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?

NYTimes:

While female voters generally tend to favor President Obama, that cannot be said of white women without college degrees, a group known in this race as waitress moms.

"Waitress moms"!?!

maybe they aren't voting Democrat because they keep getting called "waitress moms"

by whom, though?

apparently by "this race", and I think we all know EXACTLY what race they're talking about

waitress mothers make better lovers

i mean. why not just have a popular vote

― max, Thursday, October 25, 2012 9:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ this is substantively the approach taken by the National Popular Vote Compact which I mentioned above: since amending the constitution to switch to a popular vote is prohibitively difficult, instead they're trying to get states to agree to send their electors in the direction of whatever the national popular vote does. Eight states have signed on and another four I think have it on the docket. The gimmick is that all of them agree that it won't take effect until states totaling 270 are on-board, so that they don't shoot themselves in the foot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

If you like the idea, lobby for it in your state, etc etc.

as far as major electoral changes go I think dc statehood gets a better return 4 yr money

the popular vote compact is a great thing and it's nice that the 270 vote trigger means it wouldn't require a congressional vote or constitutional amendment

the difference between a popular vote compact and DC statehood is that one of them has a chance of happening in our lifetime

I mean it's fine, but I think people overrate the badness of the electoral college compared to other things. like the order of the primaries is probably even more distortionary than the electoral college.

nah I would put my money on dc statehood. it can happen whenever the dems control congress and feel like going for the power grab. and the gains are much more obvious.

One of my friends posted a thread on FB about that "waitress moms" thing, leading to some great comments, including:

"All that wasted energy on one band from Akron!"
"I'm voting for any candidate willing to put a waitress on mars within 10 years!"
"this article completely overshadows the struggles of Maître d'ads"

And my Reddit-ready contribution, "Any mom doing her job properly IS a waitress, am I right?"

(xpost) As a DC resident of course I'm hoping for it but even if we get something called "statehood" I don't see it coming with two voting senators and a representative. It's just nowhere near the top of national Dem priorities.

well the timing has to be right, something like the 2008 majorities w/o the world economy collapsing etc. I'm not saying it's inevitable or anything, but it's a power play there for the taking.

the good news is that if you don't live in one of the 8 swing states ur television viewing experience is blissfully presidential ad-free

― Mordy, Wednesday, October 24, 2012 11:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i live in vt and ive been getting hella ads targeted at nh, way more for obama fwiw

btw 538 has obama as a slight favorite in virginia, if he wins there you can start celebrating early

Good morning, guys!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/10/adsbystatetime.png

i watched a pre season celtics game the other night and this ad thats just a clip of romney on 60min saying his tax rate being lower than the average working persons is fair played every comercial break

jesus christ, why the hell is James Taylor tacked onto every fucking Democratic presidential run

we need the worst celebraties to pretend to be republicans as a covert op

cannot imagine how horrible it must be to watch tv in florida ohio and virginia right now

I hate that the campaigns discovered Hulu. Can't skip that shit.

if you use ad block it just shows you a black screen begging you to turn ad block off

romnmentum kaput http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/oct-24-in-polls-romneys-momentum-seems-to-have-stopped

BTW on behalf of Ohio I apologize in advance for whatever happens here.

Every day on my way home I go right past the county board of elections building, and there are a LOT of people doing early voting, every day.

Some items that are meant to be real but come off as parodies:

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/12928_4602012175566_1447120646_n.jpg

As well as

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0OomdFloKI

Man, that eagle isn't even crying. What a waste of effort.

its funny because romney is the one who brought up big bird

re that linkabait conor friedersdorf piece from a while back where he refused to endorse obama because drone strikes and instead went w/the gold standard guy

An economic depression would kill a lot more innocent people than Obama's drone strike program. Economic performance isn't just about money -- it's about people's ability to feed and house themselves and to obtain health care. Economic instability also feeds social and political unrest and can lead to violence and war. William Jennings Bryan had this right: Monetary policy is a moral issue and proposing to crucify mankind on a cross of gold is a "deal-breaker" for me.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/the-presidential-candidate-who-would-destroy-the-economy.html

health care reform also

nah I would put my money on dc statehood. it can happen whenever the dems control congress and feel like going for the power grab. and the gains are much more obvious.

