Nate Sliver predicts Clinton win. probability = 0.81

[BaalChatzaf]

Nate Sliver who is a very able statistician concludes that Hillary has an 81 percent chance of winning.

See: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/29/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-nate-silver-poll-prediction

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Not even the hard left is taking Nate Silver seriously anymore.

Cenk Uygur is someone who used to swear by him. Cenk thinks Silver is too biased now to be believable.

When I was younger, Cenk's complaint against Nate was called prostituting one's talent.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

39 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Not even the hard left is taking Nate Silver seriously anymore.

Cenk Uygur is someone who used to swear by him. Cenk thinks Silver is too biased now to be believable.

When I was younger, Cenk's complaint against Nate was called prostituting one's talent.

Michael

In terms of presidential elections Silver, in one election, call 50 states out of 50  correctly.  This could be chance, but the odds are greatly against it.  Maybe he knows how to read the entrails and the tea leaves.    

But the 81 percent is a guess.  An educated guess but a guess never the less.

Maybe Hillary has "only"  a 60 percent chance of winning.

I suggest that you wait for the first Thursday in November  By then all the votes will be in, counted  and the Electors will have been chosen.

[turkeyfoot]

Who knows? There is something momentous in play otherwise you wouldnt be commenting, would you? Maybe prognosticators will stoke the electors into action, in the days before.

Ive researched it but I honestly dont know how the electors process proceeds through the popular election. Do they, as you seem to suggest, decide the vote 6 days prior to the popular vote on Nov 8th? I understand the popular vote can come into play as it did in Florida if the electoral vote isnt decisive. Also I thought it true of electors that they will often mirror the popular vote although arent bound by it.

If you could provide a link that clearly answers my question, I will appreciate it. Thanks!

 

[BaalChatzaf]

45 minutes ago, turkeyfoot said:

Who knows? There is something momentous in play otherwise you wouldnt be commenting, would you? Maybe prognosticators will stoke the electors into action, in the days before.

Ive researched it but I honestly dont know how the electors process proceeds through the popular election. Do they, as you seem to suggest, decide the vote 6 days prior to the popular vote on Nov 8th? I understand the popular vote can come into play as it did in Florida if the electoral vote isnt decisive. Also I thought it true of electors that they will often mirror the popular vote although arent bound by it.

If you could provide a link that clearly answers my question, I will appreciate it. Thanks!

 

see  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

From the Wiki Article:

Twenty-one states do not have laws that compel their electors to vote for a pledged candidate.^[3] Twenty-nine states plus the District of Columbia have laws to penalize faithless electors, although these have never been enforced.^[2] In lieu of penalizing a faithless elector, some states, like Michigan and Minnesota, specify that the faithless elector's vote is void.^[4]

 

In theory in 21 states, electors can vote as they please, but there are social and political consequences for double  crossing the candidate under whose aegis the elector was chosen.  In the history of the country,  the vote of faithless electors has not changed the outcome of a single presidential election.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I suggest that you wait for the first Thursday in November

Bob,

You mean when YOU don't wait and open a thread about Nate Silver's predictions, you don't need to wait because that is "scientific," but when I show that Silver is discredited--even among his own supporters--because of about a gazillion wrong predictions last year about Trump (Silver kept predicting one demise after another), now it is better to wait?

Heh.

Double heh.

Michael

[turkeyfoot]

Theres 2 mentions of the first Thursday, the 3rd of November upstream. Im sure Baal will want to edit it or explain if it were otherwise. 

My grasp of this was tenuous, let the best man win. )

[KorbenDallas]

Quote

Since becoming a smash success in 2012, however, Silver and his FiveThirtyEight colleagues have suffered some high-profile misses that could lead some observers to discount their predictions this year. Their most high-profile miss of all: Donald Trump.

Last August, Silver rated Trump’s chances of winning the Republican nomination at 2%, and he remained bearish on Trump’s candidacy throughout the fall. The mistake, he has since admitted, sprang from a blindness to the very data he has made a career reading so well. The polls showing Trump’s strength were right; the nagging contextual information that Silver admitted he allowed get in the way – historical data, “gut” feelings about the candidate – was, in Trump’s unique case, highly misleading.

