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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Come next Tuesday night, we’ll get a resolution (let’s hope) to a great ongoing battle of 2012: not just the Presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, but the one between the pundits trying to analyze that race with their guts and a new breed of statistics gurus trying to forecast it with data.
In Election 2012 as seen by the pundits–political journalists on the trail, commentators in cable-news studios–the campaign is a jump ball. There’s a slight lead for Mitt Romney in national polls and slight leads for Barack Obama in swing-state polls, and no good way of predicting next Tuesday’s outcome beyond flipping a coin. ...
Bonus link: Esquire - The Enemies of Nate Silver
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i agree that the ideas were whacky
but they were very real
the inability to accept that i have some real nutjobs with a lot of money in my party who wanted to throw a million pounds of mud at a sitting president that these folks regard as the anti-christ leaves me a bit nonplussed here
While that may be mechanically true, I have to doubt that it was some moral epiphany that led him there - just the knowledge that it would have failed miserably. But fair enough - I would be willing to concede that Romney was presented with some truly awful campaign options that he chose not to pursue.
There are over 1900 posts that fit this description.
Agreed on this as well. Base would eat it up, independents would mostly be turned off, Dems would be energized.
The few people I know who are intimately involved in R-politics very much wanted the campaign to be nastier than it was.
Do you see the party as having a chance of escaping their clutches in the coming years? And, if not, is it still the place for you?
Shooty is a man of wisdom. Not bad for a middling early-80s middle infielder.
I'm pretty sure that Fox News is more important nationally than the Romney campaign.
My Obama optimism has grown a bit, but for consistency I can go with Obama is a 2:1 favorite. My prediction ... will come tonight when I look closely. I expect 2008 minus IN, Omaha, NC, and possibly CO or FL (comfortable Obama win). Senate amazingly +1 Dem. House + 7 Dem. But I will post my official predictions later (if I don't use these).
Some folks here are really irrational on Nate. I like his stuff, especially his writing. He is (as stated) most useful far out for general and for primaries.
The South was not going to win the Civil War in any reasonable scenario (the North ran a really bad war and still won going away), so talking "what if" really depends on what unreasonable thing happened.
Harvey you are just nuts on the HRC talk. The GOP went really hard against Obama and would have gone just as hard on HRC. But hey whatever.
Regarding 2016, I'll start speculating actively when victory for Obama is declared on CBS at 11:38 est (WAG).
Er, I mean the second concession speech.
I just think the Romney camp made a good tactical decision to do no more than occasionally gesture in that direction while focusing their campaign as tightly as they could on The Economy, Stupid. I don't think they avoided cultural issues because of a "buffer", they avoided cultural issues because those weren't issues they could win on.
Well, we don't live in that world now, but let's see where we are in 2016. Or 2020.
Good for Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, hammering Secy of State Husted for clipping early voting hours. Assuming Obama wins, this election was won during the year in the courts when GOP vote suppression efforts were beaten back. I was furious early in the year at what looked like the administration's limp defense of voting rights, but they ended up doing a bang up job.
The idea that Romney wouldn't have been fine with his campaign getting as ugly as possible, as long as it polled well, seems odd to me. It would be strange for this to be the one place in which Romney would take a principled stand. OTOH, it's not hard to think McCain, as unpleasant as I found him, rejected some of the baser suggestions on principle.
i may be nuts but i am not wrong.
As the two major parties are presently constructed Christie would stand a better chance of winning the Democratic presidential nomination than the Republican. For better or worse I can't see Christie with any chance of ever becoming the Republican presidential nominee until/unless the moderate faction of that party regain control.
mets fan, are you?
At some point that fight has to happen, doesn't it?
fight happened. they lost.
you didn't notice?
The US is browning, sure, but not nearly fast enough to push the GOP left in 2016 or 2020. Of all the things that the party will look at in the next several years, whether it needs to become more moderate simply won't be one of them.
