I'm enjoying this a lot more than I thought.
The Trump Presidency | Biden Inaugurated
- Thread starter Raoul
- Start date
- Status
So has Donald
Or maybe they just respect women and unfortunately we can't say the same for The President of the United States.
With Trump winning the presidency, it seems that there is potential for improved relations between the world's two most powerful military nations. This is at least some consolation. I didn't want Trump to win, but I prefer his stance on Russia, Syria, Israel and a few other foreign policy matters. I think we might see a relatively peaceful four years in terms of global conflict.
Nah...I was just acting the cnut
Ah, yes the Caf respects women and they should. I do think they underestimate how sinister women themselves can be, that is what I wanted to insinuate.
I'm even optimistic.
Many thought Obama would be shot. But right now the President (no matter who he/she is) is pretty well protected. While not impossible to assassinate, it will be very difficult.
I get where you're coming from, and i agree somewhat. I'm thankful every day for being born in Norway, and wouldn't have it any other way.
But, i still feel I'm allowed to complain when we, as a society, are moving backwards in areas I care about. Just because people elsewhere have it worse, doesn't mean we can't say society could and should be better here.
Fair enough. So, we live and learn and stop thinking we know what's happening because of statistics?Sorry bud...
It's hard to say they're worthless as they'd been right about US politics consistently beforehand. But clearly, there was a variable somewhere along the line that completely defied expectations, in this case it seems to have been an enormous surge in rural/ex-urban white working class support for him. Nationally, the polls were off by about 3 points, which isn't unheard off, but state polls in places where non-college white voters were a majority (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) were off by more like 6 or 7 points.
That said, the signs that this was happening were there in places in like Ohio (at least in most polls) and Iowa, but they were kind of put in their own box rather than viewed as part of a broader trend. I suppose that suggests that our own political bias infects how we look at races like this, even when trying to view it objectively. Didn't want to believe it could happen, so didn't. Feck.
I've just finished a social science module of my degree. It was painfully filled with nonsense, so I can very much get on board with this argument.
The lesson for a long time has been to generally not become too confident about them, in social sciences and economics (which is really just another social science). I prefer stats and the continued efforts to have raw data than to assume its worthless and "fly blind". That said, I think Silver did a decent job here again, besides just the headline prediction.
I see it a lot in financial markets too, and I was actually a very poor statistics student in college. But I still remember most of the principles, and I think reading Taleb's book at the time also helped my thinking. But most people here had the same stats classes I had, but seem to have forgotten much of the meaning of it all, and are just glad to get a number and run with it, regardless of measures or intuitions about quality/accuracy.
From mobile, I can't. If you really are interested, its easy to find information. Uganda is a good country to start.
That's a lie we want to believe. They are also importing their own workers and most of the infrastructure build is too benefit their mining sites and cities.
Using polling and statistical models based on that data is not the only way of constructing theories predicting the outcome of elections.
I'm an Economist/Statistician, so no expert on PS, but there are e.g. something called the "8-year model*" that predicted a Trump-win. Then again, one can of course argue whether such a model deserves the label scientific.
*Which, if I understood it correctly, is it exactly what it sounds like.
Was in shock this morning when I checked my phone and saw he won. Really thought Clinton would win the election easily!
Donald Trump....most powerful man in the world!
From Barack Obama to Donald Trump
Time to read through 50 pages of the election thread
Donald Trump....most powerful man in the world!
From Barack Obama to Donald Trump
Time to read through 50 pages of the election thread
The bigger problem with the polls is bias (underestimating the effect of the white/Trump vote) rather than variability (margin of error). Silver's approach is only as good as the the pollsters' data he feeds into his model and he was rightly more cautious about Clinton's chances than other sites were. For one thing his model did not make the mistake of assuming statistical independence. His approach is very logical but it does need accurate data to give a reliable forecast.
Muchos gracias for a silver lining. I need to get off the ledge...
More or less. Flying blind for a while.
Absolutely. I am whiny sod myself. Without complaining and aiming high enough, progress can not be achieved. My problem is the reaction to this frustration, not that there is one. It is one thing to express the need for discussion and evaluation, it is another to dismiss everything that has been achieved in the West (tolerance, multi culturalism, rights to minorities, equality) because our lives went from a 9 to an 8. It is the epitome of bratty entitlement.
Very much this. With the polls at hand it would be very hard to come to the conclusion that the odds were in his favor. We saw the apparent value of the interdepence assumption play out in real-time last night.
Democrats are going to need to be as single minded as the GOP were after 08.
People have a right to their vote and how they wish to express it.
All I will say is I disagree with some of your reasoning.
