NAOS
Well-Known Member
Pearlwatson is the soul.
The Debates
- Thread starter PearlWatson
- Start date
Pearlwatson is the soul.
Anyone else get fundraising e-mails from PBS today?
Interesting Nate Silver piece from today:
Interesting Nate Silver piece from today:
A bit of caution, however, about the predictive power of those polls showing Mr. Romney having clearly won the debate on Wednesday. As I mentioned after the debate, I had not come across a study on the relationship between instant-reaction debate polls and the eventual effect on the horse race polls. So I decided to do a quick one myself.
The chart below reflects the candidates that debate watchers deemed to be the winners or losers in CNN polls in 17 presidential debates between 1984 and 2008. I compare this figure with the change in national head-to-head polls before and after the debate.
(Estimates for the horse race change after the first debate in each cycle, and all debates in 1984, come from my own database; those for the rest of the debates are from Thomas Holbrook).
The estimates are framed from the perspective of the incumbent party candidate, who is designated with the letter ‘I’ and the color purple in the chart; the challenger is designated with ‘C’ and the color orange.
The clearest win for any candidate in the CNN poll came in 1992, when Bill Clinton was deemed the winner of the second presidential debate by 58 percent of respondents, as compared with 16 percent for President George H.W. Bush and 15 percent for H. Ross Perot. That town-hall-style debate, in Richmond, Va., included this famous moment in which Mr. Clinton displayed his capacity to empathize with voters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ffbFvKlWqE&feature=player_embedded#t=0s
Indeed, Mr. Clinton increased his margin over Mr. Bush by about four percentage points in head-to-head polls immediately after that debate. Although Mr. Clinton lost some of that advantage during the remainder of the campaign, this is still a favorable precedent for Mr. Romney, since his 38-point margin of victory in CNN’s poll on Wednesday night is similar to Mr. Clinton’s 42-point win in that 1992 debate.
In several other cases, however, the instant-reaction polls did not correlate with the change in head-to-head polls. Before Wednesday night, the second-clearest margin of victory for a challenging candidate in the CNN poll came in 2008, when Mr. Obama was declared the winner of the third presidential debate by a 27-point margin. However, his opponent John McCain actually gained slightly in the polls instead just after that debate.
In 2000, CNN instant polls deemed Al Gore the winner of both the first and third presidential debates. But he lost about three points to George W. Bush in head-to-head polls after each of them. In 1996, Mr. Clinton was declared the winner of the first presidential debate in the CNN poll, but Bob Dole gained slightly in the head-to-head polls after that.
Over all, the relationship between the winner of the instant-reaction poll and the change in head-to-head polls is positive, although not statistically significant.
But for what it’s worth, the historical data would project a gain of 2.2 percentage points for Mr. Romney in the head-to-head polls by this time next week.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
why does Romney want to get rid of PBS? Serious question.
Because that less than .01% of the federal budget that goes towards Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding is a huge bugaboo to conservatives for some reason. Don't you know that private enterprise could make Big Bird better?
Both a funny and pathetic take .. I'm 50/50.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
Yeah...
It's becoming more and more apparent to me that the GOP thinks that PBS, Green Energy investment, and students are bankrupting this country.
Is this more about control than anything? Seriously, are they afraid that Big Bird is teaching youngins to love anti-GOP things?
So why wasn't Romney laughed off the stage when he did the Big Bird take? Was he actually being serious about taking out PBS to save money?
Again, just a reminder... I'm being serious.
I don't get why his comment wasn't followed with a pie to the face. If we're really looking to cut into this trillion dollar debt we have, why are we wasting time talking about such a tiny and insignificant part?
I propose that no one thing has any significant impact, but an overhaul of many smaller things makes a substantial enough impact worth exploring.
I reject that proposal in its entirety, particularly as it's dishonest with respect to scope. There are several items driving deficits that have hundreds of times the impact of CPB funding. The implication being that you'd have to eliminate literally hundreds of CPB level programs to equal reforms in other programs. CBP level alterations are the finishing touches, not the foundations of reform.
