In his dozen years of fame, Karl Rove has been wrong about a lot of things, most notably about the long term effects of immigration on the GOP. Karl was going to brilliantly manipulate immigrants into voting Republican to usher in an age of GOP dominance, like Mark Hanna did for William McKinley.
But, few find unchanging realities (immigrants and their children mostly vote Democrat) terribly interesting or even respectable to think about, so Karl is still considered a major source of wisdom on this topic.
But, few find unchanging realities (immigrants and their children mostly vote Democrat) terribly interesting or even respectable to think about, so Karl is still considered a major source of wisdom on this topic.
On the other hand, Karl was wrong on Election Night about one state, Ohio, for about an hour or two, and he may never live that down.
As you may recall, Obama jumped out to a sizable lead in early vote counting in Ohio, but then Romney started narrowing the gap as more votes came in. However, with 23 percent of the votes left to count and Obama up by only 991 votes in the official tally, Fox News called Ohio for the President, in effect calling the whole election. Rove vociferously protested that this call, like the dual wrong calls various networks made over Florida in 2000, was premature.
After awhile that night, it turned out the Fox analysts were right about Ohio and Rove was wrong, and Obama held on to win Ohio.
This is widely considered a humiliating catastrophe from which Rove's reputation may never recover. Because what everybody actually finds interesting are near toss-up competitions that will be over real soon so we can know who is the winner and who is the loser. The more random the result, the more exciting we find it.
So, Rove being wrong for 12 years about the impact of immigration on his Party ... mehhhhhh.
Rove being wrong for 120 minutes about one closely contested state ... what a loser!
As you may recall, Obama jumped out to a sizable lead in early vote counting in Ohio, but then Romney started narrowing the gap as more votes came in. However, with 23 percent of the votes left to count and Obama up by only 991 votes in the official tally, Fox News called Ohio for the President, in effect calling the whole election. Rove vociferously protested that this call, like the dual wrong calls various networks made over Florida in 2000, was premature.
After awhile that night, it turned out the Fox analysts were right about Ohio and Rove was wrong, and Obama held on to win Ohio.
This is widely considered a humiliating catastrophe from which Rove's reputation may never recover. Because what everybody actually finds interesting are near toss-up competitions that will be over real soon so we can know who is the winner and who is the loser. The more random the result, the more exciting we find it.
So, Rove being wrong for 12 years about the impact of immigration on his Party ... mehhhhhh.
Rove being wrong for 120 minutes about one closely contested state ... what a loser!
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61 comments:
karl rove is wrong about ohio but right about demographics hurting GOP. apparently, sean hannity and boehner agrees with him too.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/266961-boehner-open-to-comprehensive-immigration-reform-deal-with-obama
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/11/hannity-ive-evolved-on-immigration-and-support-a-pathway-149078.html
Back when Rove was pushing amnesty in '06, I remember Charles Krauthammer opposing it. Now, he's flipped. I wonder if this is part of a Rube Goldberg grand strategy that goes something like this:
Amnesty + $16 trillion+ in debt = Cloward-Piven - guaranteed annual income. -> Welfare state collapses, Democrats revert to pre-FDR state. GOP competitive again.
@daveinhackenflack
You're attributing malice to something which has much a more simpler explanation: reactive stupidity.
You might want to read a little more closely. Rove and company spent 2001-2009 telling everyone that mass Mexican immigration would be a boon for the GOP. Those articles claimed the exact opposite.
In any case, trying to win over Hispanics by supporting amnesty will end about as well for the GOP as trying to win over Jews by taking Likidnik stances on Mideast policy did. (I.e. it won't work at all, and will probably just cause more problems.)
the issue here is not so much randomness as it is culture, the subculture of the mass media, and the 'allowed' talking points. Immigration is a subject that is only allowed to be approached and discussed in certain, well-defined, circumscribed, limited ways.
The mass media is a highly conformist profession. And the people who are visible in that profession make a LOT of money. Everyone in it is very cautious about 'doing the right thing.' One screw-up and you are out! Here is an analogy you will understand: the NFL is well-known as a 'copycat league.' What that means is that it has a highly conformist subculture, and that someone who has risen in it is cautious about doing something new, because if you do something new and fail, you will become a point of discussion and people will call for your head.
