Don We Now Our Gay Approval

Fa-la-la, la-la-la, LA LA LA

Come on. Get into the Christmas spirit. Forget about the election tomorrow. What election? PREcisely.

Fine. Election chatter it is. Look! History has a chance to be made tomorrow.

Vision 1: A Mormon President

no caption needed

With Mormons considered part of mainstream Christianity by so many Americans, electing an LDS President may not be a very big deal. Mormons have been governors, Senate Majority Leaders, and are not disqualified from holding the presidency in the same way that women are. Kidding! Oh my God I am so kidding it's not even funny. Except maybe the kidding is completely the opposite of kidding, because there seems to be little to no pushback against a fringe Christian / polytheist holding the office of President, and at the same time, we have yet to see a woman nominated by a major political party. Why is that? (The question is rhetorical.)

Vision 2: Another split in the popular vote winner and the Electoral College winner

You'll remember that Albert Gore won the popular vote in 2000 but not exactly the presidency. (Don't mention the Florida "recount." I don't want to talk about that. Ever again. Maybe.) Anyway: if Willard Romney wins the popular vote this year while the President takes the Electoral College, we Americans who are interested in democracy have a chance to use the ensuing controversy for good.

Twice in twelve years, the popular vote winner will have been denied the Oval Office. Each party will have been victimized once. Everyone on each side of the aisle will hate the system, and with just cause.

MAYBE FINALLY enough pressure will be put on Congress to enact a constitutional amendment that abolishes the Electoral College altogether. Failing that (and you should always assume a certain degree of failure from Congress), more legislatures may enact a law that gives that state's electoral votes to the popular vote winner regardless of individual state results.

(Read.)

MAYBE. If we strike while the iron is hot, maybe even sick-of-political-ads Ohioans and Coloradonites and Virginians and Floridians will climb on board.

But this can only happen if Mitt Romney, the most inept, secretive, dishonest and duplicitous presidential candidate in the history of the universe, inexplicably wins 50.01 percent of the vote tomorrow. Go America!

(i have got to do something about my broken caps lock key, it's flaring up again.)

Vision 3: Gay marriage is approved at the ballot box for the first time in U.S. history

again, a caption would be overkill

Measures legalizing SSM are up for voter approval in three navy blue states: MD, MN and WA (woot woot). Wherever gay marriage (also known as "marriage") has been implemented, it has always been as a judicial action. It has never crested 50 percent approval. Until tomorrow, when it might. Or might not.

While I would be especially proud to see my home state be the first to

 -- WE INTERRUPT THIS CLAUSE WITH EMERGENCY POLL NUMBERS --

Washington State Referendum 74: Poll numbers, averaged
Summer: 50.5 for, 42.5 against
September: 54.0 for, 38.3 against
October: 53.7 for, 40.4 against
November: 52.0 for, 42.0 against
Those are admirably consistent.

-- WE RETURN YOU TO WHATEVER THE H --

pass SSM by a vote of the people, I also am confident that should it fail, it won't fail repeatedly. Achieving marriage equality is a foregone conclusion. Whether it happens in 2012 or 2014 or 2016 is the only question at this point. With nationwide polls showing quick movement toward acceptance of SSM (look at these numbers! they're almost too good to be true), the war is won. The battles remain to be fought, and traditionalists will shriek for a time, but the eventual outcome is certain. Gays will marry, and it will be soon. Not soon enough. Just plain soon. Which is not good enough. But still just plain good.

Please vote.

Poll Dance, 10/29 Edition

In last month's polling update, I coined something I like to call the Rule of Fifty. (Scroll down to the previous post if you have extra time coming out of your ears. Ew. On the other hand, yay, extra time!)

According to the Rule, a candidate's 50-47 lead in the polls is worth measurably more than a 44-38 advantage, even though the latter lead is twice as big. People change their minds less easily these days and the undecided tend to break pretty evenly. Even getting to 49 is a good sign. But 50 is a nice round number.

But a single score in the 50's is hardly significant. Polling companies are biased, imperfect, and subject to statistical variation. It takes multiple 50's showing up in a candidate's polling portfolio before you should consider it a good sign that the electorate has settled on its guy. In that state, at least. National surveys are nigh useless in our arch-undemocratic system.

So, it is with plenty of confidence and a healthy amount of angst that I bring you the most pertinent polling figures I could find. All are recent: the oldest survey dates from three weeks ago, and most of the results are from within the last week. (I get the numbers from here.)

