“Building a new stadium down the street does not work unless (Ron) Lancaster spilled some DNA in the lot where they’re going to build the new stadium,” he added. “You have to refurbish (Mosaic Stadium). You’ve got to can all new ideas you might have and use the sacred ground. Fenway did that and that is why Fenway is loved. The new Yankee Stadium isn’t the same as it used to be.”
The former Boston Red Sox and Montreal Expos pitcher will not be running for the vacant mayor’s position in Regina later this year. With his opinion on the new stadium, he wasn’t sure he would garner many votes anyway. But that is nothing new to the former member of the Rhinoceros Party. Lee ran on the Rhino ticket in 1988 for president of the United States. Not surprisingly, he didn’t make the ballot in a single state. He said one of the high-ranking members within the party gave him a six-pack of Molson Canadian and asked him to run for president.
“I adhered to their funny philosophy,” Lee said. “My campaign slogan was ‘No guns, no butter. They’ll both kill you.’ And I only campaigned in federal prisons where I knew they couldn’t vote, and I only accepted a quarter in campaign contributions.”
With it being an election year in the U.S., Lee said he is all in for the re-election of Barack Obama.
“The only time (Mitt) Romney opens his mouth is when he needs to change feet,” Lee said of the Republican nominee. “If Obama does lose this, which I can’t see happening, then it’s because of a lady in Florida who works for Jeb Bush and Diebold, the voting-machine company. If Obama even comes close to losing this election, it’ll be fraud.”
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if the deficit was actually a critical issue, then as of january 1, 2013, obama should be your A#1 candidate.
but for as much lipservice is paid to it, the deficit is almost completely irrelevant. well, actually, the funny thing about that is that, while the republicans' belief in the importance of reducing the deficit was mostly a political calculation meant to neuter barack obama's fiscal policy, the democrats have now wholly adopted deficit reduction as a central plank in their platform, and unlike the republicans, they actually seem to believe in the importance of it.
while george bush and ronald reagan racked up massive deficits, bill clinton balanced the budget, and barack obama, as much as a lot of people don't want to admit it, has set the tables for a significant increase in tax revenue and a significant decrease in discretionary and budgetary spending.
The GOP is an embarrassment so long as they continue to pay homage to the evangelicals. By comparison, the dem's gross incompetence almost looks quaint.
I'll continue to waste my vote on third parties.
Crist was never any sort of serious conservative though, he has always been solidly in the center (strong environmental supporter, pro-choice [well, most of the time], pro-regulation in many cases, etc.). He wasn't really significantly different from Jim Davis, his Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race he won.
That's a tough one to spin, given the facts. Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half; instead he's run up trillion dollar deficits every year he's been in office. He appointed a deficit reduction commission (Simpson - Bowles) and then ignored it's recommendations. He submitted unserious budget proposals that when actually put to a vote, at the insistence of Congressional Republicans, didn't get any votes - even from the Democrats. The Democratic Senate hasn't even passed a budget resolution in 3 years!
but for as much lipservice is paid to it, the deficit is almost completely irrelevant
It's not everyone's issue, but the deficit and government spending matter to a lot of folks. The Perot movement was based almost entirely on those issues, and circumstances were considerably less dire then. Folks don't want to continue down the path toward becoming another Greece. Romney & Ryan are in a much better position to appeal to those voters than Obama.
Crist is exactly the sort of moderate Republican who formed a major part of the party's base until the loonies took the party over lock, stock and barrel. He's exactly the type of Republican that George Romney was, a type that's now nearly extinct.
What a contrast between 1960 and 2012. In 1960 the Democrats were saddled with racists throughout the South, with the most powerful commmittee posts in congress being held by Dixiecrats. Those lowlifes and their descendents have gravitated elsewhere, and the few remaining ones on the state and local levels have been totally marginalized on the national scene. 99% of the Joe Arpaios, Donald Trumps, and other characters of their ilk are all in the Republican party these days.
Meanwhile, in 1960 the Republicans featured the likes of Eisenhower, Rockefeller, Scranton, Saltonstall, Jacob Javits and Kenneth Keating in the north, and statesmen like John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky in the border states. Social moderates and fiscal conservatives who also believed in a strong safety net and a strong social contract. Who are their counterparts in today's GOP? Totally on the outside looking in, overwhelmed by fundamentalists and would-be John Galts.
i don't actually disagree with that, but i will say that, considering their stated policies, they're in a much worse position to actually deliver the reductions.
and just because people have been saying that the sky is falling for the last 20 years doesn't mean that it's actually falling. it doesn't mean that it's not falling, either, but it really isn't conclusive proof of our impending destruction.
i think that issue can now officially be declared settled.