The same sort of things goes on in the media. No one wants to make a wrong move.
But the interesting question is what forces, what factors are involved in SHAPING that media subculture?
Is that media subculture that allows only well-defined and circumscribed immigration discussion shaped by random forces and factors, or is it possible to tease out some of these of these forces that act to shape the media subculture?
Let's look at who or what is prominent in the media: the mass media is part of large corporations. These corporations have stockholders. Most corporate stocks, like most wealth is ultimately owned by the wealthy.
And now let us consider who manages the media: these managers make lots of money. Millions.
Hmmm....wealthy investors and multimillionaire managers. Is it possible that their self-interests and their views, which is shaped by their self-interest, MIGHT have something to do with shaping the dominant media subculture? Gosh, I think maybe so!
A subculture is like a species of animal. Animals are evolved through generations. They change. They change because environmental forces shape them over generations. If an ice age comes, animals get thicker fur because the colder weather selectively boosts thick fur mutations. Also, consider domestic animals, such as the cow or the pig, which produces which is used to make bacon, which you might find in a 'bacon and lettuce and tomato' sandwich. (looks directly at reader).
These domestic animals have characteristics which are shaped by homo sapiens through generations of selective breeding. Homo sapiens have a self interest in producing pigs with lots of meat on them so that homo sapiens can eat a nice BLT. So the characteristics of pigs are shaped so as to please homo sapiens.
The media subculture is like a pig. Its characteristics are shaped over decades in order to satisfy the self-interests of rich investors and millionaires. It's not a conspiracy, just like fat pigs are not a conspiracy. It is instead an ecosystem with quasi-organic entities (subcultures) and environmental factors (self-interests of powerful players (investors and managers) and not so powerful players (workers).
This is an ecosystem of ideology and subculture. Welcome to the real world. Blue pill or red pill for you today?
Steve's right here Karl Rove is wrong on many things. Romney did better usually in white red states versus the deep south or Texas. In many of the white red states Oklahoma Romney got over 60 percent of the vote and under 60 percent in Texas and the deep south.
Guys like Rove helped to irrevocably destroy the country in their blind, greedy scramble to gain the upper hand. What good is becoming King of the Hill when the hill has just become a dung heap?
http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2012/11/race-was-not-the-key-factor-in-romneys-defeat/#more-47571
Here is a contrarion take by a quant that *the browning of America* does not have an impact on the election outcome and I think he is correct. The family values of whites are the determinative factor and he came up with a white, childless, cohabitation ratio.
Among his take-aways:
*The very whitest states went to Obama, except West Virginia.
*The brownest states went to Romney: the Deep South and Texas.
*Too many blacks, so long as they remain a minority, affect white voting behavior, more than canceling out the initial effect.
________________
This is not to say that there is not effect. That would be seen in the nominees and where they put forth their efforts to keep the coalition together.
Nothing says "impact of immigration" like the following stat:
Estimate the winner's share of the white vote for every presidential election. I'm willing to bet Romney's finishes in the top five. Certainly the top eight.
Let's see... '84, '64, '04, maybe '20, '36, '56, beat Mitt.
Rove and a whole bunch of other prominent Republican talking heads spent the last couple months of the election spreading BS about how the polls were all secretly biased against Romney, and that the election was almost certainly going to be a big Romney win. While getting Ohio wrong for a couple hours doesn't discredit anyone, building a fantasy world in which they were winning does discredit them. (Though since Rove was raising a gazillion dollars by sweet-talking gullible Republican billionaires out of some money, it is absolutely nuts that anyone would have taken his comments about the election at face value anyway--the fact that most big media sources do this, despite huge and obvious conflicts of interest like Rove had, is one reason you should take their commentary with a big handful of salt.)
A whole bunch of prominent talking heads made stuff up about how the polls were all biased, in order to help the prospects of their party, and perhaps also because they came to believe their own BS. Probably most of their audience won't remember that in the future, since the talking heads told the audience what they wanted to hear. But if you, personally, want to avoid being fed a line of bullshit, you should remember what these guys did.