Look at some digits from Virginia, with the President's number listed first:

51-47. 51-46. 50-43. 51-46.

But, at the same time, one notices:

50-48. 50-47. 51-44. All for Romney. The state is not settled at all, and may in fact come down to third-party votes or Hurricane Sandy's yet-to-be-determined impact.

Then, Ohio, where Romney hasn't posted a single 50, EVER, so all of these are Obama leads:

51-47. 50-49. 50-45. 51-46. 50-46. 50-46.

Of course, the Rule cuts both ways. Florida is on its way to choosing Romney:

51-46. 50-49. 51-44. 51-47. And nine more 48's and 49's. All those numbers come from right-leaning pollsters, but the left-leaning ones have yet to hand Obama a single score of 50 or higher this fall.

With that in mind, I prepared a little electoral map. For each swing state, I applied the Rule of Fifty, granting the state to the candidate who crossed that threshold the most often in the past three weeks. Then I gave NH and VA to Romney, granting the tie to the challenger in both cases. Why not? His people are very enthused about removing the President from office. Maybe you've noticed. (Sometimes there's frothing involved.)

The resulting map:

Link to 270-to-win.com

Obama 277, Romney 261.

That map isn't my official prediction. (I do think CO and NH will go blue, and VA will be too close to call on election night.) No, it's just what the polls say, today, with a merciful 198 hours left until polls close on the West Coast.

P.S. -- My experience in manic poll-watching has taught me one thing, which forms the backbone of the Rule. Any single poll is insignificant. Aggregating the surveys is the key to reading them well. This is in stark conflict to over-reaction and sensationalism, which happens to be the key to TV ratings. A Gallup survey that shows Romney up by 6 or 7 is much more advertising-dollar-friendly. A single score in the 50's is interesting, but not meaningful. Several 50's: now we're talking.

Poll Dance, 9/23 Edition

I'll probably want to do a poll-watching post every so often as the presidential election nears. Here you go!

This time, there's a myth that needs dispelling.

The race for the White House is often described as "neck-and-neck" or too close to call. On its face, that looks accurate. Gallup offers us this chart, titled "Obama 48, Romney 46 in Swing States."

Real Clear Politics informs us that there are still 100 electoral votes up for grabs, with Obama securely holding on to 247 and Romney clinging to 191. It takes 270 to win, and neither man has that many sewn up.

Fivethirtyeight.com tells us that the President carried a 60-70 percent chance of re-election through the summer, and right now wins three-quarters of its program's simulations. It gives Obama a 3.3 percent lead in the popular vote.

Close race, right? Just a couple points here or there, sometimes three, sometimes four. It'll come down to the wire, right? Maybe we'll be up all night on Election Day, holding our breath as votes trickle in from Ohio, or maybe we'll even get treated to another recount in Florida? Stay tuned! Right?

Hogwash. The race isn't anywhere near as competitive as it sounds.

To support my point, I'd like to invoke something called the "Rule of Fifty." (Please don't google it, because I just made it up. And it just sends you to some chess thingy. You're not even playing chess right now, are you? Didn't think so.)

Premise of Fraley's Rule of Fifty: We live in hyper-partisan times. When a voter chooses his or her preferred candidate, it's very difficult to change his or her mind. The voter may take his time making his choice; she may remain undecided for a long time, through the primaries, while mini-scandals erupt, all summer long.

But when that voters settles on a candidate, he's actually settled on that candidate in a permanent way, and it would take a great deal of upheaval to change his mind.

My argument: A 44-38 lead for the Democrat in June means nothing. A 50-47 lead in late September means everything. The race is actually closer in the first scenario, when minds are changeable and the pool of undecided voters is large. Even though the Democrat has a lead twice as large in June, the three-point lead in September is far more significant. There is no pool of undecided voters in the second scenario -- just a puddle.

The late three-point lead is more powerful because people's minds are made up. If yours is, think about what it would take to change it.

Now, some numbers. If numbers creep you out, skip ahead to the wordy wordthings later on. All numbers are recent reputable poll results with Obama's "score" listed first.

Florida: 48-47. 49-44. 49-46.

Ohio: 48-44. 49-42. 51-46.


Virginia: 50-46. 50-43. 52-44.


(I left out unreliable polls who have shown an unreasonable partisan bent one way or the other.)

