6th November 2012, 11:34 AM
6th November 2012, 9:49 PM
Tonight Obama wins the election in a big way. This could have HUGE repercussions for Romney's campaign.
6th November 2012, 11:23 PM
I so called it. I knew Romney would win the GOP nomination even while Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum each got their fifteen minutes of fame. I knew the race would be very close. I knew Obama would ultimately win. I knew my Facebook news feed would implode in an apocalyptic meltdown. I called every friggin' shot of this election! I am just that good.
So the results are in: the Democrats control the White House and the Senate and the Republicans control the House of Representatives. So yeah, the federal government looks about the same as it already did.
Four states legalized same-sex unions. Hurray for social progress!
Colorado legalized recreational marijuana. Tax the bejeezes out of that stuff! Pay our deficit, create jobs, and help folks to mellow out, maaaaaan!
And can someone fill me in on whether Puerto Rico is now the 51st state? If so, I need a new flag!
So yeah, four more years and whatnot. 'MURRIKA!
So the results are in: the Democrats control the White House and the Senate and the Republicans control the House of Representatives. So yeah, the federal government looks about the same as it already did.
Four states legalized same-sex unions. Hurray for social progress!
Colorado legalized recreational marijuana. Tax the bejeezes out of that stuff! Pay our deficit, create jobs, and help folks to mellow out, maaaaaan!
And can someone fill me in on whether Puerto Rico is now the 51st state? If so, I need a new flag!
So yeah, four more years and whatnot. 'MURRIKA!
6th November 2012, 11:25 PM
I voted too, and volunteered with the state Democratic party. And yeah, a lot to like in this election -- Obama winning again was fantastic, the Democrats actually gaining seats in the US Senate is awesome (looks like we'll gain two seats, even though the Dems had to defend 22 states versus only 10 for the Republicans!). Plus, looks like Dems took back the Maine State Senate too. The Maine House looks less likely, but taking one is fantastic and was badly needed.
So yeah, good in the presidency, US senate, and Maine Senate, and bad in the Maine and US houses. It's really too bad about those latter two; the US House particularly is disappointing, but with how insanely gerrymandered is, it isn't a complete surprise (though losing a bunch of centrist Democrat seats isn't good news, nor is how many close races went Republican), but the gerrymandering in the House is so insane that it's not as surprising as it should be. Seriously, with fair house districts, the Dems would definitely have done better... we'll have to see, but the worst part of this is that with this House, nothing of note will happen. I mean, this Republican majority will do NOTHING with the President, if they continue on the path of the last two years, which they look sure to do! More gridlock and no-progress politics... sigh. :(
So yeah, good in the presidency, US senate, and Maine Senate, and bad in the Maine and US houses. It's really too bad about those latter two; the US House particularly is disappointing, but with how insanely gerrymandered is, it isn't a complete surprise (though losing a bunch of centrist Democrat seats isn't good news, nor is how many close races went Republican), but the gerrymandering in the House is so insane that it's not as surprising as it should be. Seriously, with fair house districts, the Dems would definitely have done better... we'll have to see, but the worst part of this is that with this House, nothing of note will happen. I mean, this Republican majority will do NOTHING with the President, if they continue on the path of the last two years, which they look sure to do! More gridlock and no-progress politics... sigh. :(
6th November 2012, 11:52 PM
My naïve hope is that the House Republicans will realize that they're stuck with Obama for another four years, and there's no point in character assassination anymore since he can't run again, so they might as well learn to work with him, but that's giving them way too much credit. They'll still try to assassinate the character of the Democratic party as a whole in an effort to win the White House in 2016.
7th November 2012, 9:24 AM
I've got a lot more actual thoughts on this. Firstly, Nate Silver is a witch!
I saw one pundit after another on every network sticking to the "this race is absolutely razor tight" narrative. Aside from the awful mixed metaphor, they said anyone who doesn't think the election is "razor tight" is an idiot. Well, yes, in the popular vote it really was tight. Here's how you do your journalistic job, if you consider figuring out how people will vote in advance worthy of dedicating such time to. You actually run the polling numbers from all the well documented and methodically sound polls and determine the odds of each state going which way, because it's the electoral vote that matters.
