Predictions for the debate

I saw the cartoon below and immediately became elated because Biden will not have to appear in public ever again before the election.





That said, I was hoping to hear predictions about the debate tomorrow night. I think McCain may attempt to continue the negative streak, but will hit a stone wall (perhaps a Stonewall is more appropriate, as many of us went to NYU) because of both Obama's ability to counter gracefully and also the town-hall style of the debate. Also because of the format, I feel it will be easier for Obama to do well; McCain is a zombie, after all. I don't really have anything else to add on this topic, so I will move on.

Question: why is there no debate closer to the election? Is this simply an effort to prevent a post-debate bump from deciding the election? Or, is it a vast, liberal media plot to prevent John McCain's sparkling personality and graceful way with words from winning over the undecideds and the weak liberals? Thoughts?

Does race really matter?

For a lot of this campaign, I've been worried - sort of closet-worried, actually, because I feel weird talking about it - about the Bradley effect - basically the idea that lots of white people are closet-racists and, when they get the polling booth, will flash back to 9/11, see how much the name on their ballot resembles "Osama," and vote McCain. Or just decide they can't handle a black president.

But this NYTimes article - which, fair warning, rambles a bit - tells me the issue of race is both more complex and less worrisome than I thought. It's a good read.

P.S. Now that the Cubs have choked, I'm even more neurotically worried about Obama, despite the polls. I really thought that this was the year for both of them.

The VP's VP

It's January 20, 2009. [John McCain/Barack Obama] is being sworn is as president. Some guy who's spent his whole life talking about how [white people/black people] are ruining this country grabs his [Assault rifle/Sawed-off shotgun] and kills the president. [Sarah Palin/Joe Biden] is sworn in.

Now, it will matter in one case more than in the other but either way it's still relevant: how does a new VP get chosen? I emailed the guy at electoral-vote.com because he knows lots of stuff like this and talks about it all the time.

Chris
If Obama or McCain die in office, how would Biden/Palin then choose their new VP?

The Votemaster
Biden: by consulting with the Senate, cabinet and others
Palin: by asking the other hockey moms on her kids' teams

Fortunately, the Senate has to confirm the appointment.

Talk about your slow-play

In poker, a slow play is when you get a killer hand early on, but wait to use it to your advantage (by betting big) until the later rounds of betting.

I wondered why Charles Keating hadn't been in the news more, or been part of Obama's campaign. Well now we know: he's got a whole website devoted to the association. I'm so glad to see Democrats with a well-run campaign.

I Called It

So, I'll follow up on this later, but it seems I was Wright in predicting McCain's new campaign strategy (what a knee slapper!) and he's about to go all-negative, all-the-time. It won't work because you can't go negative against candidates with very high approval ratings (both Obama and McCain have had good favorability ratings all season), but it's the only card he's got left and he's right to play it.

Also, a lot of people are saying that John McCain is making a mistake by pulling out of Michigan. If there is a mistake to his Michigan strategy, it's that he didn't pull out sooner. He's never had a real shot at Michigan, but its 17 EVs are tempting. I'll write more about McCain's strategy from an EV perspective soon, but he's just screwed.

Link Dump! (Updated)

Been meaning to do this for weeks. (Now prioritized)

First Tier:
The funniest thing I've ever read about taking a shit.
Obamanomics (already frequented in this group, but whatever)
The Sun has identity issues (just a pic)
Fake tape of McCain terrified by Palin presidency (this is damn funny)
Best 'In Memorium" ever
Only if you'd probably hate Bristol's future husband
IF ONLY
If you keep it open for 10 seconds, you will find it hilarious
Colbert on Huck/Rudy/Palin @ RNC: First five minutes are classic (gotta love Joe L)
Speaking of Joe Lieberman - best line ever? (DNC 2000)
Paraphrase: "Politics is a lot like driving. When you want to go forward, you put it in 'D'. If you want to go backward, you put it in 'R.'"
Fake Disney Trailer: Hockey mom becomes VP
(OK, so I thought it was hilarious, but no one else has yet, just watch it twice)
New Obama ad scares voters - imagine if McCain wins
I think these arguments are B.S., but here's Obama living more modestly than McCain
The REAL ticket (and why to vote against it)
Marching band goes all video-gamey. (kinda cool, even though the performance is subpar)

