Unscrewed: How 5th-grade political analysis became a GOP article of faith

Recent track of the election survey of the RAND Corporation

Not to toot my own horn, but I was on this Unskewed fella pretty damned early.

Indeed, before he inexplicably became the most-quoted polling analyst in the GOP, the subject of serious profiles in places like Slate and The Atlantic, and even merited mention in a column by Eugene Robinson, readers of our Daily Kos Elections Polling Wrap were introduced to one Dean Chambers.

The purpose, in our case? Gentle mockery:

Speaking of national polling: did you know that Mitt Romney is up by eleven points? He really is! According to the most unintentionally funny attempt at "unbiased polling" you ever will read. Go ahead and read the write-up. While you are at it, check out our man's archives, where you will learn that if you just take the left-wing bias out of polling, Mitt Romney is clearly favored to win 350+ electoral votes. Just...read the whole thing. Oh, and one more thing: You're welcome.

But, in our amused chuckling, something strange and awful happened. People on the right began to mimic the rantings of this small-bore Examiner polling blogger. And the issue of "skewed polls" suddenly, and inexplicably, became among the most discussed items in the electoral and political conversation for the past week.

What is mournful about that is not that Republicans in general, and Chambers in particular, are skeptics about polls showing Mitt Romney at risk of getting routed in November. It is human nature to be doubtful of pessimistic outcomes, especially when your heart is wholly invested in said outcome. Democrats were, to be sure, devout polling skeptics in both 2004 and 2010, while in the interim, it was the Republicans who were certain that what they were seeing on paper was not what they were going to see on Election Day.

My beef with Chambers, and the wave of Republicans that have followed his lead, isn't that it is analysis of polling that runs counter to my own.

My beef is that is simply poor analysis. It would barely qualify as acceptable polling analysis for a middle school student, and even then only because it would be mildly impressive for a middle schooler to be analyzing political polls.

That anyone in the Republican Party, or the political press, is taking him seriously is the biggest indictment of all in this whole sordid episode.

(Continue reading below the fold.)

As the Romney campaign unskews, will the GOP's racist id take over?

The Republican id and the vestiges of racism. In 1948, Southern Democrats, led by Strom Thurmond, bolted from the Democratic Party to form the States' Rights Democratic Party, better known as the Dixiecrats. Why? Because these Southern Democrats opposed desegregation:

Harry Truman established a highly visible President's Committee on Civil Rights and ordered an end to discrimination in the military in 1948. Additionally, the Democratic National Convention in 1948 adopted a plank proposed by Northern liberals led by Hubert Humphrey calling for civil rights; 35 southerners walked out. The move was on to remove Truman's name from the ballot in the South. This required a new party, which the Southern defectors chose to name the States' Rights Democratic Party, with its own nominee: Governor of South Carolina J. Strom Thurmond. [...] They later adopted a platform in Oklahoma City that said:

We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to learn one's living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.

Of course the Dixiecrats ended up in the modern Republican Party. And they came to dominate it. A sad trajectory for the Party of Lincoln. As times changed, the overt racism was cloaked in dogwhistles. See "Law and order." But on occasion, the cloak was unmasked. For example, Jesse Helms' infamous "Hands" ad in his 1990 North Carolina Senate race against Harvey Gantt:

(Continue reading below the fold.)

'I don't have the time' to explain tax plan, says Paul Ryan on Fox News

There's kind of a pattern here: Back in an August interview with Fox News' Brit Hume, Paul Ryan couldn't offer details on the budget proposal he and Mitt Romney would be promoting if elected because "we haven't run the numbers" and also he didn't want to get too wonky, didn't want to get into complicated baseline issues, and so on.

Sunday, talking to Fox News' Chris Wallace, Ryan again ducked, dodged, and evaded Wallace's attempts to get him to be specific about the Romney-Ryan tax plan, culminating in the claim that "I don't have the time. It would take me too long to go through all of the math."

Ryan is straight-up using his reputation as the Republican party's big budget wonk to get out of giving direct answers to any actual budget wonking questions. Because from his point of view, "I don't want to get too wonky" or "I don't have the time" are more palatable answers than "if I gave you details you'd see that I've been lying."

Is Mitt Romney a felon? A Q&A with MoveOn's lawyer.

MoveOn has sent a letter to the Public Integrity Division of the United State Department of Justice urging it to investigate whether Mitt Romney committed a felony by violating the False Statements Act when he claimed, on his personal financial disclosure form filed in 2011, that he was 'not involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way' after February 12, 1999. The letter was accompanied by detailed legal analysis backing up its allegations, and its author, Joseph Sandler, is no slouch, having served as general counsel to the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors Association, among others. I interviewed Sandler via email on Friday, and he has agreed to answer questions in the Comments. Here's what we discussed:

Q: What is the False Statements Act?

