#that goes for Democrat non-voters too I’m done being nice

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Women are leading men in the swing states and I’m so proud. They’re also saying that Iowa could flip blue simply because so many women are getting out and voting.

We are not going back. And we won’t allow our rights to be taken away. Please, get out and vote tomorrow. We’ll never have a perfect candidate, and not voting until we do will just hand Trump the victory and hurt so many people. You have a voice. Use it.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

When building a statistical model, you ideally want to find yourself surprised by the data some of the time — just not too often. If you never come up with a result that surprises you, it generally means that you didn’t spend a lot of time actually looking at the data; instead, you just imparted your assumptions onto your analysis and engaged in a fancy form of confirmation bias. If you’re constantly surprised, on the other hand, more often than not that means your model is buggy or you don’t know the field well enough; a lot of the “surprises” are really just mistakes.

So when I build election forecasts for FiveThirtyEight, I’m usually not surprised by the outcomes they spit out — unless they’re so surprising (a Republican winning Washington, D.C.?) that they reflect a coding error I need to fix. But there are exceptions, and one of them came in the U.S. Senate race in Texas between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke. I was pretty sure that once we introduced non-polling factors into the model — what we call the “fundamentals” — they’d shift our forecast toward Cruz, just as they did for Marsha Blackburn, the Republican candidate in Tennessee. That’s not what happened, however. Instead, although Cruz is narrowly ahead in the polls right now, the fundamentals slightly helped O’Rourke. Our model thinks that Texas “should” be a competitive race and believes the close polling there is no fluke.

We’ll return to Texas in a moment, but first, here’s a table comparing the polls and fundamentals in the five Senate races where elected Republican incumbents are defending their seats. (We covered races with elected Democratic incumbents in Part 1 of this series and open-seat races in Part 2). As you can see, there isn’t really a lot of disagreement between the polls and fundamentals in these races:

Republican incumbents are polling about as well as expected

Forecasted margin of victory for Republican senators who are running for re-election, according to FiveThirtyEight’s fundamentals and adjusted polls as of Sept. 26

Forecasted margin of victory Race Incumbent Fundamentals Adjusted Polls Nevada Heller -0.5 -0.9 Texas Cruz -0.3 +3.8 Nebraska Fischer +15.1 +13.0 Mississippi Wicker +19.2 +16.6 Wyoming Barrasso +40.8 —

The Mississippi special election is not listed because Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is an appointed rather than an elected incumbent and our model treats races with appointed incumbents as open-seat races. There has been no polling of the Senate races in Wyoming.

I’m not going to discuss Nebraska, Wyoming or the regular election in Mississippi much further.1 You wouldn’t expect them to be competitive based on the fundamentals, and they haven’t looked competitive when polls have been taken there — although I wouldn’t mind seeing a poll of Nebraska, which hasn’t had a nonpartisan survey all election cycle or any polling at all since January.

I would note, however, that our fundamentals calculation doesn’t expect all Republican incumbents to be in competitive races just as a default — it has Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer winning by 14 percentage points and Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso winning by 41, for example. Rather, it’s factors particular to Texas that make the model think Cruz is a weaker incumbent and O’Rourke is a stronger challenger than usual. So let’s talk about Texas in more detail, and then we’ll loop back around to the other close race, Nevada.

Before this year, we treated incumbency as just another variable in our fundamentals model. That was a mistake, because there are all sorts of complicated interactions between incumbency and the other variables that go into the fundamentals. To take an obvious example, the margin of victory in a state or district’s previous election is a lot more meaningful when there’s an incumbent running than when there are two new candidates on the ballot.

So this year, we built separate fundamentals models2 for races with elected incumbents, compared with open-seat races. One of the most important differences is that a state or district’s overall partisanship, as measured by voting in elections for president or state legislature,3 is less important in races with incumbents. Something like presidential voting is a very useful indicator when you don’t have a lot of other data to go by. But in races with incumbents, we have a lot of information pertinent to the specific incumbent and his or her strengths. For instance, our fundamentals calculation for Florida’s 26th Congressional District knows that Republican Carlos Curbelo won the district by 12 points in 2016 even as the area voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton for president. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Curbelo will survive the “blue wave” this year. (He’s only a slight favorite for re-election.) But it does mean the presidential vote doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the district

Cruz, on the other hand, shows signs of being a weak incumbent — and O’Rourke shows signs of being a tough challenger. Here’s a detailed calculation of exactly what goes into the fundamentals model in Texas.