Second Tier:
Free statistical software (OK, I haven't taken advantage, but you might)
Another Pandora? (I haven't used this, either)
Benford's Law (Statistics)
Textbook Wheel (Goddammit I haven't been to any of these sites)
Testimony on rigging Ohio in 2004 (only worth watching if you really want to)
The "Is-Is" Epidemic (props to Bart, probably already linked here)
McCain anti-earmark ad includes Palin's earmark
Another Obama lolcat site (not that I'm endorsing Katie's friends' competitors)
My favorite tag on Katie's friends' site (told ya)
Rachel Ray accidentally goes flying past PG-13 (kinda funny)
A lil' anti-religion humor
Things you wish you'd thought of in elementary school
Probably not funny without the last line
Only if you're a bit sick in the head
Only if you've ever been "rickrolled"
Self-described "Colbert's best Athiest moments" (I haven't seen 'em all)
A semi-interesting article on Spitzer's prostitute
You can't feel sorry for GWB, but if you wanted to, here's how
BellX1: Linked to Wiki not music, but saw them open for Stars and really liked 'em
NYT a few days ago on bailout, can't remember why I saved it
Not-so-intelligent design (not for squeamish, but now that I put that, you'll look anyway)
(Never realized "squeamish" had so many consecutive vowels)
If Miley Cyrus was Oil, from the Onion (mildly funny)
Dude designs like, totally futuristic cities and stuff

Ubiquity, Firefox, and the future of the Internet

Some of you know that I am a huge advocate of Quicksilver, a launch-bar-like program that allows you to more quickly and easily interact with and manipulate digital information, programs, websites, images, etc. (Unfortunately, this is a Mac-only program. I say unfortunately because some people still use PCs, foolishly)

Firefox is slowly catching up to the newest developments in digital interaction through Ubiquity. I highly recommend everyone check it out as a time-saver (and also as one of those things that makes you look super-cool in front of others).

I'm such a disappointment

The guys from 538 (not Nate) were just down the street from me last night and I didn't go buy them beers. I am so sorry to all of you.

Obama to shift focus to health care

I sort of wondered and hoped all summer if the reason that Barack Obama was spending so little time on the economy (an issue on which the people always side with the Democrats) was so as not to "wear it out" or "use it up" so that he could drive it home in the final months.

It appears that he's doing exactly that with health care (he didn't have much choice on the economy), another issue on which Americans heavily favor Democrats. I think this is a fantastic strategy and I'm really excited, as I was just starting to wonder why they weren't discussing it more.

Here's the story and their latest ad, which is taken straight from the VP debate.

oh also

you guys might enjoy LOLbama.com, creating by a couple of my high school friends. Pure fluff, but some of it's pretty funny. Apologies if I should have posted this in a links section...

"She succeeded by not failing in any obvious way."

(the above is quote from today's New York Times)

Completely outside of my thoughts on the debate itself, I've found the media coverage to be just ...strange.

I've seen the above statement, in one iteration or another, in practically every major newspaper today. Yes, expectations for Palin were stupendously low, and yes, she exceeded them. But is this really all that matters? Lack of a "I read anything that's put in front of me"-level fuck-up?

I'm frustrated because I feel like all I'm reading about the debate is "well, neither of them doomed their ticket." I guess that in some ways, that really is all that it was about, given the VP's Constitutional lack of power (despite all signs to the contrary from Cheney), but they discussed a huge range of topics, and it seems like everyone who didn't watch and relies on the news for their information to inform their decision-making isn't getting much today.

Thoughts?

Somebody help me out

If a president dies and the vice president moves up to the presidency, what are the rules (if any) governing the former VP's new VP pick? That is, what do we or can we know about who Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would choose in the "what-if" scenario?

WTF M.O. your the only swing state still in McCain's Camp.

Seriously.

Bloomberg Seeks Third Term

Me, I'm almost always opposed to the circumvention of rules to keep a current regime in power, but I was curious what those closer to the action thought. It seems he's playing the "Can the city really survive without me?" card, which is a tough hand to go with if it didn't work for Rudy.

Discussion Topic: VP Debate

As much as I love talking to office cohorts about these things, I was hoping for some reasonable input. Gimme some thoughts on anything. Should Gwen Ifill step down? Who's going to win, and what does that mean? What does each side need to do or avoid? Can Biden get himself booted from the ticket by the end of the week? Can Palin?

Personally, I'd like to see them get in a more politically-well-phrased variant of the line "What's the difference between Sarah Palin and George W. Bush? -Lipstick," but I don't know if that's feasible with SuperGaffe at the helm.

Nicolas Sarkozy reads our site

France is putting pressure Gordon Brown to pass a European bailout, something that came up here pretty recently.

OK, I was wrong

So, I've taken a lot of flak from a lot of people because I've always said that I had a lot of respect for William F. Buckley, even though I couldn't name a single issue on which we agreed. I admit, he is kind of a dick, mentioning in 2004 that he respected John Kerry because he was regarded as the second-best debator in the whole university while he attended Yale - before mentioning that it was Buckley himself who was regarded as number one. But his arguments were (mostly) good and command of English among the best I've ever seen, so I read him more than any other conservative columnist.

The short version of the story is that since the third child born to his son Christopher Buckley (Thank You For Smoking) is the product of an out-of-wedlock affair, the 8-year-old with ADHD is being intentionally and explicitly excluded from the parsing of William's $30M estate. I could drone on, but the point is that that's just cold.

