US Politics Thread |OT| THE DARKEST TIMELINE

[VomKriege]

USA has terrible political cartoonists. Sad !

[Great Rumbler]

USA has terrible political cartoonists. Sad !

(Image removed from quote.)

Not true:

[benjipwns]

USA has terrible political cartoonists. Sad !

(Image removed from quote.)

sweet lookin tank tho makin me rethink trump vote

[zomgee]

Oh, that's God. Ok.

Those cartoons are always great. I always rush to find Crying Liberty.

[Phoenix Dark]

@mitchellvii

Bill Mitchell Retweeted wine mom's 4 trump

Don't underestimate the negative effect on Hispanic voters of this #spiritcooking business.  They HATE El Diablo.

@mitchellvii 1h1 hour ago

You know who else hates witchcraft and that Devil worship stuff?  The black community.

[benjipwns]

agrajag now an unpaid Huffington Post contributor: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nate-silver-election-forecast_us_581e1c33e4b0d9ce6fbc6f7f

[benjipwns]

Marc Kivel · University of Phoenix
After this is all over, I would suggest we all find every pollster we can lay hands on, ALL of them, tar and feather them and ride them out of town on a rail followed by the media and political handlers....

[TakingBackSunday]

agrajag now an unpaid Huffington Post contributor: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nate-silver-election-forecast_us_581e1c33e4b0d9ce6fbc6f7f

I mean, kind of?  Silver has been embarrassed this year so he's taking Like every poll and re weighting based on trends that he's basically attempting to measure.  Also, his overall projection not taking into account these EV numbers is pretty stupid

[benjipwns]

Problem with that theory is that Nate's failure was as a pundit and that he rejected his model and ignored the data consensus in an attempt to deny Trump's victory probabilities. He was approaching Bill Kristol levels in running exactly perpendicular to what everything should have been telling him.

Now, he's dialed back the punditry after openly acknowledging his mistake and is using the same exact methodology as he always has and getting the same answer as everyone else in his niche: "Hillary Clinton is going to win the Presidency" and people are responding to that with "YOU MOTHERFUCKER! TRUMP SUPPORTER!" and people who display not the slightest clue about any of this are demanding he include absolutely worthless data for the sole fact that they want Hillary's number to increase because they're nuts and freak out about probabilities displayed on a website changing slightly over time.

[benjipwns]

That means Clinton has 268 electoral votes in states where she’s clearly ahead in the polls — two short of the 270 she needs.

...

The polls-plus model, which gives Trump a 36 percent chance, is basically the same one that gave Mitt Romney just a 9 percent chance on the eve of the 2012 election, so it isn’t inherently so cautious. But the still-high number of voters not committed to either Trump or Clinton — about 13 percent of the electorate says it’s undecided or will vote for a third-party candidate, as compared with just 3 percent in the final 2012 polling average — contributes substantially to uncertainty.

So does the unusually broad swing-state map, with the outcome in at least a dozen states still in some doubt. And it’s important to remember that the outcomes in each state are correlated with one another, so that if Clinton underperforms her polls in Wisconsin (for instance), she’ll probably also do so in Minnesota. Forecasts that don’t account for these correlations are liable to be overconfident about the outcome. It isn’t hard to find examples of candidates who systematically beat their polls in almost every competitive state, as President Obama did in 2012 and as Republican candidates for governor and senator did in 2014.

...

Our model has thought so all year, and it’s because Clinton’s gains relative to Obama are concentrated among demographic groups — Hispanics, college-educated whites, Mormons — that are under-represented in swing states relative to their overall share of the population. Now that has become more apparent in the polling, and roughly a third of Trump’s 35 percent chance of victory reflects cases where he just barely gets over the hump in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote.

Could the reverse happen instead — Clinton winning the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote? Our model considers it to be a remote possibility — an 0.5 percent chance

Donald Trump has significantly improved his position in our general election forecasts as a result of state and national polls that show declining numbers for Hillary Clinton. Trump now has a 36 percent chance of winning the election, according to our polls-only forecast, and a 37 percent chance according to polls-plus, which also considers economic conditions.

...

the race isn’t that close — Clinton is matching Obama’s 2012 margin.1 But it’s early, so the outcome is highly uncertain. That uncertainty cuts both ways, meaning that Clinton could easily lose to Trump, and she could also easily end up winning in a landslide.

One reason for the high level of uncertainty is that polls are showing both a large number of undecided voters and a large number of third-party voters.

...