Some factors hurting Cruz have nothing to do with Cruz himself, but rather with the state of Texas. Historically, the incumbency advantage is larger in small, idiosyncratic states and smaller in larger, more diverse ones. This is why Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono’s incumbency advantage in Hawaii is much larger than Cruz’s in Texas or Sen. Bill Nelson’s in Florida, for example. In addition, Congress’s overall approval rating is low, which hurts incumbents in all states and all parties.

Still, Texas is a red state — redder in statewide elections than in presidential ones, in fact — and Cruz won by a fairly healthy (although by no means overwhelming) margin in 2012. That ought to be enough to offset a blue national environment as measured by the generic congressional ballot. If you add up the first four indicators in the table — incumbency, state partisanship, Cruz’s previous margin of victory and the generic ballot — they’d project him to win by about 9 percentage points.4

It’s the other factors that push the race toward toss-up status, however. When a challenger has previously held an elected office, they tend to perform better with each level higher that office is. To run for Senate, O’Rourke is giving up his seat in the U.S. House, which is a higher office than had been held by Cruz’s 2012 opponent, Paul Sadler, a former state representative. Strong incumbents tend to deter strong challengers from entering the race, but Cruz wasn’t able to do so this time. Cruz also has a very conservative voting record, one that is perhaps “too conservative” even for Texas. The model actually penalizes O’Rourke slightly for his DUI scandal, but because the scandal has been public knowledge for a long time, the model discounts its importance.

Fundraising is another influential factor hurting Cruz. Ordinarily, you’d expect an incumbent to have a pretty healthy fundraising advantage. Instead, O’Rourke had more than doubled Cruz in dollars raised from individual contributors as of the end of the last filing period on June 30 — an advantage that will probably only increase once the campaigns file their next fundraising reports, which will cover up through Sept. 30. (Our model considers money raised from individual contributors only — not PACs, parties or self-funding.) If fundraising were even, Cruz would still lead in our fundamentals calculation by 4 percentage points, but O’Rourke’s money advantage is enough to bring the overall fundamentals forecast to a dead heat.

One could get into some pretty good arguments about exactly how fundraising should be included in the model. Should out-of-state or out-of-district contributions get less weight, for example? Are Republican donors contributing less in the post-Citizens United era because they expect super PACs to fill in the gaps for them? Still, individual fundraising totals have one really nice quality, which is that they represent hard evidence — tangible action undertaken by individual voters. If you thought you could never trust the polls, fundraising might be one of the first things you’d look at instead. And the fundraising numbers have generally been really good for Democrats, in Texas and in other races for Congress, perhaps reflecting their enthusiasm advantage.

Now that you’ve read all those words explaining why the fundamentals look the way they do in Texas, I should probably tell you that they don’t actually have that much influence on our top-line forecast there. That’s because a lot of polling has been done in Texas, and our model doesn’t weigh the fundamentals heavily when it has a lot of polling. Nonetheless, the fundamentals help explain why it isn’t necessarily a surprise that the polling shows a close race in Texas or that O’Rourke has gradually been gaining ground. At the moment, Cruz leads in our adjusted polling average by 3.8 percentage points; adding in the fundamentals pushes the forecasted margin to 3.3 points, a close race.

Let me also show you the detailed fundamentals calculation for Nevada, which is a more straightforward race:

Republican Sen. Dean Heller is a fairly typical incumbent who should have a decent-sized incumbency advantage, and Nevada is a fairly average swing state. He’s drawn an experienced opponent in U.S. Rep. Jacky Rosen, however, who has raised slightly more money than Heller has — and the overall political environment is blue. All of that adds up to a race that “should” be a toss-up, which is exactly what the polls in Nevada show too. Nevada may not be as high-profile a race as Texas, but it’s just as important in determining control of the Senate.

[evilelitest2]

100 Days of Trump Day 60: 1984

     Welcome back to 100 Days of Trump, where we try to sum up WTF happened in 2016 in 100 recommendations.  Today we are going to talk to the ganddaddy of them all, 1984....and let me just get this out of the way.  Orwell was a Socialist, he was extremely left wing, his criticism of communism (and it is more than just communism he is critical of) wasn’t coming from a right wing place.  Now one of Orwells main theory was actually disproved, if you don’t have a word for something it doesn't keep you from articulating it, usually by making a new word via language drift.  When Mao Zedong created Simplified Chinese he deliberately tried to remove certain phases and concepts from the language...but very quickly that failed, the Chinese just used new terms or loan words.  But what I do want to talk about with 1984 is the co-option of language, yes I am banging that drum again.  

