 by Chris HayesStory of the Week, Up w/ Chris Hayes |
If you follow politics, you probably noticed that polling of the presidential election has swung quite decidedly in the president's favor over the last few weeks. The Real Clear Politics polling average now has Obama up 4.1 points over Mitt Romney in national polls and Nate Silver's prediction model at his FiveThirtyEight blog put Barack Obama's odds of winning the election above 80% for the first time ever. Swing state polling out just this week seems to confirm the trend.
A new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS poll of swing states of Ohio and Florida, show surprisingly strong leads for Obama. And the Gallup tracking poll, which has showed a near dead heat for almost the entirety of the campaign now shows Obama up 6 points. It's pretty hard to survey the polling data and not come to the conclusion that Barack Obama is beating Mitt Romney, that if the election were held today Barack Obama would win, and that Romney has a relatively steep, though certainly not insurmountable, uphill climb to victory. That is, of course, unless you operate in the alternate epistemic universe of right-wing media.
Bill O'Reilly: That begs the question, are these polls dishonest?
Karl Rove: No we endow them with a false scientific precision they simply don't have.
John Kasich: These polls I don't even pay attention to them...
Dick Morris: Polling is very good at saying how you're gonna vote, its very bad at who's gonna vote, and the models these folks are using are crazy.
Rush Limbaugh: These two polls today are designed to convince everybody this election is over.
We should note that Fox News's own polls have been pretty much in line with everyone else's, but it's not just commentators making the claim that the polls are rigged, the Romney campaign itself is now getting in on the act.
Eric Fehrnstrom: Some of these polls have been called into question because they assume a higher Democratic turnout in 2012 than we experienced in 2008.
For the record that's not true. But that doesn't really matter! Conservatives are spending hundreds, maybe thousands of man-hours (or maybe more appropriately bro-hours) writing long, tortured, pseudo-statistical take downs of every new poll, from a wide variety of outlets.
The proprietors of one of the go-to sites for this kind of analysis, Unskewedpolls.com told BuzzFeed that his traffic has gone from 15,000 hits a day to 200,000. And buoyed by the huge uptick, the site's founder Dean Chambers is planning an expansion.
"I've been hearing from people inside the Tea Party movement and Republican movement calling to say that they support what I'm doing," said Chambers. "It's given them a boost of confidence. They're glad to see that someone's questioning the credibility of national polls."
Now, to the conservatives and Republicans watching out there right now, I know what you're thinking: "It's not just people on the right who fall victim to this way of thinking." And you're right. In fact, I can recall with somewhat pathetic acuity spending hours on the internet in the waning days of the 2004 election searching out any and all articles or blog posts about why the lack of cell phones in the call lists of the major polls led to under-reporting John Kerry's strength. We all, as humans, are subject to confirmation bias, the urge to find information that reaffirms our ideological priors. But the problem is that the institutional structure of the American right slavishly caters to this disposition. The institutional and market incentives on the right all push towards feeding the audience what they want to hear and make a good buck while doing it, at the expense of actually giving them a handle on some basic aspects of reality.
Glenn Beck left Fox News to create his own hermetically sealed media environment, where he has his own website, radio show and TV network, where the latter routinely runs stories first reported by the former. While his audience has shrunk dramatically, NPR recently reported that business for Beck has never been better. His company The Blaze is expected to rake in more than $40 million this year. His radio contract just doubled - to $100 million over the next five years.
The increasingly claustrophobic parallel conservative universe isn't just something that lefties like myself have noted. Julian Sanchez, a CATO libertarian who moves in social circles of both liberals and conservative, coined the term "epistemic closure" to describe the alternate reality found in, as he put it, the "multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News" where "whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they're liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!) This epistemic closure can be a source of solidarity and energy, but it also renders the conservative media ecosystem fragile."
I think we are seeing right now, just how prophetic Sanchez was. The political problems the Republican party are now facing -- losing ground not only in the general election but a wide swath of congressional races, is due, I think to the fact that the elites of that party have become so used to operating within the confines of conservatism they've forgotten how to persuade people that don't already agree with them.
The "We Built This" theme for the Republican Convention was a tone deaf, inside-joke that played off an intentionally misconstrued supposed gaffe that didn't really seem to resonate with the general electorate. Or look at the difference between the reaction to Clint Eastwood's speech inside the hall, where it was met with raucous laughter and enthusiastic applause... to outside the hall where it was met with something more like confused amusement. And the ultimate example of the costs of the conservative bubble are Mitt Romney's 47% comments, versions of which have become commonplace to the point of cliche in right-wing circles, and ones which Romney offered inside the safety and comfort of the conservative bubble, but have now leaked out to general populace where they are rightly found noxious.
