Letters to the Editor
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Defections?
Speaking of Waterboard Joe's "Independent Democrat" leanings, I can't help but notice the Gallup polling results SLATE posted...
Twenty-eight percent of current Hillary Clinton supporters say they would vote for John McCain over Barack Obama in the general election. Nineteen percent of Obama supporters would vote for McCain over Clinton.
28% of Clintonites defect to McCain versus 19% of Obama supporters? WTF, Clintonites? My hope is that Obama's draw among the more-numerous independents would counteract the ill effects of these faithless Clintonites (I mean, really -- I know Clinton's run a Republicratic campaign the whole time, but you'd actually vote McCain??? In-fucking-sane). I called this so long ago, it's ridiculous. If the Clintons can't win, they'll try to destroy the Democratic Party.
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Ah, to be free from reality
It must be nice to be Joe. Doesn't let anything bother him about doing what he wants. Doesn't care about the dems nor the american people. Just devotes himself to keeping the war on terror on track. Such a life.
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Well
Being as the democratic preference between Obama and Hillary has bobbed around the mid to high 40's for each, and more than 60 percent of dems think both should stay in the race despite the delegate count and the hollering from the minority that Hillary should get out, there appears to be some serious reservations about Obama in the democratic party rank and file.
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Second-rate senator is news but not burgeoning story about Wal-Mart ansd Hillary
The rest of the media is all over the Shank story and how Wal-Mart sued this disabled former worker who is now in a rest home. Some have connected the dots between Hillary, her refusal to release her tax returns and her ties to Wal-Mart. That might be a relevant story to post here, just as her lies about Bosnia were. Guess you can't expect resonsible journalism from the Walsh-led Salon anymore. For those who want to learn about the Hillary-wal-Mart-Shank connection, here it is:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/hillary-clinton-and-walm_b_93638.html
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Seems Clear -- Obama's the One to Beat...
What these numbers make clear is that if the election were today, Obama would beat McCain with no doubt/question, but Hillary, not so much.
No amount of wishful thinking by Joan Walsh, Mark Penn, or Notoriously Biased WES will make it anything other than that a complete debacle if Hillary Clinton tries to steal the nomination away from Barack.
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Question for Nadador
I thought I had been taught in school (and this was 28 years ago, so I might not have remembered it correctly), that when you say 'Candidate A has 52% and Candidate B has 48% and the margin or error is 3%' that would mean that due to the sample size, the actual outcome could be anywhere from Candidate A has 55% and Canidate B has 45% to Candidate A has 49% and Candidate B has 51%.
The actual ratio being somewhere within the 2 extremes.
Thanks in advance for your help.
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@vondo & nadador
Thanx and a tip o' the Hatlo hat to vondo & nadador for correcting my explanation, and for agreeing that I had a point anyway ;-) .
Which was the abuse and inaccuracy of the phrase "statistical tie". I once heard someone look at a 54-46 poll with a MOE of 4% and call it a tie, 'cause, see, if you adjust the 54% down 4% and adjust the 46% up 4%, then it's 50-50...
My clumsy argument was that if several sequential polls have similar margins, even though the margins are "within the margin of error", you can confidently say that one candidate is ahead; it's not a "tie", statistical or otherwise.
I'd like to see more reporting of undecideds, myself. Keith Olbermann has tried to come up with a sort of combined index, adding the MOE to the undecided number, which helps, but not as much as actually listing undecideds in the same chart as the candidate numbers (also, calling it "keith number" got old really quick).
I expect the problem is that, like most Americans, most reporters don't really understand statistics.
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@Paul in KY
And that's exactly the kind of fallacy I'm trying to describe.
As Randy Newman says in the Monk theme song, I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
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Independents are not the problem
I'm an independent and I'd rather see Leiberman pushed off a cliff than see him be V.P.
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counting ants
Are all of us just counting ants as the field burns?
Does it matter that Pres. Bush (and John McCain)are making speeches about "victory" in Iraq and the success of the surge EVEN AS the country is embroiled in civil war right now and the oil pipeline bombing has sent oil prices UP again? Are these people MAD?
How can we keep talking about all this small stuff when we have a huge world crisis on our hands -- brought about by the Bush administration's inept foreign and domestic policy.
Come on, Democrats. UNITE. We need to start taking leadership of this mess before it's too late. I don't give a darn about Joe Lieberman. He's irrelevant and he's a single-issue moron.
I do care that we elect responsible leadership and change the direction of this country, and the more we squabble about trivia, the less likely that is.
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Independant Democrat
= Crypto Zionist?
Who are you kidding, Uncle Joe, the Senator from Tel Aviv? Please go back to your Ferangi home-world and stop calling yourself a Democrat.
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At what point does Lieberman un-hitch his wagon...
..from the Not-so-straight-talk McBush? I mean how delusional does McBush have to get before Joe thinks "Oh this guy's obviously playing without a full deck..."? Does Joe think he can stand behind McBush forever, feeding him "facts" for the entire campaign?
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Loserman
Please God, let McCain choose Loserman as his running mate. All that Joementum would ensure that McLooney doesn't win a single State.
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Re: margin of error
...in week 3 Candidate A is at 53% and B is at 49%
Isn't that a 102%?
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@Paul in KY -- More statistics
Paul, your understanding is basically correct. A reported statistic of 52% with a +/- 3% error margin means the ACTUAL value could be anywhere between 49% and 55% (again, that's with the often unreported confidence level, usually 95%, which would mean even in 5% of the most perfect random samples, the actual value would lie BEYOND the margin of error).
And even with all of this messy statistics that many people don't understand, it still in the end doesn't necessarily correspond with the actual results on an election day, given that all sorts of other circumstances affect who actually goes to vote that day and what influences them in their final hours.