FiveThirtyEight has made other mistakes. In March a FiveThirtyEight model gave Clinton a 99% chance of winning the Michigan primary; Bernie Sanders won by a half-point. In the 2014 midterms, the site failed to anticipate a Republican wave that generated multiple upsets for its models. “The polls did have a strong bias this year,” Silver wrote afterward.

statistics + gut feelings != statistics.

 

[SteveWolfer]

I woke up early today, and having nothing better to do I looked into the tea leaves.  Forget Nate Silver, here's the real stuff.  Hillary pulls ahead of Trump after the conventions and it does look like she is going to take it walking away, but then the FBI leak their report on all the monkey business the Clintons have been into and Trump surges ahead.  The election is a dead tie in the popular vote.  Some people say that Clinton operatives cheated in a couple of states to rig the electoral vote.  But the best they could do was a tie there as well.  The election was thrown to the Supreme court.  But those eight Supremes split four-four.  That took it to the floor of the House.  They elected John Boehner.  Seriously, the tea leaves wouldn't lie (Obama once used them to predict 57 out of 57 states).  As Boehner walked in, tears streaming down his cheeks, the entire Freedom Caucus got up and walked out and Paul Ryan went with them.  The Democrats also left - to a man (and woman).  Trump declared himself president anyway at a rally in Fargo, and at last report, the Clintons were caught trying to sneak into the residence. 

(You know, it's hard to try to make up something that is more bizarre than this election season has already been - I couldn't do it.)

[BaalChatzaf]

55 minutes ago, turkeyfoot said:

Theres 2 mentions of the first Thursday, the 3rd of November upstream. Im sure Baal will want to edit it or explain if it were otherwise. 

My grasp of this was tenuous, let the best man win. )

The day following election,  the vote count is not  yet complete.  By Thursday it is.

[william.scherk]

As Ba'al notes, it is important to remember that all summer predictions are at best educated guesses -- including those which foresee a Trump landslide. If we look back at the 2012 race discussions here at Objectivist Living, at this point (July 4) few of us predicted a re-election.  We could retroactively crown those few as Oracles, but.  How much education was in our guesses?

On 6/29/2016 at 3:07 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

Nate Sliver who is a very able statistician concludes that Hillary has an 81 percent chance of winning.

See: [Guardian story]

See also the 538 page where the forecast is made and explained: Who will win the presidency? There are nifty interactive graphics and lots of explanation at hand -- for those who don't think 538 is completely full of shitty data. 

-- the 538 forecast may be mostly wrong, or just plain wrong, and conceivably 'almost right' -- if not correct.  The main thing I keep in mind when viewing such projections and guesses is that it all depends -- all of it is contingent. For example this graphic below is not remarkable ... it uses aggregated recent 'snapshot' polling data  ... and so identifies the so-called swing-states and 'leaning' states at this point in time.

This  can focus the effortful mind  -- eg, if Mr Trump's new polling hire Kelleyanne Conway** (joining the Trump campaign polling director Tony Fabrizio)  has a choice of listening to Cenk or 'listening' to the materials at 538's site, I think she will go direct, and assess the details herself -- with her own acumen: do these states represent best 'targets' for our Trump operations?  Where do we make extra effort? Do our internal soundings (in state, via polling or other intelligence) match these high-lighted states?

I believe that Kelleyanne will probably have her staff break down the various state results and benchmarks for analysis. For example, Ohio: this information is useful to her Red Hat campaign, I would say -- even if she entirely (rightly) discounts the scoring of chances.  

The worst thing Kelleyanne can bring to the Trump table is hubris: she will not, I wager, leave the 538 materials unexamined. She will not act as if  "Nate Silver is a loser and a putz, fuck all the information at 538: my bones tell me we are winning."

Here is a sample of the Ohio findings ...

