster
@Tom:
“It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” (Josef Stalin)
The Dangerman
@Tom:
You have to be within cheating distance and they are not; in the days of the Pennsylvania Voter ID law, worst case was a couple points. If it’s not cheating distance and they try to steal it, shit will burn. They won’t go there.
elmo
@Bostondreams:
Not over the top at all. Spot on.
Want to hear something sad, though? My family is similar to yours in medical history – my brother survived an inoperable brain tumor 20 years ago, and my mother sadly did not survive her lung cancer around the same time. My brothers – including the uninsurable brain tumor survivor – are all enthusiastic Romney supporters.
Jorge
Governor Chrisite is the October surprise. He genuinely seems like he’s changed his mind about Obama. The Fox and Friends appearance yesterday and the press conference today were the strongest cases I’ve seen anyone of any consequence make for Obama’s leadership and humanity.
Corner Stone
@Napoleon: I’m envisioning someone in pajamas running down the stairs to the basement with a can of fuel to prime the tiny generator keeping their internets powered up.
some guy
@Chyron HR:
wtf? Please to be showing me where I ever quoted Mein Kampf?
When did you stop beating your wife?
The Bobs
@Soonergrunt: Exactly what I thought when I read that.
They didn’t get their pony.
LanceThruster
@dr. bloor:
Though his dreams are white and delightsome.
Hungry Joe
Dick Morris is predicting a Romney landslide.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I love watching clips of Dick Morris. He just kills me — I think he’s far and away the funniest guy on TV. It takes me back to late evenings watching TV with my dad; we’d flip channels till we found televangelist Ernest Angley, and we’d howl, I’m telling you, howl until we’d wake up my mom and she’d come in and tell us to keep it down.
Come to think of it, Morris kind of looks and sounds like Angley. Hmmmmm …
Corner Stone
@some guy:
I think you mean “steely eyed centrists”.
Thanks
some guy
btw, the fried fish sandwich story is from Tampa:
http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/10/souls_to_the_polls_winning_in_florida.html
burnspbesq
Today was officially Dope-Sniffing Dog Day at the Supreme Court. The Justices heard two cases pawing into (yeah, I know you saw what I did there) Fourth Amendment issues raised by the increasingly aggressive use of dogs that are … gifted (yes, that was the obligatory Blazing Saddles reference).
If Lowell Denniston’s take turns out to be accurate, the Bill of Rights may have lived to fight another day.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/10/argument-recap-if-you-lose-scalia/
Napoleon
@Crashman:
The problem is that all demographic groups do not vote in the same percentages, and in any event the percentages are not static as in 08 many young and non-white showed up who did not in the past, so to some extent they are guessing at what the turn out will look like. With many polls as close as they are whatever assumptions they are making can change which way the poll leans. In large part that is why I think it is insane to think Obama has a 93-98% or whatever chance to win based on polls when the national polls are tied up. Just on the demographic issue alone more then a 2-7% chance Romney should be in the mix.
I just hope when its all done it turns out that the polls were assuming more old white guys were going to turn out as a % then actually do.
cosima
My 7 year old asked me if it was true that Romney would shut down schools, she said that a boy in her class was talking about it. So we had a talk about vouchers and public schools, private schools, people who can afford to send their children to private schools, and people who can barely afford to eat, and the people (like the local homeless guy that she has befriended) who cannot afford to eat or find a place to live.
She also asked me if it’s true that if Romney is president that if I get skin cancer again (had surgery this spring) that I would die. So we had a talk about insurance, health care, same terms as the school/voucher issue. Which segued into a conversation about what I told her is the single most important issue in this election: the social contract that I believe that we have in this country, that we take care of each other, that there is no reason why people in this country should be hungry or sick when there are so many people who have so much.
Charlie Pierce had a great piece on that a few days ago, he didn’t call it a “social contract” but explained it in powerful terms. Someone here excerpted it on one of the comment threads. It was strange that it came just a day or two after my conversation with mini-Cosima.
I hope that we are raising an empathetic and activist bunch of kids for the next generation, I have hope.
She put in two ballots for Obama (mine & my oil-industry husband) in the ballot box on Monday! Go Colorado, be blue!
