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?

Yesterday I was driving through Easthampton, MA and saw a few people standing around waving Romney signs and a Don't Tread on Me Banner, which is not a common sight around here.

There are weird pockets of hardcore conservatism in that area (cf. my former employers in the adjacent town who stalked around the office muttering "I can't believe we have a n----r president" the morning after the 2008 election).

A bit of levity:

http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/barack-obama-s-cold-calls

Either Obama will win, or polling/poll analysis is finished. Not sure whether that's comforting or not.

Sidenote: I wonder whether Romney's personality explains the infamous divide between national polls and battleground state polls. That is, the more you see of him, the less you want to vote for him.

Raymond, that was awesome.

Either Obama will win, or polling/poll analysis is finished. Not sure whether that's comforting or not.
--Ye Mad Puffin

Not likely. Methodologies might get adjusted, but that's it. People don't seem to remember how wrong the polls were in 2000.

Thanks man

ya that was great

xp

I think we are probably in a transition period w/r/t polling methodology and online/tech-related polls will def slowly take over. but its not like the field of statistics disappears if it turns out there was some huge methodology problem this time.

Either Obama will win, or polling/poll analysis is finished.

No! The polling just says that Obama is substantially more likely to win than he is to lose. But he could still lose. All the polls give us is an estimate. If Romney wins California, then yeah, that's a strike against polling. But I don't think that's going to happen.

good post on the difference in methodology of the various polling agrigators, agrees w my suspicion that Nate silver is v conservative in calling an election a lock http://election.princeton.edu/2012/11/04/comparisons-among-aggregators-and-modelers

My biggest worry was that this would end up looking like the 2000 election so I went back and looked at final pre-election polling results, nationally & in OH.
Bush was ahead in basically every November 2000 poll of Ohio. (2 ahead Mason-Dixon, 10 ahead Ohio Poll, 9 ahead Zogby)
Bush was ahead 11-2-2 in final national polls in 2000. (11 polls where Bush was ahead, 2 where Gore was ahead, 2 tied)
OTOH, Florida was lightly polled in Nov 2000 (only two polls after Nov 1), and both polls (ARG and Zogby) showed Gore ahead.

very nervous, the prospect of a romney presidency is more terrifying than 4 more years of bush

Yeah, not very reassuring to read of a final set of polls, which, if aggregated with no weighting, produced a result that was nearly 3pts the wrong way (Bush +2.3 rather than Gore +0.5). Looks like Nader's support was overestimated.

This all comes down to fans of The Newsroom: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/what-your-favorite-tv-shows-say-about-your-politic

Why does So You Think You Can Dance lean left and Dancing With the Stars lean right? Aren't they both just dancing shows? I don't watch either so it is puzzling to me.

one involves discovering new talented dancers and one involves torturing celebrities in order to find the two or three who can actually dance

people publicly celebrate reality tv lean right, i believe it

I'm guessing the right-leaning TCM viewers don't include the ones who stayed up to watch Riki-oh.

Why does So You Think You Can Dance lean left and Dancing With the Stars lean right? Aren't they both just dancing shows? I don't watch either so it is puzzling to me.

I can't put my finger on it either, and yet it parses so absolutely perfectly to my own personal experience.

Sons of Anarchy makes so much sense in that diagram.

dr. morbius who shd i vote 4! leaning towards romney obv ;)

This headline is a good sign:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/why-romney-will-win_660391.html

Fondly remeber Fred Barnes' 1996 New Republic cover story: WHY CLINTON CAN'T WIN,

btw lines for early voting were insane in 2008 and 2010 too but when I voted on Election Day I waited ten minutes in line both times.

Yeah, I tried to early vote on Saturday afternoon, and a posted sign announced it was a two hour wait. Based on past experience, I decided it'd be a lot quicker for me to vote on Election Day, so I went home. In Chicago, there are about 2,000 polling places open on election day, but only 50 were open for early voting.

very nervous, the prospect of a romney presidency is more terrifying than 4 more years of bush

look I don't like the idea of a Romney presidency but seriously?