Nate Silver did this during the last election and nailed 49 of the states. This time, he nailed them with what seems now to be 100% accuracy. It's called math, and when it comes to finding out which thing is bigger than the other thing, turns out numbers are still the best way to do that, even if your "gut numbers" tell you otherwise.
That brings me to the other point, Obama swept away the electoral votes but only won by a hair in the popular vote. I've had a lot of time to think about and research the history of the electoral college including it's original purpose, and I have to say this, the 2000 election, and the Nixon election, pretty much ring the death bell for the electoral college. I'm hoping republicans get just outraged enough to push this issue themselves, so democrats can agree and we might actually get an amendment to change to a raw popular vote nationwide. It should be clear to all now. Originally, there were much smaller populations, a much smaller number of states, and so issues like slavery could get dominated by an overwhelming populist majority, thus the need for the electoral college. Even then though, it was speculated that if the nation expanded enough, this reasoning just wouldn't apply any more. Now that seems to be the case. There's still a fear of tyranny of the majority, but the electoral college no longer serves as a way to prevent that. Instead it is now up to a sort of regionalism to do the job.
So Puerto Rico http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/politics/e...index.html seems set to become a new state. That's great, though it'll likely have little overall influence. We need to make another territory a state too though, for the critical importance of keeping the star field on our flag symmetrical.
Anyway, Obama is a far better alternative than the Romney, but that's a low bar. Obama's job is going to be undoing some of the harm he's caused and pushing his original goals far harder this time than he did in the last four years.
Also, I think Trump is reaching some sort of critical meltdown if his log is any indication. He's been flashing orange for some time now so we know he's low on health.
I saw one pundit after another on every network sticking to the "this race is absolutely razor tight" narrative. Aside from the awful mixed metaphor, they said anyone who doesn't think the election is "razor tight" is an idiot. Well, yes, in the popular vote it really was tight. Here's how you do your journalistic job, if you consider figuring out how people will vote in advance worthy of dedicating such time to. You actually run the polling numbers from all the well documented and methodically sound polls and determine the odds of each state going which way, because it's the electoral vote that matters.
Nate Silver did this during the last election and nailed 49 of the states. This time, he nailed them with what seems now to be 100% accuracy. It's called math, and when it comes to finding out which thing is bigger than the other thing, turns out numbers are still the best way to do that, even if your "gut numbers" tell you otherwise.
That brings me to the other point, Obama swept away the electoral votes but only won by a hair in the popular vote. I've had a lot of time to think about and research the history of the electoral college including it's original purpose, and I have to say this, the 2000 election, and the Nixon election, pretty much ring the death bell for the electoral college. I'm hoping republicans get just outraged enough to push this issue themselves, so democrats can agree and we might actually get an amendment to change to a raw popular vote nationwide. It should be clear to all now. Originally, there were much smaller populations, a much smaller number of states, and so issues like slavery could get dominated by an overwhelming populist majority, thus the need for the electoral college. Even then though, it was speculated that if the nation expanded enough, this reasoning just wouldn't apply any more. Now that seems to be the case. There's still a fear of tyranny of the majority, but the electoral college no longer serves as a way to prevent that. Instead it is now up to a sort of regionalism to do the job.
So Puerto Rico http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/politics/e...index.html seems set to become a new state. That's great, though it'll likely have little overall influence. We need to make another territory a state too though, for the critical importance of keeping the star field on our flag symmetrical.
Anyway, Obama is a far better alternative than the Romney, but that's a low bar. Obama's job is going to be undoing some of the harm he's caused and pushing his original goals far harder this time than he did in the last four years.
Also, I think Trump is reaching some sort of critical meltdown if his log is any indication. He's been flashing orange for some time now so we know he's low on health.
7th November 2012, 10:59 AM
Obama is ahead 2.7 million in the popular vote [or roughly 2.2%] so it isn't really all that close. Trump and his like were mewling early on because Romney was still ahead when the media started calling the race for Obama, but that isn't the case right now.
