FROM 2012 INTO 2013 POLITICS THREAD

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

So why Dick Morris still get high paying jobs and TV gigs?

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Well, Silver won't go alone. He's down with OPP -- other peoples' polling. Silver is running projections based on a multitude of polls. There are some changes he makes based on a poll's history and demographics. But if Silver is off, then so is pretty much anyone who ran a poll.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Yeah, right? You'd think he'd be sufficiently proud of this great business acumen to acknowledge it. But you'd be wrong.

http://b.3cdn.net/seiumaster/1c197ea2a98d79cf03_irm6b5bkf.pdf

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Do you think that will be recognized, though?

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Silver's getting an astonishing amount of attention because he more or less nailed the last election on the nose, despite the fact that he'll be the first to tell you that's partially a fluke. If a model like his is doing well, it's still going to be off by a couple of points as often as it's on the nose.

But yes, if it turns out that one of the scenarios he lists as possible but less likely occurs, he goes back to his pre-2008 relative obscurity.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

No. Silver is obviously a gay liberal who has cooked his numbers to bolster Obama's chances.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Not by Dick Morris and Joe Scarborough, no.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Because Morris has a resume outside of predicting political outcomes. He's a personality who happens to also throw out predictions. He's Lee Corso. This - the forecasting game - is the entirety of Silver's celebrity. His whole schtick is that data analysis is more reliable than punditry and "gut" feelings.

In his book, Silver explains that pundits actually gain traction and celebrity and visibility if they're wrong. That's because people want outlandish, bold predictions, not grounded ones that largely reflect consensus.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Then again, there's a cost to the economy if businesses don't pay people enough to have a domestic market. Except for the mac and cheese market, of course.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

There's also the idea that we don't really want to have a society like Malaysia's or Indonesia's where half the country is begging for food in the street. OK, most of us don't. OK, many of us don't. OK, a large but disturbingly not-large-enough portion of us don't.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Assuming these laborers/jobs were necessary for the business to operate in the first place (why else would they be hired, right?), a higher minimum wage might cut a little into profit margins, which are obscene in many industries, anyway.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

This is the kind of stuff the GOP has to hate because it opens the curtain on the "momentum" idea:

We alerted you in August to the prospect that there was a “gap” between the state polls and the national polls, which was concealed by the fact that many of the national polls at that time were reporting registered-voter results, while most of the state polls were using likely voter numbers all along. However, our method adjusted for the tendency of registered-voter polls to be biased toward Democrats by shifting them in Mr. Romney’s direction. Some of what is perceived as “momentum” toward Mr. Romney is in fact a fairly predictable consequence of the national polls having flipped over to applying likely voter screens at various points between August and October.