It's too damned easy to forget that stuff, to know intellectually that someone has lied to you or been grossly wrong on many occasions, but to sort of let it slide because they're telling you what you want to hear, and they're on your side. But that way lies trusting Steven J Gould on IQ tests and Thomas Friedman on foreign policy.
Nobody ever suggests the Republicans in the South need to appeal to minorities to win because successful winners don't need advice.
Republicans gave up their aversion to courting conservative Christians and began doing things like tying socialism to secularism in the early 90s, ushering in the Republican revolution of '94 and producing mostly good off-year elections ever since.
This has been really good because I believe that Agnostic is onto something about cocooning as well as the behavior of pastoral people. Taken together, this means Republicans are uniquely disadvantaged during "low crime times" or "feminine" times, whatever you want to call it. A significant number of whites are averse to authority to begin with and they just "drop out" and don't even bother to vote third party during these times. Agnostic has explained what made 2004 unique.
OTOH, Rs are uniquely advantaged during rising crime times. Even then, R's have to be careful because this group may do something crazy like back a third party... and it doesn't take much to turn them off.
My suggestion for the problem Rs have in low crime times is to continue doing what has helped them in off-year elections since the 90s: become less averse to going after Christians. Specifically, do voter-drives at churches as well as other outdoor venues like bike fests, car shows, etc. Go after the Amish, for pete's sake. So much low-hanging fruit.
The Dems got over that hang-up a long time ago. What Rs would gain would trump anything Ds get from it and would go a long way to mitigating so many "pastoralists" staying home; they're certainly staying home during those off-year elections, but we still win them.
(When the pastoralists come out, and are pleased, along with good economies, we get the Reagan and Nixon landslides)
As an aside, there was a very good reason for Rove to visibly appear to believe that Romney had the election in the bag, and that Ohio was going to go their way: He would like to raise more money from his current crop of gullible billionares in another four years. He has to convince *them* that he was just as surprised as they were by the shocking election outcome, in which people voted very much as the polls had said they would. Otherwise, they might suspect that he knew exactly what the polls meant, but was hitting them up for more money up till the end anyway, for his own benefit.
This also strikes me as a likely explanation for the weird line of BS about the polls spread by the right end of the mainstream media, and even pushed to some extent by the middle and left ends in the attacks on Nate Silver:. Everyone seems to agree that unprecedented amounts of money were being raised by superPACs. You can't raise much money when the election is a foregone conclusion (though it really wasn't in this case--it was close, but Obama had a big enough lead it was pretty likely he would win.). Hence, there was probably a great deal of pressure from the folks trying to raise that money to play up the closeness of the race.
If that's true, looking at pundits who jmped on the "the polls are biased" and "Nate Silver don't know nothin'" bandwagons probably gives us some hints about which pundits are willing to change their message when pressed, either by promised rewards or threatened consequences.
The other side of this is that, in battleground states, political ads were a huge chunk of broadcasters' revenue. That might have created another incentive for media companies to report the horserace as closer than it was.
However, with 23 percent of the votes left to count and Obama up by only 991 votes in the official tally, Fox News called Ohio for the President, in effect calling the whole election. Rove vociferously protested that this call, like the dual wrong calls various networks made over Florida in 2000, was premature.
I think it WAS premature. I'm against the news media "calling" elections at all. Let the votes get counted and announce the results.
The percentage of black voters in Ohio was a lot bigger than in 2008. In fact the percentage of black voters in Ohio was a quite a bit bigger than the percentage of blacks living in the state. Something very fishy there.
"Rove and a whole bunch of other prominent Republican talking heads spent the last couple months of the election spreading BS about how the polls were all secretly biased against Romney, and that the election was almost certainly going to be a big Romney win."
A big problem with that is that if people think it's in the bag, they may not bother to vote. And since GOP talking heads mostly preach to the choir, they affect GOP voters far more than the opposition. You want to be optimistic, because everyone wants to vote for a winner, and there's the bandwagon effect. But I doubt that it's a good thing to go around telling your supporters it's gonna be a cakewalk. I wonder if that talk contributed to low turnout at all.
