gehringer_2

having read Bezo's letter, I lean more toward that he is naive than ill-intentioned. Naive in the sense that like many American's in the middle of what they see as political breakdown, they don't have solutions for how to get out of it and instead keep reaching for wrong answers that have already failed.

If the dems get control, you can book there will be a tax increase early in the session. Trump or divided gov - who knows if any agreement is achievable?

He'd have a way to go to match Andrew Jackson, who supposedly grazed animals on the WH lawn.

it's pretty invisible. Can't say it's made any impression on me in over 10yrs.

Situation at WaPo still in a weird place. Bezos has written his defense of his action - it all parses fine except that if he was serious about the approach he claims, where was he a year ago when it needed to be implemented in a way that would not create the very appearance of bias he claims to be trying to eliminate. I think the problem at work with Bezos and at CNN and many other news operations, is that they see that they are not trusted and they think that's because their coverage is skewed so they try to bring in more "balance" by increasing RW representation, but the RW in the US is so stewed in their false narrative reality that it can't work to have those people in the same room with the people trying to tell the truth. What a guy like Bezos has to learn, hopefully before he destroys the Post, is that the problem is not his paper not telling enough truth, it's a public that doesn't want truth, and he won't solve that problem by making his paper trim its sails or incorporate more false shading to pander to that audience or to appeal to people who are intellectually aligned in opposition to the mission of all good journalism. Sure any paper can tighten up and be more accurate, they all have a tendency to get out over their skis chasing twitter virii that turn out to be misinfo, and he can change that by rewarding accuracy over 'scoops' if he cares to, but that's not their biggest problem. Maybe the best thing American newspapers could do would be to take on the role that American educators seem to have abandoned, which would be to use their papers to teach a little American civics on the side every day. Bezos could endow a desk at WaPo to write pieces on political history, economics, tied it to current events but not necessarily to any real time reporting. I bet it's exactly the kind of thing a modern newspaper would probably love to do but cant afford.

He gone. Trump will never apologize for anything, ever.

actually the "Main Street" in question was Ypsilanti IIRC, but close enough.

actually I'd take a bet he isn't for an internet beer, but I don't think we are going to find out. 🏈🏈

because they weren't paying a lot of attention - didn't care about him when he was out of office, and because this cycle he is (for as much as we complain that it should be more) getting much more negative coverage than 4 yrs ago, which is because if you listen to him he *is* darker and more incoherent, plus as you note Harris has run a mistake free campaign that has left the GOP with nothing like "her emails" to work with. I mean, as much as it is true that this may be one of the most pre-baked elections in history, that's not to say the campaign is not going to matter at all. And Harris has run a better one than Trump. Also, do not underestimate that inflation has cooled and gas prices are down.

Islam is at least if not more homophobic and patriarchal than RW Christianity. I would easily believe that much of Arab opposition to Dems which is couched in terms of Gaza if really culturally based, because it's a lot more PC to be pro Gaza than anti-gay (etc). To be anti-Dem over Gaza doesn't even make any sense since Trump is way more firmiy in Bibi's pocket than Harris.

Defections may be a bridge too far, but I can definitely see non-voting. I think if you sow doubt, then "let the rest of them make the decision" is a more likely response than "you changed my mind." Non-voting is only half as effective but it still breaks the same way.

Ronz's immediate circle notwithstanding () my read is that these are the people who Trump could have had but are probably being turned off by a lot of Trumps current rhetoric and condition. Librul is still a dirty word to them, they don't hold any personal animus toward POC but still believe they get the short end of the stick from elites because of DEI. They are part of the GOP's natural economic grievance constituency, many are vets, they believe themselves to be stand-up guys, the guys that shake hands at the end of the hockey game, and I think these are the people that Trump is starting to lose with the overt racism, the enemies talk, and the general deterioration in his psyche. The won't vote for Harris, but they can't deny in the hearts that Trump is a creep. They will find themselves busy enough on election day that they will just let it pass.

But there is still another piece to it. You have to hit on your picks, and that's where it's not so easy to duplicate what Holmes has done. The lions have had lot of draft capital at times in the past because of losing seasons, but never used it as well as Holmes has.

The other one that people seem to have forgotten is that a large number - certainly many hundred thousand, Dems registered R or took a Repub ballot to vote against Trump in primaries this cycle. There is no corresponding symmetry going the other way, and in the swing states that is another skewing factor when you are looking at EV by party registration.

I'm not sure that's what he is saying. His 1st chart is % of ABEV compared to 2020. But the %'s do not reflect the actual vote numbers because Dems voted ABEV in massively higher numbers than Repubs. I don't think there is any sound logic that gets you from the fact that more Repubs are ABEV this cycle to the conclusion that GOP turnout will be higher overall. that's possible but nothing more than a guess. It's just a easy to speculate that every single Repub ABEV is a subtraction from their ED turnout. I don't think there is any significant predictive value in the past on this stuff for reasons I've stated above. Nobody knows.

I don't think EV analysis is worth spit because a) in many states EV is too new a system to have settled into any predictable pattern B) Covid makes 2020 a black swan event that is not projectable C) The GOP's mandates to it voters on whether to EV or not have been all over the map.

Agree. I think Bezos was trying to play a double game. He spiked the endorsement, but then has allowed his writers to savage his decision in his paper. - in effect simply making a bunch of individual endorsements. His mistake will be believing that Trump will honor any deal he made over an endorsement, esp after the editorial staff all wrote to repudiate it so forcefully.

How "low" is the propensity of a low propensity voter defined to be? Just presidential elections, 50% of presidential elections, less than that? Do I recall correctly that in Michigan your registration lapses if you don't vote at least once every 4 yrs? Or has that changed?

I don't think that is proper formulation of the statistical conclusion. If you are looking at categorical outcomes in series, you should properly say that the outcomes distribute with a mean frequency of X out of Y total events observed. And X is a distributed variable whose variance depends on the sample size Y.

Uncertainty is one thing, fudging about their MOE is another. When you are making sample bias adjustments that are purely speculative that swing your results by as much as 5-10% (as Cohn has reported they do) you should be publishing your poll results with a disclaimer that the MOE is more like 8-10% in reality. But if they admitted that, no-one would care about their results, but that is more like where things actually stand for this cycle. The polls I think are most likely to be close this cycle are the single district Congressional polls because you are sampling a more homogeneous population in a single district and sample bias issues become a smaller source of error even given that district polls are usually smaller samples.

I don't know if it was someone up thread here or I saw it somewhere else tonight, but the observation was that Trump is no longer trying to win so much as trying to make sure he still has a hardcore movement behind him if he loses. He's making such a wanton and dissolute case to his fans to make sure they have nowhere else to go the get that kind of fix but to him.

there was time I thought it absurd that the Trump campaign would kill a couple of people to get re-elected, but after the last two weeks I really don't have a doubt left they would.

Best take away from the IDF raid in Iran: Iran is completely defenseless against Israeli (or US) air power. Their Russian AD systems failed to take down a single IDF aircraft over the course of IDF attacks on at least 4 separate sites. In fact the IDF deliberately took out air defenses around critical Iranian facilities while leaving the facilities just to make the point about what happens next time. Unless they are completely delusional, that should give the Mullahs more pause than the damage the IDF actually did.

and no cap room either no money to spend either. How do you end up with no cap room and a mediocre team?