Presidential Election 2016

[MNdible]

He's using past information to predict future events. He's repeatedly pointed out the limitations of that methodology (working from a very small sample size, the risk that things have fundamentally changed and the old data is no longer relevant, etc.), but... it is what it is, man. He's not publishing articles just to rain on the Bern parade, and I'm really not sure where you're getting that idea from.

[LakeCharles]

Gonna have to agree with MNdible. I also am a Bernie supporter, but that doesn't mean Nate Silver is making stuff up, or using less stats than before. He actually has a much more refined as improved model now, but whereas before he went through the technical minutae in detail in his articles, he know puts the methodology in footnotes, or in the models themselves on the sidebar. I've been a reader of 538 for 8 years now, he's still good. Last election cycle the conservative media was striking these same notes about how it wasn't supported by facts, yada yada. And then they were all wrong.

[Tiller]

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congres ... gn-n433581

Republican House Speaker John Boehner will resign as Speaker and leave his seat at the end of October, NBC News has confirmed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/us/jo ... gress.html

Most recently, Mr. Boehner, 65, was trying to craft a solution to keep the government open through the rest of the year, but was under pressure from a growing base of conservatives who told him that they would not vote for a bill that did not defund Planned Parenthood. Several of those members were on a path to remove Mr. Boehner as speaker, though their ability to do so was far from certain.

Mr. Boehner’s surprise announcement came just a day after Pope Francis visited the Capitol, the fulfillment of a 20-year dream for Mr. Boehner of having a pontiff address Congress. He had a private audience with Francis before the pope’s address to a joint meeting of Congress.

[David Greene]

- Boehner has been frastrated by Tea Party politics for years. It's well known he butts heads with the crazies.
- He is Catholic
- He cried profusely during the Pope's address
- He resigns

I don't think he was in real danger of losing the Speakership. My guess is (terminal?) health problems and a crisis of conscience.

[MNdible]

Boehner probably realized that he's been fighting to keep the worst job in the world. He was getting sniped at from all sides -- why put up with it?

[David Greene]

There's also some suggestion that he sees the Pope's address as a crowning achievement and just doesn't think there's much else significant he can do.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... story.html

I hope that's true and I'm wrong.

[EOst]

What the journos on Twitter have suggested is that he would have won a vote for Speaker if it had taken place, but he was afraid it would have been used as a wedge issue in the primaries against those who voted for him.

[MNdible]

Fine way to run a party.

[mulad]

Boehner cries at the drop of a hat in everyday situations, so I'm a bit doubtful the visit substantially changed his plans. I'm betting he would have decided to quit the job within a few months anyway, or that he might have left earlier but had this event on the calendar that he wanted to experience before leaving.

[twincitizen]

[changing gears]

What's The Matter With Martin O'Malley's campaign?

I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for this guy's campaign to get some traction. Between Hillary's scandals and flaws (real or perceived), and Bernie's age and lack of electability (real or perceived), here we have a young-ish, fairly handsome dude whose politics sit somewhere in the middle of Hillary and Bernie. All I'm saying is I hope he makes an impact. I worry about the mass appeal and electability of both Bernie and Hillary. Here we have a guy who is seemingly perfectly electable. Is he just boring? Too early in the campaign to have name recognition? Lacking wealthy donors? It leaves me perplexed for sure.

[MNdible]

Did we mention that Rybak appears to be in camp O'Malley?

[EOst]

O'Malley's liberalism is a pose; his record is dramatically more conservative than Hillary's or Bernie's.

[David Greene]

^^^ Ah, that explains Rybak.

[MNdible]

Ah, yes, the old RINO rhetoric that has served the Republicans so well... isn't it time the Democrats used it too?

[EOst]

I don't think O'Malley is a "DINO" or anything like that; he's clearly still a Democrat. I'm just not particularly excited by him, because his views are farther from my own than the other two viable candidates mentioned.

But, y'know, do you.

[David Greene]

DINO has nothing to do with it. O'Malley is certainly a Democrat. He's just not a liberal. Rybak is in the same camp. We can in fact call out people pretending to be liberal without resorting to the DINO label.

[MNdible]

You know these labels are pretty meaningless, right? Liberal, compared to what? I think we can safely say that the whole lot of them are well to the left of the current center of the American population, and maybe even to the left of most Democratic voters. Sanders, as a self-styled socialist, can presumably say that nobody else in the race is a liberal. Unless, of course, by liberal we're referring to economic policies...

It's one thing to say that one candidate is more liberal than another one, but to decide that one is a liberal and the other is not is no different than the DINO.

[LakeCharles]

You know these labels are pretty meaningless, right? Liberal, compared to what? ... It's one thing to say that one candidate is more liberal than another one, but to decide that one is a liberal and the other is not is no different than the DINO.

So all the Democratic and Republican candidates are liberal. Some maybe more so, some less. But you can't say Ben Carson isn't liberal. Similarly you can't say Bernie Sanders isn't conservative.

[David Greene]

It's one thing to say that one candidate is more liberal than another one, but to decide that one is a liberal and the other is not is no different than the DINO.

By that logic Trump could be called a liberal. You make a good point about labels and the fact that we're talking about a multidimensional continuum of beliefs but there does come a point where someone is decidedly not liberal. From where I sit, Clinton is not a liberal. She's cast herself as a centrist, deliberately shunning the "liberal" label. She's corporatist, which to me is absolutely not liberal. I put Obama in the same economic category.

To put a finer point on it, I'd say that O'Malley is not economically liberal. Socially, I'd say most Democrats are on the liberal side of things but that's only because the GOP has pulled things *so* far right that it's difficult to accept modern social norms at all and *not* be socially liberal in the current U.S. political universe.

In any case, the bottom line is that O'Malley isn't getting traction. I think it's because being somewhere in-between Clinton and Sanders on various issues doesn't differentiate a candidate enough. No one gets excited about lukewarm water.

[MNdible]

At this point, I'd say the reason O'Malley isn't getting any traction is because there's no oxygen in the room (the Republicans obviously have sucked up most of it, and the Clinton-Sanders horserace has taken the rest). It's clear a lot of Dems are nervous about Clinton at this point, and aren't ready to hitch their wagon to Sanders. At this point, Biden's toe in the water is enough to make him the alternative, and if he gets into the race, O'Malley is done. If Biden doesn't jump in, then I think O'Malley will get a more serious look, especially with the Democratic debates coming up soon.