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?

And what makes it worse for GOP diehards is that Bill gets to be all elder statesman/campaign rallier/etc now, maintaining an actual wide popularity. And in contrast W is... *shrug*

I mean, can you imagine W being back in 2016 in that capacity? Or later? Fuck no.

ISTR Clinton getting all kinds of partisan abuse for apparently being a cracker with extravagant appetites, Lady Macbeth for a wife and a Bingo lady for a mother.

it's easier to like a guy when his political career is over cf also reagan + democratic party

they don't have to like him, they just don't benefit anymore from demonizing him (reagan, clinton)

Van: let's just say that the 2004 campaign was mildly bitter.

Demonizing Dubya should pay dividends for at least as long as it has for Jimmy Carter, if there is justice in this world.

Christie - "one big distraction."

I am personally disappointed by obama's unwillingness to constantly demonize and blame dubya for the country's problems

hopefully in ~30 years the democratic party will not be trying tie the republican presidential candidate to GWB

hopefully in 30 years the DEMOCRAT Party will tie the GOP prez candidate to Reagan.

Going back upthread to the whole "running away with the election" doohickey, it's just circular bias. These righties insist the data shows Romney's winning. When he loses (which he will), they will say obviously there was fraud because the data showed he was way ahead. When you point out that it did not they will merely point to Rasmussen which was oh so amazing in 2008 and all the others are biased. It's best to not argue with people who were likely conceived at an L.A. Guns concert.

On the topic of Rasmussen, their slanted polling is getting ridiculous. They are currently the ONLY State Poll that shows Romney ahead in Ohio...and by TWO PERCENT. Every other poll has Obama ahead by at least two (except one newspaper, that had it tied). They also are (according to the Infamous dickbiscuits at Breitbart.com) now predicting an Electoral victory for Romney, making them the only aggregate site to do so. Bring this up, and they will claim it is ALL THE OTHER POLLS that are biased. Tell them it is Rasmussen that is proven to be right-leaning, and they will deny it, even if you bring up the fact that Scott Rasmussen wrote for Conservative rag World Net Daily in the early 2000s (Seriously, Nate Silver gets shit for the fact that he's an Obama supporter that aggregates poll data that favors Obama, but Rasmussen gets nothing for being a GUY WHO WROTE CONSERVATIVE ARTICLES AND PUBLISHING POLLS???!!!)

so yeah...let themselves Rage themselves out on Election Day, enjoy it as Schadenfreude. I may create a Schadenfreude twitter account and Twitter all the Butthurt live.

nice turn of phrase

East side,
West side
Me and Mamie O'Rourke
Tweeted the butt-hurt li-ive
On the sidewalks of New York

@GovChristie I want to thank the President personally for all his assistance as w recover from the storm.

“@GovChristie: I have confidence that we will have support from the President and federal authorities. #Sandy”

“@GovChristie: I don't give a damn about Election Day after what has happened here. I am worried about the people of New Jersey. #Sandy”

“@GovChristie: On conf call with POTUS discussing post-Sandy cleanup efforts in partnership with the feds. He is instructing Gov't to lean forward to help.”

“@GovChristie: Here with President Obama at the Brigantine shelter. http://t.co/pkei2eJA”

“@whitehouse: Photo: On Marine One, President Obama & @GovChristie survey the damage done by Hurricane #Sandy along New Jersey coast: http://t.co/l3nIu7ht”

“@GovChristie: President Obama made it clear to me today that it is his top priority to help New Jersey get back to normal. As it is mine.”

“@GovChristie: The President came to New Jersey today to offer his help and I accept that help and appreciate his good will.”

“@GovChristie: When it comes to getting things done, I don't care what party someone is in. The responsibility I have is much bigger than politics.”

“@GovChristie: Pictures from my tour of hurricane damage with President Obama today. #Sandy http://t.co/QN8VKMbL”

christie, sweaty, passionate

is it really that hard to understand what "70% chance of winning" means? do we as adults really need (flawed) baseball and d&d comparisons to make this more intuitive?

― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, October 31, 2012 8:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's actually not intuitive at all! people don't naturally think in probabilities

― iatee, Wednesday, October 31, 2012 8:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for 1 time events, this is otm. he publishes percentages (i.e. "frequentist" statistics) for the betting markets set, but really he's a guy who knows better, and he should be publishing posterior distributions and talking in bayesian language all the time.

avb out

speaking of betting markets how much $ have you made on my intrade advice caek??

i am currently up about $28. looks like i sold romney at pretty much the exact top of his market.

It's best to not argue with people who were likely conceived at an L.A. Guns concert.

simultaneous lol & middle finger

I rolled my eyes and then I remembered when I saw Poison at the Cap Centre in Landover, Maryland in 1988 when I was 13, I saw a couple openly having sex in full view of everyone and theoretically that could have resulted in a baby who would be voting in a few days.

if it makes you feel any better, I'm voting for Obama

lol

today in the war on our friend nate silver http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/11/todays-war-on-nate-silver-quiet-flows-the-don-edition.html

i am currently up about $28. looks like i sold romney at pretty much the exact top of his market.

Proof that Romney is already doing good things for the economy.

OF ENGLAND

GERMANY ACTUALLY

I was torn on which to go with tbh, England seemed funnier

i think your instincts were solid

Wanted to post this long quote (somebody named Gelman, via Sullivan) because it's exactly the point I was making yesterday. (Sorry if someone's already linked).

I can simultaneously (a) accept that Obama has a 72 percent chance of winning and (b) say the election is too close to call. What if the weatherman told you there was a 30 percent chance of rain — would you be shocked if it rained that day? No. To put it another way, suppose Mitt Romney pulls out 51 percent of the popular vote and wins the election. That doesn’t mean that Nate Silver skews the polls (as is suggested by this repulsive article at Examiner.com, which, among other things, criticizes Silver for being thin and having a soft voice). Romney winning the election with 51 percent of the vote is well within the margin of error, as Silver clearly indicates. That’s what too close to call is all about.

gelman is a statistician who does a lot of polisci stuff and he has a good blog

it's true in a v limited way of thinking, like maybe it's too close to call but not too close to put a probability on, one tells you something the other nothing

another way of looking at it is one way would help you win at poker, the other not so much

Everyone take a nap for the next 5 days.

Great idea.

gelman's better critique in another post was that as far as these sorta conceptual probabilities go, 538 is probably being *too* precise and rounding to the nearest 10% would be less confusing

xp

omg imagine the seizures when the prediction flipped from 60 to 50%

and in this case the only poker here is intrade or whatever. but as far as just understanding what's going on 72% vs 73% doesn't help people and can be deceiving in a sense.

yeah I thought of that too, when you round to the nearest 10% people misinterpret things in the other direction.

it helps show the movement over time, if maybe not day to day

and it would be way less fun to check every day

I think he should just do it like the homeland security alert system, 5 colors

top threat level soviet red

I'm guessing the actual results will be slightly better for Obama than the raw polls indicate because a lot of them don't include households without a landline -- missing a lot of the under-30 voters, who don't turn out to the polls as much as others, but who lean Democratic. (I believe 538 takes this into account but I'm not sure.)

the odds of Romney winning goes down the more he says things like this:

http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/10/31/romney-compares-sandy-relief-to-cleaning-up-after-high-school-football-game/

I saw that last night while watching Last Word (ugh, Lawrence O'Donnell) because nothing else was on. Was hoping some other media outlet would pick up on it so I don't have to link to his page.

(xpost) I imagine the world Romney carries around in his head looks a lot like this:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__hspjzfC024/TDLdWOX1uMI/AAAAAAAABd0/FzCfyhWzQYA/s1600/pleasantville-Islam.jpg

Which I sort of understand--the one in my own head looks something like this:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/dazed-and-confused/w448/dazed-and-confused.jpg?1337960424

the world in my head looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXT6KrX-PF4

"What World Do You Carry Around in Your Head?"

http://www.springfieldfiles.com/albums/food/0229.JPG