To be sure, Crist did not leave the party out of principle. He bolted when it appeared that Rubio, whom he had assumed was not a serious adversary, was about to pulverize him in the Senate primary.
Thanks for the laughs, Charlie. Now crawl back under whatever rock you've been living under and leave the election to the people who have a nickel's worth of principles (and shame).
but yeah, there's something really shitty about politicians who find a voice to speak against the machine, but only after they've sucked out everything they could get from it. this is my favorite example of that.
Your side must ache constantly since Romney dispatched with the last of the GOP true believers... Can you honestly say that changing 'Charlie Crist' to 'Mitt Romney' makes that statement any less apropos?
2002 Mitt Romney says hi
in 2008 in NY, every 3rd party candidate running on the ballot was more loathsome to me than both Obama and McCain...
I suppose I could find it in me this time to vote for Gary Johnson...
2002 Mitt Romney says hi
That is an AMAZING video that shows Romney addressing the abortion issue for more than 5 straight minutes during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign. Watching it from start to finish, you can see why to this day many right-to-lifers still don't trust him.
Jesus, what Romney was saying 10 years ago was barely indistinguishable from the position of the NARAL. He repeats over and over and over that the most important point is to preserve the woman's right to choose, with the only exception being that for women under 18, he wanted either parental consent OR the approval of a judge---and he proudly pointed out that in the entire history of Massachusetts, no judge had ever turned down such a request.
And when Tim Russert asked him if he'd endorse a Massachusetts law that would require a 24-hour waiting period---patterned after a Pennsylvania law that the Supreme Court had upheld---he was unequivocal in stating his opposition, and went on to repeat his bedrock foundation of a woman's right to choose.
It's not Romney's patented flip-flopping per se that's so compelling about this video, it's the forcefulness with which he presents the pro-choice line. I've looked at it twice all the way through, and seriously, I almost wound up believing him myself. The guy is one great chameleon.
The Simpson-Bowles commission did not make any recommendations.
The funny part is that the exact opposite is true Crist jumped/was pushed because he wouldn't pander to the base like others would - but the Joe K's can't see that.
As a former "liberal republican" current independent, let me say that I find that voters like Kehoskie are more or less the poster boys for what the hell is wrong with this electorate
and as a former Repub who was driven out of the party by the wackos and people like you who support them, let me be one of the multitude to say go drive right off a pier.
But, why would an Obama opponent lie lie?
If Trump had any idea how many people would pay to see that... he would agree to do it no hesitation
Does Bloomberg count? (Mayor, country's largest city)
The NRA has been waging full scale, total war against the gun control lobby for my entire lifetime, the fact that they have not recognized their victory, the fact that they have not recognized the utter vanquishing of their foe is all about
money- the NRA has for 40 years raised money by raising the spectre of gun control, by talking about jack booted things coming to confiscate their guns and they have become positively addicted to the cashflow generated by the belief that the 2nd amendment is under siege - the absolute worst thing that could happen from the NRA's POV would be for the Piers Morgans and Mike Bloombergs to go away - I swear to god if it came to it, the NRA would likely secretly fund a pro-gun control advocate for some office some where just to keep the issue alive.
Why bother with funding a candidate?
The NRA has done perfectly fine running with wild stories that bear no resemblance to reality -- they're full-bore raising money on the idea that Obama is looking to cancel the 2nd amendment, despite the fact that the ONLY federal gun legislation we've seen in 3 1/2 years actually expanded conceal/carry into national parks (granted, it was tacked on to an unrelated bill, but it still got signed). Look no further than the Fast & Furious conspiracy theories... which seems based on the idea that a few mid-level idiots in the ATF were taking orders from Obama and Holder to enact an asinine gun tracking program, carry it out with utmost ineptitude, then use the inevitable fallout to apparently outlaw guns entirely.
