mtutiger

He hardly has any core beliefs, but tariffs are the biggest, most consistent belief he has. And it's something he can do without Congress. So I absolutely would not assume he's full of **** on that.

I don't think it's being underestimated, it seems pretty much like conventional wisdom.

Exactly.... she isn't Jesus, but it's about who she's being contrasted with. And it's stark.

When you cut through the noise of social media and everything else... The contrast between these two candidates on a human level is stark

Jan 6th does matter at some level for sure. And just anecdotally, I know a couple of Trump-Trump-Harris folks in my own life.

In Year of Our Lord 2024, there is nothing bigger than defeating Donald Trump. Nothing. At least if one believes he's a threat to our form of government and way of life. **** Cheney, I don't like the guy. But if it creates a permission structure for a certain type of Republican to defeat Donald Trump, I don't care. No matter how small that number of voters is, just ****ing win.

The mask slipped a bit with COVID... prior to, he was much more focused on the data, but he kinda veered off and became what he had previously loathed, a pundit. That continues apace today, along with the gambling (which, tbh, should instantly make people skeptical of his model for ethics reasons IMO). There's a bit of a historical parallel to a figure that comes up in engineering ethics in my field: William Mulholland. Mulholland is the man most responsible for making Los Angeles what it is today, a thriving metropolis, completing the LA Aqueduct and other public works projects that delivered water from the Sierra Nevadas down the otherwise dry and barren LA Basin. Mulholland was a self taught civil engineer, no formal schooling, and, from the ground floor, worked his ass off to climb the food chain to become Chief Engineer at the DWP. (Obviously a lot of the work he did in the early years wasn't good, such as swindling landowners in Rural California, but strictly from an engineering perspective, the body of work was impressive). At his height, he could have run for Mayor... and to this day, Mulholland Drive and other things in LA are named after the guy. But as his career went on, he got distracted. He got lazy. He became further and further resistant to criticism. And eventually his career ended: the St. Francis Dam, which he inspected hours prior, collapsed and killed over 400 people. The parallel to Silver is that he hustled and built a model that saw great success in prior election cycles, particularly in 2012. And who knows, maybe he's got it all figured out this time too.... but he seems... distracted to me. He seems like he dedicates a lot of time to other pursuits, such as sports gambling and poker, and he's incredibly resistant to any sort of criticism that he gets. Gets really defensive. And is just coasting on his reputation. That's when I start asking questions.... as adults, no matter what we do for a living, you always have to be learning, you always have to be trying to improve yourself, and you should never be getting high off of your own supply. Because that's how you lose a step, and that's when bad things can start happening career wise.

Again, still kinda ambivalent, but wow nonetheless.

Your comments re: response rates are spot on. And pollsters do try to weight and correct samples based on various factors to try to correct for the issues. Silver's model is a different discussion.... the polls show somewhere around a 3-4% nationally, and aggregate averages of the swing states, at least at this moment, show Kamala over 270 *based on polling today*... yet, unlike every other aggregator, he's showing a 62% probability that Trump wins. Ultimately, the aggregator discussion is a discussion about nothing, the difference between Kamala having a 55% win probability (what 538 and DDHQ show) and what Silver shows isn't that statistically huge. But given his reputation, a lot of people do hang off of his every pronouncement and, lo and behold, here we are talking about it.

Setting aside the quality of polling hasn't been great (ie. a lot of Rasmussen/Trafalger fly-by-night stuff) and Silver seemingly takes these entities at face value, my understanding is that he built in an expectation of a Convention bounce into his model. Polls since the convention have shown maybe 0.5-1% gain nationally, which is below whatever the model expects, so the model penalizes Harris and will do so until this effect is no longer taken into account in the model. If that is indeed the case, one would expect to see Harris' odds in the model increase starting next week and run closer to DDHQ or 538 (debate impacts nothwithstanding). Of course, a lot of folks don't trust Nate Silver these days (TBH, I'm not sure he's the God that he's treated as in the pundit world myself) and, if said effect doesn't wear away and bring about odds changes, it will end up raising more questions IMO

I'm ambivalent just because of how bad Liz's dad was as VP... but it's still a sentence I never would have expected to read 10 years ago

I would add Tallahassee as well if for nothing else because of it's proximity to Rural GA / sizable black population in SW Georgia. Population-wise, North Florida is a drop in the bucket, but it's a good way to maybe test the waters in a way that isn't a frivolous use of money. Texas is a tougher case just because the big media markets are where the potential votes are for D's, and those places cost a lot of money. And relative to Florida where you can pass it off as an investment in a border market, it really doesn't border anything competitive. There's still long-term reward there with real investment.... Overall, it's something they should explore.... obviously job number 1 is to win the White House, but if Tester really is in trouble in Montana and if Scott/Cruz are only leading by low to mid single digits, it starts to become justifiable to make some strategic investments with the kind of resources they have.

