Jump to content

U.S. Politics: The Flood Shall Wash Away The Cobbs


Jace, Extat

Recommended Posts

3 hours ago, mormont said:

Playing devil's advocate here, but... I can see why he wants to say that.

Remember, the Trump party line is (has to be) that this payment was made for personal reasons, not political ones. That way it isn't a campaign expense, and no campaign finance laws were broken. 

Oh yeah, that certainly was what he was going for, or at least supposed to go for.  If was just executed really, really terribly.

3 hours ago, Mudguard said:

Thanks for linking your previous post on economic models in your earlier post.  I note that the PollyVote site lists the Bread and Peace model (among many others) on its website and incorporates its prediction into its aggregate. They also list the 538 model and also incorporate it into their aggregate.

Now that I've seen the Political Economy model, I'm still not impressed with it's utility.  It's interesting, especially in its simplicity, but it seems pretty useless besides being a relatively simple way of roughly predicting the popular vote shares of each party.  The Lewis-Beck Tien Political Economy Model isn't really based on any theory of voting, so it doesn't provide any insight about why people vote the way that they do.  Their model was simply developed by testing a bunch of different variables and seeing which one(s) fit the data set that they used the best.  What was the original point of citing this model?

Yes, PollyVote includes all kinds of forecasting, that's their mission.  Part of the attractiveness of EV models is precisely what you're referring to - their parsimony.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that's been at least one of the main reasons I've brought them up in the past and partly why I still do today:  using very few metrics taken considerably further away from the election, they perform just about as well as all the over-saturated Monte Carlo's that "data journalists" use to spit out forecasts hour-after-hour come election season.

In terms of what underlies EV theoretically, here's a primer.  Since these are inherently aggregate level models, the discussion within the literature can get quite stale:  do voters vote sociotropically or pocketbook? (spoiler:  sociotropic); are voters retrospective or prospective? (spoiler:  we're never gonna really figure that one out).  And then just different variables and/or variations to the models.  I admit theoretically it's not a very vibrant field, that's why it's not mine.  The original point - in the last thread - was to emphasize that the economy plays an important role in voting behavior.  The original point in January?  I don't remember.

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I do have to apologize

[...]

what I don't agree with is the conclusion. No data scientist would ever take the above model and then conclude that economic anxiety was a primary factor in the election.

These exchanges seem to always boil down to you apologizing for making some flagrant and fundamental error then misrepresenting my position.  I never said economic anxiety was the primary factor.  In fact, I tried to clarify that I am not saying that three different times in the last thread.  I'm saying it was a factor.  The only time I guess you could interpret me as saying it was the primary factor was this:

Quote

I don't know how many times I've shown the economic models predicting the national vote almost exactly, I'm not gonna do it again.  If you want studies that show those that went Obama-Trump also identified the economy as their main concern, there's plenty of those out there as well.

The first sentence I really hope has been covered.  The second is not a controversial statement in the slightest.  The economy is manifestly and consistently one of the top two (with major foreign events only ever overtaking it on occasion) issues when you measure voters' most salient issue.  And in 2016, it was more important among Trump voters than Clinton voters - 90 to 80 according to the quickest source I could find.  Further, what I'd also say if we could ever get passed your strawmanning, is that Obama-Trump voters look a lot more like Obama-Clinton (or Obama-Other) voters when it comes to issues like entitlements (SS/Medicare), economic inequality, and even government intervention than they do Romney-Trump voters.  This suggests their vote remains fluid, and may indeed flip back based on economic circumstances or even simple responsibility attribution (i.e. voting against whomever is in the White House).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

These exchanges seem to always boil down to you apologizing for making some flagrant and fundamental error then misrepresenting my position.  I never said economic anxiety was the primary factor.  In fact, I tried to clarify that I am not saying that three different times in the last thread.  I'm saying it was a factor.  The only time I guess you could interpret me as saying it was the primary factor was this:

You used that economic model as your justification for why voters vote a certain way. Both I and @Mudguard continue to not see a link or even a reasonable p-value between that model and the notion that voters use the economy as their primary source, or did. And before you object to that, note that the reason we're bringing this up at all is because you started this with an objection to my assertion that the primary reason Trump voters voted the way they did was racial insecurity. 

If you're now saying that that is correct, well, cool beans. 