In the song "Ten Crack Commandments," Biggie Smalls offered a set of rules for drug dealers who wanted to avoid the perils of the trade and one of them was a piece of old advice:"Never get high on your own supply." Same goes for political strategists: never confuse your own talking points for the truth, don't start believing that everyone out there in the voting booths are seeing the world the way you do. The GOP has, I think lost sight of this simple wisdom. They're smoking what they're dealing. It's a big part of why those polls numbers look the way they do... and good a reminder of the dysfunction and incompetence that happen when the people in charge only listen to themselves.
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Chris, I worry that voter suppression is so widespread that the republicans are trying to justify it by disputing the polls. I also don't think they realize how little the citizens of this country obsess about their wealth. Most of us are very content with our lives even though not burdened with having the worry about where to hide our money.
nate silver has said he expects that voter suppresson in PA will only count for 1-2% of the actual vote. this won't really matter. it's been over blown. and by 2016 we will have everybody registered. i know this is a problem but i think that with all the dirty dealing romney has no chance.
As cogently and brilliantly argued as Mr. Hayes is, the question still remains how will the active and legally enforced voter suppression regime of the Republican Party shape Election 2012? The polling numbers are one thing, while the votes actually cast is very much another issue. In something like 14 states Republican Governors and State Legislatures have passed laws, in the name of protecting suffrage from 'voter fraud', as yet not defined by any responsible source as a problem. These legislative acts have sought to disenfranchise the young,old and minority populations from voting. Add to that the army of Republican henchmen, who will be challenging voters right to vote at the polls. It is naive to think that voting will all take place in an atmosphere of civility. The Republicans have proven themselves to be thugs, without question,their proud of it. Jane-1363283 is rightly concerned!
People everywhere: Keep your cellphone cameras out. Film anything you think is awry. We need lots of light on this election. It's up to all of us voting to insure our rights are respected.
Any state or county or precincts where paper ballots are not used, where only touch screen computers tabulate votes, where a physical recount of every ballot vote cast is not possible, the election is subject to being stolen. Just look up red shift on the google machine or the history of what happened to the ballots cast for president in Ohio 2004 or Max Cleland in Georgia 2002.
But stealing an election, or Election Fraud, isn't just any one action, it is many small actions.
This has been the long time strategy of the repubs and was best expressed by Paul Weyrich to a group fundamentalist Christians in Dallas 1980. In 1973 Weyrich persuaded Joseph Coors to put money in to found the Heritage Foundation. Here is what he thought about universal suffrage;
Keep that phrase handy, because if we do end up with the misfortune of having to live under a Romney/Ryan administration, you will find yourself reaching for that phrase several times a day.
Bob Altemeyer has written a book, "The Authoritarians," on the bubble of high right wing authoritarian leader and follower personality types. He even wrote "Comment on the Tea Party Movement"
And the Biggie Smalls reference in American political analysis may be the first.
Chris - maybe the claim by the right that the polls are "off" is really a set-up for stealing the election. Remember the exit polls from 2000?
in entertainment (and I believe politics) it shoule be "Don't believe your own hype".
lots of people have commented on the danger to the GOP of becoming percieved as the "party of mean" and that isn't without merrit.
Yhe problem with the right in general is that they have demographicaly shrunk to a core that is increasingly cconfronting a world that they are not comfortable in which has made them bitter and angry. They can't understand why everyone dosen't share thier Guilded age Norman Rockwell vision of how America should be.
If you think back to high school history it's not a dissimilar reaction to how america reacted after the end of WW I. This is thier quest to "return to normalcy". Thier problem is that now just as then those "Good ol' Days" never were and never will be and the world isn't going to wait for them to play catch up.
The bigger problem here isn't actualy the vision of Anerica these people are imagining for themselves here at home. It's how they would behave as actors on the world stage. Defaulting to the last model they understood they would see the modern world through the lense of the cold war in the 1950's and 60's where problems requiring options outside black and white responces weren't required. That is the genuinely frightening prospect.
