Rov_Scam
15d ago
To actually answer your question:
I think 1 had a lot to do with it, though this is only partially attributable to Biden, and there's no indication that Trump would have done things differently. I think 2 definitely exacerbated the problem, but more importantly, it prevented the Biden Administration from taking early action to get it under control. The initial price spikes were in oddly specific sectors of the economy that were easily explainable as supply chain disruptions, and the administration wasn't about to treat inflation as a systemic problem and risk triggering a recession. I don't think 3 had much of an effect other than a temporary spike in gas prices, and I don't think 4 really applies since COVID caused so much disruption.
Three factors you didn't mention are first, that COIVD suppressed consumer spending somewhat, which let to a release of bottled-up demand once the pandemic ended. Second, COVID caused temporary job losses in the service industry. This also happened at a time when a lot of boomers were approaching retirement age, and the disruptions caused the retirements to come in a huge wave rather than being spread out over several years. these positions were largely filled by laid-off service employees, causing a labor shortage that was felt most acutely at the bottom of the labor market. $15/hour went from something people were advocating legislation for to something that places like Sheetz had to offer just to get applicants in the door. Finally, the Federal Funds rate was at zero for two years. While aggressive cuts were probably necessary at the beginning of the pandemic, once "the new normal" had set in there was no reason to keep them at zero. Once vaccines became widely available in the Spring of 2021 and concern over COVID was waning fast, the Fed should have begun gradual rate increases with the goal of eventually bringing them back to pre-COVID levels, assuming the signals remained good. Instead, they let things ride until inflation became apparent.
If that's the case, does Trump deserve to be the one people turn to for relief? Or did he cause it to begin with during his last year as president? Is he actually going to make anything better now?
Trump may have played some part in this but given the situation, I'm not going to allocate blame among politicians. The problem with making this an electoral issue is that the problem has largely been solved; inflation is back down to within a point of the Fed's target rate. If people are expecting prices to return to 2020 levels then they're effectively asking for a serious recession. Inflation near 10% is annoying but it's something we can deal with, provided it doesn't last too long. 10% deflation would require something akin to the Great Depression; not just a recession, but a recession that we don't even try to mitigate. Trump's actual policy proposals and general tendencies show him making inflation worse. Tax cuts are inflationary, and we can expect some of those. Tariffs are inflationary, though probably not as much as critics suggest. He has a tendency to push for lower interest rates whether they're called for or not. And he's unlikely to balance these with corresponding spending cuts; in 2019 he pressured the Fed to cut rates during an economic expansion and has repeatedly suggested that the president have more control over monetary policy.
Rov_Scam
15d ago
Following a discussion with friends about the electoral college last night, I came up with an idea that would select for higher agency / lower time preference voters without venturing into dangerous waters. Basically, if we're not going to have direct election of the president then we should do away with any pretense that we have direct election. My ballot shouldn't say Harris or Trump if I'm really just voting for a predetermined slate of electors to cast the real ballots on my behalf, especially since these real voters are political muckety-mucks whose names aren't even widely publicized. We should get to vote for these people directly, and they should all be selected at-large. If California has 54 electoral votes, then California voters select up to 54 names.
To take things a step further, political parties won't be listed for any of the candidates. You just get names. Running for elector is just like running for any other position; have a certain signature requirement and fee and adjust things enough so the ballot has a reasonable number of names. So when people go to vote they're presented with a ballot on which they have to select numerous candidates from a slate of names without any party identifier. There's already precedence for this; if you vote in off-year elections in Pennsylvania you'll occasionally have to vote in some nonpartisan election for the board of a special district where you have to pick something like 5 names from a list of 20, and unless you really care about the makeup of this board there's a good chance you haven't heard of any of them unless you happen to know them personally. To my knowledge no one has ever complained about this.
