Political Roundtable Cosmic String of Cataclysm - Part V

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjrthOPLAKM[/youtube]

I'm tired of this election, too.

[Zonkerbl]

Can't believe we have another week of political garbage to wade through... ugh, just let it end, please...

[Nivek]

The attempts to trash Nate Silver are pretty funny. Jonah Goldberg promises me there's a reasoned critique of Silver's methodology at National Review, but their site is down because of Sandy. Most of the "this is why you should pay no attention to Nate Silver" comes down to: a) he likes Obama; b) he's thin and effeminate; and c) he "adjusts" the numbers.

So, the quick and dirty response:

a) He's an Obama supporter, but he attracted attention and makes his living by being correct. Plus, why weren't the folks trashing Silver now trashing him in 2010 when he was predicting (accurately as it turned out) BIG gains for Republicans in the House and Senate?

b) Yes, he's gay. Last I checked, at least some gay people were capable of coherent thought.

c) He "adjusts" the numbers based on regressions and analysis. His process: He folded his analysis of previous polls and economic data vs. actual election outcomes and created a computer program. Throughout this election cycle, his role is to feed his program new information and then publish the results on his NY Times blog. The numbers on the right-hand side are exactly what his computer program is producing. His commentary and analysis (the written blog part) may or may not be affected by whatever personal biases he has -- although, see a) above.

All that said, he could be wrong. The election could turn out different than what he's projecting. The polls could also be wrong. But so far, nothing I've read -- pending restoration of the National Review's website -- has offered a solid critique about WHY Silver's model is wrong.

[nate33]

The efforts from the right to trash Nate Silver are about as funny as the quasi-religious belief in his prognostications from the left. They guy has a track record of just one presidential election. He is 1 for 1. Call it 2 for 2 if you want to consider the 2010 congressional elections to be the same thing as a presidential election.

Yale University economist Ray Fair designed a statistical model that has successfully predicted the winner in 7 of the last 8 elections. (The only one he missed was 1992 when Perot through a monkey wrench into the process.) Fair predicts Romney will win a close election.

[barelyawake]

Great to see Christie doing the right thing. He suddenly looks Presidential and it's looking more and more like Christie will be facing Clinton in 2016 (if Morning Joe doesn't run).

Meanwhile, Romney/Ryan are becoming a farce staging one event after another during an actual crisis. Handing out food cans to supporters so they can hand them back to you, as people drown in their god damn houses. Jesus.

Any prediction on how many national emergencies before we face the reality of climate change? You really want to put the anti-science party (who have Akin on their science committee) back in charge? The anti-evolution party. The climate change deniers. The drill baby drill party. The anti-stem cell party. During a time when we must create a science-based economy and will face weather events (with increasing frequency) that will take scientific solutions. Richard Armitage (whose son I grew-up with) calls climate change our greatest, security threat. Not Iran. Colin Powell, and 99% of the scientific community, agrees with him.

[rl25g]

never have been a big fan of politics.
Simply put, would love to hear an argument from my favorite sports board for Obama, and an argument for Romney.

[Zonkerbl]

Well, president's have no control over the economy. They can screw things up by getting us into wars, that's about it. So you don't really have to worry about who's President. What you have to worry about is a political dictatorship by one party or the other. We had a two year stint when Obama was Pres, and the Dems had control of the House and a super-majority in the Senate. Fortunately the Dems are so incompetent they couldn't actually accomplish anything besides passing Obamacare. Plus the Republicans basically have control of the Supreme Court now, although that doesn't mean as much as you would think -- look at the Obamacare decision.

I guess I'd be more worried if the Republicans get ahold of all three. They are pro-military so we'd probably end up in a war with Iran that we really can't afford right now. They would repeal Obamacare, which is childish and stupid imo, since they're the ones who invented the damn thing in the first place.

But even if the Republicans win the Presidency and the Senate, they won't have a super majority in the Senate so they won't be able to accomplish much - probably won't even be able to repeal Obamacare. So, vote for whoever's tie you like better. Doesn't really matter.

