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.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)