It's got to be refought at some point. The Indiana and Missouri senate races will surely be instructive to someone in the party. Speaking just for my state, the GOP turned a Senate seat that the Democrats have pretty much conceded for the past 30 years into what looks like it's going to be a sizable Democrat victory (and I couldn't be happier).
Their loss is our gain. Keep it up.
My current position on the Tuesday is something akin to my position on the Braves making the playoffs as of August 2011.
Agreed. It isn't good for the country to have one of its two major parties behaving crazily. It's destructive.
I'd still say that whatever "racism buffer" exists, its sexism equivalent is a much more powerful force, politically.
I'm not sure how much we agree or disagree here, but a right/conservative economic policy with a moderate/left social policy would probably have beaten Obama - and maybe badly - this year. The fact that the right keeps pushing their asinine, unpalatable social agenda (which in many ways does bleed over into economic policy, of course, that takes more work to properly parse) onto a large portion of the population that has no use for it is what has caused them harm, IMO.
I think both of you guys are right here. Romney made the correct tactical decision, but to Harvey's point, he also made the moral decision. I don't know that you can separate those decisions, but to Romney's credit he did put the chains on the race-baiting dogs in the GOP as much as anyone could have.
This is the truest thing to be stated in this thread. This is also why Gold Star still self-identifies as a R (habits die hard) and will be voting for Obama in good faith.
Don't be so sure. Mourdock is down 2 or 3 points in a race that's polled back and forth for months.
What is a "right/conservative" economic policy? I'm asking in seriousness, as there doesn't seem to be much of one any more.
My current position is close to Armando Galarraga facing Jason Donald in the bottom of the 9th on June 2, 2010, and trying to make history.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but was that DVD at any time affiliation with the Republican Party? I just assumed that was independent looney-bin stuff. That was actually shipped (albeit abortedly) by the GOP? Or do you mean there were discussions within the party about whether to run with that stuff and they decided against it?
Your willingness to get in bunkers with fascists out of convenience is duly noted, Davey.
Having everyone vote on election day is not "vote suppression." A fortiori, allowing people to vote for a week-long period before election day, or a month-long period before election day, is not "vote suppression," merely because there used to be one or two extra days when people could vote.
Double digit unemployment. Recession bordering on depression continuing apace. Much more like England than the current US recovery.
Honest question, when's the last time the immediate post-election front runner, if such a thing exists, actually won their party's nomination? Reagan?
Indiana's actually a really tough state to poll because it's got THE most stringent rules for polling and phone contact of any state -- I generally trust Howey-Gauge above all others and they had a monster number out for Donnelly (+11) last week.
Donnelly has run a pretty much pitch perfect Indiana campaign, while Mourdock - even before his debate blunder - had not. Indiana may be relatively deep red, but there's also such a thing as "Indiana nice", and Mourdock simply ain't that. Indiana likes its Dick Lugars, its Mitch Daniels, etc.
I expect Mike Pence to win the governor's mansion by about 10, but I think Donnelly will take the Senate seat with relative ease (say, +5).
Actually, I don't think it matters if you are, because I think the answer is McCain in 2008. Or possibly Romney in 2012.
i would have long been excommunicated from the party save for my long history.
here are the positions that i have advocated:
--fiscal restraint (big shocker there)
--abortion. very much a local issue but fundamentally it should be available but if states want to insert tight restraints that is fine with me
--defense spending. smarter versus more. all the military honchos of substance i know support this approach and rightly so.
--social securirty. blech. at minimum the age goes way up
--medicare. i really do not hate this with a passion of a 1000 burning suns. it's not awful.
--new healthcare. this is too long a conversation but suffice to say that all the healthcare and soc security stuff boils down to the bubble of baby boomers coming through who as a group are selfish people who have never exerienced being told no and not getting their way and they make me want to puke just thinking about it. so we are overreacting to a temporary problem that alas needs a reaction because of the scale
--guns. handguns, rifles, shotguns. good. all that other crazy sh8t. bad. folks don't need that for sport or otherwise.