The GOP don't have a candidate problem, they have a flawed social and economic platform. . Lucky for them Trump showed with his cluelessness and could not be fully shackled to their backwardness.
With the media realising this guy is clueless the idea of discussing policies became a taboo. No democrat could have won in this circus they created for ratings.
Last edited:
Statistics is the attempt to quantify uncertainty. It doesn't make uncertain results clear. End of the day, it all comes down to the flip of a coin which is biased towards one direction, but can go either way.
Now we can get all technical and debate whether the models were representative of reality, the bayesian priors were accurate, and the polling data was corrected for skewness. That's fair, and I think there is room for improvement amongst the polling community and data scientists trying to make sense of all this. But when people start trashing polls because they gave Clinton a 90% chance of winning, then one asks whether people actually understand how probability works. Judging by my own biased sample of people I know who loathed their Statistics 101 class, odds are that your average person does not.
Really? What about all the terrorist who are probably already pissed off by what he has said about Muslims ? These are good Muslim people who won't condone terrorism but these terrorists will just use that as fuel to the fire and twist it to suit their agenda.
Bar likes of Sanders, Warren and a select few, rest will fold.
The only reason that happened was because of George W. Bush. He fecked up the country so badly that the public would have elected anyone at that time. Trump ran his campaign on 2 race base agendas, he did not discuss any plans on how he would run the country, he just kept mentioning how he would make America "great" again.
This is a good point I think. He is a lunatic, but the fear of world destruction is a bit farfetched. Trump didn't strike me as a warmonger during his campaign, quite the opposite actually.
A more restrained US, a US that cares less about what other countries are up to, might make them easier to like on the international stage.
The only sensible thing he said in the last debate was on Russia, holding the opinion that he won't come into the Presidency with some grudge against them.
Lots of reading this morning kids...History does repeat itself.
Trump won - it's not the end of the world and we'll survive, why? Because this has happened before.
This was written in March -
Donald Trump and Reconstruction-Era Politics
Editorial Observer
By BRENT STAPLES MARCH 3, 2016
Donald Trump’s flirtation with the Ku Klux Klan should come as no surprise. He has functioned for years as a rallying point for “birthers,” conspiracy theorists, extremists and racists who are apoplectic about the fact that the country elected a black man president. These groups have driven the Republican Party steadily rightward, helping to create a national discourse that now permits a presidential candidate to court racist support without paying a political price.
Every era of racial progress engenders a racist backlash. The one that is still unfolding in the wake of Barack Obama’s presidency bears a striking resemblance in tone to the reaction that swept the South after Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War when former slaves were granted constitutional rights and black Americans served in interracial governments that came to power in the former Confederacy.
The sight of former slaves eagerly lining up to vote and electing their fellow citizens to public offices was anathema to Southerners who had justified slavery, and believed that Negroes were not fit to govern because they were not actually persons. And early historians of this period embraced the Southern view that Reconstruction governments were corrupt and incompetently run.
But as the historian Eric Foner has written, Reconstruction was doomed by two developments: Washington’s decision to no longer enforce the rights of African-Americans in the South, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and related white supremacist groups that brought to bear “a campaign of murder, assault and arson that can only be described as homegrown American terrorism.”
The Southern states subsequently wrote black citizens out of their constitutions and erected a system of civic apartheid, enforced by mob rule. The Southern fixation on denying African-Americans the right to vote was a direct response to the rise of black political power during Reconstruction. A similar backlash erupted during the modern civil rights movement.
Reconstruction-era talk re-emerged after Mr. Obama was elected in 2008. Tea Party supporters and others responded to the extraordinary turnout among black voters by contending that the election had been “stolen.” Since then, most of the states that had the highest levels of black turnout have passed laws making it more difficult to vote. A 2013 study from The University of Massachusetts Boston concluded that these laws were debated and enacted in a “highly partisan, strategic and racialized” process.
Anti government and militia groups have grown rapidly since 2008. Shortly after Mr. Obama’s election, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups, reported that the anti government militia movement had undergone a resurgence, fueled partly “by fears of a black man in the White House.” And for proof of violence like that of the Reconstruction era, look no further than the young white supremacist who is charged with murdering nine African-Americans at a church in Charleston, S.C., last summer.
This is the backdrop against which Donald Trump blew a kiss to the white supremacist movement during a television interview by refusing to disavow the support of the white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Republican Party leaders in Congress wagged their fingers and delivered pro forma denunciations. What they need to understand is this: Racial hatred is a threat to the country and their party’s leading candidate is doing everything he can to profit from it.
Now that you've read all that...here is what the map looked like from last night
*Please note, this was NOT the reason Hillary lost last night (voting numbers were down across the board)
She won Virginia with the restrictions and lost Florida which didn't have restrictions
Trump won - it's not the end of the world and we'll survive, why? Because this has happened before.
