Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/how-is-mitt-romneys-mr-fix-it-image-holding-up/2012/09/19/4fb0378a-0276-11e2-8102-ebee9c66e190_blog.html

down-ticket candidates repudiating the pres nominee is def an omen of how bad Romney is doing, that shit is crazy

tbf two out of the three are in heavily democratic states and the third is in one projected to be carried by obama, but still

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight
The. Polls. Have. Stopped. Making. Any. Sense.

dude... dude

we broke nate silver =(

I see Shakey has finally succeeded in undermining the entire system of polling. Good on him!

nate keeps running the model over and over again but somehow sarah palin keeps coming up as the president

This right-winger to right-wingers explanation of the polls as of the 17th is pretty entertaining. But it probably won't convince most of 'em.

So why is Obama doing so well in the polls, if increased public dependency on government isn’t the answer?

For starters, the public at large isn’t as convinced as conservatives that he has been a dismal failure. Most people cut him some slack because of the economic crisis that began under a Republican president and kept unfolding as Obama took office. They know that the economy has changed direction. Some people think the economy has done about as well as it could have under the circumstances.

Another reason Obama is doing well might have to do with the weakness of the Republican economic message. Republicans dwell on the heroic entrepreneur held back by taxes and regulation, which must be part of the story that a free-market party tells. But most people don’t see themselves in that storyline, any more than they see themselves as dependents of the federal government. They don’t see Americans as divided between makers and takers.

To the extent Republicans do, they’re handicapping themselves.

(Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg View columnist and a senior editor at National Review

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-17/the-right-is-wrong-to-pin-obama-s-edge-on-welfare-state.html

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight
The. Polls. Have. Stopped. Making. Any. Sense.

Did something weird happen today? I haven't had a chance to check.

different polls giving wildly different results - both between different national polls and between national + state polls

Well, his next tweet = "National polls are fine. Consistent with an Obama lead of ~3 points, plus random variance. It's states where things get weird."

one of the great dumb presidential myths

scuse me mr goole, Jerry Ford did fall down in public several times in the first year of his presidency, I saw it on the news when I was just Young Intern Morbius.

oh, i thought national polls were being weird too. xp

It'll be great if Romney's popular vote total ends up being 47%.

Which is fairly likely, it occurred to me today.

hah would be amazing, itll likely be closer tho

im not ruling out some sort of epic romney collapse tho

Damn, Nancy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5NutYfZRJs

Jerry Ford did fall down in public several times in the first year of his presidency

rly i thought it was just the once!

President Brown no longer openly saying whether he supports Romney: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/250443-scott-brown-wont-say-if-he-still-supports-romney-for-president

I know Brown is in a tight race in a mostly liberal state, but that's still not a good sign for Romney.

xp i think that belongs in the scared of a romney victory thread!

not a good sign for romney, but imho really not a good sign for brown, panic mode xp

http://i.imgur.com/xjo9V.png

the thing that's working against Brown in this election is that he's running the same variant of Patrick's "all the other side can do is run negative ads" campaign that he ran last time, only this time it's against a candidate who is actually doing more than just saying "TED KENNEDY'S LEGACY" like an entitled broken record, so instead of coming across like the dude who wants to cut through partisan bullshit and get things done, he's coming across like the dude who has settled into DC culture and doesn't want to get booted out

dude why should he care? He's President Brown

interesting point dan, havent really followed it other than checking the polls and getting some of the ads up here

Regarding the polls not making any sense, this totally makes me sound like a Democratic Underground poster, but it's hard not to look at the different pollsters' numbers and not think that some of them have fucked up Likely Voter models (Rasmussen, Gravis Marketing): http://realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

I know Silver has house effects built into his model, though.

Obama leading by 14 points in Wisconsin.

Which is why Romney should start from scratch and urge states to invest in....roads.

all of the scott brown ads i have seen (not that many) are about him driving around in his truck visiting kindly old veterans

this is the Scott Brown ad I've seen the most so far:

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

basically, no one in MA cares about this as far as I can tell and he's hammering it like a major achievement; ppl are basically like "okay how about jobs legislation? what's your record there?"

haha i like how it makes the point of captioning obama saying "good job" to him

makes me nervous the way he isnt looking at the road when he drives

someone really needs to turn this into a 20-second animated infographic campaign commercial. not just for Obama, but for, like, every election ever.

"There are lots of other taxes, and they're mostly regressive. The payroll tax and state and local taxes all hit poorer households harder than they hit richer households. Once you add up the progressive federal income tax and the regressive federal payroll tax -- which raise roughly the same amount of revenue -- with regressive state and local taxes, you only just get a progressive system overall."

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/its-not-just-income-taxes-mitt.html

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_VizIrBQwA8w/SGe42Rg618I/AAAAAAAAC7g/R7Y5Fqedge0/s400/hartmancarvey.jpg

I wish Brown's caption for Obama had been a speech balloon.

lmao 'good job'

btw appreciate browns subtle boston accent, stikes just the right balance

like his centerfold poses

While all that's happening:

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/548550_10151164549719206_1974262731_n.jpg

haha look at Beyonce going SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

a+ photo

yr fucked bro

Aww look she turned her eyes into actual hearts!

i lol'd

http://meemsy.com/v/3721

nice history of eitc, republican antipathy toward: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/09/republicans-and-47-case-study

yr fucked bro

I keep forgetting that Yahoo is absolutely massive, to the point where a five hour old article can have 16000 page views. And really frothingly rightwing as well!

And filled with 16,000 commenters repeating the same two things.

The truth is I wanna have a

/one of the great dumb presidential myths
/

scuse me mr goole, Jerry Ford did fall down in public several times in the first year of his presidency, I saw it on the news when I was just Young Intern Morbius.

It's weird that they only show the Air Force One fall though. Where are the other ones?

yeah I thought it was just the one