Shorthand for Nothing

As of this writing, the last few states are too close to call. It is clear that Barack Obama is the next President of the United States, and I’m not alone in feeling like this may be the start of something big for our nation–and I hope the world. His speech was spectacular and moving. John McCain gave a concession speech that was polite and dignified and everything a concession speech should be.

Tonight I’d like to look back at this election, all sarcasm, snark, and joking aside.

I really started following it towards the end of the primaries. I’d heard of Barack before, but didn’t know a lot about him. I knew I didn’t want to see Hillary as president–but I think more importantly, I knew that Barack Obama had a lot of grassroots support. He was energizing people–he was energizing the young, disaffected, cynical group I was a part of. There was hope for something new. So I started watching the primaries. Hillary had long odds against her when I started. Superdelegates were a big deal. And I started learning more about Barack Obama. He was intelligent, calm, dignified, charismatic. There was something inspirational about him, and this unbelievable sense of inevitability.

At some point during the summer, I started really watching the election in earnest. Blogs, news media, political analysts, polls. There was something almost absurd about Barack–there was so much eagerness, so much enthusiasm. The media was in love with him. Everyone I knew was in love with him. And it was infectious. I found myself laughing, not because he was a bad candidate, but because he was a good candidate. It was refreshing to joke about how awesome a candidate was, and to be sincere.

Still, I knew he wasn’t going to save the world. There was something almost Messianic about his presence. And it was easy for his detractors to paint him as if he had a Messiah complex. In the end I felt that he knew that really, this wasn’t about him–this was about inspiring the people of America. This was about reminding America that they could make a difference.

And what a difference we’ve made. I don’t need to explain how momentous this occasion is. I hope this energy lasts. If everyone remains as fired up as they were for the campaign, we really will be able to change America. Who can say if it will last, or how long it will take? But change has arrived in America. If Barack Obama can keep people as fired up for the next four years as he has for the past two, maybe we won’t be a nation of people who think it’s somebody else’s problem.

If that’s the case, that’s change I can believe in. (I know, I know.)

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Okay, this time I am prepared for it. This time I am ready. Here it is, Hope himself becoming a god.

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Surprise liveblog, after the jump!

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In a few short hours we find out whether America will finally fall to the black muslim Arab terrorist space demon communist freedom-and-america-hating freedom-hater terror-loving godless inexperienced elitist fraudulent anti-Christs. If this happens only a minority of America is actually America anymore, and we will soon change the name of the country to Obamaland, and the capital will be changed to Hopeville, and all good American patriots (ie, Republicans, who put Country First despite thinking half of the country is full of America-hating freedom-haters) will be rounded up and put in camps, where they will be forced to do work and get paid huge salaries, but all of their money will be taken away from them and given to fat lazy black people, who hate whitey and love sitting around and accepting handouts from the government. They will laugh quietly to themselves and give one another terrorist fist-bumps, because they know they are really just milking the system at the expense of the poor belabored patriots! They are all evil and selfish, statistically. Rich people just want to be able to enjoy their wealth without having to think about those horrible poor people, but they won’t be able to do that anymore, because soon the poor will control the government and it will be like Karl Marx but a whole lot bloodier.

Terrorists will randomly bomb churches and private schools and small businesses and good Christian homes and then fist-bump the puppet governments in the cities, and host fundraisers for Obama in their living room, where everyone will have to come and give all their money, ever. And everyone will profit off the labor of the Republicans in their slave labor camps and sit around being decadent and drinking wine that the French shipped over. The whole country will look like a war zone and it will be a mockery of everything America once stood for. The Freedom Eagle will circle the skies one last time, shedding a single patriotic tear, and fly off, crying like the phoenix, vowing to return one day and plant the seeds of freedom anew.

So yeah, I predict Obama with about 350 electoral votes.

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I’m not a statistician, or even a math student. But a number of people seem to not know how to read polls, or how to understand them. Some of this is due to a lack of understanding about methodology–some of it due to paying more attention to the headlines than the polling data itself. So here is a friendly guide.

First: a poll usually contains somewhere between 1000 and 3000 respondents, randomly selected so they can get a representative sample. Pollsters work very hard to try to remove any sort of systemic bias, both from their methodology and their results. For politics, they will often assign a party weighting system–that is, if more Americans identify as liberal than conservative, they will weight the results so it gives a reflection of that.

I don’t know the actual details behind this–that is what the pollsters are for. But let’s look at what I do know.

