US Politics: Does the fat man singing count?

[Relic]

15 hours ago, Sharpes said:

Just confirmed Giuliani tested positive for covid-19. They might also want to test him for hair dye toxicity and sanity.

Wishing him the swiftest of recoveries. 

 

 

 

 

 

Really. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Compilation of Senate polls out of Georgia: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/georgia-senate-polls/

Didnt realize everyone's favorite Trafalgar Group had a poll out with Osoff up by 1 and Loeffler up by 5 (a bit counterintuitive, but whatever)

Anyway, tl;dr polls are close and the actual election could go either way.

[argonak]

54 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Compilation of Senate polls out of Georgia: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/georgia-senate-polls/

Didnt realize everyone's favorite Trafalgar Group had a poll out with Osoff up by 1 and Loeffler up by 5 (a bit counterintuitive, but whatever)

Anyway, tl;dr polls are close and the actual election could go either way.

Are we really going to start paying attention to polls again?  After what happened last month?  

It feels a bit like Charlie Brown playing football.

[Maithanet]

Just now, argonak said:

Are we really going to start paying attention to polls again?  After what happened last month?  

It feels a bit like Charlie Brown playing football.

Polls in Georgia were actually quite accurate, for what that's worth. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Yes we are. Georgia was better than many other states (for instance, Florida and Wisconsin); I will caveat this by stating that it will all depend on turnout, and we dont have a good handle on how that will pan out.

Otherwise, as always, these polls are a good indicator to observe that the election in Georgia will be tight.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

 

15 hours ago, Zorral said:

Waahat? 

Like to see any rethug doing remotely any of the things AOC does regularly --

https://thehill.com/homenews/527932-ocasio-cortez-raises-200k-to-fight-food-housing-insecurity-during-video-game-battle

Your problems with her are incomprehensible from where I, at least, sit.  That, unlike our household and those of almost every one we know, rethugs hate her, and a lot of older white politicians have troubles with her -- and they pretty come down to her being 'uppity', i.e. she's confident in herself, and no young woman of color has any right to be like that -- including, which she also is, happy inside her own skin, and effective.

Yeah, I was talking about Tanden. AOC is top notch lefty, in my opinion. She gives me hope that maybe my son won't live such a financially precarious existence as his father.

11 hours ago, SFDanny said:

I thought long and hard about not responding to this, but I will throw my thoughts out there, and then will stop.

I'm going to start by referencing two examples of sectarian nonsense. First, from before I was born and in another country. The Communist Party of Germany, in the days before the takeover by Hitler, was a powerful political force. The Socialists were even more so. But the Communists had an analysis of the politics of pre-Nazi Germany that included the idea of "Social Fascists." That meaning Socialist in form, but Fascist in deeds. If you haven't ever heard of or read about this idea, please, look it up. So, instead of seeing the great danger of Hitler's movement, the Communists said the Socialists were the greater enemy. The Socialist had similar terrible ideas about the Communists, and instead of joining together their sectarian analysis lead to a divided resistance to the Nazis and a vastly weakened response to them. It wasn't until later that the Communists changed their analysis and moved to united/popular front tactics that helped end Hitler's and Mussolini's rule. Two parties that advocated the same goal of socialism could not get past their sectarian division to literally save their own lives. In hindsight it should be a lesson to everyone about understanding who the real enemy to working people really is.

Flash forward to 2015/2016 and here in the United States we had an anti-democratic, authoritarian threat appear in the person of Donald Trump. A man whose ideas spoke straight from the fascist playbook. Yet, we had people here say there was no difference between Hillary Clinton and Trump. In fact, we had people who claimed to stand for socialism saying Hillary was the greater danger and even that if Trump was elected it might be a good thing because the American people would wake up to what capitalism was all about. Echos of the sectarian ideas of Germany's Communists and Socialists reverberating in our own politics.

If one can't see the difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, then their analysis is so flawed it needs to be ignored. That doesn't mean people have to love Clinton. It doesn't mean that one shouldn't disagree with her on critical issues. It does mean she wasn't the enemy in 2016, nor is she today.

