Politics

[aiw]

This is going to be a clusterfuck.

I mail my taxes directly on 4/15.

 

[physicsfactor]

I assume the rule was by received date and not by postmarked date to avoid any delay in knowing who won the election. Not a comparable issue with taxes.

Maybe I’m dumb, but I’m believing the polls. I don’t think we’ll need to worry about this stuff and Biden will defeat him easily as long as Biden can avoid debating.

 

[DurhamSon]

The idea is that polls are modeling a scenario where there is a much smaller amount of mail-in voting, and no significant difference in partisan composition of mail-in vs same day voting (or just not distinguishing between the two at all), and thus little reason that further counting would change the statistical projection. For good reason, as that has historically been the conditions in which presidential elections played out. But growing evidence indicates this will not be the case this year.

It's not, and really can't be known if pollsters should be changing their methodologies to reflect these new degrees of freedom concerning the machinations and consequential effects of mail-in voting; perhaps it won't ultimately matter. But if they don't, and these concerns are even marginally meaningful -- especially as it skews in one direction -- then what the polling is measuring now translates a lot less reliability into the actual tallies on election day and beyond. Frankly i'm surprised someone like Nate Silver hasn't at least wrote some piece with a sensitivity analysis examining the issue.

Wasserman touches on it, with a back-of-the-envelope calculation of an additive 2% effect, which could prove enormous, even if just downballot. And even for those calculations, I think he was using numbers not accounting for the unprecedented volume of ballots likely to occur

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

I think it’s just a matter of the party and their mainstream media who think of themselves as being so much smarter than the other side actually becoming smart about this. If Biden and the DNC are too stupid to sound the alarms at some point in the next 3 months, then I’m not sure how much more competence should be expected of them in office.

 

[aiw]

The Axios Swan interview of Trump is unbelievable. I put one clip in the COVID thread. Here is another segment.

 

[aiw]

Also this.

 

[aiw]

 

[DrKlahn]

Yo Semites, what's with the funny hats?

 

[aiw]

 

[aiw]

BTW, we have to get rid of this "acting" thing that the executive is allowed to do. Just the other day, Tony Tata (former Wake County School Super and all around crazy person) withdrew from consideration for a Pentagon post because he didn't have the votes in the Senate, even from GOP. So, Trump names him person in the role of whatever job he was up for. So he's doing and getting paid for the job that he wasn't confirmed for. Same with Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli and a million others in this admin that wouldn't get confirmed. Congress should deal with this, but won't. No need to advise and consent anymore. What's to stop a president from just putting someone on the Supreme Court?

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

Looks like Trump will indeed win his reelection, on the back of a merely moderately depressed economy, which is much better than what half the country thinks would be the case for the economy under a Democrat.

 

[aiw]

This thread. Geez.

 

[deepdarkblue]

Also this.

It's how he greets his son-in-law.

 

[aiw]

 

[aiw]

Yet Trump will still win.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

Kansas will not have a Democrat Senator. Another repudiation of Trump, and not a completely insane Senator, though.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

This version of AOC isn’t from the most predictable district in the country.

 

[aiw]

 

[rome8180]

I thought this was great and really covered all the major talking points.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]