General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 80

Bernie Sanders keeps repeating his biggest mistake of the campaign (not talking about Clinton's emails)

Thoughts on this? Personally, I don't think it would have really helped him. I think many people admire his integrity by not getting super negative. Plus, I think Bernie attacking her on the emails would turn off many democrats, as many of them consider the email thing to be a "republican attack". I think it would just hurt is support with democrats, somewhere that Clinton already has a lot of support from. It isn't like he said "she didn't do anything wrong", he just said there is an investigation going on and we have bigger issues to discuss.

 

Haha I do too. Not saying it would ever happen or he would even be good. But I like the way he presents answers and I think he has way more knowledge on how technology is effecting the global market. I have no idea really what he would be like in a political setting, but the guy is pretty credible when it comes to how government regulations effect different types of business. Here is a good interview with him:
Cupp: Inside the surprising mind of Mark Cuban - CNN.com

He does mention that "But again, I will qualify this and all my answers: I haven't done a deep dive study. This is just opinion-based." He can still answer these questions better than most politicians though.

 

I think all your points are pretty spot on. I would also add that it made it hard for Hillary to really be able to attack him without looking like a jerk. I think it helped him hold off any attacks for a while, which was huge for him.

 

Cuban is far from left on economic views, come on. And honestly if your economic policy perpetuates and expands the working poor in favor of the hope that you too can get rich its going to continue horrible social outcomes regardless of well meaning social views.

 

Would love to see any sources on that being Cubans political view. He is for raising the min wage and all of that, just doing it realistically. Ya he's not a far left radical, but he understands actual steps you can make.

 

How did Nate Silver lose credibility? He made predictions based on he information available, they were wrong because everyone was wrong, then discussed where he came up short.

 

Our fictional pundit predicted more correct primary results than Nate Silver did

But are Silver’s models truly scientific? Do they deserve any more credence than Carl Diggler’s gut instinct?

Good science is falsifiable. Silver’s horserace predictions are not. When he says that Clinton has a 95 percent chance of winning the California primary if it were held today, you couldn’t prove or disprove him (because the primary won’t be held today, and even if it were, it would be held only once, not 100 times so you could see if she lost five of them). It’s an

Yet Silver’s Election Day models have not been vindicated by actual results. FiveThirtyEight’s homebrew “Polls-Plus” model, which weights several factors based on a secret formula, has been worse at predicting outcomes than a weighted average of the most recent polls. It’s hard to pin down Silver’s actual success rate when these two models compete with his third demographic model, which in turn might contradict his blog posts and podcasts. Benchmark Politics, an upstart competitor that claims its record is better than FiveThirtyEight‘s, likens Silver’s hedging to “telling a basketball team they can shoot four free throws instead of two.”

Even when all of Silver’s models for a given race turn up wrong, it never seems to be FiveThirtyEight’s fault. When the site badly whiffed on last year’s British election, it was the pollsters who erred. Their mea culpa after Michigan’s Democratic primary, which Sanders won by 1.5 percentage points even though Silver’s model gave Clinton a greater than 99 percent chance of winning, was titled “Why the Polls Missed Bernie Sanders’s Michigan Upset.” After the Indiana primary, Diggler’s tongue-in-cheek victory lap was met with scoffs from Silver fans who explained that Silver gave Sanders a 10 percent chance of winning, and that things with a 10 percent chance of happening do happen from time to time.

But what’s the point of a prediction if you can’t stand by it, and if it doesn’t, well, predict? This ridiculous backpedaling has a glib, Brechtian tone to it: “The models are right. It’s the voters who are wrong.”

Despite the pretense of scientific detachment, Silver’s models are hardly unbiased. The moment you decide to weight some data sets over others, you’ve introduced bias. Silver’s failed Polls-Plus model incorporated indicators that had virtually no predictive value this year, like endorsements and fundraising totals.

 

I've only read your quote, but it seems as though this "blames" silver for attributing certain missteps to external factors (the volitity of the race, the polls being wrong), with out explaining why he said that. The article on why he got the Michigan poll wrong, for example, explains this.

I don't think he's failproof, but he's got an excellent track record, and confronts his errors. I don't think that makes him lose credibility.

 

I mean it's like weatherman, they look at the information they have, there is probably some bias, and sometimes they are wrong. It's not a definitive science so they are bound to be wrong sometimes. You just end up trusting the guy that has the best track record of being right.

 

Read the whole thing, it's a good read. The issue with Michigan primary, and it isn't only Michigan primary where this turns up, is it shows that the predictions are unfalsifiable. It's either some outside uncontrollable force that fucked the model, or the model was right and it's just the low probability outcome that sometimes occurs, occurred. There's no doubt that can happen, but it again shows that Silver/538 don't really confront their errors because they don't really need to as there is always the underlying assumption that the model itself was right even when faced with evidence to the contrary as that evidence can be dismissed as an outlier. Also he has certainly not had an excellent track record this election season, especially considering how many contests 538 didn't try to predict (ie: the hard ones). As the article mentioned 538's "polls-plus" forecasts, the "plus" part being what distinguishes 538 from other predictive models, did worse than a mere average of the polls (and, again, did worse than two random dudes making guesses based on gut instincts for a satirical character), and any success they have had in their predictions is rendered less impressive considering the hedging of their bets by using multiple models.