--gay marriage. lost. lost it 15 years ago. nobody under the age of 30 cares. and why should they care? marriage is a longstanding institution. of course, who wants to live in an institution? (thank you, thank you here all week)
--fracking. it's technology. i am no luddite
--innovation. support it. we should have 100 silicon valleys versus the 4/5 we have now. make inventing stuff cool. that should be a federally supported program. making nerds cool
i am sure there 1000 more issues. but this is where the gop should be
What about allowing predominantly Republican precincts to vote early while restricting predominantly Democratic precincts to voting on Election Day, which is what was actually happening in Ohio?
That's a huge outlier from other polls. For the sake of sanity though, I hope it's right.
And thus the caveat "as much as anyone could have." I don't think it's possible to run a GOP candidacy against Barack Obama that was less racist than the Romney campaign. The fact that Sununu and snide little jokes about birth certificates are the best the GOP can do is the gist of the problem.
the dvd was sent out by a third party.
they approached the gop first to see if they could send out nationally.
Ah that makes sense, thanks!
Worst party boat ever.
i know someone who hates obama with the passion of a thousand suns (possible racism) and line-votes R unless he knows the person but pretty much agrees with everything you posted above, excluding the fracking thing.
(Edit: this person also believes that the oil companies should give back a bunch of their profits, along with wall st firms. i tell him he's more socialist than he accuses obama of being!)
Vice Presidents Bush and Gore are the obvious ones. But in general, the Republicans do something similar to this more often than not. Reagan, Bush, Dole, McCain, and Romney were all the runners-up in the previous open primary campaign. The exception was George W. Bush in 2000, in large part, I think, because 1996 was similar to 2012, where the runners-up in the primaries weren't particularly mainstream (Buchanan, Forbes, am I forgetting somebody; similarly, I can't see Santorum winning the GOP nomination in 2016). If the Republican Party settles on a 2016 frontrunner (which they may not do), and he decides to run, I'd be surprised if he doesn't get the nomination.
EDIT: On the Dem side, Mondale would also qualify.
if you gotta sacrifice a few cows along the way so be it.
So you're fine having it done with your own water table/aquifer?
EDIT: You answered it as I typed, but as long as you're willing to have them do it where you live and get your water from, I suppose that's consistent.
Don't go confusing David with facts. He has ideology to worship.
Yeah, sorry about that. In a rush for a meeting and hurried. Should have said wrong (because I think you are), and nuts was a very poor choice of words. I do think you are wrong though, but that is OK.
Regarding 2016 I think HRC is a wildcard, much like Gore in 2004 was. Their entering changes the race very substantially and it is not really possible to predict as it is really just one person's (OK small group of people's) decision, there is no logic there.
EDIT: Horrendous typos. I blame hunger. Off to lunch.
^ I'm not well read on it, but what I know of fracking seems like a bad idea. I need to learn - it will likely take place not too too far from my house (and a large lake) sometime in the next few years...
When it comes to energy solutions, you don't usually see "it's technology" as an argument for more oil production.
Double digit unemployment. Recession bordering on depression continuing apace. Much more like England than the current US recovery.
Not to mention two more Alito clones on the Supreme Court instead of Sotomayor and Kagan.
-------------------------------
Harvey (#1947),
Details of your position are always appreciated, especially in threads that fly by this quickly. I'm assuming, then, that you agree that bashing Hillary in the fashion that you were alluding to might not be such a great idea in a general election.
With regards to the Civil War issue, there was no way that the South was going to win. I think getting England or France to intervene was a pipe dream by the South akin to a the A's getting a bid name free-agent to sign to play 3b for them.
Also after speaking to my HS classmates who are all in their mod to early 40's, they think there might be civil disturbances like there was in the 60's if the economy tanks again. These are all right wing to right leaning people which made me wonder if people really think that there could actually be a Civil War again?
no worries
Gods damn it, that's fraking without a "c". You should know this.
It is to lol.
Yes, you win the argument if we change the parameters into a completely different argument. Well done.
***
Ludicrous. There were essentially two Republicans in both the '92 and '96 elections.
