Tom Brown and I have been debating the Presidential election. He has felt I might be overconfident. I think he's gotten a bit hand-wringy by mixing apples and oranges like state races with very different tendencies and even some hypothetical general election polls that show Hillary losing to Ben Carson. My point and this is the view of political scientists-such polls are meaningless at this point in the cycle.
These same polls always had Biden doing better head to head than HRC. Is this because he's a superior candidate-or just because people kept getting asked about someone who wasn't running-and was therefore still above the partisan fray?
Tom does admit he's a pessimist;and I do honestly believe there''s a place for optimists and pessimists.
In a piece at FiveThirtyEight they sketch out a view that is largely in line with my view.
Some background:
Yesterday I had made this snarky comment regarding FiveThirtyEight.
" I see FiveThrityEight has a post that asks if, 12 months out either party is winning."
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-election-is-a-year-away-is-either-party-winning/
"Ok, I haven't read it yet-I've just discovered it. My prediction is that this piece will say no. It's a pure tossup is what they will tell us."
"I will play the contrarian and predict that the Dems now have a 60% chance. This presumes that the parties came in exactly even but that the chaos in the GOP race is a net positive for the Dems."
"They are also helped by Hillary's 'coronation.'
"I know this won't be the FiveThirtyEight view. I guess they will say that the chaos won't hurt the GOP-maybe they'll even try to deny that it's all that chaotic, after all remember Rick Perry and Herman Cain in 2012?-and that it's all about the economy-and of, course-Marco Rubio or someone like him will win-maybe even Chris Christie or Carly Forina-as what do polls matter?-and will not be hurt at all by the process or all the attacks on Latinos."
"It will come down to little but a coin flip based on how the economy's doing.
"Now time will tell whether or not this view will hold but my guess is this is the view they express here. Soon as I post this I'm going to go read it."
"If I'm wrong it will be very pleasantly so."
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-establishment-wails-as-chris.html
So now I have read it and am happy to be wrong.
They do start with the coin flip argument. That if these are two generic parties this would be the case where the parties are about equal-just depending on the economy. Speaking of the economy, Matt Yglesias argues that the economy maybe very good this winter if the Fed doesn't mess it up.
http://www.vox.com/2015/11/6/9680584/case-against-december-rate-hike
But they-thanks I think to Nate, who has been inching towards this realization-admit that this year's race is not just two generic parties running two generic candidates. One of these parties is the 2016 GOP with some very unusual tendencies and dysfunction.
natesilver: You have four examples of term-limited presidents. If you look for examples before the 22nd amendment was adopted (which I guess you have to do when you have a sample size of four): Elections with retiring incumbents seem to be about 50-50.
micah: Of course, who the parties nominate could change those numbers. It seems like this could be an election where the candidates make a huge difference, right? Let’s say Hillary Clinton wins, whether she faces Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio will have a big effect on the odds.
natesilver: Yes. That’s the proverbial and maybe literal elephant in the room.
micah: What order of magnitude are we talking about?
harry: Yes, this is the question. This is one where I could find myself in agreement with Mr. Silver on whether it’s a 50-50. Cruz, for example, would be a historically conservative candidate. If he’s the GOP nominee, that could be worth a few percentage points and harm the Republicans.
natesilver: Which, in an election that otherwise looks about 50-50, could make a lot of difference.
If Clinton has a 75 percent chance of facing a 50-50 election, and a 25 percent chance of facing a 75-25 election (e.g., against Cruz, Carson, Trump, or a GOP electorate that gets all screwed up because one of those guys runs as a third party), then her overall chances of winning are 56 percent.
natesilver: Now, I think you can argue that Clinton would be a slight underdog against Rubio, for instance.
micah: What about vs. Jeb! Bush or John Kasich or Chris Christie?
natesilver: Sure, Kasich, in particular. I’m less sure about Jeb or Christie, just because their personal ratings have been pretty bad for a long time.