This was written in March -
Donald Trump and Reconstruction-Era Politics
Editorial Observer
By BRENT STAPLES MARCH 3, 2016
Donald Trump’s flirtation with the Ku Klux Klan should come as no surprise. He has functioned for years as a rallying point for “birthers,” conspiracy theorists, extremists and racists who are apoplectic about the fact that the country elected a black man president. These groups have driven the Republican Party steadily rightward, helping to create a national discourse that now permits a presidential candidate to court racist support without paying a political price.
Every era of racial progress engenders a racist backlash. The one that is still unfolding in the wake of Barack Obama’s presidency bears a striking resemblance in tone to the reaction that swept the South after Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War when former slaves were granted constitutional rights and black Americans served in interracial governments that came to power in the former Confederacy.
The sight of former slaves eagerly lining up to vote and electing their fellow citizens to public offices was anathema to Southerners who had justified slavery, and believed that Negroes were not fit to govern because they were not actually persons. And early historians of this period embraced the Southern view that Reconstruction governments were corrupt and incompetently run.
But as the historian Eric Foner has written, Reconstruction was doomed by two developments: Washington’s decision to no longer enforce the rights of African-Americans in the South, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and related white supremacist groups that brought to bear “a campaign of murder, assault and arson that can only be described as homegrown American terrorism.”
The Southern states subsequently wrote black citizens out of their constitutions and erected a system of civic apartheid, enforced by mob rule. The Southern fixation on denying African-Americans the right to vote was a direct response to the rise of black political power during Reconstruction. A similar backlash erupted during the modern civil rights movement.
Reconstruction-era talk re-emerged after Mr. Obama was elected in 2008. Tea Party supporters and others responded to the extraordinary turnout among black voters by contending that the election had been “stolen.” Since then, most of the states that had the highest levels of black turnout have passed laws making it more difficult to vote. A 2013 study from The University of Massachusetts Boston concluded that these laws were debated and enacted in a “highly partisan, strategic and racialized” process.
Anti government and militia groups have grown rapidly since 2008. Shortly after Mr. Obama’s election, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups, reported that the anti government militia movement had undergone a resurgence, fueled partly “by fears of a black man in the White House.” And for proof of violence like that of the Reconstruction era, look no further than the young white supremacist who is charged with murdering nine African-Americans at a church in Charleston, S.C., last summer.
This is the backdrop against which Donald Trump blew a kiss to the white supremacist movement during a television interview by refusing to disavow the support of the white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Republican Party leaders in Congress wagged their fingers and delivered pro forma denunciations. What they need to understand is this: Racial hatred is a threat to the country and their party’s leading candidate is doing everything he can to profit from it.
Now that you've read all that...here is what the map looked like from last night
*Please note, this was NOT the reason Hillary lost last night (voting numbers were down across the board)
She won Virginia with the restrictions and lost Florida which didn't have restrictions
Garbage in, garbage out. Your prediction is only as good as your data.
Hopefully going forward this phenomenon will be better understood and mitigated.
The main problem is Isil. Trump's plan is to cooperate with Russia and Assad. That means a three-pronged front against Isil. This feels like a return to the Reagan doctrine of installing useful dictators. By no means perfect or even good, but less scope for mass terrorist activities like we've seen since so many of those regimes have fallen.
I agree with Raoul that not much will change for the average American. It never does because the president does not have a great effect on daily lives. Climate change and the environment are my big concerns. California will be buffered by the fact that states have a lot of control over local conditions and it is a large state with a democrat assembly, senate and governor. The rest of the world may experience more change as a result of foreign policy, trade deals, reduced immigration, global warming, and so on.
Russia is playing Trump. America will force itself into an unexpected war when Russia begin to annex other small nations around them and they will have to choose side.
in other news Alex Jones has been live on air for last 52 hours
So looks like Clinton has won the popular vote. Surprising given the huge disparity that will likely end up in the electoral tally.
It's quite interesting though that if you really boil it down, Clinton has lost due to not being able to keep the blue collars that Obama courted.
I think what it really shows is tactically the Clinton team got it wrong.
It's quite interesting though that if you really boil it down, Clinton has lost due to not being able to keep the blue collars that Obama courted.
I think what it really shows is tactically the Clinton team got it wrong.
I think it's unlikely.
I don't agree. I think they're going to piss them off even more in their efforts to end it. Hopefully they are successful but it's going to be a long process and there will be a lot of collateral damage during that process and it won't be just America that suffers.
Isn't that assuming most Johnson voters would prefer Hillary over Trump? I doubt that's the case. They might also not have voted at all if there wasn't a third party option.
- Status