Furthermore, the Founding Fathers hated the idea of political parties and would be appalled to discover that they've become a semi-official part of our system of governance. I'm not advocating the abolition of parties, but I don't know why our electoral apparatus needs to provide what is essentially free advertising to people who haven't otherwise paid attention to the election. In my system, electors can advertise who they plan on voting for, and newspapers, the League of Women Voters, and other groups can publish voter guides, and everyone gets full media access. But you have to do a modicum of preparation beyond selecting one of two names that have been pushed on you ad nauseum for the past six months. Some people just won't vote, and others will arbitrarily select names, like many do in the elections I described above. But a sufficient number of actually motivated people will do their research and fill out their ballots, and these are the people who will likely decide the election.
Rov_Scam
15d ago
Good write up. Most IRL Trump supporters I talk to, especially younger ones, seem to be of the opinion that we shouldn't be sending any aid to Ukraine because it's not our war, etc., etc., and I think that general sentiment on the Right has seeped into discourse about Trump since he's been ambiguous on the issue. Trump's actual statements, though, lead me to believe that he still thinks of himself as a master negotiator and that he has the kind of influence with Putin that the Democrats don't, and accordingly he will be able to hammer out a settlement that both sides can live with.
Kudos to Trump if he can pull this off, but I'm pessimistic about the chances. The biggest problem is that any settlement would likely involve freezing the front lines where they are now, and it isn't in Russia's interest to do that. Problem number one is that they're currently making progress — slow progress, but progress — and any pause gives the Ukrainians the opportunity to further entrench their front lines. Problem number two is that the Ukrainians control part of Kursk, and while the area controlled isn't huge, I doubt Putin would be willing to put any of his own territory under semi-permanent Ukrainian control. He can dilly-dally when it comes to retaking it, but publicly acceding to its continued occupation would have negative political consequences.
As far as Kursk is concerned, there could theoretically be some horse trading involved, but it's unlikely that Zelensky would be willing to give up his greatest strategic asset in exchange for a comparably sized piece of the Donbas. Trump could certainly use the threat of withdrawing aid to force a deal down Zelensky's throat, but he'd probably only do this if the deal objectively made sense, i.e., if Zelensky was turning down obviously favorable terms because he wanted to continue the war. As much flack as Trump has gotten for cozying up to Putin, I highly doubt that he'd be willing to give up the store in Ukraine. Add in the probable necessity of some kind of security guarantee for Ukraine, and you have a recipe for failure.
In short, I think the end result of all of this is that Trump tries to hammer out a deal, Putin makes demands that are obviously preposterous, the talks fail, Trump comes back and claims he made progress, and the current levels of military aid continue unabated.
Rov_Scam
15d ago
McCormick's problem is that he basically hitched his wagon to a Trump win without actually jumping on the Trump Train. Notice that none of his TV ads are actually about him. Or Casey for that matter. They're about Biden and Harris, and only about Casey insofar as he supported Biden's policies. They do nothing to appeal to the kind of voter who would split his ticket. Maybe this is a good strategy, because we've become so polarized that no one who votes for Harris will trust a Republican senator to not vote in lockstep with the MAGA nonsense du jour. But the guy is basically Romney, and going full MAGA is probably both a bad strategic move and one that goes against his principles. So all he could really do was dunk on Kamala and hope that the R next to his name was enough to win. It might be, but man, was his campaign depressing to watch.
Rov_Scam
15d ago
For simplicity's sake, we'll assume that Harris won the same states Biden won in 2020. In your scenario, neither Harris nor Walz will have been formally elected, since that doesn't happen until the Electoral College meets on December 17. So, as far as Federal law is concerned, no election has even taken place yet, and the electoral vote will determine the presidency. The party has plenty of time to find new candidates and convince everyone that the Shapiro–Whitmer ticket doesn't represent a significant change. A problem arises, though, in that some state laws require the electors to vote for the candidates whose name appeared on the ballot.We don't have to worry about Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Georgia, or Illinois, since those states allow electors to vote for anyone. We don't have to worry about Wisconsin, Oregon, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware, or Virginia either, because although those states technically prohibit faithless electors, the votes are still counted.