Obama is a very intellectual leader. He will think things through, and his administration has hired a ton of academics to political positions. He didn't trash the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which is an admirable bit of intellectual honesty. Although when W was in charge I was surprised at the level of intelligence of the folks I came into contact with. All Republicans either get or are sympathetic to economics, which is a plus to me. A lot of the Dem political appointees think they're smart and they're idiots. The Rep appointees had this kind of country bumpkin air around them but are smart as whips. I imagine Romney's folks would be more of the same. Republicans are more regimented -- when they decide to do something, they don't sit around dithering about it like Dems tend to. Their political machinery is much more effective. Dems are a cowardly lot as a group - afraid of offending people. Problem is, Republicans tend to set their mind to stupid things, like war in Iraq. So, you have a choice between a group that is very effective at doing stupid things, or a group that is completely incompetent at doing smart things. So I tend to favor the Dems -- they are the least likely to do lasting damage.

[barelyawake]

Democrats had a supermajority for 130 days. After that, they faced the threat of a filabuster over every issue. Democrats in general have a harder time organizing because: A) A handful are straight-up corrupt (and those handful are currently the difference between a bill passing or not), and B) There are more Democrats, so there are Democrats elected in traditionally Republican areas.

Although it is true that the President doesn't have much control over the immediate economy, he does have power over the direction of the country (and thus the future of the economy). Check the list of inventions that governmental departments have created or funded -- jets, the microchip, the internet, medicines, tang, etc... Kennedy's moon mission dramatically effected the future economy by inspiring a generation to study science (thus creating cell phones etc). I could debate that the majority of our current economy is based on government funded inventions. And I would debate that the decisions a president makes now in terms of funding research and development in green energy, computer tech, medical tech, battery tech and infrastructure, will dramatically effect the future economy.

[hands11]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjrthOPLAKM[/youtube]

I'm tired of this election, too.

Bronco Boma

To cute.

Poor little thing.

[Wizardspride]

Democrats had a supermajority for 130 days. After that, they faced the threat of a filabuster over every issue.

Thanks for posting this.

The "Democrats had a supermajority for 2 years" line has been repeated ad nauseum.

[hands11]

Great to see Christie doing the right thing. He suddenly looks Presidential and it's looking more and more like Christie will be facing Clinton in 2016 (if Morning Joe doesn't run).

Meanwhile, Romney/Ryan are becoming a farce staging one event after another during an actual crisis. Handing out food cans to supporters so they can hand them back to you, as people drown in their god damn houses. Jesus.

Any prediction on how many national emergencies before we face the reality of climate change? You really want to put the anti-science party (who have Akin on their science committee) back in charge? The anti-evolution party. The climate change deniers. The drill baby drill party. The anti-stem cell party. During a time when we must create a science-based economy and will face weather events (with increasing frequency) that will take scientific solutions. Richard Armitage (whose son I grew-up with) calls climate change our greatest, security threat. Not Iran. Colin Powell, and 99% of the scientific community, agrees with him.

And the worse things get, I fear the more these people will cling to their dark ages view of the world. Before long, I fear they will be slaughtering lambs in hopes that the storms will stop.

If there is anything good that comes out of the storm, it may be where it hit. To many power brokers up north just watch what happens to the South. Sure they get snow storms up North. This was different.

I always like to believe that eventually, facts will reach the masses. The problem has always been that carbon emitting energy companies have so much money and that money has so much influence in politics and the media. The science is not presented nearly enough. Its so sad we are even debating this still. But that is what you get when one party is wholly owned by big oil and coal. Its the same problem we had with big tobacco for all those years. Mega corporation vs the people/planet. Who will win.

Our collective inability to address the global environmental problems is the biggest reason I didn't have kids. I just didn't feel comfortable bringing them into a dying planet. I have gained some hope in recent years as hybrid cars has finally started to take off and I see more solar and wind energy getting deployed. More people are recycling and to a large degree that is more common place. But we are way behind the 8 ball.

Warmer water are the fuel to these large storm systems. And warmer water expands. Most of us learned that in elementary school. So we have higher sea levels.

" Globally, the ocean rose about eight inches in the last century, and the rate seems to have accelerated to about a foot a century.

