Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

but so many politicians are used to skipping the question and getting straight to the talking points. to force them to actually answer a question would unleash chaos, similar to that classic SNL bit where the teleprompter goes down during a local newscast and they panic and eventually resort to cannibalism.

We need Will McAvoy now more than ever.

He’s a man who says I care deeply about every single word.

It means he was targeting an audience that far more values a narrative of apparent certainty/directness/assuredness/earnestness than it does anything even approaching factual accuracy.

The standard they should stick up for is not allowing someone to use airtime for what are actual propaganda tactics.

uh but that's what airtime is for

there are only so many Frasier and Who's the Boss? reruns that can be used, though! you gotta fill up the airtime with something..

I don't remember if it was an attempt at talking point obfuscation in the Matthews interview. I think it was more unusual for the persistence in the follow-up questions and for his emotion.

Bobby Jindal is the worst I've seen with this recently. He is absolutely relentless.

Kornacki giving an impassioned diatribe about the Romney/Ryan calculation that the media will leave the truth to the fact checkers. He holds up the NYT front page and says it takes 18 paragraphs to mention the possible lies in the speech. SE Cupp responds that the 'line' was crossed a long time ago when Romney was accused of killing a woman.

can i interrupt all this conventioneering crap (which i'm ignoring) to say that i'm not especially optimistic about this election?

people's optimism seems based on the electoral college & nate silver's parsing thereof. it turns out he lowballed 2010. here he is on sept. 15 2010:

"On average, the model predicts a net gain of 45 to 50 seats for Republicans, which if achieved would put the G.O.P in the majority. But there are 90 districts, the model finds, in which either party still has at least a 10 percent chance of prevailing, and it is on a district-by-district basis that each party will learn of their fate on Nov. 2." (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/g-o-p-has-2-in-3-chance-of-taking-house-model-forecasts/)

the GOP gain turned out to be 60. and, i think we are living among 2010's electorate, not 2008's. perhaps a direct, rather than proxy defense of Obama will energize his 08 voters, but i think pessimism is on order there too.

my one point of optimism is the sense, attested to in several places, that political professional in both parties assume that obama is running/positioned stronger than the polls suggest. plenty of psychological mis-attribution possible there tho.

House elections and national elections are very different kinds of elections though. Predicting individual districts is a lot trickier, for one thing. and no electoral college.

for instance, those 10 extra seats Silver didnt predict could come from districts whose votes in a presidential election are outweighed by heavier voting turnout elsewhere in the state

not that i dont agree that theres a lot of misplaced optimism but i think silvers final prediction was closer (though still a lowball):

FiveThirtyEight’s House projection is unchanged over the past 48 hours. Over the course of its simulation runs, our model found Republicans gaining an average of 53 seats, which would bring them to 232 total. Democrats are given a 16 percent chance of holding the House, down slightly from 17 percent on Wednesday.

Increasingly, there seems to be something of a consensus among various forecasting methods around a projected Republican figure somewhere in the 50-60 seat range.

Several of the expert forecasters that FiveThirtyEight’s model uses, like the Cook Political Report, the Rothenberg Political Report, and Larry Sabato, have stated that they expect the Republicans’ overall total to fall roughly in this range. A straw poll of political insiders for Hotline on Call found an average expectation of a 50-seat gain. And some political science models have been forecasting gains somewhere in this range for some time.

it took me a second to realize that's from 2010 and not now. My heart stopped.

he also hedged a LOT going into election night. you can believe it or not but his line was that 2010 was a weird/unique election, the model had a really wide range of possibilities, etc. he had a long thing about why he thought GOP might do better than his model was predicting; as it turned they did though not by an immense amnt

yes, i mean, i'm not attacking silver so much as i'm questioning a particular frame of mind. general idea: "it will be close, and ugly, but obama will hang on to 50.1% in x, y, z states." i wonder...

again, as i said, both campaigns seem to be living with this general idea.

statewide polling/predicting is always 'better', shakey otm

I just don't get what states Romney is going to flip the polling in and win to get past the 270 mark. He might get a couple of the tossup states, but there's no way he's going to get all the ones he needs.

there's about a 40 million voter turnout difference between 2008 and 2010. I also tend to see mid-terms as attractive to the more politically active.

i can't believe that lindsay graham thing! i mean, i can, but still...

yes, i mean, i'm not attacking silver so much as i'm questioning a particular frame of mind. general idea: "it will be close, and ugly, but obama will hang on to 50.1% in x, y, z states." i wonder...

again, as i said, both campaigns seem to be living with this general idea.

― goole, Thursday, August 30, 2012 3:47 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah that's totally true. even if you buy 538 wholesale he still gives romney ~40% of winning the electoral college. which is not bad!