As for the others, it would depend on whether the state legislatures could enact emergency legislation that either created a one-time exception or implemented an alternative system in the event that a candidate was deceased. If that couldn't be done, then things get goofy. The enforcement mechanism for most of these laws is that the faithless elector is replaced with one who will cast a ballot for the winning candidate. This presents us with two scenarios. In the first, the Secretary of State certifying the election accepts the faithless ballots, and is then sued by Trump for contravening state law. the state Supreme Court then issues a ruling affirming that since the intent of the law was to ensure that the will of the people is recognized by the electors, given the extraordinary circumstances, allowing the faithless ballots satisfies that will better than simply invalidating the majority of the votes.
In the second scenario (which would only happen if it was clear that the other way wasn't going to work), the electors simply elect Harris/Walz and treat it as though they both died simultaneously after becoming president. If the Democrats have won the House in this scenario, then Hakeem Jeffries becomes president. If the Republicans win, then a huge argument erupts over how the next speaker is going to nominate Trump for vice president and immediately resign so that Trump can become president. Unfortunately, there's no one believed to be sufficiently loyal as to give up the presidency in what is likely their only shot at it. So we spend the first few weeks of January in a huge floor fight where most of the Republicans nominate Mike Johnson again under the premise that he'd just be the president and could go from there, while the hardcore MAGA wing takes turns with a bunch of sacrificial lambs who nobody trusts to actually resign when the time comes and who would then face the added hassle of having to re-win their House seats if they actually did resign.
In the meantime, Inauguration Day is approaching and we don't have a speaker. This scenario only works if the Republicans also have the Senate (otherwise Trump would never get confirmed as vice anyway), so Chuck Grassley would become president. Since Grassley is approximately 10,000 years old there would be more credible calls for his resignation, but he'd surprise everyone and either stay on or nominate someone other than Trump. But these are pretty murky waters so that's just a theory.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
From what I can gather, Alabama only recognizes the Democratic and Republican parties for state and Federal races. the Libertarian candidates on the ballot are all for local races.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
I guess the remaining 1 percent prefer something else entirely.
As a first-born son who has spent a good part of his career untangling complex heirships involving people who died with 9 kids, who each had 7 kids of their own, etc. for a hundred years, I am strongly in favor of primogeniture.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
...more anti-democratic and blatant than anointing Kamala the Democratic nominee without a primary process?
I don't understand this complaint. The nominee is formally selected by convention, and has been since the 1830s. Primaries played no role in the selection of delegates prior to 1972; prior to then most states didn't even have them, and the ones that existed were mere "beauty contests" to demonstrate voter preference to the actual delegates. There was a brief period when Democratic delegates were bound to the candidate they had been selected for unless the candidate formally released them, but that hasn't been the case since 1984. When Biden dropped out of the race, the same delegates who were selected in the primaries were the ones who participated in the convention. They could have voted for anybody, but nobody besides Kamala made any serious play for the nomination.
If Donald Trump's assassination attempt the Saturday before the convention had been successful, do you seriously think that the Republicans would have postponed the convention so they could hold anything remotely resembling new primaries in all 50 states? As presumptive vice-presidential nominee and with Biden's endorsement, at least Kamala was an obvious choice. The GOP didn't have this luxury, and Nikki Haley, Ron Desantis, and anyone Trump had talked to about possibly being vice president would have all been jockeying for position. You're also talking about a party that's still hanging on to a caucus system that nobody outside of the relevant states seems to understand.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
Pinging @FiveHourMarathon and any other fellow Pennsylvanians for thoughts on some of the downballot races that nobody else on here cares about (and that very few Pennsylvanians actually care about.) Obviously, who you vote for is your own business, but I always find the dynamics of these races interesting.
First, is there something about the AG race that manages to filter out major party bozos? I'm sure the requirement to be admitted to the PA Bar has something to do with it, but there are plenty of bozo attorneys in the state. This is honestly the one race where I have zero preference on who wins. I get the impression that DePasquale is trying to use the office as a stepping stone for a gubernatorial run once Shapiro goes on to bigger and better things, and Dave Sunday comes across like one of the brass-balls types whom you hope isn't the father of your high school girlfriend, but other than that, they both seem qualified and reasonable, especially given that their platforms are so similar. I got the same impression last cycle, where I voted for Heather Heidelbaugh over Shapiro. She represented the kind of old-style Pittsburgh Republican (like Bill Green or Jim Roddy) who would go on public affairs programs nobody and have serious policy discussions with their Democrad friends. This is a dying breed, as was evidenced by Melissa Hart's utter failure in the GOP primaries, where she dropped out a day before the party nominated Doug fucking Mastriano.
