Sorry, dude, but I don’t believe these “undecideds at the margins” exist.
But the effect of those factors — say, Clinton’s decision to give paid speeches to investment banks, or her messaging on pocket-book issues, or the role that her gender played in the campaign — is hard to measure. The impact of Comey’s letter is comparatively easy to quantify, by contrast. At a maximum, it might have shifted the race by 3 or 4 percentage points toward Donald Trump, swinging Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida to him, perhaps along with North Carolina and Arizona. At a minimum, its impact might have been only a percentage point or so. Still, because Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 point, the letter was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College.
Blind Retrospection: Why Shark Attacks Are Bad For Democracy
As a result, retrospective voting is harder than it seems, and incumbents often get rewarded or punished for events beyond their control. We illustrate this point by tracing the electoral impact of a clearly random event—a dramatic series of shark attacks in New Jersey in 1916. We show that voters in the affected communities significantly punished the incumbent president, Woodrow Wilson, at the polls.
This is indisputably true. The other thing that is indisputably true is that Hillary Clinton was the prohibitive favorite starting out and had no business being anywhere in range of Donald. While the Comey letter was the straw that broke a very large camels back, there are literally dozens of things we could all point out as causes for her losing to Donald. A lot had to go wrong for that spectacularly unlikely thing to happen.
Given how many of those individually game winning/losing moments were literally just decisions that got made by HRC and her senior campaign staff I’ll never forgive her, and if it was up to me none of them would ever work in politics again.
Like sometimes we just have to accept responsibility for stuff. Trump was a dumpster fire of a candidate and we managed to seize defeat from the jaws of victory in a spectacular way. The only way to make sure it never happened again was to do a full post mortem on what happened… but instead we have disingenuous shit like this from 538 of all people.
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Honestly for me it was even more about just putting a check of run away authoritarianism than getting Trump. If they refuse to even check this, if a smart Trump ever gets in office we’re truly and completely fucked.
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Sure, but a football team can always find reasons for losing in retrospect. Maybe it’s from calling a fade on a critical red zone drive or failing to challenge a close but incorrect call. However, if you narrowly lose because the starting kicker got crippled in a freak play and you don’t have a backup to make the chip shot, that’s pretty easy to figure out. We know exactly how to get those particular 1 or 3 points in football.
All I’m saying is that there’s a last ~1% to ~3% of people who are literally voting based on shark attacks and we know that with near certainty. The strategy for winning them is also known: control the news shortly before the election with some sensational story. In other words it’s the October surprise, there’s evidence that it works, and there’s even evidence for who it works on. All of the other stuff–which Hillary absolutely should have been doing–has a more Byzantine cause-and-effect structure and is tougher to measure. As a point of political strategy, there’s no good reason to not have an October surprise (or two) ready to go. I am basically just reiterating the point from Nate’s first two sentences:
But the effect of those factors — say, Clinton’s decision to give paid speeches to investment banks, or her messaging on pocket-book issues, or the role that her gender played in the campaign — is hard to measure. The impact of Comey’s letter is comparatively easy to quantify, by contrast.
As a further point of strategy, if you have the lead in October, you don’t drop the god damn bomb first–you force the opponent to play their card so you can bury it with your own while simultaneously minimizing the fact-check clock in the process:
On October 7, 2016, during the 2016 United States presidential election, The Washington Post published a video and accompanying article about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and television host Billy Bush having “an extremely lewd conversation about women” in 2005.
Three weeks later, on October 28, then FBI Director James Comey announced in a letter to Congress that he would take “appropriate investigative steps” to review additional emails related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
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Right, the main point is applying the law to criminals to restore law and order. Any election benefits are ancillary.
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If I can romanticize a bit, the best play here is not releasing the actual tax returns to the public, at least not in the days leading up to the election. That is a thing people still live action role-playing in The West Wing multiverse would do. The poetic move is New York obtains the tax returns and announces a new investigation into Trump and associates.
It might help fuzzy the news what with the Hunter Biden public hanging scheduled for Election Day.
There is no world in which he wins and the Dems take the Senate.