If people are longing for a 'return to normalcy' why go for the party that devastated their once 'normal' lives?
because I think their version of "Normal" came under attack and at least in their view wrongly, in the 60's and 70's and things haven't been right with the society or the country since. If you look at the common thread that runs through a lot of the positions of "values voters" it's the themes of the nuclear family and well defined traditional gender and social roles. They look for a party that will give them a place where they feel ideologically comfortable and secure with people of like mind and opinion. Why do you think Rush Limbaugh has such a big audience, it's not because he is a sparkling entertainer it's because this is a subset of people who like to have their views affirmed and to be comforted in a world that continues to regard many of those views as outdated. In this case that ideology is endorsed or at least paid lip service by some of the last remnants of the WASP elite culture (and those that orbit it's monetary gravity) that composed much of what was "The Establishment" during the years when things as they saw it went so terribly wrong. I make no judgment on whether they are good people or not (I like to believe most Americans are) but I do believe they are on a very personal level scared, and that it is that fear which has at least in part responsible for the creation of the "alternate universe" that they like to inhabit. Let me just to be clear make the point that I am not talking about "All Republicans" here just the elements of the party that have decided that it is safer and more comfortable inside the bubble.
Chris, love your program! I get UP to watch on weekends. Great discussion on the Conservative bubble and I would say that not only is the Right living in an alternate universe but they really have no policies or principles that match the reality of 21st century problems and therefore no repertoire to solve them. Their "message" is not working because their policies haven't worked and they have nothing new. They are running against themselves. Romney is a bad candidate who seems incompetent to run his campaign, nevermind the country--how can anyone consider voting for someone who cannot tell the truth about anything? Ryan is a disaster as the VP pick (arrogant, immature, uncaring, and dishonest), but the Republican Party of today seems to have abandoned their responsibility to develop policies or take actions that actually contribute to our system of government, therefore they cannot pick credible candidates. The ultimate cognitive dissonance is preaching individual freedom and liberty (over community) and forcing legislation that limits women's reproductive rights, systematically threatening voting rights around the country, abandoning the social safety net that would lead to the "freedom" to be old, sick, and poor, selling out environmental protections to corporate interests, the theft of middle class resources via tax policies written by lobbyists that subsidize the wealthy, stripping unions of their ability to advocate for members and pushing "right to work" legislation--a frightened and deluded electorate having put conservatives in power--to create even more profit from labor that now has the right to work for less, refusing to work on a coherent health care system to assure at least a floor of coverage for all citizens in favor of catering to the for-profit segment of the health care system in the name of freedom? This is not a personal freedom issue, it is a health care public policy issue, but their disinformation campaign turned it into a "big government" debate. I could go on. The Republican Party/Tea Party/Religious Right coalition seems to have conflated social issues with some a "personal freedom" mantra and use it to abandon the social contract, all the while secretly crafting tax policy and regulatory laxity that allow enormous concentration of wealth, unfettered corporate and financial industry activities that take resources from labor and the environment with no return to society. This is redistribution to a top tier of the few and most people don't read enough or understand enough about economics to combat the rhetoric from the right wing about "job creators" or see the flaws in supply side economics or counter the absolute garbage the Ryan is spewing right now about middle and poorer class benefits as "entitlements" and redistribution, i.e., welfare. Also, most people don't stop to think that cheap goods at Walmart cost all of us in lots of ways from layoffs due to shipping jobs overseas, to the loss of businesses on Main Street, to tax dollars covering the needs of workers earning minimum wage with no benefits. The GOP has succeed, it seems, in convincing the middle and the less well off that they are fighting over the same leftovers, to inflame Tea Party anger and bigotry, and it is damaging if not destroying the sense of community needed to solve our very real problems. This allows the very wealthy to operate without scrutiny so most of us don't really know how much advantage and power they enjoy. The video-tape of Mitt Romney speaking with his crowd at the Boca Raton fundraiser was an eye-opener for millions of people. It pulled aside the curtain not only on the concentration of wealth but the greed and sense of entitlement in that room who seem to feel no obligation to contribute. BTW, public employees are not the enemy and I wish you would cover the fact that every other administration, Democrat or Republican, has been given the help needed from Congress during previous recessions to add public sector jobs to help put people back to work, except this President. The GOP accuses the Democrats of encouraging people to be jealous of success and class welfare all the while pitting underpaid private sector employees against public sector employees because they have better pay and benefits. Do we stop to ask whether we are really better off with more and more people trying to get by on less and less, looking ahead at being old and poor, while corporate profits and income disparity increases? The Republicans have been masters at spinning their priorities of protecting wealth as an issue of personal freedom for the masses. It's perverse, and frightening, really. The Todd Akin and Mitt Romney comments have been enlightening for many, I believe. Women need to wake up about GOP attitudes about women's health and economic rights, white working class males need to wake up about protection of corporate interests over fair pay and benefits and tax policy, seniors and all of us need to wake up to the very real threat to the social safety net posed by a right wing take over of government,voters need to be aware that neo-cons on the Right would have us in another armed conflict in a flash, and we all need to see that we are still in a Republican economy which is why it is stalled out. Obama is talking about an economy built to last, from the middle out, and about fixing some of the most egregious tax policies that currently cater to the wealthy avoiding paying their fair share, and that threatens the status quo for the wealthy. No wonder they are trying to buy this election. Anne
Wow, Anne. Wow!