How is it "unbelievable"? The Dems already held 291 seats in the House before Carter won in 1976. How much additional upside potential do you figure the Dems had?
As for Reagan, he gained 34 seats in 1980 -- in the fifth Congressional election since the 1972 redistricting -- and then 16 more in 1984. Those were nice gains, especially in the midst of a three-decade Dem stranglehold on the House. (And the idea that 1984 counts as an Electoral College "trouncing" but 1980 did not was a fine piece of cherry-picking.)
As long as we want three hackers from REDDIT fighting with seven or eight hackers from Singapore over the next president, sure.
(I'm being flip, it's probably a good idea, but the implementation scares me more than paper and pencil.)
Yup. I think things are mostly the same. McCain was from the NeoCon wing of the party, right? So the incentives to go into Iraq are still there. The tax cuts probably happen regardless. Maybe just one instead of two?
I don't know what McCain's signature issue would be, like Bush wanted education to be his. Maybe immigration? He seems to genuinely care about that. Maybe climate change legislation? Not sure. In any case, trade out NCLB for some kind of immigration bill. Or maybe campaign finance. Not sure.
Obama still gets elected. We don't have torture as an institutional policy, so that's a big plus. *probably* a less toxic Republican brand in general.
Maybe they think an R would've won in 2008 if McCain would've won in 2000 (and presumably 2004).
Yes. If Romney hasn't demonstrated that he is readily willing to say anything, anything at all, if he thinks it gains him an electoral edge, no one ever has.
Yes, they're predicting the Dems have a 1 in 4 chance of winning ~30 House races in which they currently trail. But they're also predicting that Romney has just a 1 in 6 chance of overcoming a 2-point deficit in Ohio. The two seem out of whack.
A point well taken.
Fracking is one of those things that conservatives should be extremely wary of, except it's "free energy" and "technology" so they just go all in without even asking about consequences and unknowns.
if you gotta sacrifice a few cows along the way so be it.
I'm strongly opposed to fracking here, pretty much for one reason: The governor of PA. Gas is good -- you get a shitload of BTUs out of one Carbon atom. It's homemade energy. I am for big investment in alternative energy, but we're decades away from that. A big source of existing domestic paleofuels should help in making it over that hump. Yes, there are negative environmental consequences, but they replace relatively equal consequences from coal and oil. In the real marketplace, it keeps us sucking a teat that will eventually go dry, but there is no inherent reason we can't frack and develop alternatives at the same time.
But this ####### idiot Corbett resists every attempt to regulate or tax it. Screw that.
HW - I will ask specifically, though. You're fine with this technology, tomorrow, being constructed where your family, your grandkids, will be drinking water from for the next 15 years or so?
yup. give me a break from the think of the children stuff already. the melodrama isn't required in asking a question
the whole 'corporations are willing to kill people to make moneny' is so old i am surprised you went there
and do we not have sophisticated water testing methods? i am not simultaneously advocating dismantling the epa.
you can one and the other ya'know. one science to push things forward and another science as oversight
Wait, what?
Second, that's not remotely accurate. There was disparate effect, but it did not restrict Democratic precincts "to voting on Election Day." The issue was whether the early voting -- which would take place over the same weeks in each county (not by "precinct") -- would have extended evening hours or would be open primarily during business hours¹. Note that this affected only in-person early voting; it had no effect whatsoever on early voting by mail. Thus, unless you think the U.S. Postal Service is conspiring to keep Democrats from using mailboxes, it would prevent exactly nobody from voting.
Third, it was Democrats who were "allowing predominantly Republican precincts to vote early," because they believed that it benefitted them. (Each county set its own rules for early voting. When there was a tie, the SoS got to break the tie, and he had a consistent policy of breaking the tie in favor of shorter early voting hours. In Republican counties, there weren't ties because Democrats were voting for extended hours. If Democrats voted for shorter hours in those counties, then there would have been shorter hours. It was a bizarre quirk.)
