Maybe my objections to him aren’t “substantive”, but neither are his views. I can’t figure out what the hell he believes in or what motivates him. And that’s what really scares me about him.
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I think that is a reasonable grounds for objection. I had some of the same qualms about Jimmy Carter in '76 (and as a result didn’t support him in the primary). It makes more sense than objecting to PB because of, say, the timing of his deployment.
As for motivation, I think the usual motivations for political office are greed, lust for power, narcissism/Jehovah complex, or sincere belief in public service. You always kind of hope that the people you’re backing are there mainly for #4, though the level of chutzpah required to run for POTUS usually means there is a bit of #3 in there for most presidential candidates. PB’s narrative on paper supports the plausibility of #4. However, as you’ve noted, someone who wants to look like they’re in it for altruistic reasons might try to compile a similar narrative.
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Only one supporter showed up.
To be fair - we’re not on the Appalachian Trail…
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Further endorsements imminent.
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Well this is terrifying.
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Skimming that report earlier, it struck me as Moody’s stretching to spin everything toward the conclusion they want to reach (probably in reaction to Warren gaining steam – her becoming President is the worst-case scenario for Moody’s clients).
For example, where they can point to the economy being good for average consumers (e.g. low oil prices, stable housing prices) they spin that as a positive for Il Douche. But where they can’t deny economic trouble for those same Americans (e.g. the S&P 500, which is due for a correction months before the general election), suddenly it’s a case that people will vote for Il Douche because of uncertainty.
It’s an interesting report, and Biff obviously has a strong chance of winning on the usual razor thin GOP margin, but I understand the viewpoint this report is coming from and the meme it’s trying to spread.
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Well …sure
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Cue a million posters saying we need to slow down and meticulously look at ALL the polls!
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Don’t know about the Russians, but she is certainly favored by Assad!
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The Russians, too. And members of the America First alt-right.
I do wish Hillary Clinton would stop “helping” though. Dems really don’t need advice from someone whose campaign was so incompetent that she lost the Electoral College to America’s foremost public grifter. Take a long vacation, Hillary – say until Thanksgiving of 2020.
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She’s been making the rounds because she and Chelsea have a new book out. I assume she was responding to a question (from podcaster David Plouffe, a colleague during the Obama administration).
Tulsi has responded with her own unhinged theory that all the criticism of her from day one has been a secret attack by HRC.
Meanwhile, when it was pointed out that HRC never actually mentioned Tulsi by name, a HRC spokesman said “If the nesting doll fits. …”
This is all kind of sad for me. Despite her cult connections and hopefully-past history of opposition to civil rights, Tulsi has been a pretty upstanding member of my state’s congressional delegation, and her stand against the DNC last election cycle was an important one. This cycle, starting with her unprovoked attack on Mazie Hirono, has probably killed her political career.
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Sure she’s leading- but that just shows why she’s not electable. /s
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Huh - Biden and Yang kinda surprised me.
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What do those graphs represent? Donation values? Individual supporters? Is each dot a poll?
Also, having done a shit-ton of scatter plots with best fit lines, most of those lines are off. Warren’s is WAY off. It shows a positive slope when it should be a negative slope, looking at the data points.
Edit: Against my better judgement, I followed the link to Twitter. Each dot is a self-identified occupation group, plotted by it’s median income vs % support for a particular candidate.
2nd Edit: Something is really weird with that data. If you go by those plots, Bernie would be ahead in the polls by 98%. It would be good to see the actual source information, because it could make sense if Bernie was favored by, for instance, retail workers, plumbers, bartenders, etc. but less favored by stockbrokers and lawyers. But the plots show Bernie favored by virtually every occupation group, including the highest income ones.
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I think each dot represents a wage interval. That is, if 38% of people earning between $33K and $(33+dx)K donated to Bernie, then a dot gets placed at (33,38) on Bernie’s chart. However, that’s just a guess. There is more here, but I cant find the “what’s a dot” details:
The curves are probably interpolated by a smoothing algorithm in whatever software he’s using (possibly SAS since he’s a statistician for a state government, they like SAS).
The chart I like best is the one around 2/3 of the page down of “Top occupations by candidate”. Warren’s top is “mathematicians”. We usually don’t make the top of any list.
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Each dot is an occupation for the one from the Twitter thread @Wanderfound linked. So one dot would be: Occupation: retail clerk; 38% of them favor Bernie in the $33k income bucket.
OK, that makes more sense. Hypothetically, then, the total percentage for one occupation and income bucket would sum to 100% once you combine all the candidates.
Unless I’m misreading it, the take-away would still be that everybody loves Bernie. He’s pretty loveable, but that’s also not consistent with the polls (unless there are a lot more mathematicians than I think there are). Which brings me back to the source. I donated to both Warren and Bernie via ActBlue, but it looks like it’s the preferred portal for donating to Bernie relative to other candidates. That’s what the data implies, assuming the polls are even somewhat correct.
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That can’t be right. There are only 22 occupation groups in the database, that is far less than the number of dots. (ETA: but there might be more “occupations” than “occupation groups”, so maybe it isn’t wrong.)
FWIW, the link I gave is the blog of the person who did the actual analysis (and isn’t the person from linked twitter thread).
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