LD50
@some guy: Let us know if you’re volunteering to help with Romney’s attack on Iran.
Napoleon
@Corner Stone:
:)
Now I see.
I wonder if Cheetos would work in a generator?
Soonergrunt
@The Bobs: What gets me about those idiots is that you NEVER hear from them about any of the stuff they did to influence one party or the other. They never post on here about attending a county organizing meeting, or volunteering to be a state delegate or organizing other like-minded people within their chosen party to do that to take control of the party and make it be what they want it to be. They never do the hard work that democracy actually requires.
It’s always “I didn’t get my hand-job EXACTLY the right way so I’m not voting/voting third party/voting for the other guy.”
JustAnotherBob
Princeton just posted this…
Oh noes – we’re down! We’re working on restoring access. In the meantime, here is the Google-cached site.
In the meantime, here is a quick update of the race. Sorry for the minimal nature. It’s kind of like where we started back in 2004!
Above is a screenshot of the Princeton Election Consortium’s meta-analysis of state polls. The numbers are a high resolution “snapshot” of state polls as viewed through the Electoral College. There are no adjustments and no corrections to polls – just some math to optimally extract win probabilities and all 2.3 quadrillion possibilities.
The “Meta-margin” shows that state polls would have to swing toward Mitt Romney by 2.6% to tie the race. This Meta-Margin differs by about 3.0% from national polls. I regard this as the big current mystery. While we bring PEC back online, I am doing analysis to understand the difference. Swing-state polls were dead-on in 2004 and 2008, suggesting either national-poll methods or non-swing state opinion as the culprits.
Finally: here is the state of the Senate race. Rick in Miami has helpfully calculated some time series. As has been the case for several months, Democrats/Independents will control 53-54 seats – neutral or a gain of one seat. Rick has added Pennsylvania and Nebraska, whose races have gotten close. If you like what we do, visit ActBlue. If you like what we do, but oppose who ActBlue supports, then go to CrossroadsGPS, which does just as good a job of targeting knife-edge races, but for Republicans. See you soon! Sam Wang and Andrew Ferguson Princeton Election Consortium
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I don’t think most Rmoney voters are reachable. Plus the only undecideds I know are Jill Stein vs Obama. It is hard to convince them, when I just want to throttle them for their idiocy.
JustAnotherBob
Here’s the cached Sam-summaries of a few hours ago:
As of October 31, 10:05AM EDT
Obama: 318 Romney: 220
Meta-margin: Obama +2.60%
Probability of Obama re-election:
Random Drift 95%
Bayesian Prediction 99%
les
@Napoleon:
Unless you are exceedingly concerned about popular vote, national polls aren’t going to do much for you. An extreme example: Obama wins by 1% in enough states to get 300+ electoral votes, and the Mittster gets 90% everywhere else–national polls would likely be showing Willard way ahead, but it doesn’t matter. Closer to reality–Obama up 2 to 8 in the swing states, Mitt up 20’s in the solid south. So, very high probability of winning, little if any national lead.
Crashman
@Napoleon: Thanks. I hope you’re right! Now to just stay sane or one more week.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
Finally got the sunny weather (and the courage) to look up at my roof. Many of the asphalt shingles littering the streets were the same color as mine, so I was nervous. No floods up here but a LOT of wind, the worst we’d ever had since living here.
By some miracle, my roof weathered it ok from what I can tell on the ground. I’ll get someone to climb up there ASAP.
Sadly, the across-the-street neighbors lost about 1/4 of their roof shingles on the water-facing side. Most of the tiles on the street were theirs, just happened to match my color.
Now holed up for Halloween, they start blocking the streets in downtown Salem very soon.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@cosima:
I think we are. I’ve had a lot of interactions over the last several years with middle-school and high-school age kids from well-off (i.e. top 2.5%) families in which the parents are openly right-wing. Quite a few of these parents are going to be in for a rude shock in another couple of years when they find out where their kids are culturally and politically.
JustAnotherBob
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Voting for Stein makes about as much sense as sending your Christmas wish list to the Easter Bunny.