Neera Tanden isn't the enemy today either. People who want to take away our democracy - people led by Trump and are willing to overturn the election by force - they are the enemy. People like the armed thugs who showed up at the Michigan Secretary of State's home tonight. People like those who planned to kill the Michigan governor are the enemy. And the people that push them to do their dirty work are the enemy. Trump first and foremost.  Anyone whose sectarian ideas would have us believe allies, with who we may have serious disagreements, are the same or worse than the danger that Tump represents, is lost in a fantasy world. Now, I love fantasy stories, but I don't construct them in place of reality when it comes to political analysis. I'm done

Then don't respond. If whatever it is I'm saying bugs you so much--and all I'm saying is you continually ignore what I'm saying versus what you're projecting onto me because of Hitler or whatever. You are making wild claims about what I believe based off an argument you've had with someone else somewhere else. That's all I can fathom is happening here--nothing else makes sense. If you think the modern left in the US is reflective of your country's history, yikes. Really good reading of history there.

More than one enemy exists, and I clarified for you--she is the enemy of progress. Democrats, Tanden among them, pretend they care about progress, but they don't. 

So, whatever your deal is, you're right: you won't convince me. You're operating on a binary of two strawmen. 

[Maithanet]

13 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Yes we are. Georgia was better than many other states (for instance, Florida and Wisconsin); I will caveat this by stating that it will all depend on turnout, and we dont have a good handle on how that will pan out.

Otherwise, as always, these polls are a good indicator to observe that the election in Georgia will be tight.

Whether it's one poll or twenty, if one candidate is leading by just a point or two, the race is basically a toss-up.  That's all we know about Georgia right now. 

Pollsters are working on correcting what went wrong in 2016 and 2020.  There are indications that polling is getting harder, because fewer and fewer people are answering their phones and taking surveys (like 1% of people called).  And indications are that those that do pick up and are willing to answer questions  are increasingly different from the 99% of people who will not take surveys.  That does not strike me as surprising.  I'm not sure how pollsters can get around that, although I've heard a couple of different theories on ways to try.  It's an interesting problem, for sure. 

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Whether it's one poll or twenty, if one candidate is leading by just a point or two, the race is basically a toss-up.  That's all we know about Georgia right now. 

Pollsters are working on correcting what went wrong in 2016 and 2020.  There are indications that polling is getting harder, because fewer and fewer people are answering their phones and taking surveys (like 1% of people called).  And indications are that those that do pick up and are willing to answer questions  are increasingly different from the 99% of people who will not take surveys.  That does not strike me as surprising.  I'm not sure how pollsters can get around that, although I've heard a couple of different theories on ways to try.  It's an interesting problem, for sure. 

The cool explanation I heard was from an experienced pollster who said that the people who normally answer polls are already weird compared to the rest of the population because they in general trust people as a default, which isn't usual. The real change has been that those kind of weird people who trust their fellow humans had been spread across the political spectrum to a large extent. But increasingly, that kind of person has gone away from Republican politics and towards either independent or democrat leaning, and so it's far harder to find anyone who is a Republican and will pick up the phone. 

Another story I read had pointed out that Republican voters are increasingly incredibly isolated from not only people that are different than them but just people in general; it was something like 18% of Republican voters do not regularly interact with humans outside of their household, which is often a single household. 

[Martell Spy]

It's hard to come to a firm conclusion that polls and pollsters suck right now as we don't really know, just as we didn't know for a fact that James Comey tanked Clinton's chances. It was one of several likely explanations at the time and makes him a great whipping boy. It may be that 2020 was just unprecedented due to the pandemic. It may be as simple as Democrats not canvassing enough due to the pandemic. But we don't really know that either. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Compilation of Senate polls out of Georgia: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/georgia-senate-polls/

Didnt realize everyone's favorite Trafalgar Group had a poll out with Osoff up by 1 and Loeffler up by 5 (a bit counterintuitive, but whatever)

Anyway, tl;dr polls are close and the actual election could go either way.

Don't do this to yourself, man.