1. 1000-3000 is not the entirety of the American population. There will be errors. Some places have a house effect towards one candidate–this is not because the pollsters are biased, it is because their methodology isn’t working.
2. Nevertheless, the results are remarkably stable and show clear trending over the course of an election. The pollsters are evidently doing something right.
3. This is true despite the fact you occasionally end up with an outlier.

But let’s look more into how to read the polls. It is generally not the best idea to simply pick a pollster and rely exclusively on that one. So the first step in reading the polls is to read a number of them. Gallup is good, Rasmussen is good, they are both showing different numbers. Instead of assuming one of them is wrong and the other is right, perhaps you should consider taking them both into consideration? The more data, the better. If there is a legitimate trend, it will be reflected in multiple polls. CNN even conducts a “poll of polls” to get a better idea of the overall mood. And of course, fivethirtyeight.com, pollster.com, and realclearpolitics.com also perform poll aggregations (and include state polls).

But it’s also really tempting to assume, based on a poll’s numbers, that it is because of something your beloved candidate did or didn’t do. Guessing the motivations of the American public is tricky at best, so I recommend against this, but if you really want to see why there’s a change, look at some of the other numbers, and compare them to what they were earlier. Many pollsters report on a number of factors. They might ask if you feel confident or content that the economy will get back on the right track if this candidate wins. They might ask if you feel he is knowledgeable, or ready to lead, or understands your needs. They might ask if you feel confident that if he is elected the nation will have a good, capable leader.

These numbers are not reflected in the topline “Obama is up by eight points” data–but it can give you a good indication of a number of things. Are the people afraid of Obama? Is he likely to lose supporters? Is McCain’s negative campaigning having the desired effect? Is the race tightening because of that? Is the candidate improving his positive view among the American public, or are they increasingly worried about him?

These numbers make up the difference between a hesitant “I support John McCain” and an enthusiastic “I support John McCain.” You have been seeing the race tighten in the past few days, but the public doesn’t seem more optimistic about John McCain as president. I suspect what you’re seeing is a number of undecideds seeing that McCain is about to lose and deciding they are going to support him. They just aren’t happy about it.

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One of the conservative forums on which I lurk has a thread for predicting the election’s outcome. Approximately half of the 35 votes believe McCain will win (18/35, slightly better than half). In the interests of full disclosure, a lot of people on this particular forum seem to be under the age of 18. Still, I was surprised that fully half of voters thought McCain would win.

Some gems from the thread, after the jump.

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Probably you’ve heard by now that Sarah Palin, in the event McCain/Palin loses this election cycle, wants to remain a prominent figure in national politics. I’ve been quietly making this speculation for some time now, but at first I thought she might be more likely to run for one of the state’s Senate seats. I think I was wrong about this one. Sarah Palin wants to be president of the United States in the year 2012, and she is going to use the same narrative she’s been running on.

She kicked out the incumbent Republican governor, if you recall. She fought the existing Republican establishment. She is a diehard Republican, but she still bucked the establishment. And now she has a flotilla of intellectual Republicans who don’t like her and think she is dangerously unqualified and a bit of a lunatic. She will be fighting against these elites who think that knowing what you’re doing is important in a candidate. She has a narrative already. She will drag the word “maverick” kicking and screaming back into politlcal discourse.

You see, many observers think the Republican party is tearing itself apart. You are seeing the intellectual conservatives and the conservative base, and they are not happy with each other. John McCain has ultimately decided he would rather appeal to the base. And he has set up Sarah Palin to become their new champion. It’s politics without high-minded discourse, just gimmicks and obvious ploys to make the common man feel included. Joe the Plumber? Really?

Are the gimmicks working? Can Sarah Palin come back from this election and lead the Republican Party to victory? Can this Republican Party win elections anymore? Do they need someone whose gimmick is being a reformer to shake up the party? Or is it perhaps that what they really need is someone who is intelligent and thoughtful and has the right temperament to lead, to redefine the party so that it is no longer associated with angry shouts of “socialist!” and “terrorist!” and “muslim!” and “kill him!” at rallies. A thoughtful party with traditional values, rather than a hateful party afraid the gays are going to steal their jobs.

Watch Sarah Palin carefully. What happens to her could be a sign of the future of the Republican Party.