― iatee, Thursday, October 25, 2012 2:43 PM (42 minutes ago)

can you imagine the level of "throw the bums out" spent too much time in washington incoherent rage this would create in the other states tho? seems like a one way PR disaster ticket to a complete congressional turnover.

nah I think the rage would be 100% partisan, democrats would quickly agree that a place w/ more people than wyoming should have representation, republicans would all quickly agree that this is the biggest injustice in human history. I actually think they mentioned this in their platform?

dc certainly wouldnt be throwing the bums out B-)

btw most gangster licence plate

http://i.imgur.com/RF6Vt.jpg

hahaha ive never seen that before

its so good, maybe not quite as good as live free or die, but still

so they unsealed the staples divorce records. when do we find out what's in them?

I hate live free or die, it's so randian

yeah but come on a licence plate that mentions death, you got to give up the props

all license plates imply death cause they are on cars

i just spent a couple minutes trying to make the dc one into a die hard movie title to give it the leg up but i got nothing

" The nation's capital city, a special responsibility of the federal government, belongs both to its residents and to all Americans, millions of whom visit it every year. D.C.'s Republicans have been in the forefront of exposing and combating the chronic corruption among the city's top Democratic officials. We join their call for a non-partisan elected Attorney General to clean up the city's political culture and for congressional action to enforce the spirit of the Home Rule Act assuring minority representation on the City Council. After decades of inept one-party rule, the city's structural deficit demands congressional attention. We oppose statehood for the District of Columbia. "

2012 gop platform

the DC license plate is probably the best in the country

all license plates imply death cause they are on cars

― iatee, Thursday, October 25, 2012 11:42 AM (51 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to drive w/death is to truly have lived

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-momentum-myth/2012/10/25/f7fc67a6-1eaf-11e2-8817-41b9a7aaabc7_blog.html

The first group is made up of truly independent, and undecided, voters. Most of them don’t pay very much attention at all to politics. Eventually, they will vote one way or another (at least if they vote), but they may be the most likely to swing between “undecided” and that candidate depending on what’s currently in the news. This create the impression of momentum, but the effect will be short lived, rather than continuous.

The second group is made up of voters who have actually decided but move in and out of “likely voter” screens, or even in and out of answering surveys at all, depending on their enthusiasm for the election and their candidate at any given moment. This can create a temporary “surge” in likely-voter support for one candidate that isn’t actually long term momentum in his or her favor.

The third group is made up of so-called undecided voters whose ultimate decision is basically predictable. Thanks to the campaign, they end up “learning” to vote for the candidate they might have expected to support all along. For example, there are those voters who insist that they are independent, yet always just happen to wind up supporting the same party. For them, the high-intensity portions of the campaign in which they are exposed to “their” party’s message will often be sufficient to permanently move them from undecided to decided. That can create a bump for a candidate — and the appearance of momentum — but once it’s done, it’s done. There’s no reason to expect it to build on itself.

In all these three cases, shifts happen when the information environment strongly favors one candidate or the other — such as when a party’s (successful) convention is running, or if a candidate is perceived to have decisively won a debate. The key thing, then, is that “momentum” is only likely to last as long as information favoring one candidate continues to dominate the news. And that almost never happens, because the press usually wants to move on to a new story.

For the first two groups, it’s likely that the effect will wear off rapidly once press coverage shifts, as it almost always does. By contrast, for the third group, some of the gains from a “momentum” period are likely to be permanent conversions. But they would have ended up with that candidate, anyway.

er that quote would work better if I included

It’s worth thinking about three groups of voters who might change the horse race polls.

convention bump is generally #3, so my theory is #3 ended up happening w/ first debate instead after shitty convention

i just spent a couple minutes trying to make the dc one into a die hard movie title to give it the leg up but i got nothing

― I'M THE ONLY ON (jjjusten), Thursday, October 25, 2012 11:43 AM (16 minutes ago)

taxation without representation harder

If DC and New Hampshire have the most badass license plate mottos, Idaho's is the least:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Idaho_license_plate_-_passenger_baseplate_-_2008.jpg