But Clinton’s not very popular either, obviously.
micah: OK, let me see if I have this right …
One year out, the election is probably about 50-50 (maybe 55-45 Republican, according to Harry), but that could be tipped toward the Democrats if the Republicans nominate Trump/Carson/Cruz or toward the Republicans if they nominate Rubio or Kasich. Moreover! Obama, with middling-but-not-horrible approval ratings, won’t have a huge effect on the race (also, the “it’s hard to win the White House three times in a row” maxim is bullshit).
harry: I think that’s mostly right, though I will say to the degree that Obama has an effect, it likely hurts, not helps, the Democratic candidate at this point.
natesilver: That’s basically right. Almost everything we’ve been talking about wouldn’t shift the probabilities much from 50-50. Maybe you can argue that slightly more of the tiebreakers line up on the GOP side instead of the Democratic side; Harry’s more convinced about that than I am, I guess.
But there’s some probability of something that would make a huge difference, which would be the GOP nominating Cruz/Carson/Trump. Or nominating an establishment candidate after a huge, messy nomination fight, that might include a brokered convention or something close to it. In those cases, Clinton — for all her flaws — is a clear favorite.
harry: Clear favorite undersells it, IMHO. (Of course, now I’m just being difficult.)http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-election-is-a-year-away-is-either-party-winning/
This is why I'm a Trump-or possibly even Ben Carson-Democrat.
This is very close to my assumption. If I were to bet on how it breaks down, it's more or less exactly like this.
I have argued-as have others including a major Rubio Super PAC-that the only candidates who are viable at this point are: Rubio, Cruz, Carson, and Trump. My prediction is one of these four men win the nomination.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/rubios-team-handicaps-primary.html
As they imply for the GOP it's vital that that candidate be Rubio. If I had to bet, I'd be conservative and presume that Rubio will prevail in the end-but after a very messy nomination process that could lead to a third party run or at least a lot of acrimony in the base.
Even that wild fight between Will and O'Reilly yesterday-many conservatives are saying they've never seen anything like it-just underscores how much division there is.
Rubio at his best might have been a close contest with HRC but after such a mess nomination process he wont be at his best.
And the Trump effect will be lethal-that is the effect Trump has had in driving Rubio and other candidates so far to the Right on immigration with Rubio now promising point blank to reverse Obama's 2011 executive order for Dreamers.
So the Dems-Hillary-with a 56% chance: sounds about right. Remember in a race that in theory should be very closs-a tossup-six points is a big deal.
natesilver: Sure, it’s meaningful if it really were a difference between 55 percent and 50 percent. Something that made a 5 percentage point difference in the likelihood of Democrats or Republicans winning would be way more meaningful than 99 percent of the stuff that pundits call “game-changers.”
So Nate like me doesn't believe that it's a tossup provided it's not an establishment candidate-or maybe even if it is an establishment candidate after a very messy nomination process.
These same polls always had Biden doing better head to head than HRC. Is this because he's a superior candidate-or just because people kept getting asked about someone who wasn't running-and was therefore still above the partisan fray?
Tom does admit he's a pessimist;and I do honestly believe there''s a place for optimists and pessimists.
In a piece at FiveThirtyEight they sketch out a view that is largely in line with my view.
Some background:
Yesterday I had made this snarky comment regarding FiveThirtyEight.
" I see FiveThrityEight has a post that asks if, 12 months out either party is winning."
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-election-is-a-year-away-is-either-party-winning/
"Ok, I haven't read it yet-I've just discovered it. My prediction is that this piece will say no. It's a pure tossup is what they will tell us."
"I will play the contrarian and predict that the Dems now have a 60% chance. This presumes that the parties came in exactly even but that the chaos in the GOP race is a net positive for the Dems."
"They are also helped by Hillary's 'coronation.'