Scientists say most of the rise is a direct consequence of human-induced climate change. Ocean water expands when it warms, accounting for some of the rise, and land ice is melting worldwide, dumping extra water into the ocean. Scientists say they believe the rate will accelerate further, so that the total increase by the end of this century could exceed three feet. "

I guess we need to levy and storm wall the entire country. So much for the pretty coast line we had. I guess we are all New Orleanians now.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00984.html

[hands11]

Well, president's have no control over the economy. They can screw things up by getting us into wars, that's about it. So you don't really have to worry about who's President. What you have to worry about is a political dictatorship by one party or the other. We had a two year stint when Obama was Pres, and the Dems had control of the House and a super-majority in the Senate. Fortunately the Dems are so incompetent they couldn't actually accomplish anything besides passing Obamacare. Plus the Republicans basically have control of the Supreme Court now, although that doesn't mean as much as you would think -- look at the Obamacare decision.

I guess I'd be more worried if the Republicans get ahold of all three. They are pro-military so we'd probably end up in a war with Iran that we really can't afford right now. They would repeal Obamacare, which is childish and stupid imo, since they're the ones who invented the damn thing in the first place.

But even if the Republicans win the Presidency and the Senate, they won't have a super majority in the Senate so they won't be able to accomplish much - probably won't even be able to repeal Obamacare. So, vote for whoever's tie you like better. Doesn't really matter.

Obama is a very intellectual leader. He will think things through, and his administration has hired a ton of academics to political positions. He didn't trash the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which is an admirable bit of intellectual honesty. Although when W was in charge I was surprised at the level of intelligence of the folks I came into contact with. All Republicans either get or are sympathetic to economics, which is a plus to me. A lot of the Dem political appointees think they're smart and they're idiots. The Rep appointees had this kind of country bumpkin air around them but are smart as whips. I imagine Romney's folks would be more of the same. Republicans are more regimented -- when they decide to do something, they don't sit around dithering about it like Dems tend to. Their political machinery is much more effective.


Dems are a cowardly lot as a group - afraid of offending people. Problem is, Republicans tend to set their mind to stupid things, like war in Iraq. So, you have a choice between a group that is very effective at doing stupid things, or a group that is completely incompetent at doing smart things. So I tend to favor the Dems -- they are the least likely to do lasting damage.

Classic summery. Though I think the Dems are getting better from their low point about 20 years ago. They seem to be a little more assertive and organized.

[Zonkerbl]

See, if somebody I trusted like Chris Christie were the Republican candidate I'd vote for him in a heartbeat. He's exactly the sort of guy I would want to be in charge of an efficient political machine.

[Wizardspride]

See, if somebody I trusted like Chris Christie were the Republican candidate I'd vote for him in a heartbeat. He's exactly the sort of guy I would want to be in charge of an efficient political machine.

Not me. Don't like his bully personality and how responds when challenged.

But with that being said, he's not a wing nut so that counts for something.

[dobrojim]

One could argue that Silver's 2008 prediction was a little better than 1/1.
What he did was correctly pick 49/50 states missing only Indiana which
went for Obama closely. He also predicted every single senate seat in 2008.
That seems better to me than saying he was 1/1.

Gentlemen's wager on Silver vs Fair?

[verbal8]

Silver offered a bet to Joe Scarborough:

http://news.yahoo.com/nate-silver-joe-s ... 15600.html

[fishercob]

Great to see Christie doing the right thing. He suddenly looks Presidential and it's looking more and more like Christie will be facing Clinton in 2016 (if Morning Joe doesn't run).

Meanwhile, Romney/Ryan are becoming a farce staging one event after another during an actual crisis. Handing out food cans to supporters so they can hand them back to you, as people drown in their god damn houses. Jesus.

Any prediction on how many national emergencies before we face the reality of climate change? You really want to put the anti-science party (who have Akin on their science committee) back in charge? The anti-evolution party. The climate change deniers. The drill baby drill party. The anti-stem cell party. During a time when we must create a science-based economy and will face weather events (with increasing frequency) that will take scientific solutions. Richard Armitage (whose son I grew-up with) calls climate change our greatest, security threat. Not Iran. Colin Powell, and 99% of the scientific community, agrees with him.

Christie is doing two things:

(1) His job as Governor of New Jersey to help his constituents in a time of crisis.
(2) Going out of his way to praise the President and the Administration for their help.

I commend Christie for doing his job and I think his ferocity and "can-do" attitude may well provide hope to people in a time of need.

But Christie is being a savvy politician and is kicking off his campaign for 2016. I think CHristie believes Nate Silver a lot more than nate33 does, and he realizes that he stands to gain nothing by backing a losing horse at this point. By publicly praising Obama, he comes off as non-partisan, Presidential, moderate, whatever adjective you want to use that means appealing to swing voters. Some may find my characterization cynical, but this after all is the politics thread.