Just to flesh this out a little more, because everyone thinks about 2016 and Hillary's mistakes in investing time and money expanding the map, I am as cognizant as anyone to the idea that her campaign cannot take their eye off of the generally accepted swing states (ie. PA/MI/WI/AZ/NV/GA/NC). Certainly don't think Kamala or Tim Walz need to be having many rallies or bus tours outside of these states. But at some point, when you have 60 days left and $400 million in the bank (a little over $100 mil more than Trump's campaign), you are going to reach the point of diminishing returns really quickly if you only focus on these seven states.... and you cannot take this money with you, it needs to be spent and put towards something. Whether it's through contributions to Congressional/Senate CCs, state parties, and/or investing in targeted expansions of the map. The other part is that states along in the future takes time and money. HRC lost in 2016 while investing in GA and AZ, but money spent in these states no doubt had some impact with bringing them along in 2020 and building more infrastructure to compete in these places. Particularly with Texas, a state that has seen movement toward Dems in recent years but has no near-term history of voting for Dems, and a state that is massive and has expensive media markets, you cannot wait for change to happen organically.... it takes some long term investment. Just think these things get framed as "either/or" way too much, particularly when more $$$ gives more latitude to an "all of the above" approach.

As always, laser focused on the important issues like *checks notes* defaming his accusers

Real "Layla Scene from Goodfellas" vibes going on here lol

Maybe the NYT should get in contact with *check notes* the person who asked the question and see what she thinks apparently.

This is absolutely wild. It really isn't the job of journalists to find or interpret meaning in a statement that has none

We're getting to a point in terms of the marginal utility of money where Kamala probably oughta throw a little bit at Texas and Florida, if for nothing else to try and help Allred and Marcusal-Powell in their Senate races... Particularly if Montana is shaky. The top 7 come first, but at this level of fundraising, it isn't "either/or"

Interesting question

I believe there are room for alternative views on issues. And really, it isn't the consumer that I blame so much as the purveyors of this stuff.... if you have massive audiences like these folks did, you oughtta show a little bit more discretion or understand the kind of power that comes with the role. They maybe understood, but they didn't care.... it was all about those huge sums of money the source of which they either never questioned or didn't care about. Either way, the commentators named in the indictment had, at times, used language that had very little daylight with the lines held by the Russian government. Not necessarily here, but in the greater zeitgeist, had someone suggested prior to yesterday that these commentators that figures might not be good faith actors (as they clearly weren't), you would have been tagged as a "Resist Lib" or "Blue Anon" or whatever. The indictment is much more of a vindication that a lot of anti-Ukraine skepticism floating around in the podcast/media space isn't good faith than a lot of folks would like to admit.... because again, it's really hard to believe that these were the only folks being influenced.

These are not serious people

Fair, I'm not making any specific accusations of anyone. But I still stand by my comment that it's exceedingly hard to believe that there aren't others, perhaps even more well known figures, who have been used in the way that Tim Pool or Dave Rubin were. If I was offered the bag of money these guys were offered to produce their podcasts, I'd have a few questions about the sources of said cash. Particularly when the cash comes with conditions about content and ideology being shared. I'll never be able to prove it, but they either didn't know (best case; they were useful idiots) or didn't care (worst case; they could put 1 and 1 together)

Media: "Kamala is so light on policy specifics, unacceptable!!!!" Meanwhile... Media: *cricket noises*

Just posted this over in the Media Meltdowns thread, but it's worth saying / asking here as well.... but after this indictment, does anyone really believe this activity stopped at just Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, etc.? Obviously it's not something any of us can prove, but it's exceedingly hard to believe that the commentators mentioned in the indictment are the only ones who benefited off of Russian payola over the years....