As to making a fragrant error - sorry, I made a small one. It ultimately does not matter in the least whether the factor for GNP is 5x the popularity of the POTUS in power; the objection is entirely around how this correlates to state voting and how you can use it to justify that the economy is a major factor in people's voting decisions. What's the p-value on that - .75 or so based on 6 elections? Come on. 

56 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

  And in 2016, it was more important among Trump voters than Clinton voters - 90 to 80 according to the quickest source I could find

This poll was taken in July. We've given several results since then that point out this doesn't appear to be accurate. 

56 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Further, what I'd also say if we could ever get passed your strawmanning, is that Obama-Trump voters look a lot more like Obama-Clinton (or Obama-Other) voters when it comes to issues like entitlements (SS/Medicare), economic inequality, and even government intervention than they do Romney-Trump voters.  This suggests their vote remains fluid, and may indeed flip back based on economic circumstances or even simple responsibility attribution (i.e. voting against whomever is in the White House).

That article also suggests that the primary people who shifted shifted not on economics or social issues, but on populist issues: "

Of the remaining 13 percent of the electorate qualifying as populists, about 8 percent of electorate had voted for Obama in 2012, while another 5 percent of the electorate had voted for someone else.

Among those populists who voted for Obama, Clinton did terribly. She held onto only 6 in 10 of these voters (59 percent). Trump picked up 27 percent of these voters, and the remaining 14 percent didn’t vote for either major party candidate."

Furthermore, in a BIG BIG paragraph, we get this:

Trump’s biggest enthusiasts within the party are Republicans who hold the most anti-immigration and anti-Muslim views, demonstrate the most racial resentment, and are most likely to view Social Security and Medicare as important.

I've never stated otherwise that their vote isn't fluid (again, strawmanning? Projection much?), but rather that these factors don't matter as much when dealing with Trump the incumbent vs. Trump the new candidate. The major factor I continue to state is that in US politics, it is very, very rare for an incumbent POTUS to be beaten, especially in the last century, and so far Trump - as bad as he looks - does not fit the bill of someone like that. This is especially true given the GOP's built in advantages in voting patterns and their efforts to reinforce those patterns. Furthermore, while Trump's support has gone down, it has not gone down particularly much in the states that got him elected. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Morpheus said:

I’m seeing on MSNBC that Cohen was wiretapped weeks before the raid and there was apparently at least one convo with the WH.

So if the feds have Cohen talking about the Daniels payment with Trump, it's possible that Rudy's performance art of the last 24 hours is a desperate attempt to get ahead of that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Sword of Doom said:

Neo-Nazis: We want an Ethnostate AKA PC term for Aryan Nation, we will commit ethnic cleansing and follow an ideology that preaches genocide to get the ethnostate / aryan nation.

Press: Maybe these guys have a point, lets give them a platform over and over again.

Incels: Women should be literal property, we will kill them if they don't submit!

Press: These boys have a point. Lets give legitmacy to their toxic and violently misogynistic world view and blame women for them hating women and being violent towards women

Leftist: Listen to us, maybe capitalism ruined our lives, maybe we should stop giving far right bigots platforms since they keep growing in numbers and trying to recruit, and more importantly since they keep killing people.

Press: Leftists are opressive and hate free speech.

Also leftists: Here is a comedian that will use free speech in a way that doesn't perpetuate bigotry, but will just use observational comedy about the ridiclous state of things and how the media profits of the normalization of lying fascists as well as mocking the fascists face to face.

Press. Some comedian on the left made fun of us and was vulgar. She crossed a line. waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.

Way too accurate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We're living in an alien simulation, right? And they're just stressing testing the limits? That has to be it, doesn't it? No way reality can keep going in this direction.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Fez said:

We're living in an alien simulation, right? And they're just stressing testing the limits? That has to be it, doesn't it? No way reality can keep going in this direction.

 

 


I've played WWII simulators with less daily chaos.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Pony Empress Jace said:


I've played WWII simulators with less daily chaos.

This is amazing. Paul Ryan vs a Jesuit. In an alternate universe, I'd have written a Jesuit fanfic novel along these lines.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Lost in the scrum of Giuliani’s interview is the fact that he said The Kush was “disposable.”

Is anyone else reminded of Sopranos season 1, when Livia and Junior are talking about what to do about Christopher and Brendan Filone.  Livia says that you can't kill Christopher, he's family.  But the other guy...[shrug]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Is anyone else reminded of Sopranos season 1, when Livia and Junior are talking about what to do about Christopher and Brendan Filone.  Livia says that you can't kill Christopher, he's family.  But the other guy...[shrug]

I swear to god I feel every time I see it like "Eh, Jared the Jew?" is about to come out of his mouth.