[Nivek]

The efforts from the right to trash Nate Silver are about as funny as the quasi-religious belief in his prognostications from the left. They guy has a track record of just one presidential election. He is 1 for 1. Call it 2 for 2 if you want to consider the 2010 congressional elections to be the same thing as a presidential election.

To expand on Jim's point, if you count the presidential race and the congressional races as 1, then yeah, he's 2-2. Except, the presidential race is really 50 state contests. And you'd have to ignore how accurate he was in predicting primary outcomes. In terms of the presidential race, his predictions were correct everywhere except Indiana. As Jim pointed out, he also predicted the outcome for every senate race that year.

In 2010, Silver's model predicted the correct winner in 34 of the 37 senate races. Silver predicted a net gain of 7 Senate seats for the GOP that year -- they got 6.

Also in 2010, he predicted the correct winner in 36 out of 37 gubernatorial races.

So...the sample size is a bit larger than 2.

Yale University economist Ray Fair designed a statistical model that has successfully predicted the winner in 7 of the last 8 elections. (The only one he missed was 1992 when Perot through a monkey wrench into the process.) Fair predicts Romney will win a close election.

And he might be right again. It's definitely going to be a close election.

So, again...Silver's analysis can't be so easily dismissed. He's been right an awful lot in the past two election cycles. That doesn't mean he should be taken as gospel. But one of these commentators trashing him might want to come up with an analysis of Silver's model (which is published in full detail) that explains the error of his ways AND explains how he's been right so consistently despite these problems with his model.

[montestewart]

So, again...Silver's analysis can't be so easily dismissed with he's biased or gay. He's been right an awful lot in the past two election cycles. That doesn't mean he should be taken as gospel. But one of these commentators trashing him might want to come up with an analysis of Silver's model (which is published in full detail) that explains the error of his ways AND explains how he's been right so consistently despite these problems with his model.

Maybe I don't know enough lefties, as I don't see him being embraced as gospel because he supports Obama as much as for the openness and accessibility of his process when compared to most polling and prognostication processes I see. That's why I started reading him, because he gave so much information about the process. And, as Nivek noted, his track record is brief but broad. I assume any partisan would struggle with bias, but even if Obama wins, if it turns out much closer than Silver predicted, I would expect him to view that as a shortcoming to be addressed. His candidate winning and his process being accurate as two separate things.

[FAH1223]

Nate Silver to Joe Scarborough: Wanna Bet? - Yahoo! News

Nate Silver to Joe Scarborough: Wanna Bet?
Political polling guru Nate Silver is so confident in his statistical models that he just offered to bet MSNBC's Joe Scarborough $1,000 that Barack Obama will win re-election. Scarborough, you may recall, criticized Silver's math earlier this week, saying that "Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue ... they're jokes." He was specifically talking about Silver's FiveThirtyEight website, which shows Mitt Romney with just a 1-in-4 chance of becoming president.

Silver has spent the week firing back, criticizing political pundits for not understanding how odds and probability work and aggressively defending his method against critics. As the week has progressed, his model has only shown Obama's chances of winning increasing, which has not coincidentally increased Silver's confidence in the outcome. (As of this morning, Five Thirty Eight gives Obama a 79 percent chance of winning, with a final Electoral College total over 300.)

The back-and-forth swipes all came to head today with this tweet, with Silver offering a friendly $1,000 wager on Tuesday's result, with the winnings going to charity.

".@joenbc: If you think it's a toss-up, let's bet. If Obama wins, you donate $1,000 to the American Red Cross. If Romney wins, I do. Deal?

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 1, 2012"


After that Politico story claiming Silver was putting his reputation on the line with this election, he's making it clear that he's willing to put more on the line than that. And he's also clearly fed up with pundits who aren't willing to put anything on the line to back up their numerous predictions.

Scarborough was not on the set of his MSNBC show this morning and has yet to respond, but he already has one wager riding on Tuesday's vote. Just yesterday, he agreed to a bet with Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod over their facial hair. (Axelrod will shave his mustache if Obama loses Michigan, Minnesota, or Pennsylvania. Scarborough will grow one if Romney loses Florida or North Carolina.) Will Joe put his money where his mouth—and mustache—is?