¹Since most Democrats are on welfare, this would presumably disproportionately benefit them over people with jobs. (Ducking.)
if you frack in north dakota and there is a water problem any impact on the population is minimal because there is hardly anyone there
it's not like contaminating an aquifier in pennsylvania
Ruth Bader Ginsberg - 79
Antonin Scalia - 76
Anthony Kennedy - 76
Stephen Breyer - 74
Clarence Thomas - 64
Samuel Alito - 62
Sonia Sotomayor - 58
John Roberts - 57
Elena Kagan - 52
You could reasonably see 2 or 3 appointments during the next presidential administration's term. If Obama wins, Ginsberg is probably near retirement, and Breyer might consider it. That would allow the liberal caucus to hold serve on the SCOTUS. If Kennedy retired, the liberal caucus could gain a seat on the bench.
If Obama wins, nothing short of a massive coronary or auto accident is going to move Scalia off the court. Actually, I don't think Scalia's ego allows him to retire even if Romney shocks the world on Tuesday. The other justices are young enough to assume they're locked into the bench for another couple of decades barring sudden illness or accident.
There's much greater volume of polling in Ohio than there is in any single house race. This is not that complicated.
They already are.
i likely won't be around to be proven right or not but i am 100 percent certain of that forecast
That's a very tough call. Clearly, Obama would be getting spanked if the Repubs could snag even 40% of the Latino vote, but is Rubio really that charismatic? And if indeed he's the crown prince of the tea party movement, how likely is that to play well nationally? At least Romney can pretend to play a moderate, which is the only reason this election got close. I doubt Rubio even has that inclination.
Note to Davey: moving the goalposts so that anything short of brownshirts firing on Democrats as they break towards a polling station doesn't constitute vote supression isn't even an argument. I don't know that you can do better, but, do better.
to most people they place far more value on their finances than on their vote
Serious question: What are Chris Christie's odds of being alive in 2020 if he doesn't drastically alter his lifestyle? He's a 50-year-old hot-tempered Type A personality in a high-stress job who's been morbidly obese -- estimates: 300 to 335 pounds -- for years. Modern medicine is amazing, but he really seems to be playing with fire.
Fair enough. I accept that criticism, sorry.
if you frack in north dakota and there is a water problem any impact on the population is minimal because there is hardly anyone there... it's not like contaminating an aquifier in pennsylvania
Well, they want to frack where I live, into my aquifer, and PA is not far off either. I'll ask again, without the melodrama - are you fine with them fracking within your own aquifer, where you live? If you're ok with them fracking where no one lives, that's different, and that isn't what you said.
I have 3. Imaginatively named Ron Johnson, Ron J and Ron J2.
Mostly because I couldn't be bothered to debug some weird cached password issues.
Angus Reid??? has Obama +4 in Pennsylvania
Oops, sorry. In that case, it would depend on whether we're talking about the early primary version of McCain or the McCain that took note of South Carolina and adjusted accordingly.
I doubt his Supreme Court choices or immigration proposals would have been much different. No matter who was president, the last unpleasant SC surprise for the GOP is likely to have been Souter. And I doubt if the co-sponsor of the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill would have sounded like the finger in the wind McCain of more recent years.
On 9/11 and Iraq, I doubt if McCain's initial reaction would have been much different than Bush's. But then neither would Gore's. The possible difference between McCain and Bush is that McCain would have had much better trained instincts when it came to resisting the rosy scenarios laid out by the chickenhawk civilians regarding cakewalks and such. He'd have had the standing to ask the sort of hard questions that a Bush might have been afraid to ask. The ideal president in a situation like that would have been an Eisenhower, and the absolute worst would have been either G. W. Bush or LBJ. We plunged into Iraq feet first due to a combination of credulous reception of faulty intelligence and the pre-dispositions of the crew that Bush had assembled around him. It's possible that the "good" McCain might have had a much less ideological set of advisers, and much more inclination to ask hard questions from the various intelligence sources. But cudda shudda wudda, and we'll never know.
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