No kidding, buddy:
Dean Chambers, the man who garnered praise from the right and notoriety on the left for his “Unskewed Polling” site, admitted today that his method was flawed.
“Nate Silver was right, and I was wrong,” Chambers said in a phone interview.
Chambers’ method of “unskewing” polls involved re-weighting the sample to match what he believed the electorate would look like, in terms of party identification. He thought the electorate would lean more Republican when mainstream pollsters routinely found samples that leaned Democratic.
But as it turned out, the pollsters were right — self-identified Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 6% in election exit polls.
The bigger question is why on earth he ever thought just changing numbers in a poll until you liked the outcome was going to actually reflect the reality on the ground. That’s the power of the bubble working. When every source you hear, whether it be Clown Hall or Faux News or the National Review or whatever else ells you over and over and over that the media is biased or that statistics have a left-wing bias, chumps like Chambers start to really believe it. And then they do predictably laughable stuff like this- just rejiggering polls until the numbers put you in your happy place.
What’s even more astounding than some lone nitwit doing this is all the people who linked to it, repeated this nonsense until significant portions of the right wing believed it. That’s what is really astounding. You can find people doing really stupid things every where you go in the world. You don’t expect their stupidity to be elevated. And there was just no one, no one at all in the GOP feedback loop who stood up and said “Good lord, you people are morons.”
Baud
There is no analog to Balloon Juice in Wingnuttia.
Surreal American
“Are my methods unsound?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdNsltQXTVU
Alexandra
Wingnut tears are delicious.
Fuck ALL the chickens! (né Studly Pantload, t.e.u.u.)
Nate haz a comment.
Scott de B.
Getting in early in the thread to say that the next big priority has to be to get the Senate to support filibuster reform. This is our one chance for the Senate to pass new rules with a simple majority, we have the rush of victory and a new, more liberal Senate coalition.
Please, for the next two months can we mobilize a letter-writing and phone campaign like we did on health care reform? There really isn’t anything that would be sweeter than getting the filibuster removed.
MattF
Well, he got attention and respect from his fellow inmates– I wouldn’t understate the importance of that, especially (clears throat), here in the comment section of this blog. That said, he’s actually admitting that Silver was right.
Rommie
The Bubble is all convinced America is D0med and the future is Greece x eleventy and everything will crash. Just another reason to feel good about how things are actually going to go.
Egypt Steve
This will change little or nothing. These guys are like snake-handling preacher-men who predict the Second Coming. The rubes never learn. When Jesus doesn’t appear, they just pray and pay some more.
Zifnab25
It’s all a big con-game. Republicans insist they’re *really* winning, to maintain the air of legitimacy regardless of what the polls report. Purple state governors and unscrupulous campaigners try to block “those people” from voting, to tilt the game in the GOP’s favor. Then, when voting gets down to the wire, partisan judges shut down recounts, and the pundits start chanting “Sore/Loserman” if anyone questions the funky numbers coming out of Palm Beach or Miami-Dade counties.
You aren’t allowed to question Republican supremacy. Especially when they’re losing.
WindyCityCat
That’s because anyone who disagrees with the bubble gets exiled from the bubble. Speaking of which, reading NRO today has been the pinnacle of hilarity. Doomsday predictions abound.
srv
And unfortunately for them, this is not covered under pre-existing conditions in the ACA.
SatanicPanic
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothing can beat teamwork.-Edward Abbey
beltane
Magical thinking is powerful and addictive. Perhaps the GOP would be well served by admitting some concern trolls to their ranks.
I do give this guy some credit for admitting that Nate Silver was right and he was wrong. This speaks to a humility that is completely lacking in the rest of the equally wrong punditry.
dmsilev
@WindyCityCat: I’ve been reading RedState. Equally hilarious. They’re pretty sure that it wasn’t Conservatism’s fault that they lost. Somebody, anybody, else is to blame.
one two seven
I sit on the executive floor where I work and in addition to the expected griping over the election, here are some of the gems I heard:
– “the real losers of this election are people making between $250k-$5million; they are the new oppressed class”
– “we should go back to a system where only white landowners vote” (said by an Indian guy!)
– “i thought obama was going to be a nightmare i was going to wake up from this morning”
I guess I never realized what a bubble they were in until I saw it up close.
Roger Moore
I call shenanigans. No way would a real wingnut admit that his method was flawed; a real wingnut would find some way of blaming the liebrul conspiracy. I think this guy has a dangerously high level of intellectual integrity and may be in danger of having independent thought. If he doesn’t look out, he’ll be a gay marrying Democrat before he knows it.
scav
For their next trick, they’ll cure winter by smashing thermometers.