Soonergrunt
@les: Yup. This is because we don’t run a national election in the USA. We run 50 state elections and a few territorial elections.
Mnemosyne
@hildebrand:
There is a certain contingent of people in their 50s who are absolutely, 100 percent convinced in their souls that Obama is going to kill Social Security, and no amount of facts or evidence will ever convince them otherwise. Charlie Pierce is one, as is digby.
So Pierce’s endorsement is colored by his absolute conviction that Obama is going to get rid of Social Security, but at least he’s slightly better than the other guy.
What these people are going to do when 2016 comes and goes without Obama ending Social Security, I don’t know. I think it’s gonna look a lot like these guys, because the failure of the apocalypse to appear on schedule doesn’t mean you were wrong to believe it.
shortstop
@Soonergrunt: I would submit that you are right.
Here’s how I say it, when someone asks: “I don’t think that someone far left enough for my tastes is likely to be elected president. That’s why I’m enthusiastically supporting the guy who’s in line with the vast majority of what I believe.” Then I move on without feeling the need to center further conversation on my precious, precious fee-fees.
Get over yourself, meadrus. No one is nearly as interesting to others as we are to ourselves.
cokane
Obama almost def wins Wisconsin. Then Romney has a near impossible uphill battle to win Nevada and Ohio. And he never had a chance in Michigan.
After that the other swing states don’t matter–and it’s unlikely he would sweep them anyways.
Juju
@geg6: I think NC has a good chance of going Obama again, but it will be as close as it was the last time. When I voted, it seemed as if about half of the people waiting to vote were minority, and I live in a very red part of the state. It made me feel like dancing.
? Martin
Expect the wingnuts to completely lose their shit over the jobs report on Friday. I don’t know what’s going on with Gallups daily tracking but their employment polls have been pretty accurate the last 6 months and it’s currently polling unemployment at 7.1% – which is WAY the fuck lower than what was reported last month. It can’t possibly drop .7% in one month without anyone knowing it, but it looks fairly likely that we’ll have another big drop in the rate. Underemployment is similarly down and payroll to population is similarly up. It looks like a big jobs month, we’ll see if it actually is.
And if it is, the freakout will be epic, with suitable conspiracies involving HAARP and whatnot.
NotMax
@JustAnotherBob
Romney = the 1%?
The irony is too, too sweet.
LD50
@Soonergrunt: One bizarre thing I’ve noticed in the media coverage of this election is the media’s fixation on *national* polls and neglect of the electoral college. Obama’s been substantially ahead in the electoral college pretty much all along. But the media keeps saying “oh, it’s a tie! Romney’s ahead by 2%!”
I suppose they decided to play it that way since it makes Romney look stronger. But judging from how some FB wingnuts are ranting, I think a goddamn lot of Americans have no idea what the electoral college even is and will quite possibly be shocked as shit next week.
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: That’s a good observation about them and SS. I was just chalking it up to Barack Obama being young(er) and cool, and listening to rap and them being too old to relate. Though I still think that’s a big part of it.
LanceThruster
@LD50:
He’s helping the cause by working to get Rmoney elected preznit (like the Rmoney spawn….that you, Tagg?).
LD50
@shortstop:
I think that’s all meadrus was trying to say. Yeesh.
les
@Soonergrunt:
Interestingly, Nasty Nate says he and other number crunchers don’t see the state/national split that others do–at least not enough to think popular/electoral difference.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@JustAnotherBob:
I KNOW and they get so snippy when I point this out. Must.. not… strangle…
ranchandsyrup
Annnnnnnd Spurs are gonna lose to the GD Norwich canaries.
ETA at least liverpool are losing to Swansea.
Good day for the minnows of the Premier League.
Mnemosyne
@some guy:
Hey, did you figure out how to read the Social Security Administration’s own reports yet and see what happens to benefits after 2038? They’re in this exotic format called “PDF.”
The Moar You Know
@Spaghetti Lee: As I learned in 1989 up there, the only kind of disaster that can hit Silicon Valley is not the kind where you have everything up and running in a week.
A far more powerful earthquake than the one we had back then – a totally plausible scenario, I might add – could take the Valley out for years.
