Tales of a Modern-Day Cassandra with a Philosophy Fetish
Yes, it’s been a while. There’s too much going on locally and at the national level and I’m trying to keep my head above water while I’m clearing stuff out. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter to see what’s going on daily.
This is getting addressed because of something someone said on Facebook, and it’s just easier to lay it all out in a blog post anyway. Continue reading “Special elections don’t predict SQUAT…”
Last week I got into a pissing contest with a couple of liberal fanatics who think the blue wave is real. I called bullshit based on what I’ve seen so far. They asked me to give a best guess scenario for the Senate, based on my research. The results are below, but before we get there, let me remind you just who you’re dealing with here. Continue reading “Endarkenment (Part 2)…”
According to the NY Times, votes should start to roll in at around 8:20. When they’re done, the dust is going to settle and yet another “bellwether” election will be over, but as I’ve said repeatedly, special elections don’t count. They especially don’t count when the weather is horrendous thanks to a nor’easter that’s sweeping up the east coast of the US.
That said, I’ll repeat for the peanut gallery: I don’t trust polls. I trust votes. Continue reading “Election 2018: Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District”
There’s a benefit to following folks I’ve never met anywhere else but FB. Occasionally, someone shows me a bit of the Internet that I’ve missed before, and because it flew under the radar, I didn’t have it available to draw connections.
Today, someone revealed a tiny tip of a much larger iceberg, and now I’ve got the first Dots post in almost seven months. Continue reading “Connecting the Dots, Part 7…”
In Election 2018: The End of Everything (Part 1), I introduced the second “Cassie’s List” compilation, which includes all the historic data that matters to ME from the last six election cycles for US Senate and House seats. Unlike the work I did for the Presidential election in 2016, this delves deeper into state politics and shows why some state numbers are better predictors than others.
The list, you may recall, is here:
The data’s complete now, based entirely on the stats published by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). I’ve downloaded the PDFs in the event that the current government decides to erase the data, which I can imagine they could do, since they’ve already done it with climate research and other inconvenient truths. Continue reading “Election 2018: Analysis Complete. Now what? (Part 2)”
I’m almost done compiling data on the senate races from 2006-2016. This stuff takes time because I’m using at least three sources (including the Federal Election Commission) and scouring them for the data is a royal PITA.
When I’m done, there’ll be a better list of who to direct those precious support dollars, assuming you want a blue candidate to win.That’s 10 years’ worth of data, and it’s proving to be relatively reliable. If I have the vote counts for all the republicans and all the democrats who voted in the primary, regardless of their candidate selection, I can predict the outcome of the general, with an error ratio of around 4. Continue reading “Election 2018: The End of Everything (Part 1)”
When I started writing online, way back in 2004, my blogging was a combination of minutiae designed to keep a then-deployed husband in the loop on day-to-day life at home. We were not quite to the end of W’s first term, but it was already clear to me what his election meant to the country, in terms of an erosion of civil liberty, of a dramatic (but by no means complete) shift to the right, and long term lasting damage to our reputation as a world leader by his creation of the USA Patriot Act.
In an ever-increasing feeling of depression and anger over last November, I’ve lashed out repeatedly at people who still seem to think that we are operating “business-as-usual” even in the face of abject corruption and cronyism not seen in decades in this country, going all the way back to the Gilded Age of the robber barons. Continue reading “I was off by a month. My bad.”
In the last few weeks, Nate Silver’s site fivethirtyeight.com has shifted stance from Hillary Clinton Will Win to Maybe We Ought To Worry After All.
You can see the progression here (since the beginning of August):
What I find most disturbing is that his map of the US is much less ambiguous than mine, and mine called it for Trump back in June, based on the numbers I saw coming out of the primaries. I’ve had people blowing me off consistently, with placating comments about how primary numbers can’t predict outcomes. Well, maybe that’s true, but I said it would be a close race back then, and I am sticking to those guns today. Continue reading “What if I’m right?”
A friend posited the following on her FB page (paraphrased here).
“It seems that Hillary is attacked due to gender-based perceptions: She’s cold, manipulative, sneaky, can’t be trusted, and so on. Very few people are speaking about the actual issues. Foreign policy? Hillary has laid out a comprehensive set of goals and stances. Trump said that generals are impotent and we must throw money at them. The economy? Hillary has a plan with specifics, goals, and a path to reach them. Trump said “I’m successful and that’s enough.” Yet instead of discussing the differences in policies, people complain about Hillary’s demeanor and call her “cold,” which is just a smidgen away from being called “frigid,” which implies that her worth is tied to how much she enjoys sex. Which has what to do with the Presidency?”
I thought it was a good question, and I’ve been hammering at the answer all day. It’s complicated, because the second one brings up the question of gender in politics, lots of people (mostly men) go instantly on the defensive.
Sound like anyone you know? Continue reading “Can you vilify Hillary Clinton without being called sexist? Signs point to no…”
FiveThirtyEight: Election Update: Clinton’s Lead Keeps Shrinking: 10 questions as the stretch run begins.
A few weeks back I got into a fight with people on a friend’s FB wall over the relative value of polls. After the smackdown, I retreated to my corner to wait out the holidays and take a break.
This evening, I caught a glimpse of the headline above, which is vindication of a sort, and also just a bit terrifying. Continue reading “To poll or not to poll (Updated 11/1/2016)…”