David Koch
I love the smell of circular firing squads in the morning.
That smell! The gun powder mixed with blood smell!
Smells like VICTORY!
Repugs in Disarray – HA!
brendanyc
His thinking is absolutely consistent with the right’s rejection of any science they don’t like–climate science or biology,or environmental science, or statistical probability. Doesn’t matter which or what, if it doesn’t sound like what they want to hear, they chuck it out, or employ consultants like this idiot to tell them what they want to know and dress it in some thin semblance of ‘methodology’ and then they go tell their friends.
some of these ‘researchers’ get big bucks from various Koch or similar sources, some just do it because they are true kool aid drinkers.
but all very consistent with this case.
Comrade Dread
Because that’s a desired feature, not a bug.
NotMax
As it turns out, voting is the best revenge.
Villago Delenda Est
This is inevitable. The “conservative” philosophy is moronic in every way I can think of naming. It ignores history, it ignores logic, it ignores science, it ignores the numbers, all because the “belief” in it is more important that whether or not it actually functions. It’s as if people operated in the basis of the magic of Hogwarts being real, not fantasy, or The Force being real, not fantasy.
These people have mistaken fantasy for reality for so long that when cold hard fact slaps them in the face, they ignore it and go back to their fucking fantasy.
They have no business at all being involved in the political discourse. They can’t handle the truth.
Litlebritdifrnt
I loved Sully’s comment on Colbert last night “there is a black man in power with nothing to lose” that must scare the wingnuts fucking stupid.
Hill Dweller
Fordham released their pollster accuracy rankings this morning. “Liberal” PPP was the most accurate. Gallup and Rasmussen were in the bottom five(28 total pollsters ranked).
Liberty60
Chambers just sounded like those instant experts that pop up in threads on global warming or 9-11.
Ordinary folks just suddenly become experts in climatology, metalurgy, geology, pyrotechnics, whatever.
They are jailhouse lawyers who decide that this field is easy-peasy, and adopt just enough terminoloy and jargon to sound halfway convincing.
In Chamber’s case, he just assumed that voter turnout would match 2010, multiply times percentage, and whammo, Romney wins.
Our only hope is that someday these folks all decide to engineer, build, and fly their own airplanes, and Darwin will take care of the rest.
Violet
I might have to watch Fox News tonight, just for the entertainment value. Last night was great fun.
rob!
I think these kinds of posts need to stop–i.e., those that point out how delusional the wingnuts have become.
The reality on the ground kicked them in the nuts last night, and with the ever-brownening and ever-gayening of America, that’s going to keep happening.
So let’s stop telling the wingnuts they are in the bubble. Let them stay there, where they can keep “unskewing” their polls, and eventually they’ll just spin themselves into total irrelevance.
Arclite
We’ll never reach peak wingnut. In 20 years with FL drowning and the breadbasket a desert, they’ll still be denying global warming.
Joshua Norton
“Nate Silver was right, and I was wrong,”
Mainly because Nate handled it forensically and let the numbers speak for themselves. The right-wing yahoos continually skewed the polls to achieve the results they only wished would happen.
BIG difference.
Anoniminous
Suck it, morons.
cathyx
So the conclusion could be that maybe there isn’t a left wing bias after all. No that can’t be correct.
Svensker
But I think the Repub elite also believed it. I bet it’s one of the reasons Romney wouldn’t concede last night — he’d seen those unskewed poll and, dammit, he was supposed to win!
They’ve got so far in the bubble now they actually believe the bullshit. The elites used to kind of know a bit about reality, even if they did their darnedest to avoid it. Now, not so much. Which is pretty fucking scary, actually.
Calming Influence
If I ever meet Nate Silver in person, I swear to God I’m going to kiss him right on the lips. Last night I went from “He Who Won’t Ever STFU About Politics” to “Political Guru Whose Thoughts Should Be Chiseled In Stone”. My secret weapon? Nate’s little State-by-State Probabilities map on my phone, and the certain knowledge that Nate Silver is the God of Statistics. For weeks I’ve been surrounded by nail biters absolutely freaking about the popular vote, and I’ve been walking around like the Buddha with a relaxed smile on my face. And last night was soooo sweet!
The Madding Crowd: “OMG Obama’s gonna lose Iowa!!!”