Personally, I'd be fine with Americans falling out of love with the idea that everyone can be Wyatt Earp (and I love Westerns!) - but I've reconciled myself to the fact that America is a nation of small-penised individuals with deep-seated inferiority complexes that can only be solved by packing heat... Whatever the original intent of the 2nd amendment, it's clearly been interpreted as protecting private firearm ownership... so be it. I'd gladly sign on to repealing the 2nd amendment, but I also recognize that it's politically untenable and it's not area that makes for wise use of political capital...
Guns are banned from the GOP Convention in Tampa, so at least one organization is more concerned about their own personal safety than they are about 2nd Amendment fundamentalism.
Of course, bananas and "whole fruits" are also banned in Tampa, so maybe the GOP is just a bit crazy.
What does Nate say about this? Because I would tend to agree with James here.
What does Nate say about this? Because I would tend to agree with James here.
Nate's got a lot more intelligence than to be a reductionist. He bases his changing probability of outcome percentages on a wide variety of weighted factors, including several key economic indicators, not just one of two of them. If you're a data-driven kinda guy, Nate is definitely the gold standard.
538 Blog link
Here is one (Addressing the comment that it "shouldn't" be close based on fundamentals)
There's also this (first two chapters of a book with a Sept 2013 publication date. Basically outlining their proposed methods for analyzing the outcome of the election)
Some place in early August he linked to three models based on fundamentals. One of which has Obama getting clobbered.
The U-6 unemployment rate - the one that counts all kinds of unemployed, including underemployed, and has been very popular to cite lately as "true" unemployment - has been tracked since 1994.
July 2012 is the 6th consecutive month that the U-6 is below what it was in Obama's first full month in office.
One might argue that it would be even better, had Obama not enacted his policies. As it turns out, the U-6 peaked shortly before Obamacare was passed, roughly two years ago. The largest decrease ever recorded in U-6 in a 2-year period has been -2.5. That record-setting two year period? From April 2010, just after Obamacare was signed into law, to April 2012.
Discuss.
Socialism. Dead babies. Baby Jesus crying.
Two things appear to affect the size of the bounce, according to Mr. Holbrook in a recent blog post. One is how well the candidate is doing, relative to expectations. Here, we can think about expectations in terms of the underlying political and economic fundamentals. So a candidate running behind what the economy and other fundamentals would predict should get a larger convention bounce. A second factor is the timing of the conventions. Traditionally, the party whose convention occurs first — the party currently not in control of the White House — has had the larger bounce, which makes sense if the challenger is not as well-known as the incumbent and therefore voters have not formed as strong an opinion about the challenger. However, holding the conventions close together and somewhat later in the campaign season, as in 2008 and 2012, seems to mute the advantage of going first.
Final question: Will the bounce persist? Will the changes during this period have lasting benefits for President Obama or Mitt Romney? The term “bounce” makes it seem as if the candidates numbers will go up and then down, rendering any impact temporary. In fact, the conventions tend to leave a more permanent imprint. Mr. Erikson and Mr. Wlezien in their study of the 1952-2008 presidential elections find:
On average, the party that gains from before to after the conventions maintains its gains in the final week’s polls…Although the convention season is the time for multiple bounces in the polls, one party ends up with an advantage when the dust clears.
Of course, this is an average result, not a description of every election. In 2008, Mr. Obama was behind in several polls after the Republican convention, only to cruise to a comfortable victory.
What does this mean for 2012? I’ll leave the exact forecast to Nate, but I would expect only small bumps for either party. Neither candidate is really polling above or below expectations at the moment. The fundamentals going into the race suggest an Obama victory, but by a relatively small margin — and that’s exactly where the polls are right now. Moreover, scheduling the convention late in the summer and back-to-back should mitigate their impact. And there is only a small number of self-described undecided voters, which may help explain why another high-profile event, the naming of Representative Paul D. Ryan as the running mate, has not really moved the national polls.
To be sure, even “small bumps” might be enough to put the race on its head, moving Mr. Romney from a slight underdog to a slight front-runner. If that proves true, the question is whether Mr. Romney will sustain that lead through Election Day.
This year's VP bounce has already come and gone, which leaves the post-convention bounce this time up to the degree to which Romney can somehow convince independent voters that he's not really what he is at heart: A vulture capitalist who wants to use the presidency to widen the gap between the upper 1% and the rest of the country even more than it is today.
And I'm just waiting for Ryan to be asked directly by a woman, preferably during the VP debate, if she should be forced by law, at "gunpoint", no less, to bear a rapist's child---which is what Ryan has proposed many times.
