Biden losing in swing states

[Elixir]

People really are stupid as hell aren't they.

Yup.

 

[TomC]

People really are stupid as hell aren't they.

Worse than that really.
Stupid, violent, and tribal.

Welcome to This Vale of Tears.


Too bad Jesus didn't develop a serious following. Imagine how different the current human situation would be if the dominant culture were attached to ethical teachings like, "What you do for the Least you do for Me" and "Love your God and love your neighbor. The rest is details."

Sadly, Jesus never developed a real following. Here we are. Living in a Christian world.
Tom

 

[Shadowy Man]

People really are stupid as hell aren't they.

Worse than that really.
Stupid, violent, and tribal.

Welcome to This Vale of Tears.


Too bad Jesus didn't develop a serious following. Imagine how different the current human situation would be if the dominant culture were attached to ethical teachings like, "What you do for the Least you do for Me" and "Love your God and love your neighbor. The rest is details."

Sadly, Jesus never developed a real following. Here we are. Living in a Christian world.
Tom

In another thread we are trying to be convinced that Christians outnumber atheists, yet when I look around I can barely find any people that actually follow the precepts of Christianity. And the same poster said we shouldn't believe what people say they believe. So, the conclusion is that there aren't that many Christians at all.

 

[Politesse]

I can barely find any people that actually follow the precepts of Christianity.

Hard to find someone if they are living in the countryside and eschewing wealth or political involvement.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I can barely find any people that actually follow the precepts of Christianity.

Hard to find someone if they are living in the countryside and eschewing wealth or political involvement.

Fair enough but I still figure that they represent a small fraction of self-proclaimed Christians.

 

[AdamWho]

Obama was losing to McCain and Romney at this point too.....

 

[ZiprHead]

Random sample telephone dialing

random sampling dialing

www.pbs.org

“There’s a dirty little secret that we pollsters need to own up to,” wrote polling expert David Hill, president of Hill Research Consultants and a 2020 fellow at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife Center for the Political Future, in The Washington Post in 2020. “People don’t talk to us anymore, and it’s making polling less reliable.”

“There’s a whole class of Americans who don’t answer calls with caller IDs that they don’t know,” Hill said. “If we’re honest … this is all a complete mess today because we can’t really have a true random sample anymore because we can’t get a random sample or anything close to that to cooperate.”

Some Americans are very picky about what calls they answer. Those who are not selective tend to have different traits than those who are, a situation that needs to be corrected by the polling institution, Hill said. People who tend to pick up any and all phone calls tend to be older, conservative, less wealthy and less educated, he said. So you’re not capturing opinions of younger, more affluent, progressive and educated voters if you only use the ones you gather from people who pick up their phones all the time, he said.

 

[Elixir]

“People don’t talk to us anymore, and it’s making polling less reliable.”

^ That’s why I am more concerned with the performance difference between Sleepy Joe and Random Unnamed Democrat, than I am about the difference between Biden and Trump.

 

[Emily Lake]

when I'm a poor artsy faggot atheist, in semi-rural Jesustan Indiana.

Perhaps you should have tried attending community college, I hear they have towers of pure ivory.

Be sure and go to a rural one though, I hear "urban" community colleges are dangerous. You know, cause of all the urban people.

WTF?

Just try and find a college that's in the middle of a field somewhere. It should be easy to spot, as there won't be very many other towers around.

WTF?

Poli has taken umbrage at being called an ivory tower academic. Somehow he has confused this term, which references his viewpoints and their complete lack of any relation to the real world, with some very literal assumption of the tower-dwelling nobility that are so very commonplace these days...

I haven't taken umbrage, I'm laughing my ass off. If there's a polar opposite to an "ivory tower", it's the place where I work (and I'm fine with that).

"Ivory Tower" doesn't refer to a location or a place, it refers to a mindset. It's a metaphor.

 

[Emily Lake]

My observation is that humans are pretty much as likely to be assholes no matter where they live. The only difference is that in a city - where 99% of the people are faceless strangers to you - it's a lot easier to surround yourself with only like-minded people, and therefore pretend like nobody else exists.

I agree with this, except for the part about people being 99% assholes. I think most people are at least largely good, but we all have plenty of faults.

Agree with pretty much all of your post, except this bit I didn't say 99% of people are assholes. I said that the likelihood of any given person being an asshole is the same no matter where you are. I also said that 99% of the people in a city are strangers. I think you may have inadvertently squashed those two sentences together.