Calming Influence: “Ahhh, No. He’s not.” [with Slight Buddha Smile® affixed to visage].
The Madding Crowd:: “Wow! Obama might win North Carolina!!”
Calming Influence: “Unfortunately he won’t, but he will take Virginia and Ohio. Oh yeah, and Nevada and Colorado too.”
The Madding Crowd:: “WHAT?!? Nevada AND Colorado? NO WAY!!!’
Calming Influence: “Oh, yes way, young weedhoppers…And hey, could somebody grab me another beer? I think Romney’s about to concede…” [Mad scramble to service me ensues]
different-church-lady
@SatanicPanic: http://despair.com/meetings.html
General Stuck
I think this magical thinking was a wingnut version of “Build it and they will Come” for this election. Or creating an aura of victory to get the unenthused gooper to work for GOTV and to just vote.
It is true there have been some shifting of party ID the past 6 years, to and fro, so no one, not even Nate really knew what the election day ID would break as. Rasmussen had it at +3 dems, but that was off, due to a larger Hispanic vote, some likely GOP registered, and an even higher black voter turnout. I think what I suspected as well, that the evangelical vote was less than stellar this time, as well.
Patricia Kayden
“The bigger question is why on earth he ever thought just changing numbers in a poll until you liked the outcome was going to actually reflect the reality on the ground.”
Something is not mentally balanced when it comes to Rethugs. “Delusional” doesn’t even begin to describe their thinking. They are bizarre and until they come to their senses they should never win another Presidential election.
one two seven
The thing I love about all the Nate Silver hate that was spewed this year was that they ignored the fact that in 2010 he saw the GOP onslaught and was very close to the mark in predicting the outcome in a Republican wave year.
Apparently back then he was skewing his model just right.
28 Percent
OT, cruising Free Republic just now (on one of the saddest threads I’ve ever imagined), found this gem in a comment:
I’m Going Galt. Any of his books that aren’t in the library I don’t read from now on.
Where the heck is the self-awareness?
Big R
@Rommie: America is domed? I mean, I agree that the designated hitter is the great travesty, but no rain delays seems good.
Big R
@Rommie: America is domed? I mean, I agree that the designated hitter is the great travesty, but no rain delays seems good.
Also, FYWP.
NonyNony
John you’re missing what actually happened with Chambers and the rest of the Wingnut Echo Chamber.
Look at what he’s saying: “He thought the electorate would lean more Republican when mainstream pollsters routinely found samples that leaned Democratic.”
Scott Rassmussen said the same thing – that his polls were wrong because his likely voter model thought that Democratic turnout would be far, far less than it was in 2008. Across all demographics. But that wasn’t the case – turnout was about the same in 2008.
These guys honestly and truly believed that people turned out to vote for Barack Obama because of the novelty of having a black President. And they honestly believed that his voters were so disappointed in his performance that they were going to just stay home on election day and not turn out to vote for him again.
That’s the root cause of their error – the inability to see the voters that Obama’s campaign brought into the mix as “real” voters whose votes count just as much as the “traditional” (older white male angry) voters that Republican tactics require to be the dominant voice in electoral politics.
Anoniminous
Trickle down the list of Conservative policies and you’ll discover a festering pile of big, fat, FAIL!
Example 1: the “Debt Problem” (sic) is a direct result of Conservative FantasyLand where lowering the amount of money the Federal Government takes in through taxation will – by some miracle never fully explained – result with the Federal Government taking in more in taxes.
Example 2: removing restrictions on the Financial Industry to “promote economic growth” resulted in a global financial collapse we’re still trying to solve.
and so, boringly, on.
Culture of Truth
Frank Burns: “Margaret, I was wrong!”
Trapper: “You’re always wrong, Frank. That’s what’s so right about you.”
scav
@28 Percent: only takers and moochers use libraries. Apart from that observation, I’m clueless as to the intended logical meaning of that sentence (sad face ping coming through loud and clear).
Mike G
Inventing magical stories to flatter their fucked-up view of the world is about all there is left of Repuke philosophy.
Geoduck
@Scott de B.:
Even forcing the GOPers to come and actually physically filibuster would be an improvement.
MikeJ
The people who most need to learn basic counting skills want to defund Sesame Street.
Also, I’m sure most of you read xkcd anyway, but if you haven’t you should.
AnotherBruce
I turned on Fox at the moment that they had declared Obama to be the winner. And there was Karl Rove spinning the Ohio vote, naming this county and that county that would swing Ohio for Romney, of course he never mentioned Cuyahoga county. A friend of mine began to believe him a bit when the numbers went Romney’s way. She kept asking me why he would argue against Fox News, what was the upside?
