Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that all bubbles are equal. Some are much smaller and harder to penetrate than others.
But consider BobLibDem’s characterization of “backward districts in backward states” - it’s a cartoonish representation of a sizable portion of the country that isn’t really accurate and yet pervades a lot of left-wing thinking (subtly or otherwise). Furthermore, the idea that the other side vote the way they do purely because they’re stupid or evil isn’t particularly constructive and certainly won’t help win elections for one’s own side, even if a portion of them **can **be reasonably shown to be stupid and/or evil.
A lot of the pundits’ “conventional wisdom” is just bunk. Like “high turnouts favor Democrats”. The turnout in GA-06 special election yesterday was through the roof. 256,000 votes vs. the 194,000 in April. And the results are the same 52% to 48%.
I don’t recall anyone predicting that Ossoff would win. But the general consensus was that it was close to a toss-up and could go either way, with perhaps a slight edge to Handel. (Which I agreed and agree with. Also, people who devoted over $30M in campaign contributions agreed with this too, as did the betting markets.)
The spin is in saying that there was never any real chance that Ossoff was going to win and the Handel victory was completely expected.
If you want an instance of the changed tone for one person, compare posts #69 & #151 of this thread. But beyond any one person, the tenor has changed.
The notion that this was never anything more than a longshot hope is new spin.
High turnout in specific districts may or may not favor democrats, but when most pundits talk about turnout they’re frequently referring about nationwide turnout.
They’ll kick the effects of the Obamacare replacement down the road so it won’t impact 2018 anyway.
Getting rid of Pelosi sounds good because she’s a woman from San Francisco and such an easy target for the "R"s, right? Except the next Democratic leader will get exactly the same treatment and we all know it.
The comments section for the market gave me confidence.
When I bought into Handel on May 27, the price was .42; this made it a good buy even if you thought the outcome was a coin flip. But the reality was that the district was strongly red to begin with, and the earlier vote diluted GOP support among multiple contenders. Just based on those fundamentals I thought it was underpriced.
But the comments section posts that supported Ossuff talked about “disciplined Democratic candidate,” and “uninspiring Republican candidate;” an energized Democratic party with money and a voter base that is sick of Trump’s antics. In other words: the sense I got was that the Ossuff market was buoyed by hope, and reliance on highly subjective factors.
If I have a secret sauce for winning, it’s in locating betting markets with a goodly mix of opponents who bet their desires. It’s as though they’re willing to trade the money loss at the end of the month for the 30 days of uplifting feeling they get supporting the “correct” cause.
You’re giving reasons for assuming that the market was mispricing Handel’s chances. So it suffices as an explanation for your investment - .42 was underpricing her. OK. But none of what you’ve written is a reason for thinking that Handel would win, in absolute. So it does not suffice as an explanation for assertion in the OP that you “predict, with not just a voice but real world money, that Handel beats Ossuff”.
In this coming national election, I think high turnouts will favor the GOP, since Democrats will already turn out since I hardly think that they will become less angry at 45. So high turnout to me in next years election would mean that red and red-leaning voters support their leadership enough to come out and vote for them.
I think the result from last night that is more interesting is the result here in SC - 5. Ralph Norman ® won with 51% of the vote. For a district that was won by now-Budget Director Mick Mulvaney last fall with almost 60%, that’s a bit of a surprise. I don’t think even Archie Parnell’s polls showed it that close. And it happened with only a tiny fraction of the money spent here as was spent in GA - 6.
The difference, as I see it, was that Archie Parnell actually had a decent platform, and decent background in something politics-related. He focused upon taxes in his campaign, and really didn’t try to push the “I’m not Trump” button too often. In the end, the Republican Party was reduced to sending out mailings and putting up signs that said: “Vote Republican” (literally!). They had to get out the vote from the locals who cannot stand the thought of “those people” being in power.