 

Related, I find Carl Diggler hilarious.

 

very funny, indeed

 

Vegan Café Allegedly Attacked by Right-Wing Extremists With Sausage and Fish

I thought this was fake at first lol

 

Sen. Boxer to Sanders: 'You can't just diss everybody' backing Clinton

"Just because you are supporting Hillary doesn't mean you are, quote, the establishment. It means you are progressive and you want to see her [as president]," Boxer said. "She is so qualified for this post. She is just what we need. I love Bernie, he’s my friend for a long time. But you can't just diss everybody who supports Hillary Clinton.

 

"For her part, Hillary Clinton has convincingly made the case that she knows how to get things done and has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda." - Jerry Brown

Sounds pretty establishment to me

 

I agree that Hillary is "establishment" but I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing and I think that Bernie would get destroyed in a general election. Yeah I know he leads Trump in hypothetical head to head polls but those same polls had Ben Carson beating Bernie in a head to head back when he was still in the race.

 

He made a mistake by not going (appropriately) negative earlier, but the email scandal is small potatoes compared to her other skeletons.

His "polls plus" analyses, whereby he factored in his own variances, have been terrible and altogether less accurate than the polls left alone. The polls predicted a Trump national landslide and Sanders' continued competitiveness. And now that Silver has been proven completely wrong on his first assertion (Trump), he's gone attack dog on Sanders' post-March 3 competitiveness to try and sure up his earlier assertions that his campaign was dead on arrival.

The early dismissiveness of Trump by political pundits was in no way data-driven. It was all high-minded subservience to the illusion that the two-party establishment was unable to be infiltrated and that the American political process still has an element of prestige.

Silver is a partisan hack now.

 

What like Vince Foster? Name one scandal that wasn't Republican manufactured bullshit.

 

I think they have a word for a belief that is held contrary to all available evidence.
also

 

There is no rational basis to think Clinton performs better in the general. She performs terribly with independents and her strongest states will 100% go Republican.

Also, her being "establishment" i.e. part of the group that insulated itself from scrutiny regarding horrid corruption, acted in the interest of corporations even when contrary to explicit promises to the electorate, and moved this country hopelessly to the right while unions died and families suffered....yeah, the modern Democratic establishment must go. Sooner than later.

 

1. Backdoor lobbying for TPP
2. Clinton foundation
3. Support for Keystone
4. DNC fundraising
5. Ousting Gaddafi
6. Suppressing the Haitian minimum wage
7. Suppressing her husband's rape accusers

i.e. the things Republicans wouldn't go after because it's in line with their interests.

 

I am not (and have never) argued that Sanders would be a better general candidate than Clinton. I don't think either of them are particularly electable candidates. I just don't see why it's bad for him to continue running and make harmless statements about running against the establishment. Nothing he said is untrue.

And you thinking "establishment" is not a bad thing flies in the face of the majority of voters on both sides of the aisle. No establishment candidate has met expectations in this election cycle (with the exception of someone like John Kasich who had no expectations). If Clinton runs on the idea of being establishment, she will lose.

 

No clue what this graph is when you just paste it in without context. This is what I am referencing:

RealClearPolitics - Election 2016 - General Election: Carson vs. Sanders

When people talk about Bernie polling better than Trump in a head to head matchup this is what they are talking about. The polling average. I'm saying this same polling average showed Bernie neck and neck with Ben fucking Carson. That's why these things are bullshit until after the convention.

Anyone who thinks a 74 year old socialist protest candidate stands a chance in a general election is drinking a little bit too much of the revolution kool-aid, in my opinion. He is the furthest left senator in the entire Senate:

Bernard “Bernie” Sanders, Senator for Vermont - GovTrack.us

Just because all of your friends on facebook like him does not mean he appeals to moderates and old people, which are the ones who you actually need to vote for you since they reliably turn out to vote, unlike hipster millenials who think communism is totally rad.

A Gallup poll done last year shows that 40% of DEMOCRATS wouldn't vote for a socialist. Democrats. It polls lower than Muslim and atheist as you can see.

 

Man, I wish I was smart enough to predict voting trends completely contrary to all predictive data.

 

1. TPP isn't as bad as Bernie people say it is and she's pro free trade. So am I. So are the overwhelming majority of economists. Also a political position is not a scandal.
2. Clinton Foundation is a charity that does lots of good. Also the Clinton's can't touch that money and they have to disclose every contribution. I suppose you hate the Gates Foundation too?
3. A polititical position is not a scandal, again.
4. Is she chair of the DNC? No. Obama fundraised the same way.
5. Gaddafi's own people rose up against him and we decided to support the people. Obama made the call, Hillary, as SoS advised. You can say it was a mistake but Gaddafi could have killed many of his own people without our support.
6. Secretary of State does not set the minimum wage in other countries. No clue what you're talking about.
7. This is popular on right wing blogs but until I see hard evidence of it from a credible source I'm going to dismiss it just like all the other shit.