Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Thursday, April 22, 2010

The Truth About Pandering

One of the great things about Michael Steele is that he often accidentally speaks the truth, like in his mention of the GOP's infamous Southern Strategy. In return, a conservative blogger complained, "Steele’s job is to make TODAY’S GOP attractive to voters, not to declare that we haven’t pandered enough to any group."

Let me spell this out for Mr. Cargosquid. If the only demographic your party consistently attracts is white men, maybe the problem isn't that you're not pandering to other groups. Maybe the problem is that you've been pandering to white men. Remember when I pointed out that in many circles, male is the default? Well, to the GOP, white men are the default, and everyone else is a special interest group.

(Special interest groups who should stay in the kitchen! Ah, Medina.)

Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Shining Rays

I don't want to jinx anything (too late!) but the Rays prevailing over the Red Sox has given me hope about Obama's prospects...

Let me explain.

For tracking the polls, the best place by far is fivethirtyeight.com, which uses some hardcore statistics to combine polling and demographic data to forecast the election results. The guy who runs the site, Nate Silver, has a day job doing hardcore statistics for Baseball Prospectus. Way back in February, Nate forecast that the Rays would be the most improved team this year. And he was right!

In the ALCS (Nate was not so bold as to predict the Rays would make the post-season, let alone the World Series) the Rays were up 3 games to 1 against the Red Sox. Building a 7-0 lead in the 7th inning, the Rays were roughly where Obama is right now. But it ain't over til it's over. And the Red Sox came back and won the game. And won comfortably in Game 6. It looked like an epic collapse was at hand...but in the end, the Rays prevailed!

Similar to the calculation of safe lead in college basketball, an extremely unlikely series of events has to occur for McCain to prevail now. And the Rays/Sox showed us how unlikely that is.

(Of course, I probably jinxed everything now. But if Nate was right about the Rays...)

Friday, August 22, 2008

Evan Bayh?

So apparently there are Obama-Bayh bumper stickers being printed up in Kansas (h/t Mark Ambinder). And then I checked and www.obamabayh.com redirects to http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet_evan.php. There's no obababiden.com, or obamasibelius.com, or even obamaclinton.com.

You heard it here first.