I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII

Still haven't seen a Trump sign in OC, but that insane surfer vs. cyclist video happened in the next town up the coast.

when I was driving through rural eastern Washington back in May, there were tons of Trump signs. also weed dispensaries

"also"

Saw a few (maybe 6-7) Trump signs in rural-ish eastern upstate NY, a few of them homemade. Zero signs in urban areas, though.

538's fine! They provide lots of explanation of how much credence you should put in what. Even today, when the "now-cast" sits at 87-13 or whatever, they make it a point to say that a 13% chance of something happening is not at all a remote possibility. It's no different than some of the junk baseball stats that Bill James will occasionally throw out there. He'll say this is fun, this is interesting, don't take it that seriously. Same thing.

seems like pointless clickbait/trolling to me

http://crooksandliars.com/files/mediaposters/2016/08/34198.jpg?ts=1471023905

I really and truly do not get this woman. She goes on CNN every day and people yell at her. From the right, from the left, guests, hosts, everyone ridicules her and throws up their hands in exasperation. I guess she'll be rewarded in the future for her undying loyalty. (I mean, I understand surrogates and spinning and all that. But she's beyond anything I've ever seen.)

Is she the replacement for the brunette with the bullet necklace?

No Katrina Pierson still bringing the crazy the rest of the day.

I'm not sure who that is...Katrina Pierson? Anyway, she--Kayleigh McEnany--has been one of CNN's two primary Trump mouthpieces for many months (Jeffrey Lord the other).

It's no different than some of the junk baseball stats that Bill James will occasionally throw out there. He'll say this is fun, this is interesting, don't take it that seriously. Same thing.

Baseball is a game.

when I was driving through rural eastern Washington back in May, there were tons of Trump signs. also weed dispensaries

I live in rural eastern washington and I've only seen two, they seem conspicuously absent when there are SO MANY other signs for republicans everywhere. But yes on the weed stores, there are now four in my ~30,000 person town.

Also I still own one of these shirts that I bought for $5 from a guy in a trailer park in Michigan in 1992:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/83/d3/25/83d3250d8d1b5d245c0131bb6ca8e74d.jpg

Kayleigh McEnany goes on CNN and takes abuse from everyone because she truly truly believes that Trump is the best solution for America's problems and believe that she can convince smart people to vote for him with her words. She's a Trump evangelist.

I would feel bad for her if Trump weren't the worst person in America, but what do you know, he is.

538 is the worst form electoral prediction, except for all the others.

a friend of mine has an original reagan/helms '80 shirt that he still wears

maybe thats 76? shit I wasnt alive anyway.

There are more Zapp Brannigan Trump quotes... these are... amazing.

I don't really look at 538 much beyond their general polling updates and that one time I played with their state-map-tool thing - why are ppl so down on them this cycle?

― Οὖτις, Friday, 12 August 2016 18:51 (3 hours ago) Permalink

Volatile modeling and dumb articles. The podcast has been not terrible but not amazing either.

― Mordy, Friday, 12 August 2016 18:54 (2 hours ago) Permalink

i don't follow the debates concerning 538 as closely as some of you. i don't seem to grasp the critique entirely.

you'd expect the "polls only" forecast to be volatile, since they are designed to change with each new poll, which is necessarily based on a sample size quite a bit smaller than the voting population.

is the argument that the "polls-plus" forecast is likewise overly volatile given the dynamics of this race?

are we sure we're not critical of 538 because they estimate trump's chances of winning as higher than we'd like to imagine? (i.e. the reverse of those right-wing websites who chatter about "unskewed" polls.)

I've been wearing this a lot lately (not an original...and that's not me):

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/nixon_zps3wqnh9cs.jpg

Unlike the other Nixon T-shirt I wore a few years ago, people look at me sideways now. It's the "Vote Republican," and also Trump. A woman sat down beside me at a movie last month and said, "Nice shirt--I hope it's ironic." I mumbled something about rain and weddings.

i don't understand why you would wear that even ironically

Rain/weddings?

Nm,

yeah, well i've been wearing this a lot lately

http://rlv.zcache.com/wallace_68_t_shirt-rdbe853e3e3f84d199ef1c11dacda746a_jy9a7_512.jpg

hilarious!

x-post

I used to have a thrift store "Teachers For [Bill] Clinton" shirt.

i don't understand why you would wear that even ironically

ya rly

it reminds me of that billy joel song where everything --including major humanitarian disasters, political ideologies, etc. -- is reduced to pop-culture trivia.

I think I still have a Viva Kennedy button from when my brother dragged me to a Dem election center in Merced, Ca in 1968.

I would feel bad for her if Trump weren't the worst person in America, but what do you know, he is.

Agree w/this, but I do enjoy the deer-in-headlights look she gets when the other panelists (left or right) call Trump on his bullshit.

it reminds me of that billy joel song where everything --including major humanitarian disasters, political ideologies, etc. -- is reduced to pop-culture trivia.

https://twitter.com/jonathanchait/status/762458291897192448

I live in rural eastern washington and I've only seen two, they seem conspicuously absent when there are SO MANY other signs for republicans everywhere.

oh duh that might be because I wrote eastern but meant *western* Washington (basically Aberdeen north to Olympic NP). it was also right around the time of the primary, so some may have come down since? the dispensary per capita ratio was truly remarkable though, like we passed through several towns that literally had no other businesses, maybe a gas station at most

one thing I love about RealClearPolitics is it pastes a smattering of opinion articles on the election on the front page, so you can read batshit stuff from the Moonies, The Federalist, and "Washington Examiner" amongst the NYT/WaPo articles. Get the whole spectrum!

Nixon fascinates me more than any other politician ever. Simple.

well that's true for me too but wearing a shirt like that implies endorsement or "I'm being ironic bro" status

so don't be surprised when people react that way to you

you know who fascinates me? Nathan Bedford Forrest. i'm bout to get one of those Nate Forrest tees from American Apparel.

i used to have a tito shirt, but then we broke

would wear an augustus shirt tbh :/

http://s3.amazonaws.com/images.store.woven.com/products/66/large/reagan-right-bro.jpeg

I don't think I expressed surprise, exactly--I was just noticing the difference between this and the other Nixon T-shirt I wore a few years ago, which I partly attribute to the slogan but also partly to Trump. I wasn't shattered or anything.

Jesus, amateurist, give the piety a rest. I think you were on here a few days ago calling someone an idiot because he didn't have the same interpretation of a film as you, and I think you've even gotten temporary bans here for some of your more thoughtful commentary. It's a T-shirt.

forget it jake....

sorry, didn't mean to be pious. i just thought "i was fascinated by..." was a weird reason for wearing a t-shirt and decided to take the logic to a few farcical conclusions.

One would have sufficed. I got your point.

gentle mockery, in other words

(my auto-translate wanted to render "mockery" as "hockey")

i apologize for overdoing it!

i got one temporary ban for a bad-taste analogy involving morbs fwiw, and it was deserved.

someone put Sherman looking all irritable on a t shirt and i'll wear the fuck out of it

538 never had Trump ahead, or even close.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo#plus

it was the NowCast I believe that had him ahead

It's the now-cast that complaints about 538 are directed at.