Hayes' training in philosophy made him aware that this awareness of bubble realities is no sudden, new realization. The tendency of humans to indulge in bubble realities is ancient, and has received focused scrutiny over the last 200 years.
So what is new about what Hayes or Julian Sanchez is saying? Is it the existence of robust self re-enforcing networks of communication that are backed by strong economic incentives? That's a historical assertion that does not withstand much scrutiny. The pamphleteers and social networks in cafes, churches and working associations which had strong economic rewards for feeding the confirmation bias hunger. In cases where there is depth of emotion behind that hunger, the cycle feeds itself, growing in strength until we have the revolutions against the dominant bubble the rest of society lived in. Looking at every revolution large and small, you will see the same phenomenon.
If that isn't it, then what other new realization did we come to? Are we saying that people are unaware that people outside of the GOP convention don't find the Eastwood bit funny? Please. The bulk of American colonists were not behind the revolutionaries- while many were not happy with policies of the authorities, they would have been profoundly alienated to hear the jokes and incendiary mockery of the King and established institutions they trusted. Were the revolutionary elites so tone deaf that they did not understand that the bulk of colonists did not yet see issues through the same lens?
Let's be honest. What Hayes is suggesting by his comparison to drug dealers and cynical monied interests trying to buy an election feeds the confirmation bias of liberals. We would like to believe that conservative elites holding these world view will privately admit they understand and believe the same reality we live in. And there is some shreds of evidence of this faith- of course most intelligent elites will not honestly dispute the science of climate change and understand that women do not have magic spermicide against rapists. But let's get a grip- most political questions are not like that though- even on points of fact. Is it demonstrably true that there is a missile gap or not? Kennedy used that fear as leverage against the GOP administration. It was empirically not the case- nor was WMD in Iraq. There is no question that there are those that cynically know what they are peddling is drugs- the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaugh and Hannitys and some populist politicians have an awareness of the unreality they are peddling. The problem is the backbone of these whirlwinds of conviction are not empirically verifiable, so the verity they are clinging to is not clearly a drug. Good people of good will can be seduced by the druglike high of the preposterous dream that all men are created equal. Read what the British aristocrats had to say- they looked at the revolutionary leaders as cynical opportunists in the same light as liberals regard the promoters of the Right wing bubble world. Simply because some were does not mean that there weren't sincere people that believed the truth that was being promoted.
So is that what are we saying? That we should be immediately skeptical of heterodox views which have no currency in the dominant world the rest of us live in?
What Hayes said today suggests that the GOP establishment believes that what they are selling is an intoxicating illusion that they have become addicted to. Hayes, like the Cato institute author he quotes believes in the myth of the Enlightenment- that there is one world that we would all live in if only we would rationally engage the facts and each other in open and honest discussion. Both he and Julian Sanchez are not alone in this faith in a common verity that can be arrived at through open, intellectually honest competition between ideas. The idea is there is a correct point of view based on truth, and everything else is based on fantasies- fictions. Our linguistics follows this. Science has become devalued as a term, so now we must employ the term Arithmetic as a cudgel. Hayes and Sanchez believe there is a Darwinian survival of the fittest ideas that will win out, and the body politic will live in the world structured around those fittest ideas. Our republic was founding in a belief in that illusion.