I know why he did. He began to believe his own propoganda. That’s the danger of continually making stuff up, eventually one begins to believe one’s own bullshit.
GregB
Chambers vows to commit to a more scientific method next election wherein he’ll throw shit from a bucket at a giant electoral map on the wall.
cathyx
Another theory about the skewed polls is that if the races continued to lean republican, then the republican money would continue to flow.
LanceThruster
Dean-o still has more integrity and humility than Political Observer and the other troll reincarnations/posse.
Roger Moore
@Joshua Norton:
In fairness, it’s understandable how somebody who doesn’t really understand this stuff could believe there was a real problem with the polls- or anything else that’s been worked on as hard as polling has been. This stuff is a lot harder than it looks, and you can bet that a serious, careful, non-ideological person made the same mistake in the past. It’s just that they published their results, admitted the mistake, learned from it, and incorporated those lessons into the rules of how to do better in the future. If you haven’t absorbed that history, it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you’ve discovered a methodological mistake nobody else recognizes and you’re doing a better job, when you’re really making a counter-intuitive methodological mistake that everyone else has learned not to make based on hard-won experience.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Ha! Awesome! Haven’t watched it yet–it’s sitting there on the DVR. Can’t wait to savor it.
Triassic Sands
I’m weak…I just had to see what Erick Son of Erick Erickson had to say about the election. I was not disappointed.
Modern Republicans live in a fantasyland of myth (Reagan), wishful thinking (economics), and denial (virtually everything about Obama, climate change, virtually all of science, etc.). They are, in general, totally innumerate and Erick SoE Erickson uses his comments today to re-enforce just how fantasy-bound he and his fellow lunatics have become.
Remember, Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States.
To summarize, ten American presidents have been denied re-election. Obama is the 44th president. Ergo: defeating an incumbent president is nearly impossible.
Now, that’s some pretty impressive thinking.
It turns out that defeating an incumbent president is practically impossible, just like flipping a nickel four times and having heads come up only once is nearly impossible. Try it — it’ll never happen. Or to quote that famous American mathematician, Erick Erickson “…that’s just the reality.”
Note to Erick: something that is impossible can’t happen. Something can be “more or less impossible” (which in common usage means close to impossible), but nothing can be more impossible, since impossible means zero chance of happening and you can’t have less chance of happening than zero.
The Ancient Randonneur
Here is some fun with Karl Roves second on camera freak out.
priscianusjr
Give the guy credit. He admitted he was wrong. Well, it’s now obvious he was wrong, but at least he accepted it and explained his mistake. That’s a lot more than most Republics are going to do.
SatanicPanic
@different-church-lady: Even more succinct. I like that one
The Moar You Know
Only one question about this guy: how much money did he make off the site?
Bet he’s laughing his ass off about the sucker Republicans. Privately, of course.
tkogrumpy
Bottom line though, he admitted he was wrong and Silver was right, without weasel words.Credit, where credit…………
General Stuck
@NonyNony:
I think this is largely true. But the degree of self delusion over Obama and his relationship with the electorate went way past that. They convinced themselves or blocked out 4 years of polling that Obama’s base, or those that voted for him in 08 had largely abandoned him for all sorts of reasons. When they had not, and remained approving through thick and thin, of both his policy successes and personal favorabilities. That was partly a function of minority of whites getting it. And able to judge both Obama and his competence, as well as the depraved state the GOP has become – EVEN THOUGH THEY MAY NOT AGREE WITH HIM ALL THE TIME. That just does not compute for them. Nor the absolutely justified contempt and fear of minorities of today ‘s GOP getting into power.
Villago Delenda Est
@Geoduck:
I think the filibuster should stay in place, but ONLY if those demanding a filibuster are willing to read the phone book on CSPAN for hours on end, the way it was intended, not this “free filibuster” crap that’s been going on for the last four years. If these assholes want to obstruct legislation, force them out in the open to display their obstruction for everyone to see. Don’t give them a free pass.
Same on these fucking “secret holds”. If you want to hold something up, own it. Don’t hide under your receptionist’s skirt.
Stop enabling cowardice. Make these fucking assholes OWN their assholishness where everyone can see it.