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So, if we dodge this bullet, what do you do to prevent it in the future? If your answer is “let’s have an enlightened public that would never ever elect anyone like Trump again” or “let’s trust some geniuses to be wise and benevolent” you’re living in a fantasy. The proper thing to do, when and if you/we ever have power, is to do what we can to limit the government’s ability to truly fuck us. Stuff like fewer cops. Less surveillance. Fewer prisons and jails. Smaller military. If you don’t build it, they won’t come.
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If it’s going to gone down to an October surprise, Trump wins. Maybe the Lincoln Project keeps something up their sleeve. Biden isn’t going to play this substantially better than HRC, not in that regard.
But I do think too much attention gets paid to the mythical high information moderate. It’s more about depressing your opponent’s turnout and increasing your own.
As for those last minute low info types? Fear is a powerful motivator. Dems should use it this time. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for death by covid. He’s a careless buffoon, he just wants to get rich off the stock market, he doesn’t care if you or granny die of covid.
They should do a whole series of these. Want to go to a football game again? Vote for Biden. Trump doesn’t care about your football game, he isn’t even trying to stop the virus! He’s a billionaire he would rather golf on his hoity toity private course and leave you for dead. A vote for Joe is a vote for football!
Legislate, legislate, legislate, that’s what you do to stop the next Trump. He showed Congress everything wrong with the ‘honor’ system, and it will be their job to fix those loopholes to prevent a totally corrupt president from ever being immune from removal and also needs to be written to avoid the clock delays that happened. This goes straight down the line for every executive branch job. If you do what they did, you get punished, and that has to be done through legislation.
You can also expect major changes with how special counsels are dealt with so that what happened with Barr/Mueller can’t happen again. This will only happen with Dem control of the House and Senate and regular people need to put constant pressure on them to fix these things if that event happens.
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Lawbros won’t save us next time either. You want to make it hard for the next Trump to throw kids in cages? Fire the all the people who have actually done it and take away their guns and budgets. Tear down the walls and make them try to scrape together money to rebuild them. That’s harder than telling lawbros to fuck off.
If you want to legislate something, I guess laws can make the TSA, CBP, and ICE and the whole Dept of Homeland Security illegal.
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If you write in laws to remove people, fine them, jail them for this kind of stuff it will make a difference. That means enforcement has to be written into any legislation. Every single one of those people who did the actions you mentioned should go to jail. Azar should absolutely be prosecuted as should Nielsen.
You aren’t going to get anywhere trying to get rid of ‘guns’ or whatever you’re advocating for there. Removing budgets absolutely should be a part of any legislation.
With your latest edit, you’re not here in good faith so never mind on engaging on this.
That was all in good faith, but since you’re being an asshole, I will tell you that more LAW AND ORDER is not the answer. That’s like 50/50 in good faith.
And seriously, no one will ever let the fact that some people from some previous administration went to jail or got fined stop them from being a fascist if that’s what they want and they have a shot at it.
And after all that’s gone down you’re still talking about impeachment and removal?
So we’ve finally gotten to it that you think the president should be above the law? I absolutely think impeachment/removal should be massively shored up across the board. But then again, I’m for actual systemic change so much I ran on it. This isn’t about law and order on the people, this is about law and order on the people in power. For some reason, I thought you’d be for that, but I guess not.
Dude, your argument here and you’re being an asshole like you always are and why you constantly fight with everyone, starts with your apparent problem with limiting the power of those people in power, of having fewer prisons and cops and guns. You don’t like that. You want to be part of it I guess.
I’m not even remotely being an a-hole here, but that’s how you read a lot of situations that aren’t even close to what you think they are.
What bugs me about your line is that you have zero solutions to any of this stuff that will ever happen. I’m for trying to fix the issues that exist in a system that is here brick by brick. I have no idea what you’re saying about the rest, because I’m absolutely for fewer prisons, fewer cops, and fewer guns (especially in a military context). I’m against a cruel system, and want the people in power held accountable for their actions. I don’t get your line here at all or how you’re presenting yourself. But I’m fine tapping out with you.