Is the probability that the GOP will steal control of the House in the November elections 18.4%?

Is the probability that the GOP will steal control of the House in the November elections 18.4%?


538's hybridization and weighting of polling and other data say there is a 84.6% chance that the Democrats take control of the House in 2018.


Yet the political markets are selling those buy contracts at 66 cents -- political investors think the chance the Dems actually secure this victory is only 66% or 18.4% less.


Can these very different estimates be reconciled?


One hypothesis: Nate Silver's shop does NOT estimate the likelihood of the GOP STEALING votes. When these polls are conducted, people who believe themselves registered state their voting intention, but many of them do not yet know their registrations and thus votes will be suppressed, or that their mail-in votes will be thrown out on a variety of illicit technicalities.


Is 84.6-66=18.6% the (extraordinary) measure of the likelihood that the GOP will "steal" the House in 2018? This is not the probability that they will TRY to steal the election -- that probability may be 100%. It is the probability that they will SUCCEED.


Alternative hypothesis: 18.4% is the measure of the likelihood that the final three weeks of key campaigns will see massive infusions of GOP financing and attack and other ads that will convert massive numbers of voters across many swing districts.


Of course, the 18.4% gap could be explained by a combination of these two, failures of 538's methods, and failure of the political markets. We just don't know.

Trump is the Anti-Eisenhower

Trump is the Anti-Eisenhower.

We once had a brave man who led by example, served his country, built up our infrastructure, and taxed the rich. He enforced the Constitution, protected civil rights, executed the decisions of the Supreme Court, and despite a lifetime career in the military, warned us of the dangers of its overreach.

And I would bet half my portfolio that he did not frenetically cheat on his wife, assault women and girls, cheat on his taxes, collude with the Russians, and call women 'Horseface' and 'Pocahontas' in public or private, much less perform the 1001 embarrassments we have endured in only two years.

I was born in the 50's, so I have watched my country fall from The Great Anti-Fascist Hero to the Monstrous Fascist Anti-Hero who serves, and serves sadistically, only Mammon.

And I have watched the Greatest Generation, some great liberals, some great conservatives, descend into this anti-fact, anti-reason, incoherent, sadistic blood mob, hooting like angry chimps when anyone dares stand in their way. When women came forward crying out about the abomination of a man who hurt them, this sadistic mob attacked those women and those who supported them and despite his falsified appointment to the Court are MORE inclined to vote GOP to punish those who would dare ask for justice from the Grotesque Old Patriarchy.

My generation is the Anti-Merlin, converting gold into dreck.

I have to accept that as Pogo said, rephrasing Commodore Perry, we have met the enemy and he is us.

The US is now the existential threat, the cancer that will kill humankind. Cancer of the wallet — and we must be excised from the human body before we kill off every human being on the planet.

The international community needs to ostracize any nation that does not commit to the Paris Accords and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. No trade, no treaties, no travel. Starve us into submission until we repent and place our leadership into the hands of sane and decent people and commit to trying to avert ecological collapse before it is too late. We can’t clone Eisenhower in time, so like Diogenes we must set off in search of one honest person to lead us out of this darkness.

Shall we find it possible to forgive the Alt Right Soldiers in this dangerous culture war?

A democracy cannot survive if one exposé after another uncovering criminality and deceit is ignored by a blood mob, millions strong, surrounding the castle, protecting evil in power while cheering on attacks against truth tellers.

That’s not painting a rosy picture of nearly half of America, but it’s not inaccurate.

If we bend over backwards to understand what is happening, I think we come to this: there is one time when most of us think it is justified to plug our ears and refuse to risk conversion to another view, and that time is in War.

In War we expect our soldiers to give only name, rank and serial number, refusing to otherwise engage. Resistance to reason is commended as strength against propaganda, coercion, and the risk of treason. We believe that the incredible strain of being a prisoner of war makes it impossible to honestly evaluate propaganda, we are at risk of brainwashing under such pressure, so we are exhorted to treat all communication as false, and to resist instead.

When the soldier hums an anthem and plugs his ears against his captive’s arguments, we applaud his valor. We know that self-interest pushes the captive into embracing the man with the whip and the bread, and the man who refuses and faces lash and starvation instead is a true hero.

But perhaps many never really understood the point of this sort of valor? Especially those raised in closed-minded Churches that praised congregants for clinging to faith in the face of reason? Did they learn the pernicious lesson that plugging one’s ears against attacks on one’s current dogma is not ignorant, but somehow valorous? That refusing to learn, especially that Emperor has no clothes, is not vice but virtue?

Is this a description, perhaps even a defense, of at least some of those Americans who seem deaf to the mountains of evidence that this is an authoritarian Coup and democracy is fast slipping away?

Are they plugging their ears and humming to block us out because this is what the loyal, faithful, obedient soldier does, even when the Officers in Charge have turned traitor?

Surely there is no forgiveness for those who have justified terrorizing sexual assault victims or terrorizing children in detention camps or depriving the poor of food stamps and the elderly of medical care, but what of the others?  The simple, faithful soldiers, already, but unbeknownst to them, victims of this cabal, too? Shall we forgive them?