 

Another thing I bear in mind is the 120-odd exciting days to come.  As Nate Silver says in one article supplementing his forecast, An 80 Percent Shot Doesn’t Mean Clinton Is A Sure Thing.
 

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Not even the hard left is taking Nate Silver seriously anymore.

 Cenk Uygur is a stand-in for a 'hard left' blob, meaning commie-tipping like Mother Jones? ... perhaps.  

But what does it mean to your greater argument if (not even) Cenk is taking Nate seriously (any longer)?  Does this mean that nobody intelligent takes 538's data seriously, at all?  It seems you are taking Cenk's remarks as the final and/or best take on the matter. That is unusual reasoning. 

But then again, as a Red Hat Incarnate, it isn't your role to be even-handed or neutrally analytical, is it?

5 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Cenk Uygur is someone who used to swear by him. [...] Cenk thinks Silver is too biased now to be believable.

In terms of presidential elections Silver, in one election, call 50 states out of 50  correctly.  This could be chance, but the odds are greatly against it.  Maybe he knows how to read the entrails and the tea leaves.    

If it were tea leaves and entrails, then we could treat Big Data analysts as warlocks and soothsayers -- with a higher degree of skepticism -- as claiming precognition. In this case, the question I ask myself is what is the proper degree of skepticism for such analysts and products (ie, Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, Josh Putnam's FrontloadingHQ, etc)?  What can I glean from them as data, without falling into cognitive error?

-- a graphic from Josh's article The Electoral College Map:

-- and here the map from Sabato:

 

There is some commonality in all these electoral maps.

Imagine what I would need to make a judgement call on one or several of the highlighted swing/soft/hinge/toss-up/leaning states for November 8.

Pick one, let's say Colorado.  How can I get to know whether Colorado will swing out of "Romney lost" territory to "Trump wins"? I figure I need to get informed. There are specifics to consider and compare, many lines of evidence to weigh.  

I think this is what the top smart Red Hat people are doing right now.  It isn't that 538 soothsaying is reliable -- it is that the data models and supporting materials are useful -- both to the Democratic and Republican campaign.

It is fine Red Hattery to devalue Nate Silver's opinions because he was one of the bozos who confidently guessed wrong about the GOP nominee. That is fun and encourages folks who might otherwise be a bit gloomy.   There are plenty of electoral map combos to further encourage a winning feeling -- and you can always build your own, based on extant data, gut feelings, personal biases, wishes and hopes. Here is my estimation of a Trump schlonging, from the tools at 270toWin.com:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Ultimately, I think fair-minded, reasoning creatures can set aside the prognostications. They are what they are, guesses. It is the fluid data itself that campaigns need take note of, at least to the extent own-polls track the numbers of public sampling -- and offer strategic guidance. 

For those creatures who like to explore wonkeries undergirding 538's forecast. Of note is that the forecast updates as new data is fed into the models: A User’s Guide To FiveThirtyEight’s 2016 General Election Forecast

 

-- two related angles tie back to discussion at Friends and Foes:  Firstly, I believe Mr Trump wants to achieve an historic victory. He not only wants to turn the swing/leaning states red, he wants victory in states like California and New York. Secondly, Mrs Clinton's campaign obviously pays attention to state polls and forecasts/analysis. Mere days after polling that showed Pennsylvania as getting fainter and fainter blue, the campaign turned its attention there, not least in multimillion ad buys. As noted in the Finance discussion at F+F, there were no Trump-side ad buys there yet.  

What does this mean? It means an unconventional approach to winning.  A contingency, a variable, an unknown.

So, my bottom line is that state polling matters more as we get closer in time, and forecasts are mere tools.  We can compare all metrics to 2012, but we must keep 'contingency' in mind. Polls can shift, October surprises can happen, and conventional wisdom can be upturned.

_______________________________________________

** from Breitbart a few days ago: 'Trump issued a statement about the hire, stating, “Kellyanne is a tremendous asset to our rapidly-expanding campaign team. She is a data and messaging expert and terrific on TV. It is great to have her on board.”'