Next, is there something about the Auditor General race that attracts Democratic perennial candidates from Philadelphia? In 2020 the party nominated Nina Ahmed, whose lone credential was serving on Philadelphia City Council and who didn't seem to even know what the Auditor General actually did. Even the Libertarian candidate was a CPA who chaired his township's audit committee. This year, we have Malcolm Kenyatta, another non-accountant politician who previously got a lot of the early endorsements in the 2022 Senate primary before being a total non-entity in the primary. What qualifies him for the position is beyond me. At least DeFoor is an actual accountant.
For the Treasurer race, there's Stacy Garrity, who seems to be doing a competent job but who I can't vote for on principle because I refuse to vote for anyone who makes military service the centerpiece of a campaign for an irrelevant row office. She also seems to be flirting with election denialism and comes across as uncomfortably Trumpy. I can't vote for the Erin McClelland, either, because, in addition to being unqualified, she's out and out said that she plans on using the state spending power for political ends and won't sign checks if she doesn't agree with the purpose. I ended up going with the Forward Party candidate, who is somehow even less qualified than the two major party candidates (he's a career tennis instructor), but this is a race where I can confidently throw my vote away.
Now for some quick hits: The Libertarian AG candidate went to Point Park College University and a Law School I've never heard of. He evidently works at firm in Downtown Pittsburgh that's notorious for requiring their attorneys to be in-office 9 hours a day and pays like 50k/year. PCN interviewed him from his office via Zoom and he spent more time explaining libertarianism than he did explaining what he would actually do in office or why anyone should vote for him.
The Constitution Party candidate for Senate has a series of self-produced YouTube ads where he says you should vote for him for Senate and Trump for president. It seems like poor party discipline for him not to be endorsing Randall Allan Terry for president, though to be fair, Mr. Terry is not on the ballot in Pennsylvania.
I base my downballot election decisions on voter's guides published by various outlets including The League of Women Voters, the local NPR station, and major newspapers throughout the state. Regardless of my opinions on his politics and the fact that he lives in Connecticut, Dave McCormick is automatically disqualified for not responding to any of these questionnaires. He's the only major candidate for any office who apparently thinks that this is beneath him. At least with his advertising budget it's understandable. What's not understandable is the third-party candidates who don't fill these out. When you have no money to advertise, and no one who is going to vote for you based on party affiliation alone, the least you can do is respond to one of these. Every candidate on the ballot gets one and participating is completely free. It's probably the only chance you're going to get to tell most people about yourself. This is literally the least you can do to mount a campaign, so if you don't do it I can't vote for you, unless there's some super-compelling reason to.
I also want to comment on State rep Leslie Rossi, who is my least favorite rep in the state house and who is emblematic of what is wrong with Republican party in general. In 2021 the rep in the district where she resided died unexpectedly. Her qualification for office: She owned the Trump House. During the 2020 election she painted a farmhouse she owned (but did not live in) as a massive Trump advertisement. What's surprising isn't that a bunch of morons elected her in a primary (morons from both parties get nominated all the time), but that she was specifically chosen by the party over the widow of the late representative. House GOP leaders in Harrisburg seemed pretty incredulous when they were asked about it. There was some discussion also about her being an "entrepreneur" but a friend who lives in her district told me that her husband actually runs the business and mentioned something about an extramarital affair that I can't remember.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
Just to give you my own story: I still don't have a Real ID. In PA DLs are good for 4 years. I renewed mine in 2017, but PA wasn't Real ID compliant until 2018. Nonetheless, family members were telling me I sould upgrade anyway because I'd need it to fly come 2020. Now, in addition to the paperwork, a Real ID costs double what a regular DL costs, so there's that. And I don't fly often so using my passport isn't too much of a hassle anyway, since that's always acceptable ID. Then COVID delayed the full implementation, and when my DL came up for renewal in 2021, the DL Centers were closed and they were doing everything by mail (my license still has a 2017 picture which looks nothing like me, for various reasons). I'm sure if I really needed it there would have been some way to get one but it wasn't exactly a pressing concern. Then I lost my wallet this past summer and had to get a new license and my parents told me I should do the Real ID then but I wasn't wasting a Saturday in the summer getting a driver's license and had to go on my lunch break and getting a reprint takes long enough as it is that I wasn't about to overcomplicate things by getting a Real ID at the same time. So maybe when my license expires again next year I'll get one, but I don't really see any compelling reason to.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
Let's suppose the GOP controls both houses and the presidency.