LanceThruster
@? Martin:
Too high unemployment #’s would be proof enough to install the royal Romney, too low proof the books were cooked (again).
[sigh]
NotMax
@les
Which is as it should be. Conscientious statisticians toss or minimize the weight of individual outliers, whereas too many dimwits in the media assign all polls equal credence.
Mnemosyne
@SatanicPanic:
On the left, I’m pretty sure that it’s mostly the Social Security thing. A lot of them lost a big chunk of their 401(k) and other defined-contribution plans in the crash of 2008 and/or were laid off, so they had a pretty major freakout about how the hell they were going to retire on what remained. If President McCain had been elected, they would also be shrieking about him ending Social Security, but that at least would be semi-rational since the Republicans tried it during Bush II’s second term.
I can’t entirely blame them for being freaked out after seeing most of their retirement savings wiped out, but IMO they are being irrational when they think Barack Obama — the guy who went to the mat to get health insurance reform — is going to kill the most successful social program in US history.
cosima
@ThatLeftTurninABQ —
We are very fortunate to be doing well financially, and our daughter is both aware of it, and yet not completely oblivious to how hard some people struggle.
Last weekend she went to the birthday party of a friend who lives a few blocks away. They live in near-dire poverty. There is a huge disparity here in our neighborhood that is reflected in the disparate housing and in the make-up of the school. And there are a lot of homeless people on the streets near here. It’s a strange neighborhood…
Our girls have been all over the world, had amazing experiences that most people can only dream of, but they are extraordinarily empathetic. That’s my #1 deal as a parent, raising kind & compassionate children. Not virtuosos, or geniuses, but sweet & loving kids. Looking around here I don’t see much of that, but I guess if they grow up to vote Dem I can handle it…
It’s a strange thing to be fighting for things for my girls (birth control, access to abortion, health care) that I was able to take for granted my entire adult life. Strange and sad.
les
@NotMax:
Repeated for emphasis, and to note the redundancy.
Joel
Goddamn it, with Sam Wang’s site down, I’m stuck to Nate Silver’s 1-a-day (at best) updates.
I am a junkie.
shortstop
@LD50: Oh, I think you may have missed the “two bad choices I find least repulsive” part, as well as the “now let’s talk about how terrible I feeeeeeeel while voting” bit.
Spaghetti Lee
@SatanicPanic:
Um…Obama’s in his 50s.
Hal
At this point the only ones saying Romney has a strong position are Rasmussen and Gallup. I hope those idiots have their asses handed to them post election.
Also, I’m being enormously cynical, but I have a hard time believing Chris Christie isn’t trying to sabotage Mitt Romney. Or maybe he sees which way this election is going and is simply going with the flow.
JustAnotherBob
@The Moar You Know:
I doubt that. Current building codes cover a fairly significant earthquake. (Remember, most of the loss in the 1906 SF earthquake was from post-shake fires, not the quake itself. A lot of the 1989 quake damage happened on the fill land of the Marina area where the soil did the jelly-shake. )
Then, I would imagine that most Silicon Valley businesses have their critical information stored on servers spread around the world. Were their SV building to go up in flames their data would be safe.
Grumpy Code Monkey
And yet, I heard Rene on NPR yesterday morning touting a new poll showing Romney moving ahead nationally.
They don’t just want a horse race; they want a Romney victory. Why escapes me, since NPR will be among the first up against the wall in a Romney/Ryan administration.
? Martin
@The Moar You Know: Years? Nah. The valley is pretty resilient now. Most of the critical infrastructure is distributed around the world and pretty much all of the manufacturing is elsewhere. A LOT of the workers just need a high speed connection – you can have a pretty good chunk of the economy work from home, or relocate to another area. It’s a totally different ballgame from 1989.
Spaghetti Lee
@shortstop:
You know, the guy explicitly said he’s voting for Obama, and he explicitly said that it’s because the idea of Republicans getting into power is so horrifying. Isn’t that what we think is supposed to happen with people to the left of Obama? I mean, you wonder why these lefty guys are so bitter all the time, maybe it’s because they get shit on here no matter what they actually say.