If Obama wins even one of these states, the electoral math becomes impossible for Romney. Not only must the Republican win all three, but he probably has to steal another pretty blue state like Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin, or New Hampshire, and even then it might not be enough to dethrone the President.

And, oh, by the way, Obama polls better in the five states just listed. Far more fifties than forties.

As Romney offers to the public gaffe upon gaffe upon gaffe upon piss-poor convention, Obama's starting to scrape 50, or reaching it, or crossing it, everywhere that matters.

(Visit this awesome place called 538 for more data. Blogger Nate Silver is a numbers guru, who dispassionately gathers polls to make political predictions. He is the best.)

The Rule of Fifty receives confirmation in job approval polls. Say you're the President. (Don't actually say that. You sounds foolish when you say those words!) You might slog your way through your first term with job approval ratings in the forties. If you're a terrible Chief Executive, you might flirt with the thirties. If you're truly an abysmal farce of a president, you might dip into the twenties. (Like him. Or him.)

But if you're in the fifties, people aren't going to vote you out of office, unless the challenger's charisma is so overwhelming that his positive ratings outshine yours by a large margin.

President Barack Hussein Obama (I still stifle a giggle when I type that sequence of words) has seen his job approval settle at 50 percent, just in time.

[ You don't have to trust me on that. Just check out the chart at Real Clear Politics with the numbers. Click on it. It is pretty.]

Meanwhile, presidential wannabe Willard Mitt Romney (Esquire) logs more approval numbers in the 30's than the 50's. There is a gap there too. So many gaps.

Enough stats. Barring a Mayan Apocalypse, we're going to get four more years of President Obama. If that causes your head to explode, sorry.*

* apology is insincere.

It's Like What Jesus Said About Gays

.

No, Screw You, Mitt Romney

Screw you, Mitt Rommey.

(All profanity has been edited out of this post. But you can add it back in, mentally. All right. Here we go.)

"There are 47 percent who are with him [President Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it... [My job] is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Well, screw you, Mitt Romney. I run a business that I started from scratch nine years ago. I work 50 hours a week to support a family.

Screw you hard, Mitt Romney, I pay my fair share in taxes every year. My taxation rate is higher than yours.

Screw you, Mitt Romney. Fifteen percent of my income goes toward health care costs, and I'm a moocher?

Screw you once again, but not for the last time, Willard Romney. I stayed home part-time with my first child when he was an infant, even though I couldn't really afford it, to give him the kind of nurturing he deserved.

Screw you even more, Romney. I am no victim. I make my own choices, and I choose to ridicule you for being a douchebag.

Screw you even harder, Mitt Romney. We are all dependent on government to an extent. Veterans, students, the elderly, the sick, teachers, cops, firefighters, single moms with deadbeat ex-husbands, the disabled, and everyone who buys food. Oh, and everyone who enjoys the protection of our awesome military. So, all of us, in other words. Yeah, screw you. From all of us who rely on the government in one or more aspects of our lives.

Screw you, Mitt Romney, for declaring your intent to become president in one breath, then in the next one, dismissing half the population as people you don't need to worry about if elected.

And if you produced that quote because you were at a fund-raiser and that's what you thought your donors wanted to hear, then screw you one final time. You just forfeited all benefit of the doubt I would otherwise have granted you.

Now go lose this election, because screw you.

Hell Is No People

(That's a play on Jean-Paul Sartre's famous line. Free culture!)

It's easy to populate hell, at first.

Stir in one cup of Hitler, a few tablespoons of Pol Pot, add a dash of fresh Manson, sprinkle some Osama on top, and cook over brimstone for, well, eternity.

The world has seen no shortage of evil perpetrated by selfish humans. I could easily add more "ingredients." They wouldn't even have to be mass murderers or serial killers. Plenty of people have produced plenty of evil actions. It happens every day.

But I'd like to suggest that not a single person deserves hell, at least not if it's defined as everlasting torment. Not bin Laden, not Adolf. Not the misguided Crusader who raped and pillaged his way through the Holy Land. Not the Soviet leader who sent millions to their death in labor camps. Not the serial kidnapper-murderer.

Only a warped sense of justice allows for another being's lifetime of maliciousness to be punished with an eternity of pain. Any punishment that becomes everlasting... have you even really considered it?