A plug for my F+F polls: please take the time to ID what you think are the important challenges facing the Trump Campaign: 

 

Edited July 4, 2016 by william.scherk
Added link to "Trump Victory Strategy at F+F; grrrrammar

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

I'm glad you have the interest and patience to wade through all that.

Let me ask you a "duh" level question. Did Nate Silver use this same methodology when forecasting his LONG-ASS STRING OF PREDICTION FAILURES FOR ALMOST AN ENTIRE YEAR about Trump's primary run?

Or was that entire fail series a mere coincidence that dummies like me cannot fathom?

 

Michael

[william.scherk]

 

Supplementary to the challenge of interpreting state polling four months out ...  a couple explanatory articles:

Why I was wrong about Donald Trump
How I acted like a pundit and screwed up on Donald Trump

For fun:

7 times Nate Silver was hilariously wrong about Donald Trump

-- and from my LinkedIn network, What we can learn from data-jockey Nate Silver's mea culpa, with a couple of useful observations for the pundit lurking in us all ...

Quote

Observation #1: None of Nate Silver's misreading stemmed from errors of forecast methodology, data science, modeling, etc. They were instead all errors of judgment, leading him to:

• overestimate the resolve of the party elites to oppose Trump,
• underestimate the impact of celebrity coverage as a substitute for conventional ad spend,
• assume blue-state Republicans were necessarily pro-establishment because they were likely to be anti-conservative,
• become overconfident in the internal logic of the analyses. 

Observation #2: "Shoe leather" research could have helped him overcome his cognitive biases.  Apparently an old term in journalism, the term was used by  Washington Post reporter Paul Fahri who wrote about why so many were surprised by Eric Cantor's loss to Tea Party long shot David Brat.  But a handful of journalists at Politico and the Post who actually went out and talked to voters were not surprised.  

 

I am the kind of guy that likes examining mistakes, most importantly my own. It is a good means of clearing out inoperative assumptions and testing one's own bias. I want to know when and how I am wrong, and how to be less wrong the next time out .. I like how Josh Bernoff at Without Bullshit puts it in his Nate Cohn, Nate Silver describe how they misread Donald Trump:

Similarly, a true analyst is fearless and bold in making predictions. You’re going to be wrong. But slinking away in shame is a waste of resources. True analysts go into the rubble of their predictions and find out what went wrong and why.

Nate Silver was smart when he accurately predicted Obama’s reelection in 2012, state by state. But he wasn’t infallible then, even if he appeared to be. Now that he has emphatically and unequivocally mispredicted the Republican primaries, he’s not stupid. Every failure makes him smarter. Can you say the same?

Thanks for the added votes at F+F's poll!  I think one fun in this race is watching campaigns identify and then rise to challenges. Many fun days ahead. 

If you are a Red Hat, I suggest ignoring any and all 'bad' or worrisome non-news, like the dog-days polls and forecasts right about now.  The campaign is using multiple tools to get up to speed on intervening fronts, so you don't have to.  Let the smart top Red Hats do their things, and don't worry your pretty little head, as MSK might put it.  Insert smiley.

In other words, in other words, the proof is in the pudding, and we are four courses away from that sweet moment.

[BaalChatzaf]

Nate Silver's prior successes   are due mostly to his use of Bayesian Statistical Analysis.  Here is the key taken from the article referenced prior:

his is a tricky question. Trump’s eventual win was unprecedented, but there wasn’t all that much precedent. Bayes’ theorem can potentially provide some help, in the form of what’s known as a uniform prior. A uniform prior works like this: Say we start without any idea at all about the long-term frequency of a certain type of event.10 Then we observe the world for a bit and collect some data. In the case of Trump, we observe that similar candidates have won the nomination zero times in 8 attempts. How do we assess Trump’s probability now?