The truth is that most principles upon which people base their lives are not provable positions. They are all fictions, and humans never have and never will escape that condition. Collectively, we live in an ever more heterogenous political world whose members cleave to alternate fictions who are unwilling and incapable of living within one collective fiction. Romney represents a hunger to resturn to a Pleasantville reality, sincerely believing that America is slipping into decline due to initiative sapping effect of well meaning social programs. While he is well aware that his rhetoric portraying it as socialism is over the top, He does believe that large portions of America are drifting towards the point of view that they need not take responsibility for their lives. A more artful politician like Reagan was able to connect to that verity that many Americans continue to be anxious about. The power of that anxiety will not disappear but simply seek another path in 2016. Gore Vidal long ago pointed out that the GOP is not really a political party. The way I frame what Vidal was pointing to is that the GOP is a group that feeds anxieties. Examination of the enacted policies demonstrate that the so called ideologies have no force. Of course not- they are simply a veneer over whatever anxiety is gripping the American psyche at a particular moment in US politics. Yesterday the Red hoards who don't believe in democracy, today the Muslim hoards who don't believe in democracy.
So what is the solution? Perform an analysis of the driving passions openly. This means more cognitive analysis of political phenomena. It means an acceptance that we fundamentally are not the rational creatures the founding fathers presumed us to be, and that we must spend a substantial portion of our analysis not on the literal examination of the policies, but of the emotions and non rational forces (both on the left and right) that power them.
One might have thought Hayes would do better, but his message today is both sincere and fully developed because it conforms to the philosophical thought he believes in. He is simply mistaken.
"The truth is that most principles upon which people base their lives are not provable positions."
Prove it.
"Both he and Julian Sanchez are not alone in this faith in a common verity that can be arrived at through open, intellectually honest competition between ideas. The idea is there is a correct point of view based on truth, and everything else is based on fantasies- fictions."
They are right. There is an objective world that exists independent of our interests. There are facts which are true regardless of how you feel about them and they do not go away when we ignore them or wish them away.
"Hayes and Sanchez believe there is a Darwinian survival of the fittest ideas that will win out, and the body politic will live in the world structured around those fittest ideas."
I suspect that they, like me, believe there are true facts about the world. You are right to say that much of our politics is about our *desires* and how we feel we ought to live. The problem comes when either side refuses to accept the facts and forms policy on what they'd like to be true rather than what is in fact true. The right does this on global warming or supply side economics. The left does it on fracking or genetically modified foods.
The difference is due to liberals being more willing to change their views in the light of contrary evidence. Conservatives are less willing because they tend to be authoritarian and such a rigid hierarchical way of thinking tends to become, as they said in the piece, subject to epistemic closure.
Or... you know... drinking your own kool-aid.
Sure there are true facts as I acknowledged repeatedly. You attempt to evade my point.
There is a belief that it is right that non governmental organizations attend to the welfare of community members in need. Others believe that it is not wrong that government attend to these responsibilities.
These are unprovable positions. Although the vast majority of us may agree there is an objective world existing independent of us, and that there are empirically verifiable facts we can determine, neither science nor any body of empirical fact nor a methodical and logically sound philosophical argument prove which view is the correct one.
Making the social challenge more complex is that these views are not simply one dimensional along a right - left continuum. There exists a multiplicity of views that are unprovable and in conflict in this way.
If we think that simply puncturing the factual errors of the opposing sides will lead members of a pluralistic society to adopt a common view on such questions, then we are participating in an Enlightenment's delusion about how social order is achieved. Where have I erred?
"You attempt to evade my point."
It's possible I simply didn't understand it.
You are right that science cannot dictate our morals.
"neither science nor any body of empirical fact nor a methodical and logically sound philosophical argument prove which view is the correct one."
Yeah I don't agree. I'm a moral realist. I think that moral facts really exist. The citizens of a welfare state are better off by many social measures than those of free market fundamentalist state.
"Where have I erred?"
I don't think you've erred. I agree with 90% of what you say but I never comment about that. I only comment when I disagree with someone and even then I see it as an exercise in how to argue effectively. (I don't always do so well at that.)
I think you're right that it's next to impossible to "puncture" someone's bubble so to say. What people often fail to do is to offer a competing narrative.
You state that science cannot dictate our morals but also state that you believe that "moral facts" really exist.
I gave an example of one of the disputes between conservatives and liberals. Say an ultra libertarian society took care of the members of society but did so exclusively with non governmental organizations. Framed from their perspective, an authoritarian government does not seize their income and disperse it to those it views as needy.
In this case is it possible to prove using your "moral facts" that this position or belief in the possibility of such a world is false?