And I don't mean "considered it" as in, "imagined what it would be like to burn forever." Nobody but the most myopic literalist would argue that an actual lake of fire burns bad people, always. That's just silly and brainless. But even hell as a place at all, or as a state of mind, breaks down pretty quickly no matter what shape the punishment takes. Un-ending, un-endable pain, of any type, is not a just consequence commensurate with the crime.

No matter the crime.

I'll even take this one step farther. If there is a Satan, even it doesn't deserve hell. I don't care what it did to "earn" hell. It didn't deserve it. Eternal punishment isn't just something you mete out, if you're the one doing the meting. It's cruel. It's actually worse than the original crime.

One step farther still. Yes, that means I believe God's worse than Hitler, if hell is Adolf's final destination.

The last stop on this theological rabbit hole is to conclude that if God sends souls to hell, then God is more evil than Satan.


(I suppose this explains why I have to tune the Bible out when it promises hell for certain individuals.)

It's entirely possible that I suffer from a lack of perspective. I have the enviable luxury of talking about hell in purely philosophical terms, with the fortunate detachment that comes from never having to deal with the murder of a loved one. I don't have the life experience of someone whose son, whose sister, whose parent was killed. I never survived a genocide; I don't have a pastful of trauma to sort through. Nobody has ever hurt me very badly, and I'm lucky that way.

But is there a way for a person to perform enough evil to deserve an eternity of torment? I can't think of one. I welcome all enlightened answers to that very real question.


P.S. As I eliminate hell, my vision of heaven takes a hit as well. That's the next post in this series, I guess.

Now or Never? Yabetcha

In the Republican leadership's dream scenario, the run-up to the 2012 election goes something like this:

/dream sequence music plays/

/picture goes fuzzy, then sharpens again/

Economy still in doldrums. Growth is slow and fitful.

Unemployment stubbornly remains above 8 percent.

The housing market has not recovered.

Unlimited corporate money flows into the party's coffers because of the Citizens United ruling.

Voter suppression programs are signed into law in key swing states.

The President's health care legislation remains unpopular.

No dream sequence music or fuzzy-unfuzzy effects necessary! Close those slash-marks! We are living in the Republican dream scenario! Conservatives could hardly have asked for better circumstances to retake the Oval Office!

And yet.

The Romney-Ryan ticket trails in the polls, with the numbers worsening by the day, with time running out. (47 days until November 6.) The President enjoys an 80 percent chance of re-election, according to forecasts by the mathematically rigorous and very non-partisan projections at fivethirtyeight.com. (Look there for more details, it's a great place.) 

If a Republican can't win the White House in this climate, when can he?

He'll have to do it soon, if he wants to at all. The demographics aren't getting any better for R's. Just one race of humans gives more than half its votes to the conservative candidate, and that specific race is losing population share in dramatic fashion. By 2030, less than half of all Americans will be white.

Some numbers. Specifically, some percentages.

Blacks broke 91-3 for Obama.
Latinos made it 66-23 in support of Barack.
For Asians, it was 58-29 in favor of the President.

But that was 2008, you say. A valid criticism! Let us fetch some 2004 numbers.

Blacks: 88-11 for Kerry
Latinos: 53-44 for Kerry
Asians: 43-36 for Kerry.

You might want me to average out those figures. I might want that too. Since we agree, let's travel down that route as well. Averaging the last two election cycles:

Blacks: 90-7 for Democrats
Latinos: 60-34 for Democrats
Asians: 51-33 for Democrats

Those three ethnic groups, plus the ever-expanding racial category "other," will soon make up 50 percent of the population. Already, 44 percent of us are nonwhite.

But demographics don't even tell the whole story.

The economic climate won't be this bad in 2016. All indicators suggest that the worst is over, or ending.

The ruling that allows unlimited corporate cash to influence elections can't last forever.

The hot-button issues aren't trending toward R's. Gay marriage (or as I like to call it, "marriage") is supported by more than half the electorate, with that number climbing quickly. Two out of three Americans support the idea of a separate tax bracket for millionaires, quite the opposite of what R's are suggesting, which is another well-deserved tax cut for those downtrodden yachters.

Republicans really need a win now, or failing that, a victory in 2016, against presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. (Oh yes. It's happening.) Because if this cycle or the next one passes them by, the changes they'll need to court minority voters without losing their base along the way... it's hard to see that happening.

So... good luck* with that!

* ed. note: sarcasm!