Traditionally, GOP opposition to mandatory ID has been a bigger hurdle than anything else. I say bigger because there hasn't exactly been a ton of enthusiasm from the left for this idea either, and it's never been a huge issue.
How hard can it be to issue an ID card to every American citizen?
If our experience with Real ID is any indication, pretty hard. The law requiring it was passed in 2005 and was supposed to go into effect in 2008. No states were even compliant until 2012, and the full implementation date — when you'll actually need a Real ID to board a domestic flight — has been pushed back repeatedly, currently scheduled for sometime next year. But even then it won't actually be required until 2027; you'll be informed of the noncompliance but allowed to board anyway. This, of course, assumes that the deadline doesn't get pushed back again, and while I won't speculate on the chances of that, only something like half of the people even have Real ID compliant identification.
To give you a sense of what's involved, I helped a woman do this a couple years ago. She had been married twice, and used the last name of her second husband. So while she had her birth certificate, it didn't show her legal name. I had to go to the marriage license department and pull two marriage licenses, both from the 1980s, and then go to the prothonotary to pull the divorce from the first marriage. This is why I roll my eyes when people like JD Vance talk about going door-to-door looking for people to deport. I'd imagine the number of native-born citizens who can immediately produce proof of citizenship upon request is a lot lower than some seem to think it is. I know where my birth certificate is right now, but a lot of people don't. And I'd imagine that the number of married women who have certified copies of their marriage license with their personal papers is vanishingly small (no, the certificate they give you doesn't count).
Rov_Scam
16d ago
To be clear, I'm not trying to suggest that polling is useless, or that it shouldn't be done. I just don't think we should put to much stock into polls insofar as they concern the average voter.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
My understanding of a lot of polls is they weight their demographics by turnout from the last election, plus maybe some secret sauce to try to guesswork around shifting coalitions. But, what if their starting point, the 2020 election, was rife with fraud that is now being proactively stamped out?
They don't get their demographic data from the official tabulations of the last election. The official tabulation doesn't have demographic data. The adjust their weighting based on exit polling from the last election, among other things. For your theory to have any credence there would have to have been fraud in the exit polling, and efforts taken to eliminate fraud in exit polling.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
As part of a Catholic family we don't believe in any particular sanctity of the body once the soul leaves it. Accordingly, we don't visit graves, because nobody is there to see. So having an actual gravesite isn't important to me. Given that, I want my body to return to the earth, and I see no reason for it to be preserved for eternity with embalming chemicals and entombed in a large metal coffin. Unfortunately, state and local laws make it very difficult for one to obtain a natural burial, so I want those close to me to steal my body and bury it in an undisclosed location in the woods. That way, it can help germinate a tree or perform some other useful function. This would seem to obviate a funeral but I definitely want a funeral, not for my own benefit but for the benefit of those close to me. I've had several friends and family members who have died and requested no funeral, usually on the grounds that it's too much of a hassle. While I can't say I'm a fan of the whole traditional funeral thing, it is nice to have an opportunity to gather together in a time of need. I remember when my aunt died and there was no funeral and it was just an empty feeling. So I want there to be some kind of memorial, but I'll leave the details to the discretion of my heirs.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