7th November 2012, 6:09 PM
Well, it looks like the Maine House did indeed go Dem. Pretty awesome, it was looking like it might not for a while. However, the US House is indeed firmly in Republican control. The Democrats seem to have probably gained a total of about 8 seats (all races are not decided yet), but they needed to gain 25 to win the House. Yeah, see the power of gerrymandering! We really need to fix that someday...
As for Nate Silver, yeah, his Presidential prediction was fantastic, right on the money. The polling was good, and the model worked. All of those ridiculous pundits bashing him for speaking about statistical facts instead of their preferred instinct-based decisions, or whatever, look pretty bad now. That's good to see -- I was expecting 538's model to hold up again, and it did. However, he did miss two of the Senate races, one badly: he said that Tester (MT) had only a 35% chance of winning re-election, and he did win, and worse he gave Heitkamp (ND) under 9% odds of actually winning that seat, but she won by a small margin. I thought Tester would win but Heitkamp would lose (though I'd have put her odds much higher than 9%, personally!), but I think he under-estimated them. Of course sometimes percent-based predictions will go wrong, but I have to think that something was a little off there, particularly for North Dakota... over-estimated Romney's coattails, or something?
Finally, Puerto Rico. Yeah, that one was very, very interesting. I was expecting another indeterminate vote, like the past ones all were, but this one was much closer to being a legitimate endorsement of statehood than they've ever done before. It was a somewhat complicated two-part question, where Q1 asked whether they wanted the current status (territory) or to change status. Change status won, 53-47. The second question asked what alternate status was desired; note that this wasn't "only if you said you want to change status", all were supposed to answer both questions. Q2 ended up with about 800,000 votes for statehood, about 436,000 for a "freely associated state", whatever exactly that would be, 50-something thousand for independence, and 400,000 left that question blank (Q1 had very few blanks, so that was a clear "don't want to change status" answer). So statehood isn't actually over 50% on its own, based on this, but it did poll much better than ever before, and it won the plurality at least, with nearly double the number of votes of either other option -- quite an accomplishment.
So yeah, with that approval, if you accept it as a pro-statehood decision (which I think it is, with qualifications), the US Congress now gets the question, I think. We'll see if they decide to act towards passing a bill that would allow Puerto Rico to write a state constitution and become a state. It took Alaska and Hawaii over a decade of lobbying before they finally got the Congress to let them in, and of course there are political considerations now as ever about such things. So yeah. we'll see. I think that Puerto Rico shouldn't just continue forever in this semi-colonial territory status -- they either should become a state, or become an independent country. Either one would be fine, provided that the people there support it, but seriously, I don't think the territory status does either them or the rest of the US much good...
Finally DJ, on the question of national popular vote, it doesn't actually require a constitutional amendment. Look up the National Popular Vote (NPV) movement -- it's an effort to get state legislatures to sign bills that say that once 270 electoral votes worth of states have passed similar legislation, all of them will promise their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, and not the state's vote only. It's basically an attempt to get a national popular vote without having to go through the very difficult and unlikely-to-succeed constitutional amendment process. 130-something electoral votes worth of states have signed on at the moment, I think, mostly blue states. I think it's definitely an idea worth serious consideration. The current system is so distorted with how it favors a small number of states so strongly... it is pretty funny to be holding an election, and to have the largest states be entirely irrelevant in that process.
As for Nate Silver, yeah, his Presidential prediction was fantastic, right on the money. The polling was good, and the model worked. All of those ridiculous pundits bashing him for speaking about statistical facts instead of their preferred instinct-based decisions, or whatever, look pretty bad now. That's good to see -- I was expecting 538's model to hold up again, and it did. However, he did miss two of the Senate races, one badly: he said that Tester (MT) had only a 35% chance of winning re-election, and he did win, and worse he gave Heitkamp (ND) under 9% odds of actually winning that seat, but she won by a small margin. I thought Tester would win but Heitkamp would lose (though I'd have put her odds much higher than 9%, personally!), but I think he under-estimated them. Of course sometimes percent-based predictions will go wrong, but I have to think that something was a little off there, particularly for North Dakota... over-estimated Romney's coattails, or something?
