US Politics, February 2020. They want to kill your cows.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944

Bitecofer, a 42-year-old professor at Christopher Newport University in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, was little known in the extremely online, extremely male-dominated world of political forecasting until November 2018. That’s when she nailed almost to the number the nature and size of the Democrats’ win in the House, even as other forecasters went wobbly in the race’s final days. Not only that, but she put out her forecast back in July, and then stuck by it while polling shifted throughout the summer and fall.

And today her model tells her the Democrats are a near lock for the presidency in 2020, and are likely to gain House seats and have a decent shot at retaking the Senate. If she’s right, we are now in a post-economy, post-incumbency, post record-while-in-office era of politics. Her analysis, as Bitecofer puts it with characteristic immodesty, amounts to nothing less than “flipping giant paradigms of electoral theory upside down.”

Bitecofer’s theory, when you boil it down, is that modern American elections are rarely shaped by voters changing their minds, but rather by shifts in who decides to vote in the first place. To her critics, she’s an extreme apostle of the old saw that “turnout explains everything,” taking a long victory lap after getting lucky one time. She sees things slightly differently: That the last few elections show that American politics really has changed, and other experts have been slow to process what it means.

The classic view is that the pool of American voters is basically fixed: About 55 percent of eligible voters are likely to go to the polls, and the winner is determined by the 15 percent or so of “swing voters” who flit between the parties. So a general election campaign amounts to a long effort to pull those voters in to your side.

Bitecofer has a nickname for this view. She calls it, with disdain, the “Chuck Todd theory of American politics”: “The idea that there is this informed, engaged American population that is watching these political events and watching their elected leaders and assessing their behavior and making a judgment.”

this article is relevant to the architecture talk

https://www.thedailybeast.com/second-trump-ghostwriter-says-he-was-lousy-at-business-bored-and-obsessed-with-carpet-swatches

Charles Leerhsen, ghostwriter of Surviving at the Top, has written an account for Yahoo News about the time he spent observing Trump for the book. He paints a picture of a lazy, ill-tempered man who was out of his depth when it came to business. In fact, his main contribution to his businesses seemed to be choosing carpets.

Leerhsen wrote that Trump was neither terrified about the scale of his losses nor, as the president claimed Wednesday, carrying out a Machiavellian plan to make sure he didn’t have to pay income tax. He was just bored.

“Trump’s portfolio did not jibe with what I saw each day—which to a surprisingly large extent was him looking at fabric swatches,” said the ghostwriter. “Indeed, flipping through fabric swatches seemed at times to be his main occupation. Some days he would do it for hours, then take me in what he always called his ‘French military helicopter’ to Atlantic City—where he looked at more fabric swatches.”

According to Leerhsen, Trump's obsession with carpets and curtains appeared to stem from his lack of understanding of much more important business decisions. The writer recounted one decision Trump reportedly made that exposed his complete lack of ability as a businessman.

Re: Bitcofer. She could be right as rain, but her model would need to predict more than one or two elections for me to read that article and not hear strong echoes of "He predicted the 2008 crash in 2006, now hear where he thinks the DOW is going in 2021!" clickbait.

inclined to agree re: the breathless hype, but I think her underlying logic is very solid. swing voters are a myth.

Hmm, I'm undecided as to the wisdom of her claims, perhaps I will await a strong breeze to blow me in one of two directions.

heh

i do think there are sincere swing voters. they're all complete morons obviously. i guess the question is/are 1) are there enough for them to be worth worrying about 2) are there more of them and are they more easily activated than non-voters. land of contrasts stuff i know.

i don't care about the predicitive accuracy of her particular model, but the basic thesis seems clear and plausible.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kFUNJ2TA9II/maxresdefault.jpg

oh yeah that asshole

Andy Reid crossed with Mr Rogers crossed with Joe the Plumber

the basic thesis seems clear and plausible.

To the extent she is right about turnout being the be-all and end-all, it's not like either party thinks that GOTV isn't a critical part of winning elections already. I guess they could channel more resources from running ads into organizing GOTV, but part of GOTV is giving voters the idea that they need to vote and why. iow motivation matters and campaigns build that motivation over time. So, exactly how to turn her basic thesis into a more practical strategy is not entirely clear to me.

fair. i guess if it's correct it helps you figure out which voters *not* to chase.

i assume low info voters, ideologues or not, boil down to tribal prejudice stacked to terrible, misapplied risk mgmt heuristics.