The Republicans (on a national level) on going down the same road they did in California. They're now in the "Me Too" stage regarding immigration and minority pandering. It will get them nowhere.
http://www.athensreport.com/sony-downgraded-to-one-level-above-junk-sne/
How the mighty has fallen.
http://www.athensreport.com/japanese-gadget-makers-need-to-pull-off-a-miracle/
Japan Sinc
Rove and a whole bunch of other prominent Republican talking heads spent the last couple months of the election spreading BS about how the polls were all secretly biased against Romney, and that the election was almost certainly going to be a big Romney win.
What do you expect prominent Republicans to say? Or prominent Democrats for that matter? Most of your remarks suggest someone with an emotional age of about 20.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100188486/pundits-tell-the-republican-party-the-only-way-you-can-win-is-by-importing-more-democrat-voters/
too funny
One thing that isn't talked about much is that Romney won 18-29yo whites by 7 points... a demographic McCain lost by 10 points.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-c-wilson/the-elephant-in-the-exit_b_2094354.html
The fact that Romney won white women isn't talked about much either.
Steve I'm sure this news will catch you COMPLETELY by surprise... look who made a campaign filing...
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20121109/DA2E8UH83.html
I hate to tell you but the brownest states are California 38 percent hispanic 6 percent black and 14 percent asian versus Texas at 38 percent hispanic and 11 percent black and 5 percent asian. And New Mexico is 47percent hispanic. Romney did his best in white States, Kentucky, Tn, Wy, Montana, Utah, Alaska, Id, Nebraska, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota. The states that Obama won only had two of two high white states Maine and Vermont snd Iowa has a few hispanics and blacks to have demograhics closed to Nebraska.
Ann Coulter says the problem is immigration, with US having more 'takers than makers'.
True with Cal and Nevada. But the fact is most of the white northern states--and even Iowa--went with Obama. Could it be GOP free trade policy made a lot of white makers into takers? If you're white and lose your job, then you look to big government. If you can't make, you take.
GOP was happy with free trade cuz unions were the traditional enemy of conservatism, but for some reason, the two main beneficiaries of globalism--urban elites and third world immigrants--are democratic. GOP not only lost Reagan Democrats but failed to gain globocrats and Mexican-Americans.
Indeed, the very Jewish Democrats who gained most from globalism attacked Romney for 'shipping jobs overseas'!! Apple and Google profit from global outsourcing, but they donate money to Democrats to attack Romney the uncaring globalist Bain-man.
If Jews and Asians in America are among the biggest makers, why are they so pro-Democratic?
Though Jewish and Asian numbers combined are lower than Hispanics numbers, Jews actually have more influence because they own the academia and media. Jewish money in politics bought up a lot of TV ads that influenced the minds of white voters in the North.
Also, Jewish controlled TV and Hollywood and pop music have instilled many whites to embrace 'diversity' and 'gay marriage'.
Jews are the main makers not only of wealth but of white minds(which are molded by Jewish media influence).
So, Coulter is only part right. It's not a simple problem of makers and takers. GOP aided and abetted in making white working class into 'takers'. And many makers--Jews, Asians, and SWPL elites--are solidly Democratic, and they use their vast media influence to turn people of all color into Democrats.
Culture does matter in politics. It's not just nickels and dimes. Consider the book WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE KANSAS. If conservatives owned much of the media--and spanish speaking media(which happens to be owned by guys like by Haim Saban)--, I believe a lot more Hispanics could be conservative. If colleges were dominated by conservatives, and if Hispanic elites came under the influence of conservative professors, the Hispanic elites too would be more conservative. But Hispanics elites come under the influence of Jewish leftist professors, and Jews encourage Hispanics to form Che-Guevara-ite consciousness toward gringo/yanqui.
Hispanics are followers than leaders. In Mexico, the elites are white but they seem to be in power forever. If Coulter is right, the mestizos and Indians would have overthrown the whites long ago. But whites own the media, government, and economy and have manipulated the masses to keep the status quo.