As much as Kamala Harris was criticized for not going on podcasts or sitting for interviews, stuff like this makes it clear that it was probably the right decision. Dealing with such criticism is probably better than dealing with the fallout of an unexpected gaffe. Trump can get away with this, because he's already demonstrated that nothing he says will faze his supporters, but conventional politicians don't have that luxury. Hell, Vance only has that luxury because he's joined at the hip with Trump. Doing the podcast circuit is the kind of thing fringe candidates like Andrew Yang do because it gets them airtime they don't have to pay for, and the exposure is worth the gaffe potential. Once you've already made major candidate status there's little upside and huge downside to going on a freewheeling 3-hour podcast where the conversation could go in any direction. Tucker Carlson can say shit like this because he isn't running for anything and nobody is poring over his every word looking for ammunition against him. Imagine what would happen if Tim Walz went on Rogan and said the same thing.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
No one is changing internal policies based on polling predictions on who is going to win the next election. Even if Candidate X is posing sweeping regulatory changes to your particular industry, you're not going to start changing your policies because Candidate X is favored to win. You're not even going to start changing your policies after Candidate X wins. You're going to start changing your policies when the new regulations are actually enacted, because a lot can happen between proposals and final legislation.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
Terry Bradshaw is one guy out of many many people giving opinions, I wouldn't say that his opinion alone is the basis that people's futures ride on, but when Brandon Staley goes for it on 4th down, and Terry Bradshaw says that he's the reason the Chargers lost (everytime that happens, a guys livelihood is on the line), when the Rams lose a game and Terry Bradshaw says the Jared Goff is the reason why they lost (a guys livelihood is on the line).
I don't see what this has to do with anything I said. I'm talking about predictions, not post-mortem analysis.
Rov_Scam
17d ago
I didn't mean to suggest I was doubting that. But I can't conceive of how any election prediction would have any effect on anything I do, in any circumstance.
Rov_Scam
17d ago
No, because being granted parole isn't the end of things. If you're sentenced to 10 years and are granted parole after 5, you're still under the supervision of the Department of Corrections for the remainder of the sentence. If you violate the terms of your parole you could get thrown back into jail for the remainder of your sentence. The other angle to thinking about it is that parole isn't a right; it's at the discretion of the parole board. You could be a model prisoner but be denied parole for other reasons. Saying that you're sentenced to 5 years with a possible extension of up to 10 would imply that the parole board would need an affirmative finding of some kind of bad behavior in order to keep you in jail longer than 5 years, which they don't need.
Rov_Scam
17d ago
On Prognostication
Over the past several weeks, I've become increasingly irritated by discussions, both here and elsewhere, involving election predictions. While I agree that speculation can be fun, I think too many people try to read too much into the day-to-day ups and downs of the election cycle. While I agree with Nate Silver on a lot of things, there's something I find inherently off-putting about his schtick. I read The Signal and the Noise around the time it hit the bestseller lists and had an addendum about the 2012 election. One of the themes of the book is that the so-called experts who make predictions on television don't base their predictions on rational evidence and don't face any consequences when their predictions fail. No in-studio commentator on The NFL Today is losing his job solely because he picked too many losers.
Around this time, I became interested in probabilities, and I was regularly hitting up a friend who had majored in math and was pursuing a doctorate in economics at Ohio State. At one point he told me "Probability is interesting, but when it comes down to it, the only thing it's good for is gambling. We say there's a 50/50 chance of drawing a black ball from an urn when we know that the urn has 50 black balls and 50 white balls. When we talk about probabilities in the real world, it's like talking about the chances of drawing a black ball from an urn we don't know the size of." When discussing cards or dice, we're discussing random events based on repeatable starting conditions. When discussing elections, we're discussing a non-random event that will only happen once.