LD50
@shortstop: Hmmm. I see what you mean.
shortstop
@Joel: I have way too many texts piled up from relatives and friends who can’t stop freaking out. I direct them to solid data via Wang, Silver, Linzer — most of the people texting are geeks or have solid nerd potential — and they all ignore my soothing ministrations in favor of having mini-meltdowns every time a scary poll comes out. I cannot wait for this election to be over, and I have another weekend of canvassing first. Give me strength.
Soonergrunt
@LD50: which is funny because it’s not like it’s a new idea. We’ve only had the Electoral College since the beginning.
pseudonymous in nc
If you think a richer, more craven version of the people who do infomercials should run the country, vote Rmoney.
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
The idiotic allure of the come-from-behind narrative.
LD50
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I’ve always assumed they were kissing Romney’s ass to appease the austerity loons in Congress.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
Aren’t all the Really Big Server Farms sited in places far from the Valley, by now? Does much fabrication take place there these days?
(Actual questions, as I’m out of the loop and haven’t had much time there in probably 15 years.)
shortstop
@Spaghetti Lee: I don’t wonder why they’re bitter. I know exactly why they’re bitter. I can see that you don’t.
Democrat Partisan Asshole
@Napoleon: Your intentional innumeracy is getting really tiresome. Every fucking thread you’re peddling this shit, and every assumption you make keeps being proven wrong, but you insist you’re the only guy in the whole fucking country who’s getting it right.
So here’s the deal: I’m not going to try to prove you wrong, or hold your hand and walk your through the process of how we handle elections in this nation, or explain the electoral college vs. popular vote dichotomy, as others have. I’m going to let you continue to make an utter fool out of yourself, and when Obama smears Romney’s carcass all over the road by a 100 EV margin, you can either come back and apologize, leave the site in total shame, or pretend you didn’t make about fifty posts proving what a fucking moron you are. I’m betting on the last.
trollhattan
@LD50:
Which would be as effective as cooing “nice kitty” to the tiger who’s about to enjoy your viscera.
encephalopath
How many polls include an option for Libertarian Gary Johnson?
I remember reading somewhere that he gets about 5% when you ask, and 75% of people who choose him are Republicans.
Joel
@Napoleon: The demographic argument is baked into the polling, since pollsters apply likely voter and demographic screens to their results, even in the state polling.
Soonergrunt
@Hal:
That’s exactly what Mistermix was saying here.
Hal
@shortstop:
I’ve been feeling like this since the day after Obama was elected. This has been one continuous election cycle. I can’t believe it’s already been 4 years. I feel like I just pulled the lever back in San Francisco on my way to work in the morning. I even had the photo on my old cell phone.
shortstop
@Hal: It’s exhausting, not the work so much as the constant reassuring. My husband and I are taking the day after the election off just to sleep. I’ll give you $10,000 of Mitt’s money if you come over that morning and walk our hound.
Lojasmo
@Jorge:
Except, you know, Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, et. al.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne:
…does anyone STILL believe Obama wants to gut Social Security? How blind and paranoid do you have to be? If he didn’t do it while the tea party had the entire nation hostage, he ain’t gonna do it!
SatanicPanic
@Spaghetti Lee: Which is why I said young(er). Because I’m pretty sure he’s younger than Digby and Pierce.
Roger Moore
@NotMax:
That’s actually not what Nate is saying. What he’s saying is that if you take the individual state polls, multiply their vote percentages by the expected turnout in the states, and add it up, Obama wins the popular vote by a couple of percent. So the difference we’re seeing between the national polls and the state polls is a result of differences between the polls, not because Obama has a structural advantage in the Electoral College. This result is robust across a range of assumptions about state-by-state turnout and for different ways of aggregating the state polls. That’s true even if you use Nate’s adjusted polling figures, where he tries to account for varying house effects.
My guess is that it’s still a poll composition effect, though. Nate has already seen that there are big differences between in-person polls that include cell phones and robopolls that don’t. Meanwhile, his adjustments for house effects are based on the previous election. I think the answer will be that the national pollsters, especially Rasmussen and Gallup, will turn out to have bigger than expected Republican house effects because of their polling limitations.