"I know this won't be the FiveThirtyEight view. I guess they will say that the chaos won't hurt the GOP-maybe they'll even try to deny that it's all that chaotic, after all remember Rick Perry and Herman Cain in 2012?-and that it's all about the economy-and of, course-Marco Rubio or someone like him will win-maybe even Chris Christie or Carly Forina-as what do polls matter?-and will not be hurt at all by the process or all the attacks on Latinos."
"It will come down to little but a coin flip based on how the economy's doing.
"Now time will tell whether or not this view will hold but my guess is this is the view they express here. Soon as I post this I'm going to go read it."
"If I'm wrong it will be very pleasantly so."
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-establishment-wails-as-chris.html
So now I have read it and am happy to be wrong.
They do start with the coin flip argument. That if these are two generic parties this would be the case where the parties are about equal-just depending on the economy. Speaking of the economy, Matt Yglesias argues that the economy maybe very good this winter if the Fed doesn't mess it up.
http://www.vox.com/2015/11/6/9680584/case-against-december-rate-hike
But they-thanks I think to Nate, who has been inching towards this realization-admit that this year's race is not just two generic parties running two generic candidates. One of these parties is the 2016 GOP with some very unusual tendencies and dysfunction.
natesilver: You have four examples of term-limited presidents. If you look for examples before the 22nd amendment was adopted (which I guess you have to do when you have a sample size of four): Elections with retiring incumbents seem to be about 50-50.
micah: Of course, who the parties nominate could change those numbers. It seems like this could be an election where the candidates make a huge difference, right? Let’s say Hillary Clinton wins, whether she faces Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio will have a big effect on the odds.
natesilver: Yes. That’s the proverbial and maybe literal elephant in the room.
micah: What order of magnitude are we talking about?
harry: Yes, this is the question. This is one where I could find myself in agreement with Mr. Silver on whether it’s a 50-50. Cruz, for example, would be a historically conservative candidate. If he’s the GOP nominee, that could be worth a few percentage points and harm the Republicans.
natesilver: Which, in an election that otherwise looks about 50-50, could make a lot of difference.
If Clinton has a 75 percent chance of facing a 50-50 election, and a 25 percent chance of facing a 75-25 election (e.g., against Cruz, Carson, Trump, or a GOP electorate that gets all screwed up because one of those guys runs as a third party), then her overall chances of winning are 56 percent.
natesilver: Now, I think you can argue that Clinton would be a slight underdog against Rubio, for instance.
micah: What about vs. Jeb! Bush or John Kasich or Chris Christie?
natesilver: Sure, Kasich, in particular. I’m less sure about Jeb or Christie, just because their personal ratings have been pretty bad for a long time.
But Clinton’s not very popular either, obviously.
micah: OK, let me see if I have this right …
One year out, the election is probably about 50-50 (maybe 55-45 Republican, according to Harry), but that could be tipped toward the Democrats if the Republicans nominate Trump/Carson/Cruz or toward the Republicans if they nominate Rubio or Kasich. Moreover! Obama, with middling-but-not-horrible approval ratings, won’t have a huge effect on the race (also, the “it’s hard to win the White House three times in a row” maxim is bullshit).
harry: I think that’s mostly right, though I will say to the degree that Obama has an effect, it likely hurts, not helps, the Democratic candidate at this point.
natesilver: That’s basically right. Almost everything we’ve been talking about wouldn’t shift the probabilities much from 50-50. Maybe you can argue that slightly more of the tiebreakers line up on the GOP side instead of the Democratic side; Harry’s more convinced about that than I am, I guess.
But there’s some probability of something that would make a huge difference, which would be the GOP nominating Cruz/Carson/Trump. Or nominating an establishment candidate after a huge, messy nomination fight, that might include a brokered convention or something close to it. In those cases, Clinton — for all her flaws — is a clear favorite.
harry: Clear favorite undersells it, IMHO. (Of course, now I’m just being difficult.)http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-election-is-a-year-away-is-either-party-winning/
This is why I'm a Trump-or possibly even Ben Carson-Democrat.