Daulnay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Sully was great on Colbert last night. Even though he’s a tempestuous queen and a self-described conservative, please remove him from the mockery list! (After all, what put him on there was his tempestuous over-reaction to the first debate, which when viewed with bemused affection is a feature – oh, the drama! – rather than a bug)
Sm*t Cl*de
This will change little or nothing. These guys are like snake-handling preacher-men who predict the Second Coming. The rubes never learn. When Jesus doesn’t appear, they just pray and pay some more.
They may have missed Commet Hale-Bopp but there’s always the next one.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Moar You Know:
That’s the thing. The rubes of the GOP base are, it seems, and endless fount of grift.
Tokyokie
@scav: Now if they’d just suck out all the mercury as well……
tkogrumpy
@Scott de B.: I’ll sign on to that effort.
j
Nice people, these wingnuts:
17 People Talking About Assassinating The President
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/17-people-talking-about-assassinating-the-presiden
Aaaannnnd, THIS:
More than 400 students protest election
http://www.wmctv.com/story/20025451/riots-brew-on-ole-miss-campus
Anti-Obama riots at Ole Cracker U.
If they can’t lie, cheat or steal elections they will kill the winner.
The Secret Service is going to be very busy in the near future with Trump and the NRO calling for armed riots.
(both links from attaturk)
RaflW
I loved reading Carl Hulce’s NYT story on the coming GOP fight/battle of recriminations. The best was what I presume to be a typo, perhaps fixed in later editions (or not?)
Emphasis added.
Yes. Please do campaign on economic opportunism. We know how it looks, and it looks like Bain.
Soonergrunt
The Associated Press has just called AZ-1 Congressional District for Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick.
joes525
@Alexandra: Wow. Seems to have some anger issues.
Violet
@28 Percent: Good lord, that’s awful. Another comment:
There’s your family values right there. Do as I say or screw you.
RSR
Actually, I’m surprised that the party ID numbers are so consistent with 2008. I thought it possible that Dems might drop a few points and Ind. go up a couple. But I certainly did not expect a tide of folks flipping to the R side, or even voting that way.
The fact that these loons think the other 2/3rds of the country hates the president as much as they do is just as remarkable to me as ginning up your own statistics.
Aet
Let’s not trivialize this.
Getting a Republican to admit they were wrong is like a unicorn. He may be a chump, but at least he realizes he was wrong.
arguingwithsignposts
DId he apologize for insulting Nate’s looks? Then STFU, chambers, you douchebag.
LongHairedWeirdo
John, I’ll give him this much: he admitted Nate Silver was right, and that he was wrong. So, now I’ll defend him ever so slightly.
If he matched Republican identification to a historical average (2010 or 2008), then he was a fool, but he was at least making a good guess and if he were a student, I’d praise him for having the guts to take a shot at being wrong, to see where it led him. (But then I’d batter him with a rolled up test paper and ask him why he thought pollster’s listing of self-report would be biased when it hasn’t been in the past.)
Now – if he just flat out moved Republican Party ID as many percentage points as he needed to show a Romney win, he’s a damnfool and admitting he was merely “wrong” isn’t enough.
arguingwithsignposts
@Daulnay: As, fuck sullivan. He deserves his spot on the mock list. He earned it and he’ll earn it again before the year is out.
The Moar You Know
@28 Percent: Dear God. The heartening thing is that, even at that cesspool, at least half the posters are telling him to not cut off his fucking handicapped relative as that’s not the right thing to do.
The other half should not be permitted to live.
Jay in Oregon
I just hope that the coming GOP loyalty purge is pursued with the same zeal that they employ against enemies from outside.
GxB
@Scott de B.:
And barring that, if they threaten to FB, hold them to it and make them read the frickin DC whitepages or whatever. Don’t just give them a pass on the threat.
pseudonymous in nc
More humility and honesty from Mr Unskewer than you’ll hear from the wingnut welfare pundits like Barone or establishment dickbags like George effing Will.
piratedan
well NOW that he has been re-elected through our nefarious means of voting for him in an election it’s time for the President to start rolling out the edicts….
Gun Control… round ’em up and turn them in, The New Black Panther Party seems up to the task of handling this national concern, because black people don’t kill white people, guns do…
Birth Control for everybody, nothing spells pursuit of happiness than people gettin’ jiggy with it….
Unemployment…. seems like there is a whole demographic not being served here… we have all of these welfare queens driving these cadillacs, we have unemployed ignorant southern whites… bingo bango bongo… we now have a new federal employee class of government chauffeurs where Jeebus and Cletus can be gainfully employed driving Miss Daisy to the bank to cash those welfare checks where they can buy those young bucks those T-Bones that they deserve….