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I’d like you to perform a little thought experiment with me. I want you to think of some people you know in countries with socialized health care–usually, it is Canada and the UK. Have you ever talked to them about health care? If the answer is yes, I’m going to make a prediction: they ‘agree’ with your stance on the matter. And I’m going to go a little further: if we had the same friends in the UK and Canada, and you disagree with me on socialized health care, you will still assume your Canadian or British friends agreed with you over me.

Maybe it’s the questions. Maybe I ask them “do you like not having to pay for health care?” and they say “yeah, it’s great,” and you ask them “do you like having to go through government red tape in order to get health care?” and they say “man I hate it.” Perhaps I say “do you like that even those who are poor are afforded basic medical care?” and they say “it’s great, man” and you say “do you like paying extra taxes to pay for your health care?” and they say “no, it’s pretty lame.” But I think it’s more fundamental than that.

I think it’s the basic premise: nobody likes dealing with health care, period, socialized or not. There are reasons for this. The first, and perhaps the most obvious and overlooked, is that nobody likes being sick or injured. Americans don’t like it eather. Generally speaking going to the doctor is unpleasant because the only time you are going is when there is something wrong with you. The second reason is that nobody likes paperwork. Nobody likes doing taxes. Nobody likes waiting for administrative red tape to be cleared. Nobody likes dealing with bureaucracy. And let’s face it. That’s basically what government is.

There are plenty of arguments to be made for and against socialized health care. Fair enough. Let’s not bring the Canadians into this, shall we? Because I’m pretty sure you and I can look at the same group and see two very different things.

(I’d prefer if we don’t bring up our experience with Medicare or Medicaid, either–I don’t generally feel those are terribly successful, but that has nothing to do with why socialized health care as an entire system will work or fail.)

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I’d like to encourage you to take a good look at the picture of Ashley Todd, who didn’t get mugged yesterday. See how the ‘B’ is backwards, sort of like she made it herself, in the mirror? I’m not really here to talk about that, though. Nor about Fox’s prediction that this would sink the race for McCain. There isn’t a lot of insight to add–McCain staffer makes a bad decision, makes headlines, and then admits that she was race-baiting in Pennsylvania.

I’d like to talk about some of the conservative reactions, as collected by Wonkette. It’s not every day the conservatives are dealt a blow like this. Colin Powell elicited a predictable reaction. Most endorsements do. But Ashley Todd? How do they feel about someone taking a risk for their campaign and failing?

If the collection of comments are any indication, the reaction appears to be partly what you would expect–lamenting that someone would risk their campaign’s good standing like that. But it also consists of people claiming she is probably a liberal plant: “Exactly something an idiotic liberal coward would do. bet if you look close enough she’s an obama supporter.” Apparently conservatism is incapable of doing wrong–it is all caused by acts of liberal sabotage.

In all fairness, I do not think conservatives on the whole will be accusing her of deliberate sabotage. Anger at the media makes more sense, for breaking the story in the first place when the police were clearly not convinced of the story. It may not be reasonable to assume the media won’t break a story like this–but it certainly fits in with the conservative metanarrative.

But the fact remains–there are those who are so devout in their support of the cause they believe anyone who does damage to it is a saboteur rather than merely someone who makes bad decisions. Sometimes unquestioning devotion to your cause is a bad thing.

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The conservative forums I have been reading seem to have a common consensus these days: the election is close! Normally I would link to all of the polling sites and political analysts who disagree–who think it is patently obvious at this point that McCain is in dire straits, that the election will likely not be close, and that a McCain victory will be an upset.

I have been saying this election will not be close for a long time (but not blogging about it, so you will have to take my word for it). Partly this was based on political analysts, partly it was based on this feeling that Barack Obama was an exciting candidate. Sure, I worried. But at the same time, there was this feeling of inevitability, one that made it all the more exciting, instead of complacency-inducing.

While I don’t think the McCain campaign should become defeatist, and while I do believe they are flailing around in mad desperation at this point, I believe that a healthy understanding of the polls might benefit their cause.

There’s a bit of a disconnect, though. It’s clear the McCain campaign knows it’s losing. Morale is low, and I think Obama’s feeling of inevitability is beginning to wash the Republican campaign under. But it talks as if it doesn’t believe that. “We’ve got them just where we want them!” Seriously, John? That just makes you sound out of touch–making the defeatism worse while simultaneously making the “it’s a close election and you are all fooled!” people believe it even more.

Whatever is going on internally with the McCain campaign, I can say one thing with conviction: this is not a close election. I would be much less enthusiastic if it were.

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