It’s easy to become obsessed with how the polls have changed over the past day or the past week, but sometimes you’ll gain perspective by taking a longer-term view. Clinton’s position in the polls is about the same as it was on June 8, the day after she won the California primary. It’s better than it was for parts of May, when polls showed a very close national race. But it’s worse than it was for much of March and April, when polls had her ahead by high single digits. These types of fluctuations are fairly normal, especially early in the race; we were spoiled in 2012 by unusually stable polls.

...

Although either outcome is improbable, Trump is more likely to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote than the other way around, according to the model. That doesn’t mean Trump is winning in swing states right now

...

But the Florida-Ohio-Pennsylvania triad has been problematic for her, and that makes it hard for her to have a firewall of states that she can feel comfortable about.

[TakingBackSunday]

Problem with that theory is that Nate's failure was as a pundit and that he rejected his model and ignored the data consensus in an attempt to deny Trump's victory probabilities. He was approaching Bill Kristol levels in running exactly perpendicular to what everything should have been telling him.

Now, he's dialed back the punditry after openly acknowledging his mistake and is using the same exact methodology as he always has and getting the same answer as everyone else in his niche: "Hillary Clinton is going to win the Presidency" and people are responding to that with "YOU MOTHERFUCKER! TRUMP SUPPORTER!" and people who display not the slightest clue about any of this are demanding he include absolutely worthless data for the sole fact that they want Hillary's number to increase because they're nuts and freak out about probabilities displayed on a website changing slightly over time.

That is 100% false.  He's been writing nonstop about how this election has become a horse race.  He's saying that state polls are not kind to Clinton even though we have legitimate proof that Nevada and Florida are appearing as locks for her.

[Trent Dole]

https://vine.co/v/5gKXKVEbUKu
NEVADA
https://vine.co/v/5gv6bJ6mmZF
LYIN TED

[benjipwns]

He's saying that state polls are not kind to Clinton even though we have legitimate proof that Nevada and Florida are appearing as locks for her.

Even if we did, in two states, have "legitimate proof" of anything days before the election is even held, that says nothing about whether state polls in general are being unkind to Clinton or not.

HuffPo is the only aggregate to consider both Florida and Nevada to be even within shouting distance of "locks" and nobody else considers any of NH, NC, FL, NV, OH, or IA to be a lock for any candidate except DK on NH. (HuffPo is close on NH and PredictWise is close on NV.)

Unless we're going to turn around and agree that 538 has the election projected as a lock for Clinton.

[TakingBackSunday]

You're ignoring PEC.

[benjipwns]

I am not. The only state of that group it has close to 95% confidence in is Ohio and it has it at 91% for Trump.

[doctavius bonbon]

 

[Nola]

Problem with that theory is that Nate's failure was as a pundit and that he rejected his model and ignored the data consensus in an attempt to deny Trump's victory probabilities. He was approaching Bill Kristol levels in running exactly perpendicular to what everything should have been telling him.

Now, he's dialed back the punditry after openly acknowledging his mistake and is using the same exact methodology as he always has and getting the same answer as everyone else in his niche: "Hillary Clinton is going to win the Presidency" and people are responding to that with "YOU MOTHERFUCKER! TRUMP SUPPORTER!" and people who display not the slightest clue about any of this are demanding he include absolutely worthless data for the sole fact that they want Hillary's number to increase because they're nuts and freak out about probabilities displayed on a website changing slightly over time.

That is 100% false.  He's been writing nonstop about how this election has become a horse race.  He's saying that state polls are not kind to Clinton even though we have legitimate proof that Nevada and Florida are appearing as locks for her.

I guess I am just struggling with the logic. Now to preface I do not get all that detailed into analyzing the psychology of Nate's articles. I basically have taken a simple approach, he hasn't proven his presidential predictions are broken yet and until he does I continue to give him credibility. But he never has and never will be my singular source for polling aggregation and forecasting.

But what I don't get with the critique, accurate or not, is the why? If he is doing it, if he is sensationalizing and over-selling a horse race, that seems dangerously short sighted. The foundation of his entire brand is tied to his credibility on statistical analysis, most prominately on presidential election forecasting. Other then clicks for a few months, the downside is a complete de-legitimizing of his brand. Which I have a hard time imagining someone as smart as he is would think so narrowly and blindly. Again, not saying it isn't true, I just struggle understanding the logic if he is or why he would do it.

[agrajag]

Problem with that theory is that Nate's failure was as a pundit and that he rejected his model and ignored the data consensus in an attempt to deny Trump's victory probabilities. He was approaching Bill Kristol levels in running exactly perpendicular to what everything should have been telling him.