If you’re still looking for work, hey we have some UN helicopters that need painted and those FEMA camps aren’t gonna build themselves….
piratedan
@Soonergrunt: that’s huge, there were supposedly 80K worth of provisional ballots that weren’t counted as of last night… have to wait and see on the Barber/McBride race
General Stuck
And so it goes.
The night they drove ole Dixie down.
GxB
@WindyCityCat: First rule of the bubble is to not speak of the bubble. Fully agreed, this is all about image as the substance has no hope vs reality.
Howlin Wolfe
Hey! It takes a lot of cash and people power to keep that bubble inflated! It creates jobs! Like a major sports stadium, the govmint should pay for it and give it the the
wingnut moochersGaltian supermen. That’s an entitlement we can all get behind!300baud
@28 Percent:
Wow. That is indeed one of the saddest threads ever. Especially the woman who cut off her in-college daughter because the daughter voted for Obama. Or the person who has decided not to donate to Hurricane Sandy relief because New Yorkers voted for Obama.
The thing that really blows me away is the extent to which people there believe that support means control. That if you’re helping somebody, they’re obligated to vote your way.
Sad, sad, sad.
Jay in Oregon
@j:
Clearly, Obama needs to reach across the aisle in the spirit of bipartisanship to avoid alienating the feelings of these sensitive souls.
Robin G.
@28 Percent: Just looked through that thread. My God, what hateful people. How do they sleep at night?
Jay in Oregon
@300baud:
I read somewhere Ayn Rand isn’t against the idea of charity, only that people shouldn’t be compelled to be charitable; that it should be their choice.
Given her disdain for the concept of altruism, however, one can deduce that what Rand meant was, people should only be charitable when they’re getting something out of it.
SatanicPanic
@28 Percent: DAMMMMMN that thread was a bummer. I had to give up about halfway. At least a few people pointed out how petty the whole thing was. Plus- $30? dude, give til it hurts!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@NonyNony:
This.
psycholinguist
First, you start a blog and buy in to the stupid but comfortable partyline.
then you stand up every now and then and say “Good lord, you people are morons.”
Then you get voted off the island.
then you become a grumpy democrat.
then you become an obomabot.
then you fuckin win.
Villago Delenda Est
@Robin G.:
Pretty much the same way the guards at Auschwitz slept.
Like babies.
jenn
@Villago Delenda Est: I agree – I think the secret holds are even worse than the abuse of the filibuster. I don’t want to get rid of the filibuster – it saved our bacon on several occasions during Bush 2 – but it sure does have to be reformed such that the onus is on the party filibustering! Its more than just ‘reading the phone book’ – the need for the majority to maintain a quorum while the minority cycles through a few hours each of phone book time means that while better than what we’ve got now, it would still make the effort-to-obstruction ratio too low.
Comrade Mary
More brilliance from TNC. Yeah, I teared up a little.
And this comment wins the internets:
aimai
Holy shit I just clicked on 28 percent’s link to that thread. Saddest isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe it. It begins with someone who seems not to grasp that his mentally handicapped Uncle is being entirely supported by the taxpayers and that the “30 dollars a month” he sends the poor guy is nothing compared to what the taxpayers are paying in assistance, by which I take it he means ssi, to pick up the pieces for his lousy family and their inability to support their own members. He’s pissed off because he believes his Uncle voted for Obama in order to get “free stuff” as in the very “assistance” that he, his uncle, and his grandmother and the Uncle’s siblings depend on to prevent the entire family from assuming the burden of his Uncle’s care.
aimai
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
John – I resent your criticism of Mr. Chambers’ methodology and the idea that republicans live in some kind of bubble and need to change. I strongly believe republicans are doing a fine job and should continue doing exactly what they are doing for the indefinite future.
Comrade Mary
@Calming Influence: I intend to make a small image of you to place upon my altar. Pray tell, which is the most favourable aspect of your visage?
Tone In DC
@scav:
LULz.
johnny aquitard
Christ. They just make up shit until it comports with the template of ‘reality’ in their heads.
People have said it here a bunch of times, modern conservatism is a form of mental illness. Or a cult. Surely there’s some kind of collective mental thing going on here.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s as if people operated in the basis of the magic of Hogwarts being real, not fantasy, or The Force being real, not fantasy.
It’s “Wingardium So-LYN-dra,” not “Wingardium So-lyn-DRAAAAA!”