According to what Ryan said just a few days ago, rape is nothing but another "method of conception". I wonder how many independent women out there might not yet be aware of THAT charming little bit of religious philosophy.
The weird thing about his whole argument on this is that NY sportswriter get a grand total of 2 MVP votes.
Yet only two of those states listed are polling as even leaning toward Romney (FL, NC.)
If everyone of those states goes to Romney I'll eat your hat.
Whether or not this particular model (out of many others with similar past performance claims) holds up in 2012, there's something about all these single-factor projections that reminds me of the predictions you get from football tout sheets. Funny how almost every one of those "can't miss" models boasts of wildly successful (70% on up) rates of past success against the spread, and yet whenever you bother to check to see how their current public picks do in the following week, you find out that you'd have been better off just flipping a coin.
Which is also the case with most of those football tout sheets. Caveat emptor with any of these snake oil salesmen.
That's the key
Look at the last 8 elections, pick one variable that correlates to everyone- will that variable be useful in predicting the future?
Maybe, may be not.
Of course it may not be that they went back and looked at past elections first, perhaps they came up with the model first then looked at past elections, in which case saying that a new model "predicted" past elections is not so egregious.
Trying to be unbiased here - The Obama admin has done reasonable things and they have worked marginally well. I mean, the trend is good but the magnitude is less than desirable.
I don't see any Republican ideas fixing anything. For one - exactly how are you going to reduce the deficit and create jobs? Deficit spending IS jobs. Giving the republican ideas as much benefit of the doubt as I can - they are only going to cause MORE short term pain with the possible benefit of long term strength. Possible.
I don't think the President really has that much leverage over what is essentially the WORLD economy anyway. So - maybe I am reverse-agreeing with Joe that it was unfair for Clinton to win over Bush I because of a downturn. But the parallels end there. Clinton beat Bush by seizing the center NOT by galvanizing the left wing. I can see Obama==Bush (even down to the Bin Laden / Iraq victories parallel) - but Romney has not made any leftward swerve since sewing up the nomination.
Which, in it's own way - sort of explains why the sudden media / campaign focus on social issues.
I spent about 5 minutes on Romneys' website. He explains how he will - reduce taxes (flattening them), bust unions (essentially), cap spending at 20% of GDP (although the only noticible budget cut is Obama care at $95B - 4% of the 2012 budget), and get tough with China on trade.
So, a hot steaming cup of trickle down economics. Color me skeptical when we are trying to fix a "structural" recession.
So - objectively we are left with: Obama's not-totally-unworking centrist pseudokeynsian and the usual counter proposal of cutting taxes and pretending to cut spending. Which just means "redistributing" spending, and raising deficits.
Because the Federal Budget is not decreasing. It never has. It never will. Not unless the Government collapses. This is true of all recurring commerical or governmental Budgets, everywhere. Only way to deal with them is to cut whole divisions/departments and even then someone else always gets the money.
Of course after Pop Stargell's year, things turned around a bit, and the home team has now been undefeated for the last nine 7-game Series. I wonder what new theories those writers will come up with to explain this.
This is kind of funny coming from someone who's been working around politics for about 20 minutes. I really like Nate's work, but it's comical the extent to which he's become The Word on political issues. Being an expert in statistics doesn't make one an expert in political analysis.
Disco Stu: "Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue.....Eh!"
In 2010 the RCP average was 45.9 to 41.6 (4.3) in favor of the Repubs, moving to 48.0 to 40.4 in favor of the Repubs (7.6) by 9/12/12 and the "final" RCP average had Repubs winning 50.7 to 41.3 (9.4), the Repubs actually won: 51.6-44.8 (6.4)*.
It seems to me that either the pollsters were [over]accounting for voter enthusiasm, or they weren't counting on it (and it turns out to have been meaningless). Either way- unless there has been a systemic polling change- I don't think reports of "voter enthusiasm gaps" should be used in arguing that the polls are wrong/off one way or the other.
I still think Silver's odds of 65/70 to 35/30 in favor of Obama are a tad off, I just see this as a 50/50 proposition at this point.
*Nate Silver also had the final vote off by a similar amount- but the Repubs were very efficient- they picked up more votes than
was consistent with their overall vote total... so people look at his # of seat prediction and say that he underestimated the Republican surge, but if you look at the overall vote the poll aggregators actually overestimated the 2010 Republican surge...