Now, he's dialed back the punditry after openly acknowledging his mistake and is using the same exact methodology as he always has and getting the same answer as everyone else in his niche: "Hillary Clinton is going to win the Presidency" and people are responding to that with "YOU MOTHERFUCKER! TRUMP SUPPORTER!" and people who display not the slightest clue about any of this are demanding he include absolutely worthless data for the sole fact that they want Hillary's number to increase because they're nuts and freak out about probabilities displayed on a website changing slightly over time.

Kind of like his model taking wild swings from dubious outlier polls? 

Nate Silver on outlier polls in 2012 - ignore them

Nate Silver on outlier polls in 2016 - leave LA times poll alone!

[benjipwns]

Nate Silver on outlier polls in 2012 - ignore them

Erm, not exactly:

My general view, as I’ve expressed before, is that you should not throw out data without a good reason. If cherry-picking the two or three data points that you like the most is a sin of the first order, disregarding the two or three data points that you like the least will lead to many of the same problems.

At the same time, it’s important to take data in context. Many polls consistently show a partisan lean toward one or another candidate. And some polls just aren’t very good, taking shortcut after shortcut that leave them far short of taking a true random sample of voters.

The FiveThirtyEight forecast model seeks to strike a balance between these ideas. If it can place a poll into context based on what it knows about the polling firm, it will use it, although the model includes a lot of checks-and-balances that are supposed to prevent the model from overreacting to any one data point.

In this case, the firm conducting the Bloomberg poll (Selzer & Company) actually has a good track record, and their previous polls this cycle had not shown especially favorable results to Mr. Obama. So the model uses the poll, just carefully.

My view is that this is a reasonable heuristic method to apply even if you aren’t operating through the formality of a statistical model. If an “outlier” poll comes from a credible polling firm, throw it in the average and don’t sweat it much; these things will happen from time to time when so much polling data is released every day. Every now and then the poll might come from a truly dubious polling firm, and then you might come closer to just ignoring it entirely.

Either of these approaches is preferable to overreacting to the poll. Some news outlets reacted with surprise to the Bloomberg poll because, they claimed, it defied the conventional wisdom that Mr. Obama had been having a bad month. However, the conventional wisdom is not always worth very much.

Nate Silver on outlier polls in 2016 - leave LA times poll alone!

Fun from this one:

Put another way, the house effects adjustment seeks to determine what the best pollsters are saying and not just what the most prolific ones are saying. In 2012, that made a difference: the higher-quality pollsters generally projected better results for Obama than the lower-quality ones. This year, any such effects are very minor,3 and neither Trump nor Clinton benefits much from the house effects adjustment overall, although it can matter more in individual states. Polls in Nevada happen to be a Trump-leaning bunch, for instance, so the house effects adjustment slightly helps Clinton there.

[agrajag]

Suuuure

[VomKriege]

Debate about poll aggregators
We thought we were safe...

[agrajag]

I like triggering benji

[benjipwns]

A debate requires at least two sides with an argument.

[agrajag]

When Clinton decisively takes NV, benji will have to be helplessly rushed offstage like Donald Trump

[benjipwns]

 

[benjipwns]

how was he not arrested?!?

[benjipwns]

Trump launches attack ad against Jews:

[benjipwns]

lucky Colorado

[benjipwns]

@mitchellvii

Bill Mitchell Retweeted wine mom's 4 trump

Don't underestimate the negative effect on Hispanic voters of this #spiritcooking business.  They HATE El Diablo.

@mitchellvii 1h1 hour ago

You know who else hates witchcraft and that Devil worship stuff?  The black community.

needs to step up his game:

[Phoenix Dark]

Polls don't take EV into account unless the poll asks about it. In this case Hillary has clearly won NV and probably won FL from EV but it's not hard to see why polling might not reflect that. That's not Silver's fault. Now is he or the media at fault for ignoring this information in order to peddle horse race narratives? Sure. But again that doesn't make his model or polling trash. It's always been as good as the polling provided, and in every major EV state we're dealing with a demographic that has historically been hard to poll (Hispanics). AZ is having historic EV participation from Hispanics, Hillary might end up winning it too.

Basically I get the impression you guys are trying to calm down the less informed (parents, friends, democrats, etc) and don't know how to explain Nate's model. But you don't really need to. Hillary is still ahead bros. As I said a couple weeks ago as long as Trump has no shot in PA or VA he has no shot at winning. He also has no GOTV machine meaning he'll likely under perform on Election Day. As the greatest gay quarterback once said: relax.

[brawndolicious]

It's also an image thing if Hillary doesn't do >50% in popular vote and beats Trump by a large margin. Even if voter turnout is super low this year, how does it look when the Dem candidate can't even get a majority of support when running against Trump?