Chris
So true. All the wingnuts I knew were saying Romney would win and they usually said “I just have a feeling,” some of them even adding “yeah, the polls don’t agree, but fuck the polls, because bite me, that’s why.”
I just can’t wrap my head around it. I know, intellectually, what’s wrong with their worldview and that this is what happens when you spend thirty years living in an echo chamber with a 100% faith-based worldview in which things you don’t like don’t exist, but there’s still something in me that doesn’t understand how people can get that completely fucked in the head.
Comrade Mary
And THIS makes me so motherfucking happy. She was on As It Happens recently and sounded like an absolute sweetheart.
Just Some Fuckhead
Shut up John. Inside the bubble, Romney won. It’s safe in here, everything I like happens and we all agree on everything.
Chris
@WindyCityCat:
I think it’s remarkable that Bruce Bartlet back in 2005 got exiled from the bubble for daring to say that Bush wasn’t a true conservative. Three years later, they were all saying the same thing. But they never let him back into the bubble. Because even though he was right (from their POV), he committed the sin of being right three years to early, before The Movement said it was okay.
Egypt Steve
@Big R: fywp? I just googled it and come up with “fuck you wingnut pitcher,” which I don’t understand, and “first year writing program.” I’d like to think it means “fuck you with a powertool.” It’s the romantic in me.
elftx
O sure he admitted he was wrong, but someone else (Rasmussen) was WRONGER !
Chris
@brendanyc:
Exactly.
Has this ever happened before? I mean, I think all parties grow complacent and out of touch to some extent when they’ve been dominant for long enough, but this is a whole other level of “it doesn’t matter if I’m wrong.”
GxB
@Villago Delenda Est: Whoops, serves me right for posting in a thread with 60+ responses blind, but I basically say the same thing 20 posts later – so to put this blather shorter allow me to remove my monocle and pipe from mouth to say “Hear, hear, old boy”
@Egypt Steve: Oh dear – you are really new here. “Fuck You Word Press” – get a macro of it and assign it a hotkey, you’ll use it a lot round these parts.
j
@priscianusjr:
It’s a hell of a lot more than Scott Rasmussen is doing, trying to weasel word his way out of being spectacularly wrong all the time.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/11/rasmussen
GxB
@Egypt Steve: I’ll add, none of those responses are all that far off – actually fair alternates when you get down to it.
Chris
@Violet:
Wow.
Just wow.
JGabriel
__
__
This was the funniest quote in the Business Insider article:
AHAHAHA!
.
YoohooCthulhu
@Roger Moore:
I think that also sums up the ideas of the tea party in a nutshell. Conservatives recently are not so much reality free as entirely naiive–they’re freaked out by things that are utterly banal and status quo in politics (debt ceiling raises, the national debt, FIAT currency, deficits during recessions, etc). It’s like someone parachuted a bunch of 19th-century citizens into our modern democracy and gave them political control. Pretty much all of the tea party controversies are things that had legitimate currency during the 1800s/early part of the 20th century…that political observers subsequently learned from.
TL;DR It’s because conservatives have somehow forgotten political history entirely.
sm*t cl*de
Pretty much the same way the guards at Auschwitz slept.
Like babies.
Waking up screaming at two-hour intervals? Fair enough.
ThresherK
“Nate Silver was right, and I was wrong,” Chambers said in a phone interview.
There’s nothing more wrong* than concluding that one non-predictive methodology of observation is wrong or right based on the outcome.
If I put a chip on #36 at a roulette table three times, and hit once, I don’t say “This wins one times out of three, the payout is therefore too high and I can retire on a night of betting #36”.
He can’t even fess up to being wrong with any statistical rigor.
(*apologies to Dr. Sheldon Cooper)
Jay in Oregon
@Violet:
And the sad thing is, I can see that person decades down the line, growing old alone and wondering why their daughter never calls or visits.
And never making the connection.
John
@Calming Influence:
Did you also affect a beatific smile and assure them that Heidi Heitkamp and Jon Tester were on the way to defeat?
Nate Silver’s not an infallible god.
WereBear
@The Moar You Know: That is so friggin’ petty. That is what this jerk has left? Being cheap with a challenged relative with an amount that means a lot more to the uncle than to the person witholding it?
And for heaven’s sake, who is paying for that group home? Has he any clue how much that would cost if there wasn’t a WHOLE NATION chipping in to help out?
Whenever anyone complains Obama is going to hurt them financially, I mime astonishment and go, “Dang! I didn’t know you made a quarter million a year!”