My point was not to shred Sam Harris. His position though is philosophical clap trap, and his embarrassing defense of the smack down he got from the academic community is simply painful to read (huffington post). In it, he exercises the same anti intellectual memes that Santorum does. EG: the snarky, "my job is not to increase the level of boredom in the universe", or the disgusting suggestion that moral philosophers as a class are incapable of saying anything of use regarding acts of immorality in the world. His quest for certainty is the identical path that Bush II was a perfect example of- seeking refuge in a false certainty from the cognitive dissonance that comes as a consequence of true engagement with a world of heterogeneous ideas.
I firmly believe the GOP deserves all the ridicule it is getting regarding its denial not just of the reality of science, but the political realities of what Americans believe about medicare, reproductive and gay rights. I have participated in much of it.
While it is true that the GOP has been relying on lies to advance its agenda, a person can believe in the ideal of the libertarian world I described without reliance on any lies or distortions. (I personally regard it reliant on an overly optimistic assessment of human nature- an accusation you are not typically leveled against the likes of Laura Ingraham who suggest NGOs should do the welfare work. She thinks the Church should do it- so in her case to be more accurate she leans heavily theocratic, not libertarian).
My point is that honest people can hold these views and honest and empirically oriented people can be persuaded to adopt them. Ryan is not part of some new looney fringe that wants to gut the capacity of the state to care for people in need.
Ronald Reagan linked passage of Medicare to a march towards socialism, telling us that it would dictate which cities doctors could live in, and which professions their sons could and couldn't work in. (Chicago Trib)
Reagan is appealing to anxieties to convince people that we only can expect a dystopian future if we indulge in the appealing but dangerous idealism of compassion. The reason why Ryan and Romney is failing is not that they are lying and obfuscating. Reagan with the same beliefs was successful and people still fail to see what a twisted ball of malevolence lies at the soul of his "revolution". It is stupid for people that don't cotton to the conservative agenda- the mishmash we call independents, liberals, progressives and the true Left- it is stupid to dismiss their ideas as reliant on the tools of hallucination, because they aren't. And it is dangerous to ignore their movement as necessarily led by cynical manipulators of political opinion. It is amusing and confirmatory to triumphantly dismiss them as not just cynical but self indulgently stupid, as they are accused of breaking the cardinal rule of never smoking the stuff they have been selling.
This is not victory if out of the ashes rises another Reagan who is not so incompetent as Ryan and Romney. A leader who can get everyone high on the fantasies he has- who can acknowledge their positive feelings but lock in and harness their powerful hatreds and anxieties.
It is not that Ryan and Romney could not pass muster on the metrics set by the Enilightenment- that they be open, honest and rational. They failed because they did not engage the American psyche as those adept at the literature of politics can.
Our challenge on the left is to more deeply engage that psyche while not forsaking the ideals of open, honest and rational discourse. Because if we don't, this will merely be a harsh winter for the GOP, which open fertile ground for new Reagans to sprout and advance these toxic pyschopathic memes clothed in antisocial philosophies. We should seize that fertile ground and sow salt into it as was done at Carthage.
...Or we can fritter away our advantage and treat this as a football game, indulging in the raucous laughter at the humiliation of our opponents.
Anne you are my hero! Amazing writing!
I just noticed the devo of Romney's logo. It started with the big "R" followed by "omney. Now it's become the big "R" followed by "mittromney". Is that because people saw the time on video when the kids wearing the letter sweatshirts R O M N E Y got the order confused and it spelled M O N E Y ???
I think that Americans believe in fair play hence outcry over football call. Here in Ohio people are beginning to look at voter suppression and attempting to buy and election as an unfair way to win an election. It will come back to bite their butts.
Chris put his finger on the key issue in the GOP bubble by mentioning Mitt"s "I Dig It" tax avoidance tactic. Tax avoidance is the primary link between the super rich and Tea Party groundlings. Small-bore anti-tax nuts, now Tea Party minions, have focused for decades on real estate taxes. The 1 percenters betting millions on Mitt hope to win the elimination of the federal estate tax (it's a good percentage bet because the payoff to the the ultra rich would be measured in billions). Yet no one is discussing either issue. What is the role of real estate taxes after the real estate tax bubble has burst? What is the case for or against the federal estate tax? Neither side will touch these issues. Sounds like a good topic for "Up With Chris Hayes." By the way, Mitt's 47% remarks reveal the extent of tax avoidance envy among the super-rich. So what if they're poor or fighting in the military? How come they get to pay no income tax without spending as I do on tax lawyers and tax loophole lobbyists?