    See the regime Ingoc is specifically said to lack any real ideology, its most defining traits is its inconsistency, “We have always been at war with east asia”  But a political regime must have ideological rhetoric, even if it has no ideology itself, and so lacking any core beliefs, they instead latch upon other ideas and concepts and co-opt them for their own purpose.  And the Far Right (though not necessarily the more ‘moderate’ right) doesn’t really have a coherent political ideology beyond vague “I oppose these things” when you leave them alone to make their own theories it just turns into absolute shit.  And the greatest irony is that if you look at their writings, not only do they all sound like each other with no discernible difference, they all use the same phases over and over again, like cuck.  But the thing I find interesting is...almost all of those phases are leftist terms they just stop (not cuck obviously).  Here let me give a list of their mindlessly parroted phases that the Neoreactionary Right just can’t get enough of

Politically Correct

This was originally a socialist/communist term used by people like Orwell and Troskey against Stalinist style communists, politically correct mean that they followed the party line mindlessly without questioning.  If you used the word in its originally meaning, then you’d be using it against republicans who put aside previous objections in order to work with Trump.  Then it came to mean basically “Corporate works trying to pretend to be progressive without actually being progressive” a decidedly left wing charge.  But the right got it so not it just kinda means “Giving a shit about social justice”   Speaking of which

Social Justice Warrior 

This was actually a left wing term, I’m serious, I remember when it was first spreading around left wing internet and I was like “god damn this is a useful term”  And holy crap did that get co-opted fast.  SJW originally was a word to use for leftists who advocated a much more militant and “Us vs. them” mentality, basically for the modern day Marat or Robespierre.  This time of liberal disagreement goes back for quite a long way, the question of reform vs. revolution, and its not necessarily an ideological difference as it is a practical one, and it was nice to have a term to those people who fetishize the idea of violent revolution utterly ignorant of its results (spoiler warning, it doesn’t end well).  But not it is just a blanket term to mean “people I don’t like”

White Knight

Man i remember when this was a feminist term, it was a great term, it basically referred to men who try to defend women out of a desire for sex, which is a creepy thing that happens all the time.  Problem now is that any man who like...doesn’t think that Anita Sarkeesian is trying to take over the world is a white knight by default.  

Virtue Signalling

Basically this is when somebody obstains from doing something horrible and then calls attention to it so that everybody will value and respect them, social justices entirely for the praise.  Good term, we have all met that one guy who does that.  Problem is now that anybody who is like “Man, it is really awful the way women are consistently harassed on the internet” and the immediate response is “well you are just virtue signalling”.  

MLK

MLK’s entire existence has become one giant use of Rightists misusing him to support their argument, and then in response leftist pretending he was somehow  a violent revolutionary cause that makes sense. 

Regressive Leftist 

This one originally means to people who are supposedly left wing but actually seem to hold really non left wing views 

Ethics in Game Journalism

This might shock you but long before Gamergate was the glimmer in Ejoni’s empty souless eyes there were a lot of people talking about how corrupt games journalism is, because it fucking is but guess what? Most of them didn’t join up with GG, in fact many like Jim Sterling actually opposed GG and none of them were talking about indie devs interacting with games journalist for good reviews, they were instead talking about giant corporations buying adds on gaming journalist sites to get good reviews, the giant corporations that GG didn’t spend its time talking about in favor of how an indie game developer and a youtube feminist are somehow responsible for everything wrong in a multi billion dollar industry.  

Orwell himself

And of course, Orwell himself suffered this, despite being, I will say this again, a socialist, you see the term orwellian used to refer to the very same ideology Orwell held, its fucking maddening.  You have folks online like RedbloodedAmerican who literally say “Socialism has never produced anything of value ever” and then use the term Orwellian without any bat of irony.  

Part of this is that when these terms of defined, they are usually only defined in what they are, not what they aren’t, which makes them very easy to co-opt, after all the original definition didn’t not mean this right? Good hint for future leftist term makings, when you make something up, very specifically say what it isn’t.  Orwell would have done better I feel if he had very specifically made it clear what his regime was not as much as what it was.  

but we don’t just see this in a political context, I mean take the term 

Mary Sue

It is suppose to mean a character who is way too powerful for the narrative and around whom the narrative revolves because they are always correct, and now kinda means “thing I don’t like” 

But the right doesn’t just always co-opt the left, they have lots of neat little terms that instead exist to sort of hide to themselves and others how utterly abhorrent the whole lot of them are.  I mean when you say 

Family Values

When being homophobic or anti feminist, it basically doesn’t mean anything, I mean....what do families as a collective unit produce universal values?  All of them?  I mean the Judeo Claudians were a family should I take advice from them?  What defines a family? What if a family disagrees?  How does that mean anything at all?