Well, is he wrong? Is this not a new model? Has it indeed been predicting elections back to 1980? Seems to me one doesn't need any sort of bona fides to dispute a simple fact.
millhouse: "what higher power do all televangelists worship?"
bart: i'll say "god"
millhouse: i'll say "jesus"
both: "the almighty dollar!"
If being a "new model" was problematic, then Nate and FiveThirtyEight should be getting about 90 percent less attention and respect.
***
Please. Call me when Romney switches parties and acts even half as pathetic as Charlie Crist.
So switching parties is the sin here? You should turn in that Reagan pin then.
I trust Nate's 538 because he subjects all of the incoming flood of information (polls, economic reports, poll biases**) to a rigorous degree of cross-checking and skepticism that I haven't found elsewhere, regardless of which "side" those incoming numbers seem to favor on the surface. Like the early Bill James, his primary virtue lies in the questions he asks, not in the final numbers he comes up with. If there's anyone out there who does a better job of what he does, I'd love to know about it.
**He's every bit as willing to call out polls with a track record of Democratic bias as he is those with Republican bias, but more than that, he'll explain why those polls seem to have those leanings ingrained in their methodology.
You cannot change Medicare from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan and not end Medicare as we know it. If I were the Democrats, I wouldn't' even bother arguing the details -- just insist that Republicans properly title the legislation as a "Republisurance" or something and demand they can no longer call it "medicare" (because once you make it a coupon program, it ain't Medicare) and let the chips fall where they may.
Not to mention the royal treatment the Republicans gave to the King of the Dixiecrats and the Ann Coulter with a toupee when they joined the GOP back during the birth of the Southern Strategy.
The Simpson-Bowles commission did not make any recommendations.
Depends on how you look at it. The Simson-Bowles Commission issued a report with proposals; the vote to endorse the recommendations was 11-8, falling short of the 14 vote super-majority required to formally endorse the report. The vote failed for a number or reasons, including that ObamaCare was off limits. However, Obama never embraced the Commission's proposals or came forward with any of his own, continuing to submit budget proposals with trillion dollars deficits. There are ideas out there to reduce the deficit, they all involve some difficult but arguably necessary choices. Obama hasn't done anything but propose increasing taxes.
That would be an improvement for Mittens.
Its' not being a "new Model" that's problematic, what is problematic is that they have claimed to have predicted 8 straight elections when they haven't actually predicted one yet.
One thing I love about these election models- EVERYONE claims that they correctly predicted 2000 - those that predicted Gore say, "well he won the popular vote didn't he?" those that predicted Bush say, " well he won didn't he?"
You do that know the evolution of the parties works both ways. Jack Kennedy might be a Republican today, and Scoop Jackson certainly would. No matter how much folks here try to spin it, we have two more or less mainstream parties with roughly equal support when you take the long view.
If your argument is that they held right-wing views on social issues, then you're just arguing that 95% of politicians from the 60s and 70s would be republicans today, and that isn't a very interesting claim.
On a long enough timeline. The survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
You do that know the evolution of the parties works both ways. Jack Kennedy might be a Republican today,
If so, he would have had to have been born to a different family in a different state. He was a notorious chameleon on some issues, but don't forget that until JFK came along and helped change the landscape, Massachusetts elected many Republicans on the state level, including Richard Nixon's own running mate, whose seat Kennedy won in 1952.
And I wonder how much Adelson and the Koch Brothers would have contributed to a candidate who famously said "My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches", as he jawboned the chairman of U.S. Steel into reversing their announced price increases. That would have played real well today, for sure.
and Scoop Jackson certainly would.
Scoop Jackson was the quintessential liberal hawk ("The Senator from Boeing"), but aside from his foreign policy views, during his Senate career he was a liberal all the way, on civil rights, the environmnent and economics. He never gave any indication of switching parties.
No matter how much folks here try to spin it, we have two more or less mainstream parties with roughly equal support when you take the long view.
True, but while the leftmost point of the mainstream spectrum is still wholly Democratic, and the rightmost economic wing of the spectrum has always been Republican, you've had two enormous shifts in the past 40 years, which has amounted to a Colavito-Kuenn trade, with the Dixiecrats and the moderate to liberal Republicans switching teams. In both cases you can fairly say that (as they both did) they didn't leave their parties, their parties left them.