States and Probability: A Simple Method

(Note: I don't know why the table starts so far down, feel free to fix it if you can)

OK, so I've been foiled a few times. An earlier version of this post wasn't saved into the comments on the EV Master Thread, and the HTML-intensive nature of this post means I can't make it a comment on that thread.

So as the picture gets complicated (take NC, where everyone in the country thinks it's a toss up but my math still shows it's solid McCain) I like to have a common sense test, so I added a feature that simply counts the number of times each candidate has been ahead or tied in a poll in the given state.

Clearly this method has problems. If a state has two polls, a bad poll from May putting Obama up by 5 and a good poll from October putting McCain up by 5, they will each have 1 "point". So I then added another line to weight each poll by pollster quality and date. Then, I took the percent of times Obama was in the lead under each methodology and I also added the current probability from 538 into the following table. The table is in order by my actual mathematical average.

State	Signs	Signs2	538
DC	100	100	100
HI	100	100	100
VT	100	100	100
MD	100	100	100
DE	100	100	99
NY	96	100	99
MA	89	100	99
RI	100	100	99
IL	100	100	99
CT	100	100	98
CA	100	100	98
OR	95	100	96
IA	96	93	94
ME	100	100	93
NJ	88	100	95
WA	96	100	96
NM	76	84	89
MI	79	88	88
WI	89	99	90
PA	75	92	84
MN	89	94	90
CO	71	72	84
VA	46	51	78
NH	74	70	71
NV	41	28	67
OH	38	31	67
FL	29	33	58
IN	25	24	50
MO	17	3	43
NC	13	25	44
WV	0	0	22
MT	20	11	17
ND	25	13	16
AR	0	0	9
GA	0	0	11
LA	0	0	8
TX	0	0	8
MS	0	0	6
SC	0	0	5
AZ	0	0	7
SD	0	0	6
KY	0	0	3
TN	0	0	2
KS	0	0	3
AK	0	0	5
NE	0	0	2
AL	0	0	1
WY	0	0	1
OK	0	0	0
ID	0	0	1
UT	0	0	1

The Case Against Discussing John McCain's Health

And it's not political. It's just reasonable.

Given his previous skin cancer but otherwise relatively healthy life, we know John McCain's chances of surviving the next 5-10 years peak out at around 2/3 or 67%.

No matter how unhealthy he really is, he's been going around campaigning just about as hard as I could for a year now, so he's got to be reasonably healthy. Say his chances bottom out at around 1/3, or 33%.

So if McCain's chances of survival are between 1/3 and 2/3, that means that the merits of his VP choice are absolutely on the table, but that his death is not to be regarded as certain. And no matter how much else we know or jockey around with when it comes to McCain's health, that previous sentence won't change. So I think everybody should cut the guy a little slack on the health issue.

Scattered Morning Thoughts

The corruption trial of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (R) moves forward today. Accused of accepting bribes in the form of home improvement work, his honest-to-god defense today is apparently going to be "I asked him to bill me every cent and that darned contractor only charged me X." Good luck, Uncle Ted.

Speaking of Alaska politicians who have no business running for election in 2008 - no, not Don Young, silly, but I've got plenty coming on him, too - Sarah Palin's debate chances are getting better everyday, the way I see it. Why? The moderator of the debate is Gwen Ifill.

Oh, that doesn't tell you the whole story? My fault. Allow me to explain. See, Gwen Ifill is a woman. That's good for us. The right wing can't complain about how sexist the moderator was. However, Gwen Ifill is a black woman. And not just any black woman. She's a black woman who's releasing a book on the day of Obama's (hopeful) inauguration as president that is titled The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. I mean, seriously? Everything she says is going to get criticized, but thankfully the American public has really turned on Sarah Palin. Gear up the spin machines, this one's gettin' ugly.

Speaking of Palin and the VP debate, it just occurred to me yesterday that I drive by the Field House at Wash U everyday on my way to work (in fact, I have to find a different way tomorrow because of the debate). I wish I could get a seat, but they're reserved for students. Apparently the CPD usually gives out about 150 tickets, and this year 7,500 students registered for them (Wash U has 6,000 undergrads). That's our record, and it's only for the VP debate. Holy cow.

Hey, when's the last time NYU hosted a debate? Because Wash U has been chosen for five straight elections. (Notice the careful phrasing - we didn't host one in 1996 because Bill Clinton decided there were too many so he cancelled)

(And speaking of the debate: I thought this was priceless)

Finally, 538 has an article today about favorability ratings and the debates. I noticed yesterday that there had been a sharp change in favorability ratings in the last couple days, and he shows that Obama didn't gain independents as much as harden his support among Democrats. I thought it highly likely, and later in the article he agreed, that this could be the Hillary Clinton voters (PUMAs) finally coming over to our side (in a separate article it turns out health care was one of his most significant lines - who knew?), which would probably throw the election into - my new favorite phrase - "minor landslide" mode. Perhaps I could use the phrase "Clinton landslide" since it looks like it may mirror Bill's EV figures, but either way, that's the path we're on at the moment.