Check out Howard Fineman's new column, Why Is the Race So Close?. His method of "analysis" is simple; list a number of factors which should favor the generic Democrat, and then contend that Obama's average 6 point lead in the polls is not large enough. Actually, I put the 6 point lead part in there, Fineman uses no real numbers in the column aside from McCain's age, it's all qualitative hand waving. Now compare this sort of intellectual production to what pollster.com went about doing, Is Obama Underachieving?:
Despite the fact that pundits have claimed that Obama is not performing as well as he should be given the economic and political conditions, the models used by political scientists to predict election outcomes--models based on these very conditions--tell a different story. Obama is currently out-pacing the predictions made by some models and lagging only a few percentage points behind others. But his support does not stray more than 4.2% away from any of these predictions. Thus, there isn't much support here for the notion that Obama is greatly underachieving in this election. At least not at this point in the race.
You can see their logic and numbers in the full post. The assumptions of the model may be wrong, but it exhibits enough clarity, right or wrong, that you can elucidate your objection in a concrete manner. As for someone like Howard Fineman, you have no idea what doesn't count as "too close," he can always move the ball in his own mind because "close" is just a term which is a label for that mysterious value that he refuses to share with you. The mainstream media is essential and critical for many things; when it comes to political punditry though it produces an inferior product to most weblogs. Most political weblogs are filled with partisan trash from what I can tell, laugh out loud inanity which makes you wonder at how low we humans can go in the uses we make of our God-given minds, but at least their uninformed blather has some verve, punch an perspective. In contrast, mainstream pundits like Howard Fineman have to pitch to the lowest common denominator, so their vague contentions are comparatively insipid. It's like comparing a loud unabashed fart to a semi-audible one; if you're going to embarrass yourself go 100-proof and let it rip! Fundamentally pundits like Howard Fineman are relics from the age of 3 networks and a few print glossies. I doubt they'll ever be fired, but they won't be replaced when they retire.
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Fineman is one of the many pundits who are regarded as clowns. Not because they're lacking quants, or not merely because of that, but because they regurgitate the conventional wisdom they hear from their media establishment friends, regardless of anything.
For example, the talking heads were calling Bush "a popular president" when his popularity ratings, as reported by their own network, were in the low 40s.
The idea that there's a parity of stupidity between the Republican and the Democratic blogs is basically a Republican idea at this point. Bush and his party have imploded, and "the other side is just as bad" is all they can hope for.
think Fineman is bad? worse than misquided qualitative hand waving is pulling quants literally out of your ass. see Dick Morris's electoral map. my theory is that Morris can't possibly be so ignorant or devoid of pressional responsibility so as to arbitrarily assign places where McCain is leading by more than 10% to "tossups", and assign genuine tossups (e.g North Dakota) to McCain. i think that he is such a partisan tool that he is intentionally making Obama's lead seem bigger than it is, so as to play the "expectations" game when Obama experiences a slight dip in the polls by contrasting Obama's numbers with his fake ones.
Worse than worthless, actually -- insofar as you're against ignorance and confusion, they have a negative value.
morris' whole schtick is being retarded-for-pay. basically it's the equivalent of screaming all day, slapping your head and pooping in your diaper, and getting a big fat paycheck :-) granted, the public is retarded so perhaps it makes them feel better to see someone being subsidized like this, maintains the aspirational illusion.
btw, i do recommend readers check out morris' electoral map at the link ben provided. it's pretty funny, what kind of morons would actually buy the bullshit he's selling? the type who read newsmax for news. i doubt they'll ever look up the fact that arizona has a consistent 10+ lead for mccain all year, and being the senator from arizona he'll probably clean up the undecideds too. and yet somehow professional 'tard dicky morris puts that in lean obama? i bet a non-trivial minority, on the order of 30-40%, have no idea that john mccain is the senator from arizona. in fact, i wouldn't be surprise if the majority of the public had no idea :-) many people also have only a vague qualitative sense of the utility of the decimal number system.
Agreed that most political analysis is stupid. At least fringe sites like DailyKos and NewsMax are pretty open about being screaming monkeys flinging poop at each other.
But that's how you win elections, especially this close to the vote. There is no time left for rational analysis. At this stage you all you can do is:
a) rally your side into a frenzy
b) try to intimidate/depress your opponents into staying home (vague threats of reprisals work well for this)
c) poke enough monkey brain emotional hot buttons to force the undecided morons in the middle to pick one of the screaming mobs to join.
...
Such is life. Ideally there'd be an IQ test or some sort of property requirement for voting. Or maybe a nice poll tax. Actually, it's kind of shocking our system has held up this long. Universal suffrage is for morons. Literally.
But that's how you win elections, especially this close to the vote.
but it ain't close. also, dems have increased their partisan advantage A LOT since 2004, ergo, mccain is dumb to do the rally the base strategy without balancing with a reach to the middle.
Ideally there'd be an IQ test or some sort of property requirement for voting. Or maybe a nice poll tax.
The high IQ'd would have no incentive then to act in the interests of the low IQ'd.
IQ is a fetish here, but I doubt that an IQ qualification for voting would have much effect one way or another. A lot of political confusion comes from deliberate misrepresentation, and a lot of political disagreement comes from either conflicting interests or conflicting values. There are intrinsic difficulties in coordinatiing the activities of hundreds of millions of people, regardless of the political form chosen.
IQ is a fetish here
oh come now, you don't talk about the ethnography of ancient fergana with tards! point taken about coordination, though the high IQ do tend to be more polarized so you'd have crisper ideological disputes, and fewer toothless undecided-tard voters 2 weeks out from the election.
This seems like an oddly circular argument... isn't it the case that if the models are not predicting the actual race then they have been falsified? It seems a bit weird to judge whether or not Obama is over or underperforming on the basis of models. I guess I understand the point: say we have a model that is known to be accurate and says that under these conditions, Obama should be leading by x%. If he is not, then we know one of the assumptions of the model has been violated, so it is up to us to figure out why Obama is performing differently from the model?
If he is not, then we know one of the assumptions of the model has been violated, so it is up to us to figure out why Obama is performing differently from the model?
yes. and if he isn't performing differently from what a "generic democrat" would be performing, there's no column to be written or CNN segment to be taped.
consider the idea that this race is "close." if obama beats mccain 51 to 48, with the balance going independent, is that "close." perhaps, but "close" has to be normalized by the prior that this is a relatively evenly divided country, and that the previous two elections have been very "close," and if ross perot wasn't around '92 and '96 those races would likely have been much closer.
I just wish we had an electorate smart enough not to call an orchestrated presentation of campaign promises a "debate".
We used to have debates between political opponents. Real ones, with theses and supporting arguments and contentions. Now we have political infomercials.
We used to have debates between political opponents. Real ones, with theses and supporting arguments and contentions. Now we have political infomercials.
this is true. historically there's ALWAYS been a crap load of mud. but textual analysis of speeches, etc., shows a shift toward further 'tardation in the use of vocab an concepts. so what happened? i suspect that the typical tard-on-the-street has much more interesting material to focus on, so the politicians are having to compete with that market. in contrast, in the 19th century, even regular people would travels miles over long distances to listen to speeches, which were major events where people gathered together.
We used to have debates between political opponents. Real ones, with theses and supporting arguments and contentions. Now we have political infomercials.
Personally, I don't mind so much, because if you want to hear them talk about substance more than style you can read their policy papers.
I do agree though that it would be a nice addition to have a debate geared towards the right side of the bell curve, in which they traded scholarly arguments against one another's policy papers.