According to the uniform prior, if an event has occurred x times in nobservations, the chance of it occurring the next time around is this:

x+1/n+2

For example, if you’ve observed that an event has occurred 3 times in 4 chances (75 percent of the time) — say, that’s how often your pizza has been delivered on time from a certain restaurant — the chance of its happening the next time around is 4 out of 6, according to the formula, or 67 percent. Basically, the uniform prior has you hedging a bit toward 50-50 in the cases of low information.11

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Use of Bayes theorem does not -guarantee- a correct projection, but it is more effective than purely frequency bases statistical inferences.  During the second world war  Allen Turing at Bletchley Park  reinvented Bayesian inference (it was not used much in the early 40's) and get very effective guesses at the way German code clerks  broke the rules for key selection in the Enigma Codes.  When used correctly Bayesian statistics is very effective.  

 

Unlike frequency based methods,  Bayesian Inference uses every little scrap of evidence as it comes up  which is way a sequence of inference  more often than chance  converges to a correct forecast.   Bayesian methods  weight the evidence,  not the distribution parameters.

 

If you have the stomach for the math  read this: http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~cholmes/Courses/BDA/bda_mcmc.pdf

 

Now here is a clue.  Bayesian methods use an iterative  method of predictions.  As new evidence is introduced the predictions get sharper and sharper.  So follow  Nate's prediction right up to  the time the polls close on election day.  See how he does. As I said,  Bayes uses every scrap of evidence gathered.  It does not work off of pre-assumed  distribution parameters like the frequency methods do.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

How about if Silver tries to poll people who don't normally vote?

   

Nah... he won't do that. But guess where a yuuuuuge portion of Trump voters are?

It reminds me of an old joke.

A drunk at night was under the street light. He was crawling around inspecting the ground. A cop stopped and asked what he was looking for. He said his house keys. The cop asked, "Where did you lose them?" The drunk pointed down the road. The cop asked the obvious, "Why are you looking for them here?" The drunk replied, "There's more light over here."

That is Nate Silver with Donald Trump.

Michael

[william.scherk]

On 7/4/2016 at 5:47 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

How about if Silver tries to poll people who don't normally vote?

Does Silver normally conduct polls?  My naive view is that 538 analyses the polls made public by third-parties.  One of the free services 538 offers in this line is a rating system covering the various polling houses  ... 

To the subject of how various soundings incorporate 'likely voters' into their numbers, it's  a pretty good and large question. Some polls reveal their methodology in estimating or guessing at 'new' participation.  For the most part, I guess they look at the 'pool' of new voters in two classes: oncoming voters registered or not in simple age demographics -- these folks who may vote in November because they will be of age.  The second class is of 'expectancies' built in to larger demographics, as sliced. Here for example, pollsters need to be careful: how can one predict the voting behaviour of 'blocs' (sorted out into Black, Hispanic Non-White, College-educated, etc?).  How do you capture motive or intention?

I figure the story of 2016 polling failure/success will be told after the election, when the slicing and dicing of post-mortems are pulled up, while the transition to a new administration begins. 

If there is a fuzzy-but-potent entity  described as 'usually do not vote, but will do so this round' it will be scoped out best in the internal, unexaminable soundings and samplings of  this potential that make a difference in Get Out The Vote processes.  In the largest sum, gettting out the 'haven't voted before' folks is going to be block by block, precinct by precinct, individual by individual, state by state.  I don't think I will be able to understand this election until it is over, and all can be accounted for.  My worst fear is a squeaker loss to Clinton. Trump will not go down easy. Many Americans might then believe that the Fix was in, that the whole long process was a charade, 'stolen,' fraudulent  or arranged. What this does to confidence in government and national unity is predictable.

Nate Silver has updated the forecast since Bob posted the first entry in this thread. Published today at 538:

Quote

 

Election Update: 10 Questions About Where The 2016 Race Stands

By Nate Silver

Donald Trump has significantly improved his position in our general election forecasts as a result of state and national polls that show declining numbers for Hillary Clinton. Trump now has a 36 percent chance of winning the election, according to our polls-only forecast, and a 37 percent chance according to polls-plus, which also considers economic conditions.