I can actually see that argument. Partly it's because we've all survived a Bush presidency, but the landscape has changed so much.

i feel similarly. between the absolutely terrifying economic policy, the chances of heavy deregulation (particularly wrt environmental aspects), the near guaranteed tax handout to the ultra-wealthy (and requisite bashing of the middle class to make up the difference), the sabre rattling at iran, and the campaign promises of getting "tough" on china on day one, i think that romney/ryan could completely fuck up any progress we've made towards economic recovery, get us into another hopeless war, and accelerate global climate catastrophe.

Bush redefined the party in a way that ensures that every future GOP pres will be 'even worse' even if mittens himself might not seem so scary

Hope-filled Fred Barnes cites: "a dozen conservative groups—from the National Rifle Association to the Republican Jewish Coalition—have put together a massive GOTV effort focused on swing voters in key states. They’ve averaged 1.8 million phone calls per day in recent days" as a prime reason why Romney will win.

Whenever I read about GOTV efforts that cite huge numbers of phone calls made, I immediately think... robo-calls. Then I think, if the Big Brains For Romney believe that robo-calls will inject that last bit of self-motivation to get a non-voter out the door to vote, then they truly have more money than sense. GOTV is all about human volunteers making contact with other humans. 1,800,000 calls per day is a nonsense statistic to feed to big contributors and the media.

to ease the pressure in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, the voting has been divided into 2 days. Republicans vote Tuesday. Democrats vote on Wednesday. Please pass along

when the robot tells u to vote u have to or it will shoot u with lasers

"HEY JEWS" -Mamet

http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/the_final_obama_romney_showdown_a_note_to_a_stiff_necked_people

the diminution in employment and income will decrease their opportunity to marry

Oh right, he wrote Oleanna. Makes perfect sense now.

in case anyone isn't paying attention, David Mamet's late career has been as a reactionary zionist

(the existence of reactionary zionists would, of course, have left midcentury labor zionists totally dumbfounded)

david mamet makes reactionary zionist look bad

lol @ mamet. that is incredibly poorly written for a guy with so many awards:

Will you explain (as you have observed) that a large part of their incomes will be used to fund programs that they may find immoral, wasteful and/or indeed absurd? And that the bulk of their taxes go to no programs at all, but merely service the debt you entailed on them?

Morbs beleives in contrarianism.

anyone who makes this accuz and isn't a mindreader needs to stfu

I find the constant "yer into feeling SUPERIOR" sneer thrown at minor-party voters weird when I am regularly told by gung-ho Dem voters that I am a CHILD for 'throwing my vote away.' (In NY, of all places.)

one can be smug and foolish

constant "yer into feeling SUPERIOR" sneer thrown at you /= constant "yer into feeling SUPERIOR" sneer thrown at minor-party voters

get over yrself

don't feel sorry for the guy who pops into threads to throw out snide remarks about our moral failings and then plays the victim

boo hoo, woe is me

fuck off y'all

like sand through the hourglass... so are the days of our lives

Morbs we need to hug this out

it's a morbius strip (djp NO!)

so wait, someone just told me that mittens paid no taxes for 10 years per a new Bloomberg story, and I can find neither hide nor hair of it on the internetz. is it just being ignored?

It was linked yesterday but nobody really cares anymore

“An Open Letter to Nonvoters on the Left” by Ari Feld

Dear friends,

Representative democracy is not ideal. The Electoral College is faulty. The two party system stymies political innovation. Both Republicans and Democrats cozy up with dubious sources of funding. You are right to condemn the disingenuousness of politics— the unremitting hedging and double-talk, the pandering and outright silliness of both parties. You are wrong to believe that participation in electoral democracy legitimizes a hopelessly flawed system. Despite everything, voting remains the most powerful non-violent method of effective political action.