This is very close to my assumption. If I were to bet on how it breaks down, it's more or less exactly like this.
I have argued-as have others including a major Rubio Super PAC-that the only candidates who are viable at this point are: Rubio, Cruz, Carson, and Trump. My prediction is one of these four men win the nomination.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/rubios-team-handicaps-primary.html
As they imply for the GOP it's vital that that candidate be Rubio. If I had to bet, I'd be conservative and presume that Rubio will prevail in the end-but after a very messy nomination process that could lead to a third party run or at least a lot of acrimony in the base.
Even that wild fight between Will and O'Reilly yesterday-many conservatives are saying they've never seen anything like it-just underscores how much division there is.
Rubio at his best might have been a close contest with HRC but after such a mess nomination process he wont be at his best.
And the Trump effect will be lethal-that is the effect Trump has had in driving Rubio and other candidates so far to the Right on immigration with Rubio now promising point blank to reverse Obama's 2011 executive order for Dreamers.
So the Dems-Hillary-with a 56% chance: sounds about right. Remember in a race that in theory should be very closs-a tossup-six points is a big deal.
natesilver: Sure, it’s meaningful if it really were a difference between 55 percent and 50 percent. Something that made a 5 percentage point difference in the likelihood of Democrats or Republicans winning would be way more meaningful than 99 percent of the stuff that pundits call “game-changers.”
So Nate like me doesn't believe that it's a tossup provided it's not an establishment candidate-or maybe even if it is an establishment candidate after a very messy nomination process.
Here's my quick thoughts: this is the Lord of the Flies island... Ralph won handily at first, but struggled at the second election. Some of the boys are angry and restless now, listening to Jack (their leader)... talking up the "monster" on the mountain, putting on war paint, making spears and spending all their time hunting instead of tending to the fires... they are craving a change, and Jack, their leader, is capable of driving his followers into the realm of unmitigated savagery.
ReplyDeleteOnly there's no Navy boat headed our way. We're stuck on this Island together and will have to sort it out.
Ok, thanks for the film analogy. I still think this is an interesting and notable piece by Nate Silver and friends.
ReplyDeleteEven if you think I'm a cock-eyed optimist-which has some truth in it-Nate Silver is not.
His job is not to be a partisan but to get it right. He's got a reputation on the line and he's got the best reputation in the business.
No, I agree. I have a lot of respect for Nate's opinion.
DeleteI think you've expressed a similar story elsewhere summarizing our differences in outlook, but here's my take: as a life long partisan you see the conservatives as having been divorced from reality for the last 70 years or more, and thus they are mostly all equally nuts and harmful and what we should all be pulling for is electoral victory and nothing more. Whereas I, as a former swing voter, thinks there was a time within more recent decades when the GOP fielded some candidates who were at least capable of governing and whom were not fully divorced from reality. I'll add that IMO this change has come about with the advent of new media enabling people to self select their information sources to a degree unprecedented since perhaps the French Revolution. Thus I'm under the impression that the rabid insanity I see on the right is a new thing and not something to rejoice in but instead to lament. After all it's driven me personally into the arms of the Democrats ... By necessity... Since for all their faults, they appear to me to be the sole remaining choice for sanity.
ReplyDeleteThus our different outlooks causes me to see a worthwhile goal to "pull for" ( as if you or me "pulling for" anything will make any difference whatsoever) other than just electoral success... And that other goal for me is to do what it takes to encourage baby steps back from the abyss whenever and wherever there's an opportunity to do so amongst the entire populace. This is a more long term goal as compared to electoral success in 2016, but nonetheless I feel there should be a sense of urgency about it. My views have been crystalized in this regard by people such as Peter Boghossian and David Silverman and who is fed up with delusional thinking. To be sure delusional thinking is NOT synonymous with conservative thinking. (I welcome a serious debate with sensible conservatism. A debate centered on empirically verifiable claims made on ether side.) It's synonymous with extremely unreliable epistemology, for which the word "faith" serves as a convenient shorthand. ... Even though I myself realize that the religiously faithfully are not necessarily the enemy in this struggle... Why? Because of compartmentalization. The danger I see is faith breaking free from its compartment and infecting the rest of the brain with the lie that it's a sensible and even virtuous approach to knowing things.