If masses of Mexicans in Mexico obediently follow white elites, Mexicans in the US would likely do the same thing IF white conservatives ran this nation. But Jewish liberal elites and SWPL elites rule this nation, and they are the ones who've been leading Hispanics to hate yanqui republicans.
Another thing to consider: the coming apart scenario by Murray. A huge implosion of social values took place in the lower half of white population. We focused on the impact of marriage on voting Dem or Repub. But we should look at the impact of marriage on voting or not voting. Are unmarried white men less likely to vote? In the old days, many of today's useless white guys would have had factory jobs. They could have been Reagan Democrats. But many of them today are nobodies with nothing. They got no steady jobs, no steady women. They got internet porn and video games and maybe mooching off their girlfriends. They can't have much pride in anything. Why would such people vote? White voting was way down in places like Ohio. Could it be the result of Coming Apart? The children of the white working class are now part of the sunken class of dispirited people without hope? They see Obama as the black guy and see Romney as the rich guy. They just don't care.
"The fact that Romney won white women isn't talked about much either."
Of course not. It doesn't fit the story we're being told, that men vote for mean Republicans while women vote for the caring Democrats, so men should be ashamed of themselves.
A lot of the criticism of the pre-election predictions is needlessly harsh. The fact is that this was a very close election, in spite of what the EC results appear to say. It would have taken only a very small number of votes in a small handful of states to go the other way for the outcome to have changed. It came down to one percent of the voters in four key states, or 200,000 votes out of twenty million. This election was a lot like that in 2000 and 2004, and not like that in 2008.
The fact that Romney won white women isn't talked about much either.
--anon.
It is at the New Yorker.
"Estimate the winner's share of the white vote for every presidential election. I'm willing to bet Romney's finishes in the top five. Certainly the top eight."
Increased immigration causes white animus, sure, but what did Romney tangibly offer white people?
Off-topic: I just heard on KQED, a Northern California call-in radio show, some head of educational achievement organization (I could probably get her name from the podcast) say, that we should spend the new tax money on ever-earlier intervention, because the achievement gap starts showing up at 9 months. I'd heard that said on iSteve before but thought it was obscure knowledge; here's someone saying it out-loud, in public. How could saying this more widely /not/ a) point instantly to genetics b) /at least/ make a record-scratching sound on what the justification is, again, for AA.
As a meta-comment, how complete must this woman's and similar people's belief in absolute racial equality be, to continue in the face of such head-scratching knowledge! And a bit stupid - can they not imagine what people's reaction will be, hearing this? Shouldn't they keep this close to their chests? Either that or our society has reached an unhealthy suspension of thinking, if this woman feels safe saying such things, and as a reason for more intervention! Regardless, I wish this fact would be broadcast widely; in these days of gay marriage I think blacks are safe from legal segregation and we'd do something more compassionate with the truth.
what did Romney tangibly offer white people?
A government which wasn't viciously anti-white? What exactly did you expect him to offer white people - Obama's head on a stake?
Silver lining: more taco bunnies means cheaper chalupas for 1%ers. Cheap chalupas are the apex artifact of our civilization.
what did Romney tangibly offer white people?
What did you want him to "tangibly offer white people"? A chicken in every pot? Free health care? Free gasoline? Guaranteed government jobs? There's much that anyone can tangibly offer white people, other than a government which does not wage economic war on them.
From Reg Caesar's link at the New Yorker: But the fact remains that white females, taken as a whole, went solidly Republican. While the overall gender gap played a significant role in ensuring Obama’s reëlection, it didn’t have very much to do with white women, who remain one of the bulwarks of the Republican Party.
Did you get that whiskey?
Republicans have a chance to re-engage the white middle class, with:
- a time-out on immigration and so-called free trade
- unprecedented middle class tax cuts
- an accord with major unions in northern Battleground states
As we all know, destroying middle-class wages to increase corporate profits has been the GOP raison d'etre for decades. Now they have a chance to redefine the party, and regain power.
Or they can support another amnesty, continue to lose the Hispanic vote, and remain out of power for a generation.
Did anyone see Colbert's response to O'Reilly's "non-traditional" America comment?
