GET OUT: US politics November 2020

and the gin and tonic as the warm weather cocktail of choice

one time I rolled a ball towards a hole. I had done it many times before. the same result - it stayed on the straight and narrow and disappeared into the hole. I lost count as far as how many times I had done it, probably 1,000, maybe 2,000. It was an easy result as I was literally centimeters away from the hole. It was, as you say, a sure bet.

Anyway, I decided to bet the guy next to me that I could throw the ball in the hole, and weirdly, he took me up on the bet, which I saw as a fool parting with his money. But I got eerily unnerved as to how confident he was in winning - he plunked down $500 next to me. and all I had to do was roll a ball into a hole centimeters away.

I got ready to roll the ball and a dinosaur came onto the golf course, causing the ground to rupture, and the ball went rolling past the hole.

however the kid died so I didn't have to pay him

Before last year, Keith C. Burris was mostly known to reporters at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as the author of the most controversial opinion piece their newspaper had ever published.
In a 2018 editorial with the headline “Reason as Racism,” Burris defended President Trump’s infamous comment about immigrants from “shithole countries,” arguing that “calling someone a racist is the new McCarthyism” and that such a label should be confined to the likes of Bull Connor and Dylann Roof. Plus, he added, “there are nations that are hellholes in this world.” Appalled readers, including current and former staffers, wrote letters in response. Leaders of major foundations said the paper “has done our community and the cause of justice a grave disservice.” Sixteen members of the Block family — owners of the paper for nearly a century — called it an attempt to “justify blatant racism.”

Barely a year later, Publisher John R. Block promoted Burris from editorial page editor to executive editor of the entire paper.

And so on.

Basically, paper currently run by Trumpers.

The White House on lockdown: A federal law enforcement source tells NBC that beginning tomorrow, crews will build a “non-scalable” fence to secure the WH complex, Ellipse and Lafayette Square.

250 National Guardsmen have been put on standby, reporting to Metro Police officials.

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) November 2, 2020

^ Suggests that Trump is planning to do something so blatantly objectionable that it is predictable in advance that extremely angry protests will arise. But we could easily have predicted that a couple of months ago. It is of the essence of Trumpism.

Yeah that’s not good

or that they're assuming "angry liberals" will riot when they "win"

i don't think he will succeed in "stealing" the election

so whatever, he can do what he wants

538 still tweeting about how "10% isn't 0%", which...I know, I know, but seriously, it's fucking terrifying me.

Trigger Warning: It's back up to 11%

He can fall flat in his face trying the steal the election and still make a huge (further) mess of this situation xp

or that they're assuming "angry liberals" will riot when they "win"

not a bad assumption, tbh

if they give the appearance of "winning", and it very much appears that they did not "win", and people in prominent positions seem to be nodding along with everything, then i think that would probably make a lot of people angry

but that's a lot of ifs.

his plan is to declare victory at midnight if he is ahead in the electoral count at that time.

frogbs: I can't tell if your last post is a response to the long 538 piece that went up an hour ago, or if you haven't seen it. If not, "So let’s state a few basic facts: The reasons that President Trump’s chances in our forecast are about 10 percent and not zero..."

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/im-here-to-remind-you-that-trump-can-still-win/

“I shouldn’t even be here. They said I had Georgia made,” Trump says in Rome, Georgia. Rally no. 4. pic.twitter.com/wxldmNtavB

— Courtney Subramanian (@cmsub) November 2, 2020

it does not appear the Trump campaign is expecting to win (legitimately) at this point

Asked about the Axios report, Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, said: “My response is the president’s not gonna steal this election.”

probably the best possible response. short and terse.

xxp - just read it, I do see where it's all coming from but idk...there's so much "Trump needs all these longshot outcomes to come true" about this and I am not necessarily buying that they are as coordinated as they are suggesting. if 2016's polling error happens in 2020, Biden still wins big...and NONE of those factors that swung it to Trump are in play right now. his approval rating is still underwater. he's drawing poor marks on just about everything. Dems are overperforming in virtually every election that's been held since 2016 (nearly all of which have been drawing record turnout, just as this one is). not only is Trump polling poorly but virtually all Rs are along with him. he has massively fucked the one true test of his presidency which has caused his most reliable voting bloc (seniors) to turn on him. and Nate's most plausible theory in favor of an upset is...that 3,000,000 early votes are gonna be thrown out due to procedural errors? I mean....I trust the folks who do this for a living and I'm as nervous as everyone else...but I just don't see how it happens??

(excluding the Republicans outright stealing it, but that's kind of another scenario entirely)

like this seems pretty conclusive to me. if Trump can win with splits like this, how does the entire polling industry not immediately crumble?

Not sure we'll get more "final" national live-interview polls, but here are my average crosstabs (in situations where pollsters polled twice in Oct., "October 2020" includes the first poll and "FInal 2020 Polls" includes the second). pic.twitter.com/h833XhI5Sg

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 1, 2020

Took the @CookPolitical swingometer for one last spin. Here's what it spits out when you plug in the demographic splits in final live-interview national polls (even assuming a 10% turnout bump among non-college whites and 5% bump for everyone else). https://t.co/RAud6tHKVu pic.twitter.com/ekbfkifvNw

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 2, 2020

Trump’s gonna declare victory at like 10:30 or 11:00pm EST or so, by which point tons of DCites will be out in the streets having a party. The DCPD, who work for a black woman who hates Trump, will be trying to keep things from getting out of hand, while DHS FPS and other federal forces may very well be spoiling for a fight. It will be stupid, people might get hurt, but eventually it will stop once the projected count becomes insurmountable.