Which says a lot more good about the Democrats, unless you find the Eisenhowers, the Rockefellers and the Crists more objectionable than the Thurmonds, the Helmses, and their ideological successors.
Reagan ran for office as a Dem, lost, and then switched parties and positions within a matter of days? My Reagan books never mentioned anything like that.
***
The Colorado people developed a computer model, entered data into it, and it spit out the correct answer 8 times out of 8. Whether the model "predicted" or "identified" the winners is an exercise in pedantry.
***
If you think anything I've said about Nate here rises to the level of "trashing the guy," you need remedial English lessons.
\
No, he was a New Deal supporting Dem, and a Union President, then he moved to the right, switched parties and famously claimed that he didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left him.
While Reagan was more honest that the typical politician (then or now), that particular claim of his was simply false- he had left the party (by moving right).
Scoop Jackson was opposed to busing, opposed the Roe v. Wade decision, and was an ardent hawk on defense. Not much room for those types in today's Democratic Party. Since he died in 1983, we'll never know what he'd say today, but his son switched to the GOP.
It's a lot easier to predict things that already happened in a model.
So, this is just trolling right? Obama signed off on 4 trillion in deficit reduction, with less coming from revenue than Simpsons-Bowles. Obama's proposals, including the infamous Grand Bargain, involved a lot of deficit reduction, with 5/6 of the reduction coming from spending reductions. In addition, Obama signed and negotiated the sequester, cutting 2 trillion just in spending.
You know this, right?
whcih is another way of saying what I said:
of course, I don't know that's what they did, Nate seems to suggest that they did it the other way around, they looked for common elements in past wins and based the model on that- that's not predicting that's called fitting data - you can create a model that way, but you can't claim it "predicted" anything-
for instance, let's say that over the last 8 years, every time team X won the World Series, the Dem wins that year- you can then make a model that says, if Team X wins, the Dem will also win- but you cannot say, "my team X formula has successfully predicted the last 8 winners"
never a safe assumption, especially in politics...
Who gives a #### about Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles.
So Nate's model is entirely forward-looking?
As far as I can tell, Nate uses substantial amounts of backward-looking data to make present-year predictions, and the Colorado model did the same.
The fact that the Simpson-Bowles commission was created by Obama might have something to do with it.
You're just hating on Erskine Bowles because he likes Paul Ryan:
Nate never says that his model has correctly "predicted" past elections - elections held before his model was formulated.
yes, and he didn't endorse it because he was told by "people in the know" that endorsing the proposal would kill the chances of R's getting on board. Again, his proposal that he brought along the D caucus on was significantly to the right of Simpson-Bowles.
Nate tests based on "out of model" fit. So, for example, if the model is developed using data from 1972-2004, Nate tests the results against 1968, 64, see's how it does. 1948 is fairly notorious as a year that defies most of the models that are out there, for example.
8 elections is since 1978, if I am counting correctly (no sure thing, just got in from HKG), but to me, a decent test of the model would be to look at it's error rates vs. 1948-1974 to see how it does. Out of sample correlation is more impressive.
Nate has done quite a bit on the methodology behind the system, but a lot of it is sort of buried. I dunno how to find it anymore with the Times' paywall. Sorry!
Then why does Nate get so much attention? Why do people trust/believe that a former baseball writer knows so much more than the political intelligentsia because he correctly predicted a single Democratic primary?
Again, I really like Nate's work, but I don't understand why people have jumped from accepting Nate as a statistical expert to accepting Nate as a political expert. It's even more baffling given that Nate doesn't attempt to hide that he's a political liberal. It's not like he presents himself as a numbers wonk who's politically neutral.
All that could very well be true, but is Silver critiquing this model on political grounds? It sounds like he's questioning the statistical methodology.
I mean - are you honestly telling me that the father of the Peace Corps would be even be allowed into the Republican party? That the author of NEPA would be welcome?
Foreign policy has always been a false canard - at least, in the modern age... the modern party split comes down to whether you think the government can do no good and thus, ought to do nothing -- or -- whether you think it has a role to various degrees in regulating, kickstarting, or underpinning various aspects of our society. Jackson, Kennedy, and plenty of others fell into some manner of the latter. Today's GOP is feverishly working on expelling or exiling any apostates that have even trace beliefs in that.