To me, that shows where the Democratic Party can do its best work. Run a campaign that isn’t focused on being ‘not Republicans’. Bring a positive message to the campaign: “Here’s what we will do for you, the middle-income American voter.” And get rid of dinosaurs like Nancy Pelosi, who are anathema to so many, many middle-class American suburbanites and rural voters. Stop being the party of the cities and New England, and try again to be a party relevant to most of America.
That’s going to take a while to sink in. Probably at least until 2020, and maybe more like 2022. But it’s a much more certain bet than just pounding the message that “Republicans and Trump are Teh Evul”.
I’m not sure that’s “meaningful” interaction. If a liberal encounters 10 Trump voters at the grocery store but doesn’t talk to them, only makes eye contact, that doesn’t do a thing.
Many people - liberal or conservative - have Facebook social bubbles that are 80-90% people who think like them politically. And they spend hours in that bubble everyday. They can also read only news websites that reflect their views. You can live in deep-red Trumpland but still have a floating liberal social-media Internet bubble around you, or vice versa.
Bayesian thought makes it pretty clear you’re stupid to make a bet on this now. The conditions for the 2018 midterms aren’t set in the previous July.
If Trumps “succeeds” in raising a bunch of protectionist measures in 2017, unemployment will bloat upwards, the economy will tank, and the voters will want change, making a House flip likelier.
If Trump’s economic policies are thwarted by Congress, the economy might be okay in mid 2018, and then a flip is quite unlikely.
Wait and see, then bet like Bricker does; find a betting market where people are betting their desires.
Also, the wild card in the case of Trump is that he has set an extraordinarily low bar for himself. If he can improve his performance to the point where he’s acting even half-normal he will look positively statesmanlike by comparison. (And the way politics works is that once you’ve absorbed criticism over something, it generally doesn’t come back to bite you once it’s part of your history.)
Of course, by all indications Trump is not capable of changing anything. But you never know - again, it’s a pretty low bar.
Agreed. I think Democrats have always had a positive platform, but they neither brand it nor emphasize it in their campaigns. Except Obama, whose “Yes we can” campaign, coupled with wonky speeches on how he’d reform health care, succeeded.
And maybe they are. There’s more than one reason for betting, and there’s more than one reason for not betting. To you, betting is a way of communicating unambiguously what you believe actually will happen, but to another, betting might be a way of communicating unambiguously what they hope will happen. Betting on an outcome that really is unlikely, then, might not actually indicate delusion, as you suggest.
Similarly, not betting might not actually indicate a lack of confidence. I’m going to make many fewer bets than you will, if for no other reason than our relative wealth. Neither of us is unwise enough to bet money that we can’t afford to lose, but you can afford to lose a lot more than I can. I also suspect that we place different values on risk: You probably place a slightly positive value on it (hence, for instance, you would enjoy a moderate amount of gambling even in a casino, where you know that the odds are against you), while I place a negative value on it (hence, I would never play any casino game).
Velocity, certainly much of our modern interaction is in geography-blind contexts like the Internet. But there must be some geographic component as well, as a glance at any election map will show: Some places are much more biased towards one party or the other, even though they all have the same access to online interactions. And you might not have much political conversation with folks at the grocery store, but you probably will with your neighbors, and your co-workers, and with the other parents at your kids’ school, and the folks at your favored bar or other hangout, and so on. For people in urban areas (where most of the liberals are), that will mean more people of all political persuasions than for people in rural areas (where most of the conservatives are), just because it means more people total.
I honestly don’t understand the Dem strategy with regards to this special election.
They spent a crapload for one congressional seat.
If they won, it wouldn’t demoralize Repubs since the Dems outspent the Repubs by some large amount (between 3x and 7x as much–and I don’t care about the specific number) and the narrative will be that they bought the election.
Meanwhile, one win, even in a largely Repub district isn’t going to energize the Dem base all that much.
So why waste so much money on a single, hard-to-achieve House seat rather than spreading it around in actual competitive seats?