? Martin
Yay! This will help:
Taiwanese will no longer need visas to visit U.S.
The decision to end the cumbersome requirement is greeted with enthusiasm and is expected to boost tourism from the island.
We’ve got a massive Taiwanese population in my neck of OC, mainly due to massive local development taking place at the height of China/Taiwan tensions in the 70s, which caused a lot of Taiwanese to buy homes here. They often send their kids over to go to college and avoid the mandatory military service. We could use the tourism boost.
Further, this reduces the load on administrators which means that it’ll be easier to get long-term visas – F1, etc from these countries. That’s good too – it’s gotten vastly more difficult for students to study in the US post 9/11 simply due to the uncertainty of getting visas in time.
jackmac
@Soonergrunt: And Christie is doing a fine job of throwing Romney under the bus.
PeakVT
@Spaghetti Lee: Most of the internet’s servers aren’t in Silicon Valley. Take a look at Google’s data centers, for instance. (I’m sure there are some internet companies entirely dependent on NoCal infrastructure, but not the important ones.) The big one will put a cramp on R&D from SV companies for a while, however.
I suspect quite a few of the NYC data centers and server rooms wouldn’t past muster even from major non-web centric companies. Their location is due to convenience – IT staff often likes to be able to actually touch their servers, for good reasons. But space is NYC is expensive, so some critical stuff ended up being put in basements, where it never should have been.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
I am pretty impressed with Christy. A GOPer being willing to be seen working hand in hand with the Betrayer of Benghazi(tm) due to something as trivial as a natural disaster and the GOPers own reelection chances is pretty amazing this day and age. It maybe be a fools hope but I hope he provides Republicans with a role model on how to do the shit they elected for and not just pander to Fox 24/7.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Napoleon:
Nate addressed this in a post yesterday; basically, the state polls have been somewhat less biased (in the statistical sense) than the national polls over the last few election cycles. More importantly, the states where Obama has a solid lead give him the majority of the electoral votes necessary to win outright (because, as we’ve all learned the hard way, it’s the electoral vote that matters, not the popular vote, and most states award electoral votes as winner-take-all IINM).
And BTW, Nate puts Obama’s chances at 77%; solid, but nowhere near a lock.
The point is, Obama is leading where it matters the most.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
Just ask some guy right here in this very thread: he is absolutely, 100 percent convinced that Obama is going to make a “grand bargain” with the Republicans to destroy Social Security. He can’t explain any logical reason how it would happen or why Obama would do that, but he believes it absolutely and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever convince him.
lamh35
WTF! Damn, dude is just ridiculous. So he paid damn near $5000 for supplies for his campaign rally disguised as “storm relief” when he could have given that money to the damn Red Cross directly.
This mofo really plans to buy his way into a presidency!
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/romney-campaign-bought-own-supplies-for-storm-relief
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
@trollhattan: No, to both those questions. Asia is were most of the fabrication is done now. The Valley provides design and deals with the bleeding edge. Server farms are out of state all over the country for the obvious reasons.
shortstop
@Mnemosyne: Who is that?
LD50
@Soonergrunt: The best example: a FB friend of mine loves to bait people on anti-Obama coal country threads. As we know, people in WV especially are totally fucking berserk about Obama wanting to “destroy coal”. They’re constantly ranting about how if everyone in coal country lines up to vote for Romney, it’ll get the evil Kenyan usurper out of office and save the Coalminer Way of Life. None of them understand that if WV went from 56% GOP in 2008 to 99% in 2012 it wouldn’t make the slightest fucking difference in kicking out “Obummer”.
shortstop
@lamh35: Ha! Shades of Bob Haldeman making the White House staff bomb the WH with telegrams of support for whatever Nixon had said the day before. The pathos!
And regardless of who paid for the canned goods, they’re still not what the Red Cross wants. Dog forbid they should listen to what the disaster relief agency is actually asking for.
Mnemosyne
@shortstop:
At the risk of turning into an Abbott and Costello routine, it’s some guy (see #58).
LD50
@Mnemosyne: It’s like those people who were ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY FUCKING CONVINCED in 2008 that Obama was coming to take all our guns, and who ALL STILL BELIEVE THAT NOW, 4 years later.