Sandler: The False Statements Act is a law that makes it a federal criminal offense'a felony'to knowingly make any false statement to any U.S. Government agency. It is applied in a wide variety of situations, including making false statements to federal law enforcement agents; making false statements on any kind of government form (grant, loan or assistance application, etc.); putting false information on reports required to be filed with any U.S. Government agency, etc. Even when a document you submit to a US Government agency doesn't have to be notarized or under oath, this law still makes it a crime to put any false information on that document'as long as the person who filled out the form knew the information was false, the information was relevant to the agency's operation and within its jurisdiction.

Q: Romney is accused of making false statements on his Public Financial Disclosure Form. What's the importance of this form, and what sorts of things was Romney required to disclose?

Sandler: The form Romney was required to fill out is the Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report. The Ethics in Government Act of 1978'one of the reform laws passed after the Watergate scandal'requires this form to be filled out by candidates for President and Vice President; presidential nominees to Executive Branch positions requiring Senate confirmation; the incumbent President and Vice President; most of the White House staff; all federal employees appointed by the President; and most very senior federal officials in the Civil Service and special Government employees, and certain other federal officials. The purpose of the form is to disclose personal financial interests'income received, assets held, debts'so that the public (and for incumbent officials, federal ethics officers) can determine whether there may be a conflict of interest on the part of the federal official.

Weekend Polling: Advantage Team Blue

The Polltracker chart does not include the Dispatch poll out this morning as of this writing.

A trio of interesting newspaper polls just out in the last twelve hours show an advantage for the Blue Team.

Ohio

In Ohio, Columbus Dispatch: Obama 52 51 Romney 41 42 (+9). The two were tied at 45 in August.

What's interesting here is not simply the confirmation of an Obama lead. The internals show Obama splitting the senior vote and winning everyone else. This, with Ohioans casting ballots starting Tuesday.  And not to put too fine a point on it, this from National Review:

In terms of the broader election, I don't want to be the one who contradicts Karl Rove's view that Romney can win without Ohio, but he can't. It isn't just that historically no Republican has won the presidency without Ohio's electoral votes that 'proves' that point. It also is the fact that Ohio is a bell-weather state, so if a candidate cannot win Ohio ' especially a candidate operating under a very-low-margin-of-error strategy ' the likelihood that that candidate wins enough of the other five to nine toss-up states is not high. We are seeing that in the polling results in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Virginia. The election isn't over, but it appears that Romney will need a big Obama misstep to win.

Iowa

The Des Moines Register's go-to pollster in IA, Ann Selzer, has Obama up 49-45 (+4). There hasn't been a DMR poll since February (Romney was up by 2).

Romney leads by a huge margin on who would be better for business,

But so far they're not convinced Romney will do a better job of shoring up the economy. He trails slightly (47 percent to 46 percent) in voters' perception of who would be the better economy fixer.

Also note:

Thirty-seven days from Election Day, Iowa has few undecided voters left ' just 2 percent.

But 10 percent of likely voters say they could still change their minds. Of that group, more than half are independent voters.

'The 10 percent persuadable could change the race,' Democratic strategist Celinda Lake said.

The Polltracker chart includes the DMR poll out last night.

Massachusetts Senate

The Boston Globe has Elizabeth Warren (D) over Scott Brown (R-inc) by 5, 43-38 with 18% undecided. That reverses a May 2 point Brown lead. From the Globe:

This survey is the sixth of eight public polls taken this month that show Warren ahead.

Warren's lead is within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent, meaning a spread of as much as 8 percentage points between the candidates would still statistically count as a dead heat. Still, the survey is sobering for Brown six weeks before the election.

'It's trending away from Brown,'' said Smith. 'Brown right now is not doing well enough among Democrats to offset the advantage that ­Warren has,' said Smith. 'That's just such a big obstacle to overcome for any Republican candidate' in Massachusetts.

The Polltracker chart does not include the Boston Globe poll out this morning as of this writing.

Finally, keep in mind the under-appreciated RAND poll shows a stable race today.

Since the narrative from the media will be straining for a Romney comeback to make this a race, keep in mind where we are the Sunday before the debates.

Mitt touts Romneycare he plans to gut

To secure the Republican nomination for president, Gov. Mitt Romney ran away from his signature Massachusetts health care law he once touted as a model for the nation. Ran away, that is, until his general election prospects started to dim. Facing a persistently large gender gap in the polls, in August Romney boasted of his Obamacare look-alike plan, "I'm the guy who was able to get healthcare for all the women and men in my state." Now confronting an even larger empathy gap in the wake of his jaw-dropping 47 percent remarks, Mitt this week protested that nothing "shows more empathy and care about the people of this country" than "I got everybody in my state insured."