[benjipwns]

[VomKriege]

http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/11/06/johnny-isakson-david-perdue-reject-long-term-supreme-court-stonewall/

Hopefully the Supreme Court stalemate is about to break ?

[benjipwns]

I had always assumed they were going to punt until after the election and hope Garland is still there.

If Obama doesn't care about Hillary picking the next Justice over himself and the D's take the Senate then I'd pull him. And use like the same explanation "the next President should be able to choose blah blah blah" the GOP was.

[benjipwns]

with a definite pro-prosecution bent in criminal cases

Garland also expressed admiration for the writing style of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Ugh, nevermind, leave the seat empty!

[TakingBackSunday]

I've been thinking that was Obama's long term plan all along.  Nominate someone somewhat middling, make the GOP look like asses, wait for a Clinton presidency and slight Senate gains and pull him back to allow Clinton her own nomination.

[VomKriege]

Seems obvious Obama and his staff considered all this though, since obstruction was already in the air back then. But I agree that the compromise offer from Obama was genuine and not just some 11th dimensional optics chess.

[benjipwns]

Sorry, I was suggesting what I would do.

I'd also consider pulling Garland, then nominating the most conservative guy I can find on the Circuit Courts and let the Democrats filibuster him of the rest of the Congressional term if need be.

Wait, no.

Nominate Ted Cruz!

[VomKriege]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/us/politics/donald-trump-presidential-race.html?_r=0

And they know that his chances of winning the election are iffy. But they maintain that there is unseen money and muscle behind his political operation — and a level of sophistication that outsiders, and people who have run traditional campaigns, cannot fully appreciate.

An interesting look at the backstage of the Trump campaign and how they finally managed to turn things around in the final stretch.

[benjipwns]

Of course, the downside is when the Senate votes 99-0 just to get Cruz out of it.

[recursivelyenumerable]

Bing Predicts still has HRC at 88% and it called almost all the primaries correctly so 

If you have Windows 10, you can actually type "predict election" into the Cortana search box or even say "hey Cortana, predict the election" to get the 88% read back to you in a nice reassuring voice.

[I'm a Puppy!]

But it's bing.

[recursivelyenumerable]

I work on Bing so 

[Madrun Badrun]

I typed "predict election" into the Cortana search box and it said Al Gore was going to win. 

[agrajag]

But it's bing.

The far an away superior porn aggregator? You say it like it's a bad thing.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I forgot you're a mormon 🙂

[close]

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

This election...



https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/795324133655674880

[Joe Molotov]

I've been thinking that was Obama's long term plan all along.  Nominate someone somewhat middling, make the GOP look like asses, wait for a Clinton presidency and slight Senate gains and pull him back to allow Clinton her own nomination.

I remember when Obama did some stuff that people thought was disappointing and then Republicans made some stupid mistakes and then they'd look at those mistakes and how it made Obama look better and then they were like "What if this was Obama's plan all along!! " and people are doing it again with the Garland pick

My guess is, Obama doesn't want to play politics on this. He's too concerned with his legacy and shit.

I seriously doubt he'll respect the Republicans with their 'new president should decide' bullshit. They kept saying he was a lame duck when he wasn't. Although after the election, he will be.

I think he'll make his decision based on what Hillary wants. And fact of the matter is, she's not super progressive either and may also prefer Garland.

Edit: I think Hillary will want Garland, but Obama will hold off the appointment until after Hillary is sworn in. Then Garland will be sworn in.

Obama will pull Garland and then Hillary will nominate Obama.

[Raist]

I typed "predict election" into the Cortana search box and it said Al Gore was going to win.

Beta tested in the past.

[recursivelyenumerable]

I typed "predict election" into the Cortana search box and it said Al Gore was going to win.

fuck, the 2024 module wasn't supposed to go live just yet ... brb, fixing

[Great Rumbler]

FBI Director James Comey on Sunday afternoon sent a new letter to Congress notifying members that after reviewing a new batch of emails to and from Hillary Clinton, the bureau has "not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton."

[benjipwns]

Obama will pull Garland and then Hillary will nominate Obama.

Hillary nominates Putin as that was the plan all along

[Madrun Badrun]

Isn't this going to happen constantly for the next 4 years?  Basically anytime someone finds a system with emails from Hilary on it will reopen the case.  This is going to hang around her neck for forever. 

[benjipwns]

https://ricochet.com/386528/how-i-might-be-wrong/

On Thursday night, I posted an appeal to Never Trumpers, arguing that they should hold their noses and vote for the slimeball. The heart of my argument was the following claim — which I once again urge you to ponder:

The real issue is whether in the future we will have open discussion of political issues and free elections.

