A wonderful article. I'm assuming he'll sober up in a week or so and regret this classic of bathos. Chris Christie a "gelatinous clown," LOL.
Loser: the idea that America is a conservative nation. This makes 5 out of the past 6 Presidential elections where Democrats won the popular vote.
What I'm saying is that Ohio wasn't the tipping point. Based on the latest results, the tipping point was Colorado, and Obama's margin there was almost double that of Ohio (+3.7 vs +1.9). Even if Colorado had gone Republican, Ohio still wouldn't have been the tipping point. Virginia at +3.0 would've been.
Trump now cleaning up his Twitter account: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/donald-trump-deletes-parts-twitter-tirade But adding to it as well Trump tweeted a retort on Wednesday saying Williams "knows that I think his newscast has become totally boring so he took a shot at me last night." He added in another tweet, "Wouldn't you love to have my ratings?"
Winner: Obamafor America, for recognizing that campaign fatigue would make TV spending less effective in the fall: “October TV matters less,” he said. “We decided to make a grand bet.” But there was more to the strategy than just damaging Romney. Messina’s bet was the first stage of a two-part strategy. Over the past four Presidential election cycles, even as campaign strategists have spent more on the blunt instrument of TV advertising (the air war), the work being done at the grass-roots level to reach voters in person (the ground game) has become far more important. As Messina described it, the summer airwave blitz would soften up the opponent in the eyes of voters, but victory would be carried home by Obama’s volunteer army on the ground.
I'm of two minds on this. Yeah, it's fun to laugh at the ReMs despair, but I know of how he feels. I had to live through not one, but two, George W wins and a pair of Reagan landslides. And the Clinton clobbering in the first midterm elections. But you know what, we're still here. America is still standing. I mean, if we could survive 8 years of George W, we'll certainly weather 4 more of Obama. <<sarcasm>> What really pisses me off about the radical right (OK, there are a lot of things, but this is foremost on my mind) in general is how they play the fear card, as is in: I fear for the future of this nation. And McCain here is dripping in that. And yet the ReMs simultaneously wave the patriotic banner of American Exceptionalism, impugning the rest of us who have differing notions of patriotism. They want America to be this empire state, and yet they think the country is fragile that an Obama presidency -- when they control the house and have most of the votes on the Supreme Court -- is ludicrous. I'd like to tell them what I fear... On the other hand, he was dead-on with his skewering of Christie:
Yes, I read the article from back in April. Did you read the quotes I posted from the past few weeks? Point is: Ohio wasn't the tipping point. Can we agree on that much?
When somebody gets 332 electoral votes, there is no tipping point. Which has been my point for a while now. The assumption that Ohio was key rested on the assumption that Romney was better than his poll numbers and that the race would be very close. There was implicitly a pro-Romney forecast built into the statement.
Actually, I'm thinking maybe we're all worse off. Look at it this way: in 1980 Reagan won the Republican nomination. He defeated a future president, George Bush I, and a pair of Senate majority leaders in Howard Baker and Bob Dole. Throw in for good measure, two governors and John Anderson, who would eventually capture 14% of the popular vote. Pretty stiff competition... This summer Mitt Romney knocked off: Michelle Bachmann Rick Santorum Newt Gingrinch Herman Cain John Huntsman Ron Paul Rick Perry Remember the derision the 7 Democratic candidates got in 1988? The media branded them the Seven Dwarfs. They were veritable titans among men compared this lot. There are smart, conscientious people in the GOP. We just didn't get to see them at all.
That fear mongering thing: you'd almost think they were doing that to conceal the weakness and/or unpalatable nature of their policies. One thing that ticks me off is what I've heard on bigsoccer being called "strumming the rubes," though it's not always rubes. They have the Catholic hierarchy convinced that they're the pro life party, but when they had both houses, the Presidency, AND the Supreme Court from 2001-2006, they did nothing. It's almost as if they don't want to do away with abortion: that would lessen turnout. I was impressed that he used "gelatinous" and "perfidious," but I got the feeling he had other words on his list he didn't get to use, like "quiddity," "hypnopompic," and "jesuitical."
I don't think Nate defines it the way you do - so one of us is missing something and I'm pretty tired so it could be me. He sorts the states by polls and how close the states are - so the states that aren't close - NY and CA - are far from being tipping point states - and when it's not that close of an election the closest states may not be the tipping points. Just because you can take out Ohio and still elect Obama doesn't mean he was wrong by how he defines it.
I never did understand how Silver uses tipping point, but I know that he's smart so however he uses it makes sense. The media, not so much. Many of 'em were focusing on Ohio by giving Romney all the close states. Well yeah if you wish Virginia and Florida and NC and Iowa over to Romney, then Ohio is a tipping state. But you'd better make clear those assumptions in the article. Because otherwise you're portraying the election as a 50/50 flip when it's not.
Whew. That was close. I was worried I was going to wake up this morning, only to find out I was a racist.
What a great word. I had to look it up: of or pertaining the semiconscious state prior to complete wakefulness.
There's kind of a contrarian narrative going around that Silver looked good because the polls were good (or lucky, or both). It seems obvious, but Silver's value added is supposed to be his weighting that should mitigate poor polling. Case in point - missed Senate races. It happens, and getting races wrong doesn't mean the methodology is actually wrong. Still, it seems that if the polls are off the mark, then his predictions are off the mark too.