Is the spin making you dizzy?
It’s almost funny to read the contrasting headlines, best seen on a site like RealClearPolitics. Here’s the list I found there last night:
Obama’s Road to Victory in Ohio – Nate Cohn, The New Republic
The Inflection Point: Obama Won’t Catch Romney – Rick Wilson, Ricochet
The State of the States: Obama’s Odds Still Over 70% – Nate Silver, NYT
Gallup Party ID Figures Predict Solid Romney Win – Neil Stevens, RedState
Two Types of Romney Malarkey – Noam Scheiber, The New Republic
The Obama Campaign Is Right to Panic – Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post
It’s Always Been a Matter of Trust – Steve Benen, MSNBC
Holes in the Obama Battleship – Jonah Goldberg, National Review
Yin and Yang, matter and anti-matter, glass half full half empty—these paired-yet-opposite sets of prognostications give us whiplash as they cancel each other out. Of course, some are right and some are wrong, but we won’t know which is which until the final denouement.
Until then, only the Shadow knows, and he’s not telling.
[NOTE: Like you, perhaps, I tend to think that the articles that predict the election will go the way I want it to display more logic and better reasoning all around. But alas, that doesn’t mean they will end up being correct.]
Quote, from April of this year, b/c it still seems exactly on target. Have said the same, since 2011, b/c any of several Repub candidates would have defeated Obama, on account of the American voter was always going to notice that Obama is a cotton candy POTUS; and on account of any of several Repub candidates being clearly superior to Obama.
from http://neoneocon.com/2012/04/14/2012-referendum-on-obama/#comment-342759
In that comment section, Uncle Fred’s opinion was similar to mine. Others commenters, over the months, have agreed with us.
Just as one could see, in 2008, exactly who Obama was: one could also see, by 2011 at the latest, how the American voter was going to react at the polls in 2012. If we turn out to be wrong, it will be because will be b/c we underestimated the American voter, and b/c Romney goes beyond 330 electoral votes, instead of the 300ish to 330ish electoral votes which were long envisioned.
Last note: Nate Silver: once respected his opinions; now suspect he has been paid by the Obama Campaign.
re Nate Silver: or blackmailed.
A little off topic, but I definitely think it is time to modify the electoral process.
We have witnessed more vividly than in any other campaign how the majority of the country sits ignored, while the campaign is waged in a handful of states.
My semi-educated take–I did take some obligatory political science courses in my International Relations under-graduate curriculum, but ignored most of the blather–is that we should have an electoral college with proportional electors by state. That way, it will still be beneficial for a candidate to mine a state where a minority of electoral votes can be had.
There are many problems with the current system. One that strikes home in my new domicile of California is the frustration of knowing that your presidential vote is meaningless. However, if I lived a few hours drive East, in Arizona or Nevada, my vote might have meaning. The frustration often leads to apathy among minority voters, further exacerbating the situation. The system also skews the vote badly. Significant portions of California are actually pretty conservative; but the votes from those areas are simply swamped by the major population centers. That is fine when you are voting for a legislature, but it is not right to artificially disqualify those votes in a national election.
I have read Nate Silver’s article, and it is complete BS. Statistics can not be applied to such problems as prognosis of real-world complex system behavior. My experience with applied math tells me that, because all probabilistic reasoning is based on Central Limit Theorem, whose assumptions are not true for these situations. If it were otherwise, Stock Exchange would be defunct long ago. Every broker knows that past performance is no guarantee of future results. Mathematical wizardry in prognosis plays the same role as crystal ball, smoke and mirrors in office of fortune-teller: to con the client.
Yes, the spin is making me dizzy. I want it to be over, and I hope I never have to listen to Obama again.
I’ve been trying to keep my sanity by looking at other indicators which are harder to measure.
Pre-campaign: This year we had Scott Walker winning in Wisconsin despite massive outside support for his recall. The mayors of Boston and Chicago called for a boycott of Chik-Fil-A because of Dan Cathy’s, the owner, belief in traditional values. Millions of people spent hours in line at the outlets to show support for Cathy.
Campaign: Romney is drawing huge crowds wherever he goes. There was a thirty mile backup in Colorado for a recent event. Reporters on a campaign bus in Virginia said “Wow” when the crowd suddenly came into view.
Obama’s crowds are reported to be one third of their 2008 size. He’s mostly campaigning at Colleges and Universities where he has a captive audience.
Don’t dispare, even the polls are going Romney’s way.
Paul in Boston,
Do not forget the results of the 2010 election. That was a huge rejection of “hope and change”.
Reading the headlines of the columns each day on Real Clear Politics is a constant reminder that liberals live in a completely different world. It isn’t just a difference of policy preferences. It’s two different views of the most basic facts which are violently in conflict. So different that we’re talking different colors to describe the color of the grass or the color of the sky.
Whenever Obama had a primary opponent, no matter how unknown, that opponent pulled 40% of the vote. Chick a fill, the success of the Obama documentary, voter enthusiasm, wisconsin recalls, the 2010 election results.
These are all “tells”. I think the election will be a huge win for Romney.