We are talking about Georgia. You might as well hope for two senate pick ups in Florida, when Rubio and Luthor are up for re-election.

It's simply not happening. As for Loeffler, she kows her audience. Why do you think she refused to recognize Biden as President elect? Biden won that state, because the incumbepetent succesfully surpressed his own votes by raging about absentee voting. Now he milks them for cash by ranting about the election that was stolen, and Loeffler happily indulges him, to keep the cash cows stoked up and angry at the ballot boxes. A case of political mad cow disease if you will, but Loeffler (and the GOP in general) will eat up that burger made from those votes all the same. It's not like they have use for working brain in their alternate universe anyway.

[DMC]

It's pretty damn obvious at this point that as the response rate for pollsters has significantly decreased in recent years, the population of respondents has skewed Democrat (or GOP voters have more frequently opted out as respondents, whichever way you wanna put it).  For the time being, I don't see why one can't just have a built-in handicap on this like other asymmetries in the aggregate, e.g. the popular vote v. the EC vote, or the GOP's gerrymandering advantage v. the generic ballot, or simply the partisan lean of a state/district.  So, if the polling aggregate says a race is even, then it's slight advantage GOP.  If the Dem candidate is up 2-3 points, then it's actually a tossup.  And so on. 

If you want you could even particularize this handicap by state-by-state - e.g. in Wisconsin a Dem needs, like, a 10 point lead - or even by pollster - e.g. trusting Selzer in Iowa but not anyone else.  And it's also true that the polling in Georgia was fairly accurate not only last month but also in 2018 - Abrams actually slightly outperformed the aggregate average there in spite of Kemp's flagrant cheating.  But I really don't see what the big deal is if you understand the context, which it seems like everyone complaining about it should.

[Maithanet]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

It's pretty damn obvious at this point that as the response rate for pollsters has significantly decreased in recent years, the population of respondents has skewed Democrat (or GOP voters have more frequently opted out as respondents, whichever way you wanna put it).  For the time being, I don't see why one can't just have a built-in handicap on this like other asymmetries in the aggregate, e.g. the popular vote v. the EC vote, or the GOP's gerrymandering advantage v. the generic ballot, or simply the partisan lean of a state/district.  So, if the polling aggregate says a race is even, then it's slight advantage GOP.  If the Dem candidate is up 2-3 points, then it's actually a tossup.  And so on. 

If you want you could even particularize this handicap by state-by-state - e.g. in Wisconsin a Dem needs, like, a 10 point lead - or even by pollster - e.g. trusting Selzer in Iowa but not anyone else.  And it's also true that the polling in Georgia was fairly accurate not only last month but also in 2018 - Abrams actually slightly outperformed the aggregate average there in spite of Kemp's flagrant cheating.  But I really don't see what the big deal is if you understand the context, which it seems like everyone complaining about it should.

It sounds like you're describing putting your finger on the scale to account for the difference between what poll respondents are saying and what you expect will happen, based on historical trends.  But that is basically what pollsters like Trafalgar were doing that was so lambasted in the leadup to 2020.  If you assume that you already know what the poll is going to say, then what is the point of doing a poll?  You say that you should make state-level adjustments based on where errors have occurred in the past (for example, R+3 in Florida, R+5 in Wisconsin).  But we really don't have any idea what that number ought to be until after the election.  In 2012, pollsters consistently missed how well Democrats would do in the midwest because Obama always overachieved in the midwest.  That was part of why Trumps wins in MI/WI were so shocking, because Obama won them both so decisively.  Trump overachieved in the midwest both elections, and MAYBE the next Republican will do the same there, but it's no guarantee. 

I dunno, what you're outlining doesn't sound like a very robust analysis, it sounds more like a back of the envelope method of guessing who is going to win each state.  Which...isn't really polling. 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

It sounds like you're describing putting your finger on the scale to account for the difference between what poll respondents are saying and what you expect will happen, based on historical trends.