Romney/Ryan are engaging in the favorite chickenhawk debt game that all politicians (regardless of party) engage in when they want to appear serious about the debt. They don't want to be soft on defense, so they say defense spending is off-limits. Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security are popular, so they largely try to claim those are off-limits too (you could witness this last night, when Romney was trying to go out of the way to say he was putting money back into medicare and that SS funding changes wouldn't effect anyone 55-65 years of age). So they focus on the tiniest sliver of what's left, in the category of non-defense discretionary spending. The reality is you could eliminate that entire category, literally every single program, and it wouldn't make up the difference. So we get this focus on the piddliest stupidest things imaginable, like CPB funding, as an attempt to pose to everyone else that you're the one taking the budget seriously. That's not being a fiscal conservative, that's fiscal conservatism theater.
To use a Bill Mahrer sourced graphic:
CPB and the smaller ilk are the garnish on the side of the plate.
To be honest, I'm amused that apparently the Big Bird thing was the most tweeted about debate topic and the single item getting the most play today, I certainly didn't see that coming. In retrospect it seems like a weird thing to come out against. But I think it's intellectually dishonest to act like a) the Fed Gov directly funds Big Bird (who, incidentally, is probably one of only a handful net positive CBP investments) and b) that Big Bird is a federal deficit driver.
So true my friend, but I have quite a few friends who think everyone besides Fox, and the Post are liberal, and they are doing everything in their power
to make sure the liberals win. You know the types Stoked! I read their posts on Facebook, they are always whining. For example they think Yahoo
is completely Liberal, and out to get them. Do you see where I coming from?
The sites you mentioned are slanted, no doubt. I just can't stand when some poor conversatives act like the entire world is out to get them.
It's all equaled out when you consider that radio stations pumping out non-stop aggressive conservative agenda are almost everywhere.
Dare I say it's because they think it's Liberal? Or in the least not pro-republican...? I mean look at Bob Ross! Taty guy is a screaming Liberal....
I do know those types. We have a few of them right here on Jazzfanz. As for yahoo I do not read their stuff enough, I am reading more of it, to get a feel for them.
The conservative whinning like the entire world is out to get them is one of the forms of lunacy that was mentioned in one of these threads over the last few days. I do believe that the currect crop of liberals and the current crop of conservatives are incapable of compromising wiht each other.
mtnbayou
Member
Agreed. Give the Conservatives the South (minus New Orleans and Florida), most of the Midwest, and a couple intermountain states. And Alaska could be its own country.
Funny, most of the red states are the states that have the least educated, most racist people.
Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are all intermountain states and they are all red. Colorado and Nevada are intermountain states and they are a toos up. Only New Mexico is routinely left leaning.
If you were truly dividing up the US by political leanings the right would have Idaho/Utah/Arizona to Georgia and the Caolinas. Texas up to the Dakotas, Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana.
The left would have the West coast and Nevada (since the right took Colorado), New Mexico, The entire New England area and the Great Lake states (Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin...)
Only states that are up for grabs are Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Iowa.
How about Florida and Iowa for the right and Ohio and Virginia for the left. Done.
Saw this through RCP yesterday. Here's the link since you didn't provide it: https://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytim...l-challenge-and-more-on-debate-instant-polls/
I'm not. The mountain west has a very strong "leave me alone" streak in it. That generally aligns with the right more than the left.
Mtnbayou look at the map on this link. That is how I envision an idelogical plit of the U.S. going down.
The single exception in my scenario is that Virginia would be blue and not red.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
Romneyites are rushing to his defense over the Big Bird. They have now stressed the importance that Romney wasn't looking to necessarily cut into the deficit... But was merely suggesting the elimination of non-essential programs for which we'd have to borrow from China to fund.
Make sense?
Make sense?
Duck Rodgers
Well-Known Member
Can't we put somebody much more exciting than Big Bird as the face of Romney's PBS dislike? I was thinking that codger Charlie Rose works nicely.