A federal law enforcement source tells NBC that beginning tomorrow, crews will build a “non-scalable” fence to secure the WH complex, Ellipse and Lafayette Square.

“non-scalable”... hmmm where have I heard that before?

Even if he locks himself in the fenced-off house on Tuesday to hide from dealing with the fact people hate him, he'll be bored as shit by the end of the week - after a month of adoring rallies! - let alone in three months' time when his term ends. He'd rather flounce off saying he needs to return to his business and the White House is a dump than actually concentrate long enough to foment a civil war.

oh - wait - is Mexico paying for this fence?

Leave him there and get on with the business of government from literally any other building in DC. I hear there's a hotel with the name of a prominent tax avoider above the door, right across the street. Requisition that and move on.

though I do think about how elections are different than other random events

an election is not a random event in any way

Haha he stranded people again. The third time this week. Pathetic on so many levels, not the least of which is the people still falling for it.

It seems to me that concepts like "random" and "error" are used in different ways in different contexts without much qualification, leading to a bit of confusion.

A thought experiment / toy example: You have a big sack filled with 10,000 balls; for the sake of argument, let exactly half of them be blue and half of them red. You then repeatedly -- say, once a day -- run "polls" in this "electorate", by shaking the bag thoroughly and picking out 100 balls without looking, and then counting the blue-vs-red proportion of the drawn balls. Now, over time, the results will in all probability fluctuate around a 50/50 proportion, even if a given single poll may be quite a bit off. However, there is a chance that, by pure luck, a large majority of the polls show a blue majority, and that the results seem to fluctuate around, say, 57/43 over the horizon you run your polls. The probability of this happening gets smaller the larger the number of polls, but such random effects can seem surprisingly persistent (because the human mind is bad at probabilistic intuition, and the apparently endless number of actual polls is not statistically a large one).

So, even granted that an election is not a random event (some might like to dispute this, though), the poll results we have seen are to an extent random outcomes, and saying that the future election result has a random component is just a kind of shorthand for saying that given our observations, the future result has an amount of uncertainty. (This usage is a legit disagreement in statistics: roughly, frequentists balk at calling anything but "actually" random events random, while Bayesians happily model subjective uncertainty by probabilistic maths.)

As for "errors": If you had inadvertently made your 5,000 red balls slightly heavier than the blue ones, so they tended to move towards the bottom of the sack with shaking, you might end up with a consistent 57/43 Blue result for a different reason. This would be the equivalent of e.g. poor demographical weighting. This is a very different effect than the random polling effects described above, but it seems both are sometimes referred to as "polling error".

The big boy told his Florida crowd at a rally yesterday that he'd fire Fauci if he wins on Tuesday,

I hear there's a hotel with the name of a prominent tax avoider above the door, right across the street. Requisition that and move on.

No need, as it already belongs to GSA. And the tenant has been requesting a break on the rent.

So it's more likean eviction than a requisition.

Pretty clear with this third instance of the same problem that they’re deliberately leaving their supporters out in the cold to save money https://t.co/ReVxOJNwBO

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) November 2, 2020

Thanks, anatol. The vagueness of the word random had always bothered me and I’m a bit clearer now. Haven’t decided if I’m a Bayesian or a frequentist.

these next couple days, or possibly much more, are gonna be real rough going

And marvelous.

Alfred I've seen some perverse posts in my time but wow

optimism is serious kink

Alfred, tell me you'll be on the political threads on Tuesday night with a drink (or two) in hand.

You can count on it, PBKR.

Friends, I've entered a Zen state. I'm past the anxiety. I'm text banked, gone to rallies, done my part.

Aww, yeah!

New @CookPolitical: our FINAL House outlook is a Dem net gain of 10-15 seats, with anything from 5-20 seats well within the range of possibility. View our final ratings: https://t.co/wcfAZ8REga

Solid/Likely/Lean D: 229
Solid/Likely/Lean R: 179
Toss Up: 27 pic.twitter.com/WcdnWJLG16

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 2, 2020

Meantime....

One state I am a bit curious about is Texas. Our forecast has been pretty skeptical about Biden's chances there, expecting Trump to close well. But instead Biden got a decent run of polls there this weekend and it now it has him within ~1 point. https://t.co/486ZZ385cV pic.twitter.com/efAeDAaXaX

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 2, 2020

i'm with Alfred on paper, and have really done okay at not spiralling into anxious news- and poll-following as i might well have done (given my track record). all signs point to a solid Biden win, maybe a blowout, but the memory of 2016 is in my body, my shoulder muscles, my stomach --- my brain is not driving the car right now. i just have to pass the time and get through these days. substances will likely be involved, tho i regret to say aperol has never quite landed with me.

Good morning!

I'm past Aperol, honey. I've got Fernet, Ramazzoti, Averna, Lucano, you name it.

Biden has passed the "clearly favored" 90% mark in FiveThirtyEight's forecast

Alfred do you know Sfumato? It's rhubarb-based and hence politically apt.

I only have time for barbs.

Tipsy, have you had Zucca? Just wondering how they compare.

GUYS, you’ll never believe what NYT did today on front page—it sent reporter to a deeply red state to interview white, middle aged men abt how much they love Trump! https://t.co/2ou7wyoZwu

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) November 2, 2020

That headline...it's an Onion thing, right?

Was a diner involved?