Just make sure those Republican Governors can't alter the votes cast in their states. I believe the voter suppression is just a smoke screen to cover up their true cheating in the end. It happened in Ohio once with Bushy boy, don't let it happen again. I would not put anything past these lying deceitful people!
This is the danger of the bubble - if conservatives are willing to DELUDE THEMSELVES like this just to win an election what do they plan to do to the country? To the world? Defeating Mr. Romney is not enough. We must burst the bubble and demonstrate how hollow their vision for government really is before they do any more real damage. We must also advance a vision of our own as close to truth as possible to replace it. God help us find that vision.
I read this week's Fox News poll and I think someone should comment on the fact that judging by the questions asked they are a pollster acting as an arm of the Republican Party. The questions they asked test the popularity of Republican talking points.
As even the Rasmussen poll starts to show Obama ahead (+2 Saturday) isn't this "unskewed polls" argument losing resonance. One poll is totally insufficient. The point is that the aggregate of all of the national polls and all of the state polls and the trend of the polls shows Governor Romney in trouble. If you look at the changing behavior of the Romney/Ryan campaign it seems they believe the polls- not that they can admit it.
But if the Republicans want to base their campaigns on the perceived bias of pollsters (who after all make money by being right around election day although 5 weeks out there will never be any actual results to compare them to) I've got no problem with it. However to rephrase our President's "don't boo- vote," please don't believe the hype- vote... and do it now if you can.
Well, I believe both you, Chris, and Sheila Bair got it wrong in trying to discern why Mitt is losing. The real answer is the radical, right-wing Karl Rove/Dick Army Tea Party Express. Even if you take away Mitt's Thurston Howell traits and just left the John McCain etch-a-sketch, flip flopper qualities, he still could not overcome all the toxic boards in the GOP platform. They are not just toxic, some are instant death, like getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid. And, it's not just their domestic policies, their social agenda to kill Planned Parenthood and Roe v Wade is just as deadly.
The Republicans seem to exist in a hermetically sealed environment. They have their own tv news channel, newspapers, radio, call-in shows, etc. Essentially, they have isolated themselves from the non-Republican world. It's certainly comfortable only to talk and listen to those who agree with you: you get all warm and comfy with your own views of the universe.
The problem is that this approach doesn't deal with the real world. Dismissing reality because it doesn't jibe with what you want reality to be may be emotionally satisfying, but if you're running a campaign, a company, any type of outfit that has to interface with the rest of humanity, this approach gets you in deep doo-doo.
Because, if you're doing any of these things, you need to know what the world really is thinking and what it is about. Limiting yourself to the fraction that thinks like you do is a recipe for disaster. And that's what we see now with the GOP.
It's not Romney: it's the Republicans. They stuck Romney with an impossible platform, forced him in the primaries to take ridiculous positions (and if you doubt that, just look at who was running in the Republican primaries) and, most cruelly of all, saddled him with a running mate who lives in some kind of misanthropic time warp.
If things continue as they are now, there'll be lots and lots of Republican fingerpointing. And probably almost all of it will be directed at Romney.
If there are any thoughtful Republicans left, they might carefully consider looking in the mirror when assigning responsibility. As they sow, so are they reaping.
this environment the GOP has made is why they think the polls are skewed. they don't believe there are more dem's then rupubs. there are in fact more dems. they can't believe it because they think the country is dominated by conservatives when is fact it's not. so when the election happens and romney loses they will howl to the moon that the election was stolen. the poor saps better get with reality cause it's coming on november 6th.
Don't kid yourself the scum in the GOP have stolen the election before they can do it again
I don't know if I buy that Republican politicians and pundits REALLY believe that the polls are skewed. Just like I don't know if I believe 35% of Republicans polled believe that President Obama is Muslim. It's hard to assign motive to crazy, but just maybe there is a method to their madness. What value is there for some unknown Republican to tell a pollster they believe the President is Muslim? Maybe it's the same mentality that made them holler that "he's a terrorist" during the Palin rallies in 2008. In their ignorance they want to say the most mean-spirited thing they can say. As far as the polls are concerned - try to keep the faithful, faithful. Cover your butt if you can pull off flipping the Diebold voting machines, or purging the voter rolls or instituting voter ID laws, or caging, or hiring companies to screw with registration forms or any number of ways they are trying to steal this election.