I think most people are well-meaning... but they're also self-focused and largely unaware of the impact their actions have on other people. Much of the day-to-day ills of the world are the result of a lack of forethought, not of malice.

 

[Emily Lake]

Random sample telephone dialing

random sampling dialing

www.pbs.org

Some Americans are very picky about what calls they answer. Those who are not selective tend to have different traits than those who are, a situation that needs to be corrected by the polling institution, Hill said. People who tend to pick up any and all phone calls tend to be older, conservative, less wealthy and less educated, he said. So you’re not capturing opinions of younger, more affluent, progressive and educated voters if you only use the ones you gather from people who pick up their phones all the time, he said.

They really could have just stopped right there. It's age more than anything else that creates this gap. I know several younger, well-off, educated conservatives who don't answer the phone if they don't know the number calling. Income, political leaning, and education aren't predictors for this, not to any material degree. In fact, I'd say that everything beyond age is speculatory on the part of the article, and probably misses the point.

The only correlation in there that seems moderately reasonable is that older people tend to be more conservative. And that's not a commentary on Boomers, that's a commentary on age, and it has pretty much always been the case. Younger people 100 years ago were more progressive and their grandparents were more conservative. When you're young, you don't have anything at risk, and you're packed full of idealism and dreams. By the time you get old, you're cynical, and you've seen the cost (not necessarily monetary) of heart-before-brain approaches to policy.

But the other bits - education and income... that's just the inherent nature of the distribution. There are more poor people than there are wealthy, so no matter what sample you're looking at (unless you're stratifying on income) you're going to see a higher proportion of less wealthy respondents. Same thing for education. The article is assuming that lower income and less education are contributing factors to a person being willing to answer the phone. But they're not. The only contributing factor is age. That's it.

Pretty much anyone Gen-X or younger just ignores it if it's an unknown number - it's probably spam, and if it's important they'll leave a message.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think one problem with polling is the "push polling". I don't want to do polls anymore, because I get a tad bit upset when I know when the person on the other line is trying to manipulate my vote.

 

[ZiprHead]

I think one problem with polling is the "push polling". I don't want to do polls anymore, because I get a tad bit upset when I know when the person on the other line is trying to manipulate my vote.

The last poll I participated in turned into a push poll about 7 questions in. I told the poll taker to fuck off and hung up.

 

[Toni]

My observation is that humans are pretty much as likely to be assholes no matter where they live. The only difference is that in a city - where 99% of the people are faceless strangers to you - it's a lot easier to surround yourself with only like-minded people, and therefore pretend like nobody else exists.

I agree with this, except for the part about people being 99% assholes. I think most people are at least largely good, but we all have plenty of faults.

Agree with pretty much all of your post, except this bit I didn't say 99% of people are assholes. I said that the likelihood of any given person being an asshole is the same no matter where you are. I also said that 99% of the people in a city are strangers. I think you may have inadvertently squashed those two sentences together.

I think most people are well-meaning... but they're also self-focused and largely unaware of the impact their actions have on other people. Much of the day-to-day ills of the world are the result of a lack of forethought, not of malice.

I think that people do, for the most part, have tunnel vision, often through a lens of myopia and no small amount of astigmatism. Whatever the mix of self-interest and altruism people operate under.

I think most people are well meaning, and also at least somewhat self centered. It’s hard to see how things will unfold and perhaps better so, for risk of paralysis.

Pretty sure I did misread and mix up what you wrote. Apologies.

 

[Elixir]

I think most people are well-meaning... but they're also self-focused and largely unaware of the impact their actions have on other people.

IOW, they’re (we’re) assholes.
Toni is way too nice to ever see people that way. I try to treat people nicely, but also try to keep what you say here front of mind.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I’m in the upper half of the age category and I don’t pick up the phone when I don’t know who it is. I barely pick up the phone when I do know who it is.

 

[Emily Lake]

I’m in the upper half of the age category and I don’t pick up the phone when I don’t know who it is. I barely pick up the phone when I do know who it is.

I think the latter comes with being an introvert. At least, that's the excuse I give myself when I just really don't feel like talking to my sister or my mom or my husband...

 

[Politesse]

when I'm a poor artsy faggot atheist, in semi-rural Jesustan Indiana.

Perhaps you should have tried attending community college, I hear they have towers of pure ivory.

Be sure and go to a rural one though, I hear "urban" community colleges are dangerous. You know, cause of all the urban people.

WTF?

Just try and find a college that's in the middle of a field somewhere. It should be easy to spot, as there won't be very many other towers around.

WTF?