I don't know if Guliani is Jewish, but if he is that would make it even more Mob-ish.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Fez said:

We're living in an alien simulation, right? And they're just stressing testing the limits? That has to be it, doesn't it? No way reality can keep going in this direction.

 

 

Idk Fez, we might just be in one, but at least it’s kind of funny again. IF you recall, during the campaign I said there was a fun game: Google “Trump”. All I would do is scroll through the headlines and most of them were hysterical. The after he won’t it ceased being fun and became incredibly horrifying. But in the post Stormy Daniels era, it’s back to funny.

5 hours ago, Mexal said:

Well, according to Trump, the payment to Daniels was to stop her from telling lies, not to keep her from telling the truth. Because that's how hush money works.

To be fair, it's in line with some of Trump's other business ventures.

50 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

This is amazing. Paul Ryan vs a Jesuit. In an alternate universe, I'd have written a Jesuit fanfic novel along these lines.

It's the ultimate religious fight. Put's announcers voice on):

"In the black corner we have an actual man of faith. And in the red corner we have a man who actually has spent his entire career convincing people he's really religious even though his favorite political philosopher always mocked religious people and his actions completely defy the teachings of Jesus."

Who will win? Probably the Padre.

36 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Is anyone else reminded of Sopranos season 1, when Livia and Junior are talking about what to do about Christopher and Brendan Filone.  Livia says that you can't kill Christopher, he's family.  But the other guy...[shrug]

And here is my monthly reminder that I really need to watch this show. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ryan reverses, will keep House chaplain in place
The speaker’s move came after Patrick Conroy sent a fiery letter rescinding his resignation.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/03/house-chaplain-rescinds-resignation-567377

Quote

 

Speaker Paul Ryan Thursday reversed his decision to force House Chaplain Patrick Conroy to step down after the Jesuit priest sent a letter withdrawing his resignation and as bipartisan outrage continued to mount.

“I have accepted Father Conroy’s letter and decided that he will remain in his position as Chaplain of the House,” Ryan said in a statement. “It is my job as speaker to do what is best for this body, and I know that this body is not well served by a protracted fight over such an important post.”

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

And before you object to that, note that the reason we're bringing this up at all is because you started this with an objection to my assertion that the primary reason Trump voters voted the way they did was racial insecurity. 

No.  For the third time, this started because I said:

Quote

66-29 is a pretty big number, one it's plausible to think is a ceiling and had as much to do with the economy as racial resentment.

Now, sure, I was cavalier in saying the economy has as much to do with the election as racial resentment, but since then I've simply been saying (for the sixth time now...I think, I've lost count) that it simply is still a factor.  Has racial resentment been found to be a more significant factor than the economy in 2016?  Yes, you want a cookie?  But that doesn't mean the latter is not a factor as well.

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

You used that economic model as your justification for why voters vote a certain way. Both I and @Mudguard continue to not see a link or even a reasonable p-value between that model and the notion that voters use the economy as their primary source, or did.

[...]

It ultimately does not matter in the least whether the factor for GNP is 5x the popularity of the POTUS in power; the objection is entirely around how this correlates to state voting and how you can use it to justify that the economy is a major factor in people's voting decisions. What's the p-value on that - .75 or so based on 6 elections? Come on. 

So, your focus on p-value is...weird.  It also once again demonstrates you're utterly hopeless in reading these models, but mostly, yeah, it's weird.  The p-value isn't even reported in the Pollyvote link for the LB&T model, so I have no idea where your getting that -.75 from.  And it's based on 18 elections, not 6, so that's another thing you're wrong about. 

But to digress, any model that's published is going to have a significant p-value - significance usually agreed upon as less than .05 (I actually prefer the higher .01 standard, but not with such a small n).  No EV model that isn't significant is going to get passed reviewers.  Hell, no article period that doesn't show significant results for its key variables is going to get passed reviewers (this is actually a huge problem referred to as publication bias - something that kinda sucks because if a good theory is tested properly and yields null results, that can still be very interesting - but that's neither here nor there).