With the conventions upon us — the Republicans’ starts Monday in Cleveland — let’s step back and ask some big-picture questions about where the race stands.

Who’s ahead in the polls right now?

Despite a relatively poor run of polls, Clinton is very probably still ahead of Trump right now. That doesn’t mean she’d be assured of winning an election held today, let alone one in November — there’s a lot of uncertainty (see the next question for more about this). But polls-only has her ahead of Trump by 3.4 percentage points nationally, similar to the margin by which Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012.

If Clinton has a 3.4-percentage-point lead, as our model surmises, that means we’ll sometimes see national or swing state polls that show her ahead by margins in the high single digits, such as the set of swing state polls that Marist College released this morning. We’ll also see some polls showing Trump with narrow leads, like the polls Quinnipiac University released earlier this week. All of this is pretty normal.

It’s not quite correct to characterize the race as a tossup, however. A relatively emphatic majority of recent swing state and national polls still have Clinton ahead, but often by narrower margins than before.

[...]

 

The best (or most exciting or interesting) days are yet to come ... for the poll-gazers within us.

[BaalChatzaf]

Silver is a Bayesian,  not a Frequentist.

Please see:  http://www.stat.ufl.edu/archived/casella/Talks/BayesRefresher.pdf

and

http://blog.keithw.org/2013/02/q-what-is-difference-between-bayesian.html

[SteveWolfer]

27 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Many Americans might then believe that the Fix was in, that the whole long process was a charade, 'stolen,' fraudulent  or arranged. What this does to confidence in government and national unity is predictable.

Even if many American were wrong about a Hillary-by-nose election being a stolen election (and if it were a squeaker, I'd be one of the cynical doubters), they wouldn't be wrong about the political system as a whole.  Our country has moved into that area where being a nation of laws, and where we are all equal under the law, exists only in principle - and in historical intentions - but not so much in practice.  That which the progressives call "conspiracy theories" are more and more becoming the denied processes that actually go on behind the scenes. 

I think the "outsider - Insider" popularity split tells us that people already think that the fix is in and the system is rigged.  But there is some kind of social process where a belief comes more to the front, becomes less deniable, and assumes greater motivational power.  I think that we will see this continue.  And it isn't a bad thing, because the current systems are seriously flawed and need to be torn down.  But given that the predominate ignorance of sound political principles would make what would appear as the replacement scary.

 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

45 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Nate Silver has updated the forecast...

William,

I can't remember the video of Cenk Uygur I saw recently, but he has turned Nate Silver into a verb. If I remember correctly, he did this when discussing Bernie and Hillary.

Cenk was (and is) a Bernie supporter, so he was obviously upset with the outcome. But he has tried to remain a realist. In discussing what Bernie supporters are going to do in general about Bernie supporting Hillary, he said (with a chuckle) something like, "We have to be careful and see what actually happens. It's so easy to Natesilver this and we don't want to do that."

 

If I looked and put in the hours to rewatch videos, I could probably find this, but it's not worth it. Now that Cenk has done this once, I bet he will do it again. He's one of the few progressives I watch with any regularity, so if and when it comes up again, I'll post it for you.

Michael

 

[william.scherk]

1 hour ago, SteveWolfer said:

But given that the predominate ignorance of sound political principles would make what would appear as the replacement scary.

At least your rigged system is rugged enough to resist a strongman, so far.  It is interesting to see the flip of recent power in the UK, the smack-down fast period of adjustment and fuck-off-and-go, the new faces at desks in so short a time. It makes decision-making about the transfer of power in America more like an ordeal.

Perhaps in the particular USA  non-Westminster system the duopoly of the 'official' parties was destined to crust into place over the past century,  the intricate machinery of political trade conducted in public (ie, primaries, caucuses, balloting for party positions, fixed date county-delivered gargantuan slates of options ...). The party-monopolies as 'industry' feed off government, perhaps, in ways that would make the Founders shout.