Chris offers one of many explanations for the absence of and avoidance of truth by the republican party. Its not scientific proof of fact. Just an opinion. One fact that is far too often overlooked is governance of American government is framed by the US Constitution, and it appears to me that if the republican party could they would delete the Preamble.
I don't understand. Josh B. made a throw-away comment about the liberal myth of voting machine fraud in 2004 when Kerry lost, contrary to polling. Did I not hear reporting that a chunk of voting machines in Ohio were mysteriously locked up and the key with a vacationing official? And Diebold officials' assurances that they were "handling" the election for Bush? And haven't there been definitive studies about how easy it is to tamper with voting machines done at universities & elsewhere? And reports in the last election from people (someone even took a cell phone video) of voting machines actually switching candidates (from D to R) when they hit submit?
Am I crazy? I've been leaving comments all over the place about this possibility but NOBODY is reporting on the possibilities and what's being done to verify. Also the many, many dirty tricks like robocalls to D voters telling them election day had been extended, etc. Dirty, dirty politics that have been reported on after every election for a very long time.
What gives? Why isn't Chris weighing in on this yet? And, will he, ever, or will he just wait until the election's over and do a postmortem?
It is no accident that the Republican Party faithful are so anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and unconcerned with reality. The people who now question the veracity of the Polls, also question(ed) Global Warming, and before that Evolution as apposed to the Bible stories from Genesis.
Chris is right that this is confirmation bias, sometimes referrred to as Cherry Picking. I always tell theists that they and I decide upon morality the same way. We read the bible and pick out what is moral and what is not, but this is a human activity not a devine one. We both do it and ignore the immoral. The difference is in our insight into what we are doing. I know it is a human activity, but my religious friends deny it.
This leads me to two sources of this antiintellectual Republican bubble.
1) One is the disregard for reality in our religions. We are taught that belief is just as good as reason, that knowledge from faith is just as good, if not exactly the same, as knowledge from logic and science. Are we to be suprised that many of our felllow citizens can't distinguish between fact and belief?
We are taught that if we just wish for something hard enough it will happen, that if we just pray hard enough our love-ones will not die from their cancer. We are taught to believe in magic, and many of us do. And which party is inhabited by a higher percentage of fundamentalist Christians and Jews? These are the people of faith.
2) The second source is our money driven society (capitalist, free-market) in which we hear and see advirtisements that exaggerate a littleor a lot, from enlarging sex organs to showing how cigarretes don't cause lung cancer. Companies cheat on the truth in the name of free enterprise but if they make money on it, it's pretty much ok. Unless they are sued.
But the courts and especially the rational of the legal system is also to blame. In law the truth does not matter hardly at all. Each side is responsible in presenting one side int he best light, the other attorney is responsible for the best story from that side. Even the court isn't entirely concerned about truth but rather in settling disputes.
The problem for society is that we are inundated by partial truths or lies which are given the same status as evidence basis rational conclusions, i.e. the truth.
It's bad enough that truth is so questioned and dismissed for other motives (religious, financial, emotional, etc.) but that that process is unnoticed by the true believers makes enlightenment of them or even bipartisan agreements impossible.
The solution is to get the next generation to vote. They are more reasonable about the social issues and more open to learn new things.
I want to return this discussion to voter suppression and other techniques to turn the results to the Republicans. They used such techniques in 2000 and 2004, and we got Bush as a result, with all the disastrous consequences. Both of those elections were stolen. Do you really think that with the burning hatred of Obama they are going to refrain from using exactly the same methods they used in 2000 in Florida and 2004 in Ohio? Don't be naive! Computer experts have shown how ludicrously easy it is to change results in voting machines by tinkering with the software. Just have it automatically convert a small percentage of the Democratic votes to GOP, and you've got the election. That's why exit polls consistently indicated that more people had voted Democratic than turned out to have done so according to the machines. The British press covered this more in 2000 than the US press did. I still think Chris and company are way underestimating the potential impact of these illegitimate techniques.
mjbinto is right and I might add that when the Supreme Court in their Supreme Indiference did not take the Florida voting case appeared to say you have a right to vote, just not to have it counted. Still trying to fiqure out how you put a corporation in jail. Back to the point of this thread. It is becoming clear the core of the repulican party is made up of the undereducated, the religious fanatic and the selfish rich. It is the last bastion of the white male and they are using the party to discriminate against all people of color, women, and gays.