At absolute worst, maybe Jackson gets Lieberman'ed out of the Democratic party -- though, I doubt he would have been from his NW Washington district or WA-SEN... and without reigniting the Lieberman wars, Lieberman really got Lieberman'ed not so much because he voted the way on he did on foreign policy but because he was a complete and total ######### about it. Without checking, I'd be willing to bet you can find half a dozen Senate Democrats who had identical voting records to Lieberman, but didn't spend their Sundays parroting neocon talking points about Iraq well after the majority of the nation wanted a do-over, not a "keep doing and do more".
Which is why Bob Casey Jr got such a strong primary challenge this time out... Oh wait, he didn't? Never mind.
As for 'ardent hawk' -- who exactly in the Democratic party would you call a "dove"? I can think of precisely two -- one (Dennis Kucinich) got trounced in a redistricting primary, and the other (Bernie Sanders?) isn't even technically a Democrat. OTOH - I could probably tick off two dozen Democratic 'hawks' without even resorting to the google...
I know the GOP takes great pains to pretend that Democrats are 'weak' on defense, but the facts bear little resemblance to the strawman -- so little, in fact, that I actually wish there WAS a bit more truth to it.
In today's politics, the other major party (whichever one) would immediately produce a lineup of CEO Moms, and feign anger for awhile at how insulting Kennedy had been toward them.
The father of Romneycare is the GOP presidential nominee.
Who's doing that on this page? Nate's critiques of the UColorado model are all "statistical expert" criticisms. He's not saying that their model is wrong because it fails to take into account special political circumstances X, Y, and Z in 2012. He's making a very technical argument that in-sample predictions are different from out-of-sample predictions and getting the former right doesn't necessarily translate statistically into saying anything about the latter and that fitting 8 data points with 7 explanatory variables is pretty bad statistics.
Maybe -- but keep in mind, this past weekend, Mitt actually began touting Romneycare again... it went over so well a few weeks ago, I guess!
Something that has always been a big asset for him in Republican circles, right?
...or, do you insist I amend with asterisk to denote that apostasy will be overlooked in specific niche cases when running specifically against an incumbent Democratic president?
They were both pro-Life. That immediately rules them out for senior leadership in the Democratic party. So, they'd be Republicans.
News flash; John Kennedy was not a liberal by the post-1972 definition.
God, I hate all of these stupid #############. How can anyone support this joke of a party?
They received an early print. The current one has completely revised the section on Romneycare.
It rules them out for the Presidential ticket - that, I'll grant - but Harry Reid is anti-choice (I'll grant he does the party's general bidding on what he brings to the floor for votes, though).
I honestly haven't done the math, but I'd be interested to see the current numbers regarding whether there are more anti-choice Democratic federal officeholder or more pro-choice Republican officeholders.... With one of the Maine twins gone in a few months, KBH done - who's left in the pro-choice GOP caucus? The other Maine twin and - depending on whether he's voting on a bill or campaigning - Scott Brown?
EDIT: Murkowski, too, I guess -- though, I suppose that depends on whether you consider her still a 'Republican' or not.
I'm not insisting anything. I'm simply pointing out that if the father of Romneycare can win the GOP nomination in a year with very high interest among GOP voters, that maybe being the father of the Peace Corps wouldn't have preempted someone from becoming a valued member of the GOP.
Obama's negotiating positions in various failed secret budget negotiations isn't quite the same as submitting an actual budget. How much of those savings has he incorporated in his actual budget submitted to Congress? Pretty much zip. And if Obama's budget is so good, how come Congressional Democrats keep voting against it? Arguing that Obama is the deficit hawk is just spin.
Welcome back. Also, good news! Thanks to Todd Akin, you're only history's 43rd greatest monster.
Thank you. I'm laid up, working from home, waiting for surgery, so I've got time on my hands.
Tom Smith's comments are no dumber than advocating for government to control what political speech is allowed and what is not.
What happened?
Sorry to hear that, but glad to have you back. Hope the surgery and recovery goes well.
You do realize that he lost a nomination bid to John McCain, scourge of conservatives, 4 years ago. Between him running for 8+ years non-stop, being rich as God and having to defeat the likes of Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, I'm not sure that you should take any lessons from his nomination.
Best of luck with that: hope it's all a success.
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