No, it's accounting for the systemic error in the sample.  That's importantly different than expecting what will happen.  Based on both 2016 and 2020, the systemic error seems to clearly be D+2-4 overall, but YMMV.  Like I said, this is the exact same thing we do with estimating how much the Dem candidate will have to win the popular vote in order to confidently win the EC, or how large the Dems generic ballot lead will have to be to win the House, etc.

4 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I dunno, what you're outlining doesn't sound like a very robust analysis, it sounds more like a back of the envelope method of guessing who is going to win each state.  Which...isn't really polling. 

It's not polling, it's interpreting the polling.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Yikes city !

There's some seriously scary problems with the U.S. short term funding markets.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/07/investing/wall-street-biden-trump-regulation-fsoc/index.html

The other team is warning about a cliff as they scuttle out the door. Scary stuff, and by scary stuff I mean 2008 style scary.

I do not trust the stock markets heighth momentarily either. It seems strange that it's near its highs while the government and fed are needing to inject massive stimulus to keep this economy crawling?

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

7 hours ago, Relic said:

Wishing him the swiftest of recoveries. 

 

 

 

 

 

Really. 

Well this is a generous statement.

The only thing that gives me pause in agreeing is the thought that if this man were to recover, we know from his previous behavior, he would likely continue to be out spreading the infectious disease in the not too distant future.

Society is much safer with the Rudy ghoul right where he is. I cannot wish for his recovery.

[Fragile Bird]

The sticking point for more relief seems to be McConnell’s demand that businesses be exempt from liability if someone catches Covid-19 working for the business or visiting premises. We all know how litigious the US is, have lawsuits flooded the courts?

[SFDanny]

2 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

 

Yeah, I was talking about Tanden. AOC is top notch lefty, in my opinion. She gives me hope that maybe my son won't live such a financially precarious existence as his father.

Then don't respond. If whatever it is I'm saying bugs you so much--and all I'm saying is you continually ignore what I'm saying versus what you're projecting onto me because of Hitler or whatever. You are making wild claims about what I believe based off an argument you've had with someone else somewhere else. That's all I can fathom is happening here--nothing else makes sense. If you think the modern left in the US is reflective of your country's history, yikes. Really good reading of history there.

More than one enemy exists, and I clarified for you--she is the enemy of progress. Democrats, Tanden among them, pretend they care about progress, but they don't. 

So, whatever your deal is, you're right: you won't convince me. You're operating on a binary of two strawmen. 

Just to clarify, my country is the US. I'm a lifelong socialist who was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm also quite aware of the sectarianism of certain elements of the socialist left. I've also spent my life in the Trade Union movement and have been a part of negotiations numerous times against very large corporations. I'm well aware of who my enemies are, and how that changes from situation to situation, in different contexts. 

We won't likely convince each other of anything, but your targeting of allies against Trump as enemies convinces me we shouldn't waste our time in further discussion. Good luck in grad school. 

 

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, SFDanny said:

Just to clarify, my country is the US. I'm a lifelong socialist who was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.

These two sentences contradict each other. 

[GrimTuesday]

32 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The sticking point for more relief seems to be McConnell’s demand that businesses be exempt from liability if someone catches Covid-19 working for the business or visiting premises. We all know how litigious the US is, have lawsuits flooded the courts?

I don't think that we are seeing a ton yet, I think this is preparation for a massive number that will come out of this including class action suits. Highest profile one is a lawsuit against Tyson which had a large number of infections, little to no mitigation practices, and management having a betting pool in one plant on how many employees will get Covid. Make no mistake, this is about further disempowering workers and taking another step towards corporate serfdom where there is no remedy for corporate malice.

America is not actually that litigious (this article has some stats in it), that is largely a narrative that has built up to discredit things like class action lawsuits and people suing corporations for their malignant in the name of corporate profits. That is not to say that there aren't a lot of lawsuits filed, but corporations do not need additional protections from what they currently have.

[SFDanny]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

These two sentences contradict each other. 

Yes, it is true various parts of the Bay Area have been characterized as the "People's Republic of [fill in the blank]." But truth be told, the GOP has the right about us San Franciscans - San Francisco politics are taking over the US. Slowly, but surely, we advance our secret agenda!