"I think you've expressed a similar story elsewhere summarizing our differences in outlook, but here's my take: as a life long partisan you see the conservatives as having been divorced from reality for the last 70 years or more, and thus they are mostly all equally nuts and harmful and what we should all be pulling for is electoral victory and nothing more. Whereas I, as a former swing voter, thinks there was a time within more recent decades when the GOP fielded some candidates who were at least capable of governing and whom were not fully divorced from reality."
ReplyDeleteBut if you look at my analysis I've agreed that there's an evolution. The GOP keeps getting worse. I think there were some GOP leaders who believed in governing.
But I believe they've left the party. You know the old Northeast Yankee Republicans who were still around until about 20 years.
But I've also made the point that the GOP ironically was more constructive when it accepted its second class status in Congress. You know where things seriously started going down hill? With the rise of Newt.
http://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465074731/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447004178&sr=8-1&keywords=its+worse+than+you+think
"Thus I'm under the impression that the rabid insanity I see on the right is a new thing and not something to rejoice in but instead to lament"
You'd have to define new. Again, understand I believe in evolution here. I think the GOP has gotten a lot worse than it was in the age of Ike. But Ike largely accepted that the Dems were right on a lot of stuff and even placed some very liberal justices in the Supreme Court.
But I do think that even in the era that the GOP had more viable candidates in many places-in the North and Northeast particularly, the problem was at bottom about ideology.
I think you believe the battle is more an attitude-we should try to be bipartisan and reality based. I think the problem is sharp ideological differences.
I think the GOP has slowly gotten worse, Goldwater was an important watershed where the old Eastern establishment was defeated. Goldwater the man lost but his Spirit would go on to win as the GOP won 5 of the next 6 elections with his Southern Strategy.
I think that it didn't seem like such a problem before the age of Newt-but this is because many Republicans accepted they couldn't achieve ideological dominance or even equality.
So in previous years, the fundamental fault lines seemed a little less sharp before the Newt years.
But I think even now the problem is this simple. The GOP doesn't believe in the New Deal and can't make its peace with it.
As long as this is the case the battle goes on. It's ideology not attitude or simply being reality based.
Because the GOP's stand on the New Deal is in contradiction to the voters they have to exploit an unreality cult as a tactic.
This will be over when the Dems win.
Now I was always a Democrat but I used to believe maybe you could work with GOPers. I wasn't always as militant as today. But it's become more and more clear that there is either victory or defeat here.
There's no space of coming together. The country will unify-as the GOP falls further into civil war.
Put it this way-the partisan warfare reflects the fact that the country sharply disagrees.
ReplyDeleteDisagreements won't be simply papered over like David Brooks would have it by being reasonable or bipartisan
So I would say, what we are seeing from the GOP isn't new but that it's been getting worse.
ReplyDeleteThink about it as an emergent disease. In 2000, you yourself and many other Americans still couldn't see it. Now it's getting harder to ignore.
But I think the fundamental problem goes back to the New Deal. The GOP opposes this and this is the problem that we keep getting back to.
"Thus I'm under the impression that the rabid insanity I see on the right is a new thing and not something to rejoice in but instead to lament."
ReplyDeleteI want to be clear in what I'm rejoicing in. I agree things weren't has bad all along for 70 years, that they've been getting worse.
But the basic disease was GOP opposition to the New Deal. Now what I'm rejoicing in 2015 is for the first time I see that the GOP malady has progressed so far that it's no longer sustainable.
Until now it still wasn't clear where an end to this would come from. Now there's a light at the end of the tunnel. The GOP is not going to be a national Presidential party for awhile.