Poli has taken umbrage at being called an ivory tower academic. Somehow he has confused this term, which references his viewpoints and their complete lack of any relation to the real world, with some very literal assumption of the tower-dwelling nobility that are so very commonplace these days...

I haven't taken umbrage, I'm laughing my ass off. If there's a polar opposite to an "ivory tower", it's the place where I work (and I'm fine with that).

"Ivory Tower" doesn't refer to a location or a place, it refers to a mindset. It's a metaphor.

So you think I'm overeducated, but also suppose that I have never heard of the concept of the "ivory tower"? Yes, I know it's a metaphor. A stupid metaphor that does not apply to the rural community college that TomC is attempting to insult and that you have attempted to attach to me personally. No, earning a Master's degree, and later living in the Bay area for a whopping four years, did not and indeed could not have erased my memories of growing up in the countryside, or my ability to empathize with those who have done likewise. I despise Trumpism because it harms those he promises to champion, not because I hate the people he's screwing over. That's like arguing that I must hate lions if I oppose lion hunting, because lion hunters claim they love lions more than anyone.

Trump and his minions hate the rural poor more than anyone alive, if you measure hatred by impact rather than rhetoric. Rightwing neo-fascism will not benefit a single farmer in all of food-producing North America, It just won't. It's a false promise, a lie knowingly and cynically told. And far less of the population even buys into that lie than the Republicans would have you believe. There are plenty of good people, wherever you go in this country. But the people screaming in the streets about how much better things would be if they were just allowed to line up their political enemies and let a Smith and Wesson sort the good from the bad aren't the good people. And believe it or not, I never believed that they were. Before I ever earned a degree in any subject. Before I ever stepped foot in the town where now I live. I always rejected the rhetoric of misdirected hatred and suspicion, and I always would have, no matter what profession I had landed in or what town I came to live in. That there is such a thing as right and wrong is not a lesson that I learned, nor ever could have learned, in a classroom.

 

[Emily Lake]

I think most people are well-meaning... but they're also self-focused and largely unaware of the impact their actions have on other people.

IOW, they’re (we’re) assholes.
Toni is way too nice to ever see people that way. I try to treat people nicely, but also try to keep what you say here front of mind.

I always figure asshole has an element of malice in it. But I get the gist.

 

[Emily Lake]

So you think I'm overeducated, but also suppose that I have never heard of the concept of the "ivory tower"? Yes, I know it's a metaphor. A stupid metaphor. No, earning a Master's degree, and later living in the Bay area for a whopping four years, did not and indeed could not have erased my memories of growing up in the countryside, or my ability to empathize with those who have done likewise. I despise Trumpism because it harms those he promises to champion, not because I hate the people he's screwing over. That's like arguing that I must hate lions if I oppose lion hunting. Trump and his minions hate the rural poor more than anyone alive, if you measure hatred by impact rahter than rhetoric. Rightwing neo-fascism will not benefit a single farmer in all of food-producing North America, It just won't. It's a false promise, a lie knowingly and cynically told. And far less of the population even buys into that lie than the Republicans would have you believe. There are plenty of good people, wherever you go in this country. But the people screaming in the streets about how much better things would be if they were just allowed to line up their political enemies and let a Smith and Wesson sort the good from the bad aren't the good people. And believe it or not, I never believed that they were. Before I ever earned a degree in any subject. Before I ever stepped foot in the town where I live. I always rejected the rhetoric of hate and suspicion, and I always would have, no matter what profession I had landed in or what town I came to live in.

You know what the problem is, Poli? It's that you claim to hate Trumpism... but you simultaneously define anyone who isn't a true-blue-every-day-democrat as being a Trumpist. You seem incapable of separating the myriad of conservative and moderate positions in the world from your imagined frothing-at-the-mouth "trumpist". And then you wrap that up with your febrile fantasy of political jihadists wanting to literally kill people who disagree with them. It's nothing more than the rhetoric you wrap around your own brand of hate so that you feel righteously justified in treating other people with a truly disgusting level of disdain and contempt.

Look, you and I have had some interesting discussions over the years. And some interesting disagreements. But the one area where I really dislike interacting with you at all is when it comes to politics. Because you have repeatedly shown that you have zero compassion for "those people" and you tend to just ooze scorn and hate when you talk about "those people". And you're amazing quick to lump damned near anyone into the bucket of "those people" that you look down on so very, very obviously.

If it takes the sting out of it any, you're far from alone in that category. There's a reason that I have long tended to avoid most political discussions. It's because political ideologues are damned near zealots, and I just don't have the patience for that kind of hate.