Unfortunately, what Gov. Romney giveth, President Romney will taketh away. In March, Mitt Romney declared, "If I'm the godfather of this thing, then it gives me the right to kill it." But the former Massachusetts governor isn't merely promising to "kill it dead" at the national level. As it turns out, Romney's plan for draconian cuts to Medicaid would strangle the popular and successful program he put in place in Massachusetts and force tens of thousands back to the ranks of the uninsured in his home state.

By most measures, Gov. Romney's signature 2006 health care law has been a tremendous success. Enjoying the consistent support of Bay State residents by a 2 to 1 margin, the bill Gov. Mitt Romney signed into law lowered the uninsured rate from 12.5 percent to a national low of two percent. In March, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) showed that universal coverage in Massachusetts is indeed making people there healthier. Meanwhile, the rate of growth for business and individual insurance premiums has slowed dramatically, a trend state regulators earlier this year announced will result in only a 1.2 percent increase.

But as the Boston Globe reported May, President Romney "would probably cripple the Massachusetts health care law":

"It would have been impossible for Massachusetts to do what it did without increased federal Medicaid support," said John McDonough, a major architect of the state's health care overhaul law and now director of Harvard University's Center for Public Health Leadership. "What he's proposing is in direct opposition to what he did as governor,'' said Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, executive director of Health Care for All in Massachusetts, citing the Bay State's 98 percent coverage rate, the highest in the nation. "That kind of expansion would not have been possible under a block grant program," as Romney has proposed. Block grants give states more flexibility in spending federal money, but restrict funding increases.

Like his running mate Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has called for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But not content to stop there, Romney, like Ryan, has proposed steep cuts to Medicaid spending and pledged to hand over the shrunken pool of funds as block grants to the states, draconian reductions which go to help pay for yet another massive tax cut windfall for the wealthy. And it is precisely that formula that would smother his once-beloved Romneycare in its cradle.

As Think Progress explained, Romney in the past had been very up front about the crucial role federal funding'and flexibility'played in making his signature achievement possible. Mitt made that point to Bill O'Reilly in 2010:

"[F]rom the beginning the plan was a 50/50 deal between the federal government and the state government. The Feds fund half of it, they have from the very beginning." The Boston Globe notes that "approximately 56 percent of the gain in coverage was related to increased federal Medicaid support" in Massachusetts, and of the newly insured, "18 percent gained coverage through Medicaid, and another 38 percent gained coverage through Commonwealth Care, a program that federal Medicaid dollars pay half of."

(Continue reading below the fold.)

Sunday Talk: Cruising to victory

Contrary to what George Soros, ACORN, the liberal media, and their so-called "scientific" polls would have you people believe, Mitt Romney is well on his way to becoming the next president of the United States.

Yes, my friends, it's true.

Fewer than six weeks before Election Day, and with the first debate fast approaching, Mitt Romney is winning the presidential race.

This shocking development comes despite Romney being a lousy candidate who is viewed less favorably than George W. Bush.

To say nothing of the fact that, by any and every objective measure, he's actually losing.

But hey, that's just how Mitt rolls.

Bottom line: It looks like we picked the wrong week to quit smoking crack.

Some Mormons plan day of fasting, prayer to help Mitt in the debates

Rom Kippur? RT @mckaycoppins: Mormons Plan To Fast For Romney http://t.co/...
' @joshgreenman via Twitter for iPhone

There's an email going around conservative Mormon circles calling for a day of prayer and fasting on behalf of, yes, Mitt Romney. Specifically, for a day of prayer and fasting to help Mitt Romney not suck during the upcoming debates. Now that's a darn specific request.

"I am asking you to join me and my family on Sunday Sept. 30 by fasting and praying for Mitt Romney," the author writes. "That he will be blessed in the debates, which will be held starting Oct. 3rd. I know that seems like such a small thing, but I believe 'from small things, great things can come about.'"

I actually think this is kind of sweet, although the idea of forgoing food to help a rich person do better cuts a little close to the bone. Lots of people forgo food to help rich people do better, though it's not often (cough) so voluntary. Then there's the big ol' whatever-this-is that gets included here:

One Mormon wrote, ""This is from one of our Sister Service Missionaries in our ward. I have been concerned that Obama, with his fast talking and lies, will appear to be better in the debates. It is true, his only redeeming quality seems to be his ability to confound those who would speak the truth."

Sheesh. Well, that sure killed the mood.

Animal Nuz #116

Election Diary Rescue 9/29/12