They will have to spend a few years in the wilderness. Again this is national-the issue of the states is something different that the Dems have to work on.
Once the Dems have a governing majority we can have government sanity. I think at this point you'l find the reality quotient improving by itself.
ReplyDeleteI hope you're right!
ReplyDeleteYou guys are epic in your debates here.
ReplyDeleteBTW Mike, in response to a comment you have in a recent post, I am not an engineer I am in healthcare, anesthesia to be exact.
I think I want to quibble with one thing you said in that post and then get to this one.
You said that you didn't see a belief in evolution as necessary to being a good engineer, or something to that affect and to some extent that is true but a denial of the reality of evolution is more than just a simple dichotomy of "I think the world has a creator" vs "the world changes according to mechanism of natural selection". Evolutionary thinking is deeper than just biology, it is the ONLY way to properly understand living systems and their subparts. I would never hire an engineer to be involved in cutting edge systems if he was an evolution denier. Why? Cuz when it came to testing and determining whether everything that can go wrong had been considered and planned for, the guy with no respect for evolutionary theory would likely miss something. His arrogance would doom him I feel. Evolutionary thinking puts us in the proper perspective. Its the only way to properly understand our world
The evidence for it is overwhelming and if you ignore that.... you are a fool.
Now to this thread;
I think your comment about the trajectory of GOP politics is spot on. And I think your citation of the Newt revolution being the beginning of the slide is quite apt too. That was when they decided to stop being constructive and went into destroy mode.
Funny thing is the south was one of the biggest benefactors of the New Deal, they should love it. The north was so far ahead of the south in terms of modernization until the New Deal brought things like the TVA and then Ike built the freeway system and all those exits had small gas stations and stores run by little hic entrepreneurs. Thats the thing that is most perplexing on the surface; why do people who benefitted so much (and still do with SS etc) form the New Deal align with the corporate interests who selfishly want to make everything a "pay per view" service.? Its religion that is the elixir that gets added and since the south has always been the bible belt it was a natural fit. If you were looking for a group of people to push your ideas (which do not stand up to actual scrutiny if you use rational methods of analysis) and you needed folks who could simply accept seemingly disparate things "on faith".... the American south is your place!!!
Yes the attitude of the South is perplexing as they are the big beneficiaries-in some ways they were a third world country pre New Deal.
DeleteBut what happened was the Southern Strategy. I mean you go back to George Wallace. His think was never opposition to the New Deal, it was Segregation and Jim Crow.
This was when the GOP-which begun its existence of a Northern regional party-sold its soul and repudiated its own history as the party of Lincoln.
The short version of what happened in the South is all about race. This is the whole phenomenon of the Southern Strategy where you get white folks to vote their prejudices not their economic interests.
Then as you say, culturally the South was very ripe for this kind of indoctrination.
One thing I want to add. While you (Mike) think the Dems just need to win elections and not try and cure the GOP base of their delusional thinking, consider that losing elections doesn't stop conservatives form getting their way in many important ways. Yes they are losing the gay marriage war (largely I think cuz many gays are conservative)and immigration and women's issues are moving against them, when it comes to police violence, the control of our lives by corporations, worker protections, sane gun control etc I think we are definitely losing.
ReplyDeleteNow, I don't think even if we corrected their irrational thinking on econ matters we would change anything. Consevatives today are motivated by keeping people they dont like down, not building them selves up. Thats too much work, easier to just sabotage your competitor.
I guess there are a couple of ways I could answer that.
ReplyDelete1. Rome wasn't built in a day and change is incremental.
2. Electing a Democrat in 2016-no trade secret I think it's Hillary-won't solve all the world's problems but it will save many.
Maybe if Dems win all will not be won but if they lose all will be lost. Goobye ACA, goodye voting rights, good by a woman's right to choose. etc.
The GOP with a win could effectively own the SJC for close to 70 years going back to 1985.