Colbert's vision of non-traditional America is highly amusing:
http://crownofcastile.wordpress.com/2012/11/09/stephen-colberts-multicultural-fantasy-land/
Anon 908am:
Yeah, we emotional 20 year olds would like to notice when people are bullshitting us, so we can avoid listening to them next time. More emotional maturity would, I suppose, reconcile us to the idea that in the 2016 election, we should listen carefully to the predictions of Karl Rove, George Will, and Dick Morris. Probably the fact that they werw full of shit last time means they will be especially reliable next time.
BTW, are you the same anonymous who decided I was 30 last time I commented on the partisan poll spin? If I post a couple more comments on this topic, I predict you'll have me in grade school.
Anon 10:12:
That is true--the election was close, and could have gone either way, as a whole bunch of people looking at the polling numbers said. Obama had a pretty big advantage in electoral votes, according to those same polls.
What I'm reacting to isn't some people pointing out that it was a close election and could go either way--that was true, and for that matter, folks like Nate Silver were saying so. (So was I, but that was just looking at other peoples' predictions.). Rather, I don't want people to forget the whole meme that the polls were biased against Romney, which was spread in what looked to me to be a pretty coordinated way via mostly the right end of the MSM. As best I can tell, that meme was invented to keep the donors, volunteers, voters, and audience engaged. But it was bullshit.
People who bullshit you once will do it again. Especially in the MSM culture, where there is little cost to being wrong or lying, as long as you don't offend an important group. (Your career is much, much safer if you lie all the time than if you, say, make kind statements about an ex-leader of Hezbolah when he dies, or make factually correct commnets about the fraction of Jews in media or the fraction of blacks with low IQs.)
Awhile back, we talked about Thomas Friedman, who gets people to read and pay attention to his writings even though he's pretty obviously got no idea what he's talking about, and has been wrong about pretty much everything he's ever said that was more complicated than what color the sky was. The reason he still is taken seriously is because he says stuff that people want to hear, and so most everyone is willing to give him a pass for not knowing what he's talking about or talking outright nonsense.
So, in 2016, when Fox has Karl Rove and Dick Morris predicting a big Republican win, my suggestion is that you take them every bit as seriously as you would take a Thomas Friedman column explaining that we've turned the corner in Afganistan, and in six more months (one friedman unit) things will be visibly better. They could be right, but who would give their expressed opinions any weight at this point?
Why isn't this guys' reputation in tatters? He's been wrong so many times. Even a broken clock is right twice a day....
anon 10:27:
That's the same thing Obama offered. Is there any evidence at all that whites have actually been treated worse than blacks b the Obama administration? Say, arrest or imprisonment rates of blacks vs whites? Or hate crime convictions? (More reported hate crimes are done by blacks than whites, according to government statistics I linked to awhile back.). The Obama admininstration uses somewhat more civil-rights-friendly rhetoric, and probably does marginally more discrimination law enforcement, but it's not at all obvious to me that there's a big difference from what Bush did. I there is a big difference, though, it should show up somewhere in visible statistics, right?
That is true--the election was close, and could have gone either way, as a whole bunch of people looking at the polling numbers said. Obama had a pretty big advantage in electoral votes, according to those same polls
Why do you keep saying incoherent things? The polls cannot simultaneously say that the election is very close and can go either way, AND that Obama has a pretty big lead in electoral votes. One of those things must be false.
As we all know, destroying middle-class wages to increase corporate profits has been the GOP raison d'etre for decades.
I'm sure that all of the "we" over at Kos "knows" that.
in 2016, when Fox has Karl Rove and Dick Morris predicting a big Republican win, my suggestion is that you take them every bit as seriously as you would take a Thomas Friedman column explaining that we've turned the corner in Afganistan
Any high ranking Republican who is not predicting a Republican win in 2016 should be fired from his job. It is the job of high ranking Republicans, and Democrats, to cheerlead for their party. Your relentless cluelessness on this point is why your age gets called into question.
There are a lot of things that Rove deserves to be harshly condemned for, but his refusal to say "We're screwed - the Dems are gonna win!" on November 5th is not one of them.