JustAnotherBob
@LD50: I figure that all media, with the exception of a few who have chosen to appeal to left/right wingers only, are trying to piss off as few as possible.
The public is spread across a lot of different sites/papers/newsrooms. Lots of people are barely hanging on. Need to make as many customers happy as possible.
les
@Mnemosyne:
But keep in mind (if we’re thinking of the same “some guy”) that he equates “changing the COLA formula” with “destroy SS.” Logic not a strong point with that one.
shortstop
@Mnemosyne: Who’s on 58th? Ha. Is A&C/baseball joke. Funny, yes?
shortstop
@LD50: Well, sure. As Wayne LaPierre tells us, and they wouldn’t print his quotes if they weren’t true, the absence of Obama action against gun ownership in his first term is simple proof that he intends to do it in his second term. Also, when I snap my fingers it prevents tigers from entering this room.
Comrade Mary
@Corner Stone: You rang?
Roger Moore
@shortstop:
What cross street?
shortstop
@Roger Moore: THIRD AVENUE!
JustAnotherBob
@Enhanced Mooching Techniques:
It sure looks like the Tea Party is largely dead. This is the last national election in which white males “rule”.
A smart Republican is likely to make a move toward the center ASAP in an attempt to build a coalition for the future. A Republican who wants to win the White House after this year is going to have to have wider appeal than what is needed this year. I suspect that Christie realizes that to win one is going to have to cut the worst of the haters loose.
Mnemosyne
@shortstop:
I’m sorry, an overdose of sugar has left me unable to process humor at the moment. I can’t figure out if the cure is even more sugar, but since there are still cupcakes in the office kitchen, I may try it and find out.
LanceThruster
@shortstop:
Are they ferocious tigers?
shortstop
@Mnemosyne: A little hair of the dog? Go for it.
shortstop
@LanceThruster: No way of knowing, since I’ve been snapping intermittently since 14:00.
Roger Moore
@shortstop:
Wait a moment. Does this mean you’re I Don’t Give A Darn?
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@pseudonymous in nc:
Romney, the Amway Zombie.
shortstop
@Roger Moore: Well played, baby.
EL
@JustAnotherBob: @Joel:
Me, too. Maybe we need a 12-step program.
pseudonymous in nc
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Toss a coin twice. If you get two heads, that’s about Rmoney’s chance of winning according to Nate Silver right now. So, it’s not a coin-flip, but a two-coin-flip.
People aren’t good at gut probabilities.
Bill Arnold
Interesting article in the WSJ about how hard it is for machines to recognize sarcasm:
The Strange Science Of Translating Sarcasm Online
(And why it is important for tasks like data mining.)
Steve Greer
The next 6 days on Fox will have 3 stories:
1. Bengazi coverup.
2. Romney is Jesus of Salt Lake and
3. Teh Blacks are Looting New Jersey! Governor Fatty was WRONG to befriend teh Obamination!
Joel
@Bill Arnold: I think this is apropos.
Michael
Nate Silver just tweeted:
7 polls released in Ohio in last 48 hours: Obama +2, Obama +3, Obama +3, Obama +3, Obama +5, Obama +5, Obama +5. #notthatcomplicated
guhm61
@? Martin:
In the local papers here in Scranton-Wiles-Barre Pa. area, there is a report that the unemployment rate is up to 9.6% locally and it’s at 8.2% state wide. And now I just saw during the evening news the new ads run by that Republican SuperPac and Karl Rove’s group. Obama and Casey may have a hard time holding onto the traditionally Democratic counties because people may be simply worn down and discouraged. They really have to count on massive turnout in Philly.
Guess I better get my ass ( and my wallet ) back in gear because Pa can’t be taken for granted.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
@JustAnotherBob:
Well really this election. Mittens has only been in the race since he dumped pandering to the angry severely conservative white boy and started pretending to be a moderate. Since just about every other politician isn’t a psychopath like Romney they are going to have to make that change early.
Kathleen
I just voted this afternoon at the Board of Elections in downtown Cincinnati. Lines were very long, but BOE employees were very organized and kept everyone moving thru.