I'm not confident because of Nate silvers #s, I'm confident because republicans actually hate the guy they have to vote for and it's increasingly difficult to see new upsides for the ticket

thread needs a GOOD LUCK USA

I'm not confident because of Nate silvers #s, I'm confident because republicans actually hate the guy they have to vote for and it's increasingly difficult to see new upsides for the ticket

― iatee, Thursday, August 30, 2012 2:54 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i get you, but my thinking is that these guys have all the 'inspiration' they could possibly need

pundity prediction - zero convention bounce for Romney

Eastwood confirmed

they've gone full retard. and by retard I mean angry white male.

haha i was just thinking the other day, i'm an angry white male, but not that kind.

will Eastwood get a box office bounce

All I hope, whomever wins is a larger wedge between working class and rentier class Republicans.

given that the Dems convention is next week even if there is a bounce it'll be wiped out in a few days lol

"It seems to me that America is having....Trouble with the Curve"

kinda funny that they've gone with Eastwood. guess Arnold didn't turn out like they'd hoped lol

so if i'm reading this right, the CNN camerawoman wasn't even operating a camera at the time.

The perpetrators "didn't know what I was doing. I happened to be standing there," near one of the delegations.

http://mije.org/richardprince/cnn-camerawoman-not-surprised-peanut-throwing#Carroll

and by retard I mean angry white male.

"The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term."

yeah that's why he said that.

sad that they have totally given up on all the OTHER angry guys. who aren't white. that's how you take over the world. get all the angry guys on your side. then you got killah GOP army.

and here's Ron Brownstein a few days ago:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/politics/obama-needs-80-of-minority-vote-to-win-2012-presidential-election-20120824?mrefid=site_search

too bad the other angry GOP guys are Cubans who are ten years from death rattles.

Btw, I too am an angry white guy

SE Cupp responds that the 'line' was crossed a long time ago when Romney was accused of killing a woman.

Referring to this ad, apparently is part of the Republican strategy for justifying their campaign. But naturally, this ad has not been seen regularly yet while the welfare ones are on all the time(here in Virginia and elsewhere)

http://kdvr.com/2012/08/21/controversial-soptic-ad-thats-never-aired-backfiring-on-obama-campaign/

Bill Burton, the former Obama aide who started PrioritiesUSA to compete with conservative super PACs like American Crossroads, has yet to respond to a FOX31 inquiry about the ad and whether it will ever hit the airwaves in Colorado or other swing states.

Repubs are going to be unwilling to see a difference between a National Prime-time Convention Speech by a VP Candidate and a TV ad by a super PAC.

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

I have never understood why Wolf Blitzer has a job

― chicago rap twitter luminary (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, August 30, 2012 6:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

AIPAC connections go a long way

You should have waited one more day for a new thread. Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new morning in America.

it's teatime in america

"It's Monday morning in America!"
"FUCK!"

it's 4:45 am in america and we're starting to wonder whether it's even worth going to sleep at this point

So fyi as one of the more vocal firearm supporters on ilx, i would like to state clearly that the part where the governor of NM talked about how when she was guarding the church bingo lot at age 18 her father made sure that she had a 357 magnum was COMPLETELY BATSHIT FUCKING CRAZY.

Last night i watched "The Fog of War" and McNamara at one point says "Don't answer the question you are asked, answer the question you WISH you were asked." I thought that pretty much sums up Palin's debate style, which has pretty much morphed from a strategy for individual politicians to the entire party platform. I mean, "We built it!" is basically answering a question the republican party wishes it was asked.

I really hate the new thread title, is this thread staying open?

Mods...?

It reminds me of an old-school Idiot Thread Repository title.

except not fun.

A point I raised yesterday--don't expect it to change.

Walsh vs. Duckworth: hardcore debate: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-walsh-duckworth-boil-over-in-heated-debate-20121009,0,1141132.story

The Republican congressman also suggested Duckworth was only interested in having a debate about what to wear for her speech at the recent Democratic National Convention. Duckworth, who lost both legs in an Iraq war helicopter crash, replied, “I do sometimes look at the clothes that I wear, but you know, for most of my adult life, I’ve worn one color—it’s called camouflage.”

BAM

http://newspaper.li/static/dd9b4bfee855559e9fe9d264f3f96d99.jpg

trying really hard to pull off This Facial Expression

http://bluestormmusic.com/store/images/joewalsh_butseriously.jpg

Joe Walsh Is "Underwater" In The Polls

Since thread #3 has been started, I'm going to lock this one. If y'all want to have a debate about changing #3's title, go for it, but there's no need to have two simultaneous general election threads going.