That would be the case even if it were obvious on Nov 5th that the GOP was screwed - which it wasn't. As people have pointed out and as even you have acknowledged, it was a very close election which could have gone either way.
Anon 1124:
There are two parts to this:
a. You can be very close in popular vote but not close in electoral votes. Obama/McCain was like this--the popular vote margin wasn't all that big, but the EV margin was huge.
b. There can be (as in this election) several states that are relatively close, where Obama has a very small lead, so that the expected EV result is a big Obama win, but a shift nationwide of a couple percent in those battleground states could still change the result.
Nate Silver used the example of a football team up by 3 points with a couple minutes left in the game--the score is close, and the game could go either way, but the team that's up by a field goal has a pretty big advantage. Another way to think about it is a baseball team that will make the playoffs if it wins any 3 of the next 10 games, in all of which it is considered a slight favorite. It's still possible for the team not to make the playoffs, and each game is pretty likely to be close, but your best bet is still that the team will make the playoffs.
You can be very close in popular vote but not close in electoral votes.
No, the point is that when the popular vote as shown by polls in battleground states is very close, you cannot just say "I as a pundit am going to award those EC votes to Obama".
There can be (as in this election) several states that are relatively close, where Obama has a very small lead, so that the expected EV result is a big Obama win
Argh! When several states are "relatively close" - actually, "extremely close" was the term you were looking for - then you cannot say that Obama is "expected" to win them. What part of this are you unable to comprehend?
I hope Marvin Lewis doesn't make the mistake of talking up his teams chances against the Giants this Sunday, or NOTA will never again respect him if they lose!
Obama’s reëlection...
Those diereses, or diëreses, at the New Yorker are a racist, sexist, homophobic holdover from the Victorian era. They should be called on this.
Rove's questioning the Ohio conclusion when there was just a ~1000 vote gap was correct. Fox and the networks turned out rather lucky (or were looking at additional data that Rove wasn't). It's hindsight bias that makes the public fault Rove instead of the network.
"What did you want him to "tangibly offer white people"?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Pat_Buchanan_on_global_affairs#Fiscal_policy
Watch as hannity and boehner and Grover nor quits and bill Kristin with Fox News and the Wall Street journal as platforms push hard for amnesty and more immigration to republicans. I bet Glenn beck will join in too. Buchanan is out of the media more or less and no one else on tv gives that viewpoint al we get is pc neocons and pc libertarians. No one ever gives a skeptical view towards mass immigration and the diversity obsession anywhere in media. The media just repeats the same talking points. Charlie rose,s round tables always agree on immigration and how we need so much more. They say we have so man notices on cane or online msm but ind one non globalist voice whose smart. I can't find him. We need to spaad woe aout isteve like they did for Ron Paul. Stickers, spray paint, etc.
Have u guys checked out national review online lately? Ow pathetic it has become, how boring, all they talk about is tax Ts, abortion and the need to stay in the Middle East longer. Without derb it's so empty. Isteve alone is so much more interesting,if only people knew about isteve more they would rea t over the corner. My friends love isteve and pass it on, we should try to advertise isteve to the smart, political right leaning kids. Spray paint isteve on a voduct or something. Mike stickers. Seriously.mail sailer,s best columns to congressmen etc.
Eh I think Weekly Standard deserves all the abuse it gets but you guys are way too hard on NR. Compared to Steve Derbyshire is your drunk dirty uncle at christmas who loves being edgy and making others squirm. Not to mention the fact he doesnt really pass
The who whom test on immigration. Kind of undermines the whole project and that's without mentioning the weird prepubescent nudity fixation he has
I'm going to email the Gary sinise Steve column to my congressman. Hope it helps.
"One thing that isn't talked about much is that Romney won 18-29yo whites by 7 points... a demographic McCain lost by 10 points."
There was also a poll floating around a few weeks ago that said most 18-30 whites disagreed with racial preferences.
If only the Republicans were smart enough to take note.
"what did Romney tangibly offer white people? A government which wasn't viciously anti-white?"