Anyway, I tried to find the p-value(s) in the Pollyvote link and couldn't.  Actually, they're not even reported in the PS article it's based on, which is annoying, but not too surprising considering it's a 3 page article - no space.  However, if you click on the "data back to 1948" link under "Vote Equation," they give you the raw data.  Takes about a minute to c&p that into excel, import to stata, and run a regression.  Here's that output:

regress pop2pvot julypop gnpchan

      Source |       SS           df       MS                  Number of obs   =        18
-------------+----------------------------------        F(2, 15)        =     23.72
       Model |  360.370108         2  180.185054     Prob > F        =    0.0000
    Residual |  113.939337        15  7.59595578   R-squared       =    0.7598
-------------+----------------------------------         Adj R-squared   =    0.7277
       Total |  474.309444        17  27.9005556       Root MSE        =    2.7561

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    pop2pvot |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
     julypop |   .2638903   .0560395     4.71   0.000      .144445    .3833356
     gnpchan |   1.176748   .5275749     2.23   0.041     .0522489    2.301248
       _cons |   37.50372   2.447594    15.32   0.000     32.28679    42.72064
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've bolded the relevant p-values, their correspondent t-scores, plus the n and the r-squared(s).  This is why the model is so impressive!  Do you have any idea how much a political any social scientist would kill to have two IVs that are both significant and explain 73% of the variation of the DV - based on only 18 observations?  Sure, the GNP's p-value is approaching that .05 cutoff at .041, but again an n of 18

And before you say "well that's just because popularity is highly correlated to the two-party vote," I regressed each variable alone as well (which is really just bivariate correlation, but whatever).  Popularity ("julypop") did show an adjusted r-squared of 66% (p = .000).  But GNP growth ("gnpchan") also showed an adjusted r-squared of .3674 (p = .005).  So, completely on its own, the state of the economy explained 37 percent of the variation in the two party vote of every presidential election since 1948.  But I guess you're right, it has nothing to do with voting behavior and there's no evidence to suggest it does.

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

That article also suggests that the primary people who shifted shifted not on economics or social issues, but on populist issues

Yeah no shit man, that's why I cited that article - to illustrate my point.  Drutman is pointing out that racial resentment was the primary factor, but in doing so his very first bullet point is this:

Quote
  • The primary conflict structuring the two parties involves questions of national identity, race, and morality, while the traditional conflict over economics, though still important, is less divisive now than it used to be. This has the potential to reshape the party coalitions.

As in, economic conflict has normally predominated, and still plays a role, but race and identity (which have also always been factors, btw) were the more significant factors this time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Ryan reverses, will keep House chaplain in place
The speaker’s move came after Patrick Conroy sent a fiery letter rescinding his resignation.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/03/house-chaplain-rescinds-resignation-567377

 

Lol as spineless as ever. 

God I can't wait for him to just be a welfare king and leech off our tax payer money, at least we won't have to see his face or hear his obnoxious bs. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

Lol as spineless as ever. 

God I can't wait for him to just be a welfare king and leech off our tax payer money, at least we won't have to see his face or hear his obnoxious bs. 

You are probably making a mistake about Ryan's future activities.  Former big-wig congressmen in tight with the moneymen (libertarian overlords) who own a substantial portion of Congress pretty much outright.  Also knows where dang near all the bodies are buried.  Ryan goes from front-man (Congressman) to fixer - somebody everybody in Congress pretty much has to pay attention to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Is anyone else reminded of Sopranos season 1, when Livia and Junior are talking about what to do about Christopher and Brendan Filone.  Livia says that you can't kill Christopher, he's family.  But the other guy...[shrug]

You mean this?

Fucking perfect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just watched Trump announcing a "faith initiative" at the White House.

And suddenly I had the weirdest thought. After reading @Tywin et al. 's summary...

Quote

Idk Fez, we might just be in one, but at least it’s kind of funny again. IF you recall, during the campaign I said there was a fun game: Google “Trump”. All I would do is scroll through the headlines and most of them were hysterical. The after he won’t it ceased being fun and became incredibly horrifying. But in the post Stormy Daniels era, it’s back to funny.

... I have this odd thought... Trump may be one of the worst presidents the US has ever had (at least in the last century or so), but he's turning out to be a better politician than I expected him to be. Two years ago I didn't expect him to be able to make this kind of purely political move* and -let's be honest- some of us weren't even sure he'd last a year in office. But he's good at pandering to his base after all.
I'm increasingly starting to think it won't take that much for him to be reelected. He might not even need to start a real war (though he still might).

*Yes, I know it's was not his idea. Still...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...