Beyond that, though, the broader question is: What's the point of all of this? This isn't a football game where scoring points confers an obvious advantage. If Trump is up by 5 points in June or Harris is up by 5 points in July, it has absolutely no effect on the actual election. My irritation with this started a couple weeks ago when someone posted here about Trump having large odds of winning on some betting site. I mean, okay, but who cares? What am I supposed to do with this information? I guess it's marginally useful if I'm thinking of putting a little money on the line, but I'm not much of a gambler, and the poster wasn't sharing this information to spark discussion on good betting opportunities. I pretty much lost it, though, last weekend, when news of the Selzer poll showing Harris winning Iowa hit and had everyone speculating whether Ms. Selzer was a canary in a coal mine or hopelessly off. Again, who cares? Selzer's prediction may be correct, or it may be incorrect, but it has no bearing on the actual election. Harris doesn't get any extra votes because Selzer shows her doing better than ABC or whoever. Trump doesn't get any extra votes because of his odds on PredictIt.
I will admit that polling is useful to campaigns trying to allocate resources and determine what works and what doesn't. But they have their own internal polling for that. But unless you're actively employed by a campaign, there's nothing you can do with this information. As much as arguing about politics in general may be an exercise in futility, there's at least some chance you can influence someone else's position. Arguing about who's going to win the election doesn't even go this far, since no one is arguing that you should vote based on polling averages. The only utility I see in any of this is entertainment for the small subset of people who find politics entertaining. Which brings me back to my original criticism of Silver: The reason these professional prognosticators don't get called out on their inaccuracies is because their employers understand that their predictions are ultimately meaningless. Terry Bradshaw may predict the Browns to beat the Bengals, but at a certain time we'll know the winner and if the Bengals win the sun will rise the next morning and his being wrong about it will have no effect on anything.
For the record, a think Harris will probably win, but my prediction is low-confidence and isn't based on anything that's happened since campaign season started. In 2016, a lot of people in swing states voted for Trump because he was an unknown quantity and they preferred taking a chance with him rather than Clinton. In 2020, a certain percentage of these people regretted their decision and voted for Biden. I haven't seen anything in the past four years that suggests that any of these people are moving back to Trump. Electorally, the Republicans haven't shown anything, despite the fact that the first half of the Biden presidency wasn't exactly a cakewalk. But that's just my opinion. I don't know what you're supposed to do with it. You can disagree with it, and you may have a point, but after tomorrow what I think and what you think won't matter. The votes will be counted, a winner declared, and Dr. Oz's midterm performance won't matter, and my being wrong about it won't have an effect on anything.
Rov_Scam
18d ago
They might prosecute, but realistically they won't get anywhere unless there's other evidence, like the cop witnessing the assault as he arrives at the scene.
Rov_Scam
18d ago
I thought there would be some exception for evidence that is effectively self-documenting.
The rules of evidence consider some items self-authenticating, but this is limited to things like public records where it's obvious to tell what the document is from looking at it. The only time this might apply to video is if it's an episode of a TV show or something like that. A CCTV video isn't self-authenticating in the slightest. I don't have time to get into every piece of information that the jury would need to know about the tape before we can show it to them, but, at the very least, you need someone to identify the location that's actually being filmed. A random store interior isn't going to be immediately and obviously recognizable as Aisle 6 of the Springfield Try n' Save.
The idea is to optimize voting to favor the preferences of the voters who do research on the candidates and make informed decisions, as opposed to voters who turn out for Harris or Trump and then either vote their preferred party the rest of the way down the ticket, arbitrarily pick candidates, or leave the rest of the ballot blank. If you're only voting for one elector per district plus two at-large, it's easy for the parties to narrow in on their preferred candidates and run TV ads reminding you that a vote for Gene is a vote for Trump or whatever, and the uninformed electorate will have an idea of who to vote for. This would still be the case in the smallest states, but as you increase the total number of electors the less oxygen any individual candidate can get. By the time you get to 10 EV states it would be pretty much impossible for anyone to remember all the names based on osmosis alone, and the opportunity for osmosis is limited by the dearth of advertising. Ideally, the number of votes allowed would be based not on available seats but on percentage of the total slate, so that even small states would still have to potentially contend with large numbers of votes. The point is to maximize the amount of noise so the remaining signal comes from people who actually did their homework and are familiar with all of the candidates.
More options
Context Copy link