Napoleon
@les:
You are literally a clueless idiot.
Drew
And here I was worried about my home state going red! Is Florida really ever so slightly leaning Obama? I had thought that it was going over to Rmoney in the past couple of weeks
Napoleon
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Agreed
SW
I seem to recall close election post-mortems in the past where the principles swear to have known the outcome before the final week ie the deal is already cooked in, but they go through the motions anyway. I believe that this is probably true. Things just don’t move fast enough near the end of these things. And by the way the Romney clown car is behaving I think they understand that they are doomed.
ranchandsyrup
dickie morris’ “landslide” crap-a-thon is at the top of memeorandum. Good news or great news?
lacp
@guhm61: Jeez, did it jump that much? I thought statewide it was 7-something last month. Of course, nobody will mention that both the state executive and legislative branches are controlled by Republicans and the state supreme court is currently split 50-50.
PreservedKillick
@PeakVT:
Nothing wrong with a basement. But not in a fucking flood zone.
What is absolutely shocking – and I mean, fire people ASAP shocking, inexcusable shocking – is that all these companies did not have disaster recovery sites, did not have disaster recovery plans and did not prepare for an eventuality that was a good solid week in the happening.
Incompetence. Gross incompetence.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
@JustAnotherBob: I hope you’re correct, JAB, but I have doubts… If Christie gets too big for his britches and starts trimming away the far-right wingnuts, he’ll probably gain little love from the party faithful. The moderate Republican is pilloried as a RINO if he/she dares stop goose-stepping to the Grover Norquist mantra of “Taxes, Bad… Private Sector, Good!”
I see the right as wandering still farther out of bounds for at least another full cycle.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
@LanceThruster: They are ill-tempered….
Mike in NC
Fuck Rombot/Randroid. We’re drinking in Tampa tonight with long lost friends.
guhm61
@lacp:
Your point about who’s running the government is well taken because I suspect that some of that increase in UE rate are employees at various governmental levels who’ve loss their jobs at the hands of the Republican austerity nut jobs. Of course, those workers are likely to vote Democratic.
Annnd…there’s that shitty Crossroads ad on FX…appropriately during ZOMBIELAND.
Mike G
@trollhattan:
My reaction after 9/11 was, “This is going to exacerbate the authoritarian and militaristic strains in American culture in very nasty ways. Texas Repukes are exactly the worst people to have in power right now.”
For a few days I briefly gave him the benefit of the doubt that he would do a sensible job in leading the response. Perhaps he would rise to the occasion. His speech at the Washington Cathedral memorial service was good.
Then with his bullhorn bellowing on the WTC rubble he went back to being a stupid, impulsive fratboy. And in the following days and weeks descended into what I always thought he was — the comic-book belligerent, willfully ignorant, bloodthirsty parochial asshole cynically exploiting a disaster for profit and political advantage.
joel hanes
@PeakVT:
I work for A Major Silicon Valley Computer Company.
My company spent tens of millions creating a hot-spare data center, hundreds of miles from the San Andreas, that replicates the function of our corporate computing infrastructure. We’ve proved that we can switch live operations to the remote data center within a few seconds.
So when (not if) The Big Richter 9.4 Earthquake hits NoCal, any of us still alive and able to get online will be able to continue work as if nothing much had happened.
I intend to move out of the Valley in the next couple years, partially because I don’t want to be here when The Big One happens. I think they’ll be able to restore power within weeks after a 9.4 quake on the northern San Andreas — but much of the peninsula’s water comes from Hetch Hetchy, and that aqueduct is vulnerable and will take a long time to repair.
And I _really_ don’t want to be living among eight million people who lack potable water.
opie_jeanne
Dear Soonergrunt, I quoted your argument on Facbook, credited you, and linked back to the thread.
PeakVT
@joel hanes: The Big One won’t be that big – slip-strike faults rarely generate quakes over 8.0, and none recorded have been over 8.6. It takes a subduction zone to generate a monster 9.0+ earthquake. It will be nothing to scoff at when it happens, of course. But unlike a big subduction zone earthquake, the chances of it generating a tsunami are very low.