They look all furtive and surprised. (I KNOW they don’t make a quarter mil.) “What do you mean?”
“President Obama is only going to raise taxes on that level and above.”
They can deny and put up all kinds of radar chaff… but some of them are going to go home and google it.
Roger Moore
@YoohooCthulhu:
I’m not sure about that. I think that a lot of what gets the teabaggers riled up falls into the category of “stuff that insiders understand but outsiders flip out over” but a fair amount is being unhappy because the world is changing faster than they want to keep up with. I think the bigger thing is that the two go together. Teabaggers are people who were happy living in the past until blackity black black woke them up to how much the world has changed. When they look around, they find lots of stuff they don’t like and don’t understand, and they freak out over everything.
LABiker
Clown Hall, Faux News and National Rearview?
justawriter
More bubble talk
grandpa john
@rob!: Saw on CNN I think
The winning voter melange put together by the campaign to win the election; 93% of Blacks,71% of Hispanics,54% of women,73% of Asians
grandpa john
Whites made up 72% of overall voters. Romney got the vote of 59% but it wasn’t enough. Republicans can continue to deny reality and face extinction or the can look at the face of reality and realize that nothing remains constant and they have to either adapt or die,just as many species have had to do in the past. Frankly I hope they decide to become extinct
like they dinosaurs they are.
Ruckus
“Good lord, you people are morons.”
How could any of them say that, they are all at the same level, that being Morons. If you are a moron and don’t have a clue about that then all the other morons are going to look normal. It’s the people who aren’t morons who look different. They couldn’t recognize morons if they tried because it would be like looking in a mirror.
grandpa john
@Svensker: CNN did one of those map things last night shortly after Rove’s spoiled brat temper tantrum. They had a map of Ohio showing all the counties in red or blue according to returns. they then blanked out all counties in which 99% or more of votes were in. Guess what was left. Only blue colored counties. That was why Ohio was called for Obama, the only votes left to count were in counties where Obama would get more votes than Romney. Fox had done the same kind of thing which is why they called it also, pissing off that intellectual giant rove who knew in his gut that they were wrong.
Logic, how does it work.
grandpa john
@General Stuck: Nor will they give him credit for developing 2 of the best campaign strategies and organizations ever seen in presidential election history
opie_jeanne
@28 Percent: Those are some really nasty people over there.
Mike in NC
@General Stuck:
Wasn’t that Trent Lott’s alma mater?
opie_jeanne
@priscianusjr: No, not after he started his criticism of Nate with an ad hominem attack on his height and masculinity.
Also, he hasn’t mentioned any of this on his site, and saying that he was closer to reality is laughable since he had Romney at 359 ECVs until late Monday night
lumpkin
>>>“Nate Silver was right, and I was wrong,” Chambers said in a phone interview.<<<
I think sometimes the grifters like to rub the mark's nose in it a little, even though most of them don't get it. Wingers: you've been had once again. I bet Chambers can come back with this same schtick in any future election and use it again.
The "New Black Panthers voter intimidation" freakout on Fox was the same thing. They let the video run until the nice black man held the door for the obviously not intimidated old lady voter. Almost seems like they are mocking the bedwetters who see intimidation every time they look at a black man.
General Stuck
@Mike in NC:
I think so, and foggily remembered he was some kind of college segregationist activist or something like that. Not worth the time to look it up though.
Obi Wan
Who’s the more foolish…the fool or the fool who follows him?
Bruce S
Today even Newt Gingrich is on the path toward humility. He actually admitted that he “was wrong when predicted Newt Gingrich would win the election.” Yes folks – this was worth a news story. Of course, it takes a lot for a total narcissist who lives in an alternate reality to recognize that Romney actually lost DESPITE HIS HAVING PREDICTED HE WOULD WIN. The man just may be coming around. Today he made his way, perilously, from Pluto to Neptune – on what could become a long, long journey back to Earth.
catclub
@psycholinguist: Are you saying that JCole is the democrats 2016 candidate?
Or Tunch?
demz taters
@Soonergrunt: Yay! I helped build that!
Helen Bedd
Chambers’ method of “unskewing” polls involved re-weighting the sample to match what he believed the electorate would look like
@JGabriel:
My understanding is that Chambers re-weighted the sample to match Rasmussen’s sample…which makes the quote you cite even funnier
Laura
I can’t hate on this guy too much. What he did was incredibly fucking stupid but Republitards ate it up, so who can blame him?
He’s not some millionaire pundit just a fat old guy on the internet who got attention.