Voters elect the president. The president appoints Supreme Court justices and a host of other judges. Voters elect state and national representatives. These people work in concert (or conflict), with or without your permission, to arbitrate legal reality. Whether you like it or not, we are all subjects to their decisions. To say otherwise is foolish. To say that Democrats and Republicans pursue comparable domestic policies is a departure from reason. To say elections don’t affect you is, at best, to delude yourself. At worst, it disavows other people’s civil rights and empowers the most reactionary and destructive forces in our society.

Which political party advances women’s and minorities’ rights, gay rights, the rights of the poor, and sounder drug and environmental policies? In general, who does more of that, Democrats or Republicans? In the broadest strokes possible, which of these parties and their judicial appointees will enact and uphold laws to improve and protect the lives of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised citizens?

Your abstention facilitates Republican victories. I understand that you abstainers have personal convictions that make it difficult for you to vote for the Democrats. You certainly have a right to your conscience. Indeed, individual rights and freedoms are a cornerstone of our democracy. However, you take these precepts too far by elevating your desire to simply express them (by not voting) over seeking their full realization for all Americans. In other words, expressing your conscience comes at the expense of women’s access to safe, effective family planning services. Your conscience gets in the way of equal marriage rights for all. Your conscience has far less to struggle with than single mothers denied vital social services by Republican policies. Your conscience is of no avail to citizens imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses. Your conscience is merely self-righteous.

Self-righteousness disguised as conscience or personal conviction is the worst kind of American individualism. There are convictions and then there is trenchant unwillingness to acknowledge any reality beyond the frontiers of your own experience or circumstance. That is solipsism, not a conviction. Citizens of a democracy have a responsibility to share struggles that are not their own. This admonishment applies equally to those of you who would “vote your conscience” by supporting unelectable independents. Until you have succeeded in implementing instant run-off voting in your community, or unless this nation becomes a parliamentary democracy, someone will be elected and it won’t be your candidate. Compromise is the reality of politics, except in totalitarian states.

Progressive and radical citizens who refuse to compromise elicit comparison with the Tea Party and their debt-limit intransigence last year. Their refusal exemplifies the most anti-intellectual strain of American politics. But to say that I am arguing for all of us on the left to fall in with a party line is to utterly miss the point: we need votes not for the sake of Obama and the Democrats but for the sake of the most vulnerable people— women, children and the elderly—who will benefit from their policies.

Voters defer to reality. We shape it. We criticize and castigate. We honor those who are maimed and killed fighting for this right. We remember that not so long ago women and African-Americans in this country struggled in this way. Nonvoters must certainly remember such history as well. Perhaps today’s struggles seem less dire. Perhaps current candidates fail to excite you.

Make no mistake, the Democrats may be nothing to get excited about this year. Who cares if you’re excited? Your excitement is of great concern to no one (except possibly to you, which in itself is a luxury). The unemployed, the marginalized and unprivileged know that reality dictates acting for reasons other than excitement. Least-worst choices are all we have for the moment. There is no time to transform America during a presidential election. To say it another way, there is no time to re-make America in your own image this year. That’s what every other year is for. Realistically, though, all I hope for is a defense and perhaps a gradual advance of progressive domestic policy. It seems that only non-voters have lower aspirations.

Indeed, what are the politics of inaction? What do you hope to rectify with your power of inertia? What is the message of civil discourse that says nothing at the national level? Before you opt out, think about what’s at stake. And remember your awesome power: nonvoters make up a greater part of the potential electorate than either Democrats or Republicans and almost as much as both of them combined. If you persist in your abstention, you persist in subservience to a ruling elite: voters.

Sincerely,

Ari Feld

why does Ari Feld like killing children?

OK, I'm feeling pretty confident that Obama has a real lead in Ohio, but this stuff is making me feel extremely nervous:

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/

y'know, I love the term "to service debt". it makes it sound like our national debt is regularly receiving blowjobs