I am beginning to become scared that Romney/Ryan will win. Can smart people please post here and say reassuring things to convince me that he won't?

Imagine having to become a blue jays fan.

Pure suffering.

Feel like this election has crossed some sort of final threshold where now even polls are explicitly politicized and mistrusted (and that's always seemed to me to be the big effect of partisanship: a sort of fundamental defensiveness against information that doesn't conform to your ideology. It's putting some real sense of yourself at stake in political outcomes.)

on one hand, yeah, having so many polls has made me aware of how one's skepticism is related to how much an outcome relates to what one wants to be true. on the other, having so many polls (and poll analysts) has made clear just how arbitrary and questionable the methods behind them can be.

but if we moved to Canada clemenza would still worry about polls ;)
― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

Imagine having to become a blue jays fan.
― one bad call from barely losing (Nicole)

Pure suffering.
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF)

Ambiguous sequence...well played, Alex; well played.

Can someone explain why Romney would even atend a Smith dinner? I can't say that Smith and Romney were exactly on the same page.

Both candidates always go, every election.

It has escaped my radar. What's the significance of it?

An excuse to show the world that candidates can get on.

Kissing the ring of NY Catholic power, that's pretty much it. Arguably less relevant now, but old habits die hard.

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1185943.1350512545!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/gallery_635/john-f-kennedy-richard-nixon-alfred-e-smith-memorial-dinner-1960.jpg

Franny Cardinal Spellman above, bomb-blesser and boy-toucher.

http://i.imgur.com/CwrwT.png

so eeeeevil

seriously, hope that fucker goes to jail for awhile

for the haircut alone.

Measuring-the-drapes dept:

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/ap-romney-transition-team-working-on-fiscal-cliff

I'm sure I won't be the only one to find it galling if Romney wins and is able to glide past negotiations that would have been a major ordeal for Obama--not because he's a bipartisan guy who knows how to "bring people together," but because, you know, he's not Barack Obama. I have a feeling, though, that this is part of the recent movement towards Romney: a recognition that he will have an easier time with such things.

i love that this dude is charged with tossing 8 forms in a dumpster, but takes a mug shot like we're going to all know his middle name soon

x-post to Clemenza

Plus the Repubs in Congress will be more ruthless and show more backbone and unity than the Dems tent of libs, centrists,& blue-dogs. The latter may not fight the uh power if Romney wins, they filibustering Repubs have for 4 years.

the way that fibustering Repubs have

someday I will proofread

Yeah, I thought about that after I posted--Democrats will be much more accomodating (i.e., spineless or responsible, depending upon your viewpoint).

Haven't yall been watching the debates? Republicans are the only party that wants to work in a bipartisan fashion! j/k

Kind of curious about the claims of the republicans keeping it together in their big tent - I know it's one of their superpowers, but it's getting pretty crazy in there. What would happen if Pres. Romney comes to them with talk of raising the debt ceiling?

republicans don't have a big tent ideologically anymore but they're always pretty keynesian when they run things

also

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight

National polls published in past 24 hours: Obama +3.2, Obama +3, Obama +3, Obama +1, Obama +0.6, Obama +0.5, TIE, Romney +7.
Expand

Josh Robin ‏@joshrobin
Obama has a new zinger: says his "flip-flopping" opponent has "Romnesia."

Talking Points Memo ‏@TPM
Obama: Mitt has "Romnesia" http://tpm.ly/OOBjDh

NEW ZING ALERT

literal back2back tweets^

there should be zing think tanks that come up w/ these things

dream job

zink tanks

Man, tying it all up in a taut catchphrase will do the work of ten debate wins wrt a lot of the electorate.

zing thanks

Man, tying it all up in a taut catchphrase will do the work of ten debate wins wrt a lot of the electorate.

according to the model at the american zing institute it has the potential to do the work of 2.3 +/- debate wins

the dream job belongs to david taintor (tpm)

it appears that all he does is cover what stewart and colbert said last night and expand on tweets to make them full sentences that can be published on TPM as breaking news.
AND his name is david taintor

romnesia? p sure thats called zingbabwe now

bump for anxiety

this thred doesn't do much to quell anxiety

O has been dropping like a stOne over at intrade

http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=743474

though he's up a bit at the moment

Watched a few minutes of gloating Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe offering his cliched conservative rhetoric and talking to Chuck Todd about state polling. One of the good things that will occur if Obama wins, is that Joe and his not always helpful co-host Mika Brzezinski, will have to for a day or 3, at least, be defensive.

I posted some stuff on that on other threads. I am convinced this is a campaign stunt – or at least one rich dude w/ an agenda. If you are in Europe where it’s easy to get money on intrade you should buy some bamstock. At the very least it will go up before election day and you can sell it then.

xp

Adelsons and Koch Bros gaming InTrade? Who knew?

The Intrade thing is creepy beyond words.

if it's any consolation intrade got the supreme court health care ruling wrong

cost-benefit of gaming intrade is huge - lotsa people are talking about this, costs as much as some local tv ads or whatever. and timing-wise fits w/ the romney campaign's narrative over the last few days where they act more confident than they did when they actually had better numbers. anyway take my advice and you too can retire at age 40.

so how big is the market? how much would it actually cost to move it by 10 points?

there was no reason to believe that a predictions market would be any better than any other way of predicting what was going on in roberts' head. predictions markets are good at information aggregation - but the best information that exists on this stuff suggests that this is not a 50-50 election. also intrade is out of line w/ other betting markets.

its really small, ovbs the volume changes but there was an article that suggested you could move it 10pts w/like $15k, its ridiculous the news should stop covering it imho xp

well one person did that for romney temporarily w/ 17k and the market ate it back fairly quickly. intrade is small enough that it's obvious when a swing like that is happening. it's less obvious if someone is sitting there doing it slowly.
anyway, free money imo.

xp

intrade also not immune to the biases of the sort of people who think intrade is a good idea.

i was looking at the contracts for democrats taking all three the presidency senate and house like hmmm cause it was a p good deal but then there were like 3 shares available at that price, especially w/the more obscure bets theres just no one playing

yeah the prob is it's a zero sum game