Since this does not add anything i am not writing a book.

imho chasing racist suburban wine moms who think trump is tacky or never trump conservatives who write opinions for nyt & wapo seems like a bad idea but i'm not a data guy

She calls it, with disdain, the “Chuck Todd theory of American politics”

lol tho

read that as "The Chuck Eddy theory of American politics"

the hatred of modern architecture (as well as anything modern or post modern: art, lit, etc) is a big thing in alt-right circles.

Same as the Nazis obvi

yeah that sounds like a pet project of Stephen Miller

read that as "The Chuck Eddy theory of American politics"

TEENA MARIE 2004!

BIG AND RICH 2020

lol Rich was super-pissed a couple of weeks ago because a Nashville private christian school's curriculum included discussions of white privilege and racism.

my man has definitely got a future in TN politics if he wants it

Rig & B*tch

but how would a Nashville private christian school ever even find examples of white privilege and racism to show their students??????

Bitecofer's analysis also points to the effectiveness of disenfranchisement, if her theory is correct. The Republican version of GOTV.

big & rich remains one of the more embarrassing ILM bandwagon movements

that first album is still good, damn you

Also: I was not around in 2004 for Chuck Eddy to cast his cantrips

the hatred of modern architecture (as well as anything modern or post modern: art, lit, etc) is a big thing in alt-right circles

Not because they actually care but because they think the libs do. And if the libs like it they hate it, etc.

I believe one Charles Windsor (him of Wales) has dabbled in this realm of criticism as well.

tbf I dislike a bunch of new buildings, too! but adhering to some artificial idea of what looks "classic" is very wrong-headed

why would the greatest country on earth look towards those effete euros for architectural inspiration??

new mgmt seeks cred

why would the greatest country on earth look towards those effete euros for architectural inspiration??

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger),

are you still talking about Big & Rich

Really, one of the best public services we can all regularly do is find some agreeable little sliver of a right-wing proposition and then excitedly talk up our approval of that sliver, prefacing with 'as a liberal socialist...'.

Kill them with leftness.

I kind of appreciate that conservatives care about aesthetics. I have an affection for the utopianism of modernist architecture and design—a melancholic one as the calm, humane rational of those guys ended up not being the way of the future—and i think it’s good that some other people care enough at least to hate it.

And there is truth to scruton’s critique of modernism. There is something cold and calculating about modernism, and people do feel more comfortable in less rational spaces.

I think every conservative should leave politics and become an architecture critic.

vulgar-highbrow aesthetes are the best. the little mini sloppy joe pintxos at the events- i can't tell If it’s out-of-fashion normcore or next-level trumpism or just gross, really.

"And there is truth to scruton’s critique of modernism."

there is truth to your mom as well

The Koonsinization of the American elite

I’m a modernist calzino i just think it thrives better if there is a critic rather than just apathy

This is the U.S. Courthouse in Austin, Texas, designed by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, a husband-and-wife firm based in Atlanta. Maybe you like it—maybe you hate it.

The White House proposal to ban modernist federal buildings mentions it by name. https://t.co/FdySKF991b pic.twitter.com/ydHk5SpNUp

— .@kristoncapps (@kristoncapps) February 6, 2020

Great thread there.

The Treasury Department has broken the law for three years in denying Congress from seeing Trump's tax returns. Now they're giving documents on Hunter Biden to GOP senators.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/06/targeting-newly-emboldened-trumps-enemies-may-have-begun/

The Attorney General has notified federal agents and lawyers that they cannot open investigations of any presidential candidates, their campaigns, or advisers without his approval.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/barr-says-no-investigations-2020-candidates-campaigns-without-his-approval-n1131836

Unidentified ICE officers shot a dude in the face today while beating up another dude who is in the country legally, then blamed the NYPD.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/06/ice-agents-new-york-shooting-brooklyn

Think it's time we start working extralegally

Fuck

xp might as well, they sure are

good morning!

so did we note that the Grifter said to Steve Scalise yesterday, "You might've set a record for blood loss"?