To the best of my knowledge, no one who commented on the piece I wrote challenged this judgment — which seems to me to make it a moral imperative that we vote to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming President.

But we can go wrong on any of these matters and later correct course — as long as we can still have an open discussion of political issues and free elections. The reason I focused on the latter is that, if we go wrong on those matters, there is no road back short of revolution. If Hillary Clinton wins on Tuesday, the odds are good that she, her party, and their friends in the judiciary will shut the system down (as they already have in our universities).

Over the last seventy-five years, the United States spent lives and treasure to construct a world order within which we could live and trade in relative safety. That order, which has contributed mightily to our prosperity, was built by men and women educated by the disaster to which our isolationist policies in the 1920s and 1930s gave rise. They understood what “a cascade of global crises” and “a world beset by threats and disorder” could produce. I grew up in the shadow of the Second World War, and I lived the first forty years of my life during the Cold War. The current generation — well represented by our current President — have forgotten just how fragile the international order is. In Europe right now and in the Pacific — thanks in large part to Barack Obama — that order is rapidly coming apart. The last time this happened it cost us hundreds of thousands of lives and treasure beyond imagination. This time, if this happens, it will be worse.

One final point. On Tuesday, you will not be getting married; you will not be choosing a pastor; you will not be joining a church; and you will not be choosing a hero. You will not be doing anything that might leave you with morally dirty or morally clean hands. You will be doing something much more prosaic — something akin to hiring someone to mow your lawn. You will be hiring someone to do for you what you do not have the time or the other resources to do for yourself. And, just as you customarily do when you hire someone to mow the lawn, you should — in this situation also — prudently calculate which of the candidates for the job will do the least damage and the most good. That is the way Jeremy and John approach the question, and that is the way I approach the question. The fact that we disagree is a sign that this year there are powerful arguments on both sides. Thanks to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the hapless Republicans in the Senate and House, we now live in very dangerous times — times dangerous for our republic, as I argue; and times dangerous for our nation, as Jeremy and John argue.

You can, of course, turn your back on the whole thing — you can stay home or line up with Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or Evan McMullin. That would, however, be a cop-out. It might make you feel good about yourself, but this feeling of self-satisfaction would be false and unjustified. For to throw your vote away in a time of national crisis is to dodge your duty as a citizen.

He responds in the comments to those who don't recognize the moral imperative of doing your duty as a citizen and merely hiring someone:

I agree with most of this. But you have ignored my argument about what the Democrats are now doing to prevent the open discussion of political issues and to put an end to genuinely free elections. The year 2020 may not matter.

[Joe Molotov]

Isn't this basically going to happen constantly for the next 4 years?  Basically anytime someone finds a system with emails from Hilary on it will reopen the case.  This is going to hang around her neck for forever. 

No, cuz Trump will be elected and Hillary will be immediately put in jail. #MAGA

[agrajag]

If you go on GAF right now, everything is

OPTICS OPTICS OPTICS OPTICS OPTICS

last week it was all

OPPO OPPO OPPO OPPO OPPO OPPO OPPO

they sure love their buzzwords

[benjipwns]

Rudy says there's going to likely be RICO charges brought against the Clinton Foundation unless the Justice Department has been completely POLITICIZED!

There's never been a slam dunk of a case like this!

[Tasty]

They Finally Took Away Donald Trump's Twitter Account

Which isn’t to say that Trump doesn’t have any control over his tweets at all. According to The New York Times, it’s just that he now has to get permission from the nearest adult

As the aides agonized over which words to feed into the teleprompter, they become so engrossed that a hot light set up next to the machine caused Mr. Bannon’s Kuhl hiking pants to begin smoldering.

“I think my pant leg is on fire,” he said after noticing the acrid smell.

[Tasty]

Donald Trump Is Going To Get His Ass Kicked On Tuesday

Here’s the deal: Donald Trump is going to get his ass kicked. Anyone who says otherwise is either a) afraid of jinxing it and/or making Hillary Clinton voters complacent (understandable); b) afraid of being wrong (Nate Silver); c) supporting Trump; or d) interested in making this a “horse race” for the sake of maintaining public interest (most of the television media, along with grotesque shitbags like Mark Halperin).

[headwalk]

i'd quite like it to be close cause i'll be using it as an excuse to get the morning off the next day.

[chronovore]

What a sack of shit; refuses to do his job. I mean, go ahead and refuse the seat, but deciding not to even vote on it -- that's passive aggressive cowardice rather than acting on one's principles.