Intelligent Design

This literally exists to make creationism sound less stupid than creationism, but of course every single person who believes in Intelligent Design is of course a creationist. 

White Nationalist 

Rather than just saying ‘I’m a nazi” they use this cute little term instead, because their beliefs are basically the same as the nazis except Pan European rather than just German.  

Spengler

This one honestly confuses me, because Spengler was right wing I mean did any of them actually read Decline of the West

The point is that we just see words used not for a method of communication, but instead as a way to create a larger point 

    The list goes on and on but I want to get to my main point, I want to talk about the psychology going on with this constant revisionist of language, it isn’t because they are stupid (I mean it is but that isn’t the main point) its about keeping people angry, about creating a constant sense of anger and embittered paranoia.  Because here is the dirty little secret of the Far Right, if you actually calm them the fuck down and don’t have an enemy to oppose....they don’t really have all that much in common.  IN fact a lot of them have beliefs that are actually really left wing.  Again and again we have found that if you poll Americans based on specific issues like “Should healthcare be affordable”and “Does this country have too much of a wealth gap” and “Do the rich not pay enough in taxes” and a lot of hardcore republican suddenly sound like socialists.  CGP Grey noted that if you abstract enough and talk to people about the electoral college they will almost uniformly come out and say “Wow, that is awful” but the moment they realize that they benefit from it, they will instantly start to change their tune.  Because to a lot of Republican voters, it isn’t actually about the issues, its about fucking over “The enemy” which in this case is the democrats, and as long as people are fucking pissed, they don’t really fully listen to the whole platform of the guy they supported.  I had this issue with Obama/Clinton supporters where their supporters just stopped listening when they got to things they didn't’ like about the candidate, because it isn’t actually about the core issues, its about fear and hatred of the other side.  But maintaining that level of hatred is actually pretty difficult, because the moment people calm down a tad and go home, watch TV and find out the world hasn’t ended, they start to realize that you are kinda hyperbolic and most importantly, might become vulnerable to leftists pointing out that they actually agree on most issues.  So you need to keep them mad, constantly perpetually mad, just endlessly angry, so that they never really have that moment of calming the fuck down and actually thinking about the issues.  And Angry people aren’t famous for rational decisions

Yet again reminder of why Hitchens is an utterly worthless pseudo intellectual who reminds me a lot of Alex Jones, who is basically the result of a human being who has been angry for decades and has never calmed down.

  This is also why these buzzwords are so important, they distract from the issue as a whole, because family values...I has family, and I don’t wants family to change gah.  Rather than sitting them down and talking to them about what a changing modern society actually means for a family they just kind of vaguely panic because they aren’t in a head-space where they are ready to reason (This is worse for single issue voters).  Like i’ve spoken to people about the Iraq War and once I get to “So how do you win a war on terror” they suddenly kinda stop and go “Huh....wait”  or “How do you win a war on drugs” if they aren’t viewing in from the lenses of a culture war, they  become more receptive.  So the point of the right (who i remind you, have interests which most of the country doesn’t like, as Trump’s supporters are finding out right now).  I mean literally at this moment, we are seeing people go “Well I like the ACA I just don’t like Obamacare” when they are the SAME FUCKING THING  

And that is where the Right wing Media empire comes in and by that I mean the two min of hate, where you can take all of your collective insecurities anger and frustrations in life and everything around you and blame it on one nebulous force of “Them”.  Huh where have I seen that before?

If you watch folks like THunderfoot, Sargon or other anti feminists, they fixate a fucking tone of attention on this extremely standard video series, it is notably shocking how much time they spend talking about really basic theory level stuff and then you realize....Anita, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu and Hillary Clinton are literally the whole feminists they know.  Like they haven’t read any of the material, they don’t know any of these people, they don’t even know what feminism is other than a vague “bad thing” that that they don’t like and blame for all their problems.  This is why so called “Free speech” advocates” are totally ok with GSM folks having videos put down, why devout Christians vote for a man who admitted to sexual assault, why people who hate the Eastern Elites are always getting in bed with Goldman sachs or why the working class voted for Trump, it isn’t actually about the issues, its about screwing the other guy.  

It is into this environment that Trump thrives, because pointing to a vague, undefinable, conspiratorial other is where he thrives and he serves as the culminate conductor of rage (that should be a title of a book on this subject honestly)