Finally, Puerto Rico. Yeah, that one was very, very interesting. I was expecting another indeterminate vote, like the past ones all were, but this one was much closer to being a legitimate endorsement of statehood than they've ever done before. It was a somewhat complicated two-part question, where Q1 asked whether they wanted the current status (territory) or to change status. Change status won, 53-47. The second question asked what alternate status was desired; note that this wasn't "only if you said you want to change status", all were supposed to answer both questions. Q2 ended up with about 800,000 votes for statehood, about 436,000 for a "freely associated state", whatever exactly that would be, 50-something thousand for independence, and 400,000 left that question blank (Q1 had very few blanks, so that was a clear "don't want to change status" answer). So statehood isn't actually over 50% on its own, based on this, but it did poll much better than ever before, and it won the plurality at least, with nearly double the number of votes of either other option -- quite an accomplishment.
So yeah, with that approval, if you accept it as a pro-statehood decision (which I think it is, with qualifications), the US Congress now gets the question, I think. We'll see if they decide to act towards passing a bill that would allow Puerto Rico to write a state constitution and become a state. It took Alaska and Hawaii over a decade of lobbying before they finally got the Congress to let them in, and of course there are political considerations now as ever about such things. So yeah. we'll see. I think that Puerto Rico shouldn't just continue forever in this semi-colonial territory status -- they either should become a state, or become an independent country. Either one would be fine, provided that the people there support it, but seriously, I don't think the territory status does either them or the rest of the US much good...
Finally DJ, on the question of national popular vote, it doesn't actually require a constitutional amendment. Look up the National Popular Vote (NPV) movement -- it's an effort to get state legislatures to sign bills that say that once 270 electoral votes worth of states have passed similar legislation, all of them will promise their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, and not the state's vote only. It's basically an attempt to get a national popular vote without having to go through the very difficult and unlikely-to-succeed constitutional amendment process. 130-something electoral votes worth of states have signed on at the moment, I think, mostly blue states. I think it's definitely an idea worth serious consideration. The current system is so distorted with how it favors a small number of states so strongly... it is pretty funny to be holding an election, and to have the largest states be entirely irrelevant in that process.
10th November 2012, 4:22 PM
I hadn't heard of that movement at all. I would love to see some republicans get mad enough to push for something similar, but consider that if it ever reached that point, there may be some serious push back for using such a mechanism to de facto "overrule" the constitution. I'd love for it to take effect, but this means does lead to some possible serious objection from the populations of any states that shoot down such a thing.
10th November 2012, 8:04 PM
If it didn't happen after 2000, it's probably not ever going to happen.
11th November 2012, 5:07 PM
I don't know, it might... you're right that after 2000 was the perfect time, but still, it's not impossible. It just needs to be pushed in more states... you probably are right that it won't happen soon, but you never know.
11th November 2012, 10:44 PM
The problem in 2000 is that the issue was perfectly divided along party lines. What's needed, as it would be for an amendment, is support that crosses party lines.
11th November 2012, 11:01 PM
That is true, but with how the Democrats have won the popular vote 5 of the last 6 elections, and with the changing demographics in this country unless the Republicans do something amazing that looks like it might continue, I don't know if that kind of a situation is going to arise, unfortunately for our chances of getting the NPV through...
21st November 2012, 8:25 PM
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/11/wa...gging.html
Great wall of shame here pointing out many of the numbingly stupid things said this year about Nate Silver's election model. Watching these people (Republicans and some of the less-interested-in-facts reporters) bash him for saying that the polls showed what the polls were showing was just so, so ridiculous. It was great to win the election of course, but it was also great to see all of the people saying that "it's tied" and "statistical models are meaningless, all that matters is my gut opinion!" were proven completely, absolutely wrong.