Nope. No one in their right mind believed that Mitt was gunna do jack shit to end set-asides, quotas, or affirmative action. He was going to increase skilled legal immigration and would have, at best, only slightly increased enofrcement against illegals.
We've had the chance to eliminate AA etc. through at least 3 Republican administrations and 2 congressional majorities, and nothing has changed. Mitt's past and his demeanor - his father actually pushed forced integration of housing while at HUD under Nixon - suggests he wouldn't have done so, either.
"As we all know, destroying middle-class wages to increase corporate profits has been the GOP raison d'etre for decades. Now they have a chance to redefine the party, and regain power."
The GOP as the party of the rich is done. That message won't sell. Mitt tried to sell it - promising higher immigration, tax cuts for businesses, to keep the Bush cap gains cuts, and eliminating the estate tax - and no one bought it.
A "middle class" always on the verge of financial oblivion won't vote for small government.
The Republican Party actually does have to do something for the middle class, and for whites in particular.
Did you get that whiskey?
Exit polls?? That's no kind of evidence. Hot shiksas like these look at me with disdain. THAT's all the proof anyone could ask for that white women HATE HATE HATE white men and desire to join with sexy black alpha thugs to destroy America!
Feel a bit sorry for Dick Morris.He was half right.
The Democrat vote was 8 million fewer than in 2008 but he did not predict a lower vote for Romney than for McCain and how many people could have predicted that?
If Romney had got just a million more than McCain he would be in the Whitehouse.
Matthew said...
"what did Romney tangibly offer white people? A government which wasn't viciously anti-white?"
Nope. No one in their right mind believed that Mitt was gunna do jack shit to end set-asides, quotas, or affirmative action. He was going to increase skilled legal immigration and would have, at best, only slightly increased enofrcement against illegals.
We've had the chance to eliminate AA etc. through at least 3 Republican administrations and 2 congressional majorities, and nothing has changed. Mitt's past and his demeanor - his father actually pushed forced integration of housing while at HUD under Nixon - suggests he wouldn't have done so, either.
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yup, the GOP supports affirmative action, mass immigration etc except for some lip service during primaries.
And those where bush had the GOP congress--did he try to do anything to get school vouchers going? Nothing.
The elite know that the edu-propaganda system is their biggest tool for controlling the populace. So the GOP talked vouchers, but they never did anything.
Have you people forgotten the veriest rudiments of the English language? I can understand, and, indeed, sympathize---at times, when in the throes of John Barleycorn's bliss, I goof on spelling and grammar as well.
Proper names are capitalized, even if we disagree with the politics and policies of the person in question. "Rove" not "rove," and so on.
Anon 11:57:
So, if nobody can really say both that the election in several states is close and that Obama is expected to win, doesn't it seem kind-of odd to you that lots of people, from pundits to professional statisticians and political scientists, said just exactly that? And at least some of them showed their work, via putting up EV maps and links to polls on a webpage, discussing their models, etc? And rhat their predictions (including maps and EV totals) were quite accurate?
The main source of uncertainty in these models was not the fact that many critical individual states were very close--that's a kind of uncertainty it's not hard to quantify. The source of uncertainty was stuff that wasn't available to include in the models--was there a systematic bias in the poll results that favored Obama, or was there going to be a last-minute nationwide shift in the electrorate somehow? But there wasn't really much evidence of either of those things being a problem, so they were just possibilities that couldn't completely be ruled out.
"What did you want him to "tangibly offer white people"?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Pat_Buchanan_on_global_affairs#Fiscal_policy
White people have had plenty of chances to vote for that. They never do. Duncan Hunter ran on that sort of platform in 2008. Nobody voted for him. You can't really blame politicians for ignoring a position which has proven itself to be a complete loser.
So, if nobody can really say both that the election in several states is close and that Obama is expected to win ..
You keep talking gibberish. The definition of a tie race is that nobody is expected to win. I'd ask you why you can't grasp this simple truth, but I've asked it before and you prefer to cut and paste your canned responses.
So lets change the subject. Are you pleased that you managed to get a Democratic elected to the US Senate from Virginia? In spite of their peculiar delusions to the contrary, the libertarians have always functioned as an extension of the left.
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