The dual parties do seem snugly at home in all corridors of power, and in themselves contain and control almost all means of leverage into actual positions of power, having forced themselves into 'official,' legislatively-mandated party elections stapled to the local ballot.  A colony of vampire oysters or an extra coating of democratic mucus, I don't know. I don't know if any metaphor can capture the crusty and yet oozy particulars of the two-party lock on power. 

So, realistically,  what are the chances in America (as opposed to other G7/EU democracies) to have legislatures with third and fourth and fifth party caucuses, looking forward?  Perhaps the party bivalves have so fouled  fittings and drains that all competition is futile, stillborn, strangled, poisoned. Having successfully infested the reefs of Washington, The Blob seems not about to give up an inch to 'intruders.'

To continue my theme, it seems you poor Americans never seem to get the satisfaction of 'voting the bastards out' with such sweeping parliamentary landslides as we do in Canada from time to time, the career-ending losses, the stompings, crushings and extinction-level events for parties.

There seems never that satisfactory and convincing thumping and fuck-offing, as your same white heads in the Senate remain, and  ten-term incumbents in the House prevail in their eleventh run.  Add to the crust and mucus and nesting vampire metaphor  that the public is thoroughly disgusted with both houses and their leaders and resident clapping seals.  Add to near-even levels of disgust with the top two choices on the big-ass ballots which final ordeal is yet to hit town, what do you get?

Hope for a landslide.  Put one party down enough to flush out its systems and refresh the oyster beds. Get behind a broom.

 

Edited July 15, 2016 by william.scherk
Grrrammar, tone, pith.

[SteveWolfer]

24 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

same white heads in the Senate remain, and  ten-term incumbents in the House prevail in their eleventh run.

It's easy to envision fixes for some of the specific problems.  For example, a nice constitutional amendment that only allows one term in the senate and one term in the house (with the house kicked up to a 4 year term) and that is solved.  And it gets rid of much of the issue of spending all their time in office sucking money out of special interests to get re-elected.  And since there has to be something that is sold to the special interests to get those campaign funds, it also kills much of the motivation for legislators to keep spending at such great levels.  BUT, congress won't vote for it and the people won't organize in a way that forces them to.  AND, there will never be a silver bullet, a cure-all... The right president, the right supreme court nominees, the right party in power, the right constitutional amendments, etc., are all just more Charlie Brown football kicking attempts.  In the end, people need to be educated.  They have to grasp the correct political principles - the basics of liberty via a constitutionally limited government.  Nothing else will get the job done.  And nothing else will really matter - not the number of parties, or a parliamentarian versus our presidential system.

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, SteveWolfer said:

It's easy to envision fixes for some of the specific problems.  For example, a nice constitutional amendment that only allows one term in the senate and one term in the house (with the house kicked up to a 4 year term) and that is solved.  And it gets rid of much of the issue of spending all their time in office sucking money out of special interests to get re-elected.  And since there has to be something that is sold to the special interests to get those campaign funds, it also kills much of the motivation for legislators to keep spending at such great levels.  BUT, congress won't vote for it and the people won't organize in a way that forces them to.  AND, there will never be a silver bullet, a cure-all... The right president, the right supreme court nominees, the right party in power, the right constitutional amendments, etc., are all just more Charlie Brown football kicking attempts.  In the end, people need to be educated.  They have to grasp the correct political principles - the basics of liberty via a constitutionally limited government.  Nothing else will get the job done.  And nothing else will really matter - not the number of parties, or a parliamentarian versus our presidential system.

Yoda says: do not your breath hold until smarten up Americans do,  else blue turn you will....

[SteveWolfer]

7 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Yoda says: do not your breath hold until smarten up Americans do,  else blue turn you will....

Worry not, Yoda.  Holding my breath, I am not.

[BaalChatzaf]

11 minutes ago, SteveWolfer said:

Worry not, Yoda.  Holding my breath, I am not.

Hmmmmmm. Wolfer is wise not to his breath  hold....

[KorbenDallas]

Well, if Hillary gets elected we're all screwed...

Edited July 16, 2016 by KorbenDallas
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