Not that I expect any of them to admit they were wrong, of course... but still, they were, and the results prove it. That long, long list in the thread is a nice primer on just HOW wrong, for anyone who wasn't following this idiocy earlier.
(Oh, and yes, the two criticisms at the top are valid, the top one particularly. He said there was a 90-something percent chance that the Republican would win the North Dakota senate race, despite some mixed polling, but the Democrat won. He has to have gotten something a bit off there. I did think that the Republican would win it, but I thought it'd be close, and that she [the Democrat, Heidi Heitkamp] had an against-the-odds (but nowhere near 90%!) chance. Well, she pulled it off.)
Great wall of shame here pointing out many of the numbingly stupid things said this year about Nate Silver's election model. Watching these people (Republicans and some of the less-interested-in-facts reporters) bash him for saying that the polls showed what the polls were showing was just so, so ridiculous. It was great to win the election of course, but it was also great to see all of the people saying that "it's tied" and "statistical models are meaningless, all that matters is my gut opinion!" were proven completely, absolutely wrong.
Not that I expect any of them to admit they were wrong, of course... but still, they were, and the results prove it. That long, long list in the thread is a nice primer on just HOW wrong, for anyone who wasn't following this idiocy earlier.
(Oh, and yes, the two criticisms at the top are valid, the top one particularly. He said there was a 90-something percent chance that the Republican would win the North Dakota senate race, despite some mixed polling, but the Democrat won. He has to have gotten something a bit off there. I did think that the Republican would win it, but I thought it'd be close, and that she [the Democrat, Heidi Heitkamp] had an against-the-odds (but nowhere near 90%!) chance. Well, she pulled it off.)
21st November 2012, 11:06 PM
Sure he got that race off, but considering the sheer amount the numbers got right, I'd say it's a clear victory for... math.
3rd December 2012, 7:19 PM
Quote:There's still a fear of tyranny of the majority, but the electoral college no longer serves as a way to prevent that.
Wouldn't the problem simply shift to politicians focusing on big cities in elections? Sure, as of now, they focus on a small set of swing-states, but wouldn't taking away the electoral college skew things further?
4th December 2012, 9:02 AM
They already focus on big cities, but only the big cities in "swing states". This would make them at least appeal to big cities across other states. Living in Tulsa, I wouldn't mind being pandered to now and again. It makes a voter feel special.
Even if it's skewed towards high population areas, I think that's much more fair. After all, higher population areas have more people IN them. No worries, there's enough of a swath of people across the whole of the US in low population areas that general pandering to large sections of that crowd will still occur.
Also, Wii U! Comment on my U ish thread!
Even if it's skewed towards high population areas, I think that's much more fair. After all, higher population areas have more people IN them. No worries, there's enough of a swath of people across the whole of the US in low population areas that general pandering to large sections of that crowd will still occur.
Also, Wii U! Comment on my U ish thread!
4th December 2012, 9:33 PM
I know that for now the Republican party is opposed to the national popular vote (note how the only states to have passed it are D-leaning ones who did it in reaction to 2000), but if demographic trends continue the way they are going now, I don't think it's going to matter much -- I mean, by the time states like Georgia and Texas become swing states because of their growing Latino populations, it doesn't matter whether you're talking about a national popular vote or the Electoral College, the Republicans won't be winning unless they radially change a lot of their policies...
But yes, NPV would reduce the amount of focus on those few states, and increase focus on higher-population areas. States like Maine would suffer too; we didn't have much this time, but in the recent past sometimes Maine has drawn visits for presidential elections which I doubt we'd get with NPV; those 4 electoral votes matter a lot more than the popular vote total would! But even so, I do support national popular vote, and I think going to that would be the right thing to do.
But yes, NPV would reduce the amount of focus on those few states, and increase focus on higher-population areas. States like Maine would suffer too; we didn't have much this time, but in the recent past sometimes Maine has drawn visits for presidential elections which I doubt we'd get with NPV; those 4 electoral votes matter a lot more than the popular vote total would! But even so, I do support national popular vote, and I think going to that would be the right thing to do.