conservatives and politics 9:00 pm
Just a quick update on an earlier post in which I said Republicans don’t threaten to move to Canada when they lose. Turns out some of them do! I think mostly younger ones. And a few are saying New Zealand or Australia or something. Apparently Obama is just that bad.
Okay, this time I am prepared for it. This time I am ready. Here it is, Hope himself becoming a god.
politics 4:19 am
politics 10:27 pm
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.
politics 8:53 pm
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.
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.
conservatives and politics 10:34 am
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.
conservatives and politics 11:18 pm
Earlier today I made the comment that the post-debate polls have Obama winning by a really lopsided number–well over 20 points–among independent voters. One of the crazier conservatives I know responded with the following gem: “Yeah, but the people answering the polls are probably, idiots. Obama lied so many times, that I think Luciger [sic] wants to be his apprentice.” (Punctuation and spelling are his. I think he meant Lucifer.)
I didn’t watch the debate so I couldn’t comment on whether or not Obama was lying–my understanding is they both said some pretty outrageous things about health care. I don’t get the feeling he was lying so often Satan, Prince of the Air, Father of Lies, The Great Enemy, would want to become his apprentice.
But for all that, this is a pretty common reaction among the conservatives I encounter: if the polls disagree with you, disagree with the polls. When in the minority, they say “well most people are idiots.” And when they’re in the majority, they say “finally the people are seeing through the lies.” While conservatives are by no means the only people who view statistics through a heavily distorted lens, they certainly seem to do it more frequently than others.
But maybe I’m biased–I haven’t seen any presidential statistics that favor conservatives in a long time. It’s hard to selectively interpret data to be in your favor when the data actually is in your favor.
conservatives and politics 1:02 am
It doesn’t take a lot of digging to find someone who wants to move to Canada if McCain/Palin achieve a victory. I think everyone knows someone who was going to move to Canada if Bush/Cheney won in 2004, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the same about Bush/Cheney in 2000. I don’t actually know anyone who moved to Canada. (Fortunately, this year, they will almost certainly not have to change their minds.) But I know lots of people who said it, and I think they were sincere at the time.
It’s also not difficult to find a Republican who thinks that Obama is a fraud, suspects he has terrorist leanings, believes he is a secret Muslim, or calls him a communist or a Marxist. I’ve known a few who believe he hates America, hates white people, and that he is a dangerous radical. Naturally, these people also believe that anyone voting Democrat is in some way inherently flawed. Either they are selfish and lazy, brainwashed by the liberal media, or actively opposed to America. They believe the Democratic supermajority of 60 seats in the Senate, combined with a Democrattic president, will bring our country to ruin. They use phrases like “America the foolish.” They say that “One man one vote was the stupidest thing we ever did.” (This guy I just quoted is something special. I can write pages upon pages about him.) They essentially believe that our democratic system is flawed when they are losing.
A lot of this could probably be said about the “I’m moving to Canada” liberals. But I have never once seen a Republican make the same threat. I think the reason is this: for the conservative base, it is “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Patriotism is required–anyone who is not a patriot is a freedom-hating terrorist. Patriotism is the greatest of virtues. “My country, right or wrong.” “You don’t appreciate the sacrifices that man has made for our country.” You can do nothing better than love your country as a conservative.
I think this creates cognitive dissonance for them. If Obama is elected, they will complain about everything he does and says. If the Democrats pull off their 60-seat supermajority, they will bemoan the atrocities being committed against the Founding Fathers’ ideas for this great nation. Their way is obviously the correct way. They are the only ones who put country first. They are the only ones who are bipartisan. Everyone else is an extremely partisan self-centered radical!
Unfortunately, “everyone else” these days apparently make up half the nation. According to Gallup, there are almost ten percent more of those selfish America-hating radicals than good, hard-working conservatives. In a very real way, America is made up mostly of these people the conservative base couldn’t find a good word for if they were paid to.
They will hate the government soon, probably all three branches. They think the majority (or at least a plurality) of the population are mindless sheep at best and active opponents of America at worst. But they still love their country. They are patriots. So they have no recourse but to be angry. It must have been better back when we had our way, back when Mr. Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the wall. It’s those liberals who’ve ruined everything for us–how dare they?
It isn’t that liberals are never angry, it’s that liberals have other options.