Why It's Getting Easier For Democrats to Retake the House

You lose a whole lot of voters when you move that far right.

Nate Cohn makes me wish we had a new Intrade; prediction markets are a great way to help people get a handle on who's bullshitting and who's not. Not that I think Nate's bullshitting. He makes very good points, and he cares about the facts. He makes such a good argument, in fact, that if we had a prediction market with real money, he'd be convincing enough to the "smart" money to keep the prices down on shares of Democrats to win control of the US House in 2014.

If there’s anything I could get people to understand about the next election, it’s this: Even a 2006 or 2010-esque tsunami might not give Democrats control of the House.

Democrats don't need a tsunami to take control of the US House.

When the Great Gerrymander of 2010 gave the GOP a wave of US House districts that John Boehner surfed into the speakers office, they had a lot of help beyond simple Gerrymandering. The natural tendency of midterms to go against the President's party, a lot of anger whipped up by the Tea Party, and a whole lot of money.

But Gerrymandering has hidden costs.

Sam Wang's analysis of recent PPP polls.

It is a common fallacy to believe that seats gained by partisan gerrymandering are safe seats. In fact, the converse is the case. Gerrymandering achieves a net gain of seats by packing the opposition party into as few districts as possible. 

[...]

Representatives who benefited from the great partisan gerrymander of 2010 were given enough of an advantage to get into office narrowly. In a district designed to give Republicans a narrow advantage, Republican loyalists are likely to be spread thinly, with the balance of the needed votes being drawn from independents. Some of these independents might be more prone to anger about the current situation. These polls suggest that Republicans in those states might be particularly ripe targets for pressure.

Apparently Cohn has complained about the accuracy of PPP generic Dem polls (which Sam Wang is using in his latest calculations) vs the eventual reality. I haven't seen those numbers, and would gladly take a look. But there are enough things happening right now to make me a buyer for Dems to win the House at about $2.00/share (meaning I'd win $8 on the bet).

• Gerrymandering's hidden weakness of needing independents to elect Republicans in narrowly won districts.
• Angry independents. Do I even have to find the polls on that? You know how to find them, it's not pretty.
• Thanks at least in part to the Great Gerrymandering, the GOP has moved way to the right.
• The tendency of these far right wingnuts to keep talking (which proves that John Roger's crazification factor is one of the greatest jokes of all time) will mean even more angry independents.
• The worse the GOP looks in the polls, the better candidates Democrats will recruit.
• The worse the GOP looks in the polls, the better Democrats do at fundraising.

For those of you who aren't following the links, this is from the last one:

Not only have the Democratic campaign committees that back House and Senate candidates outraised their GOP counterparts, but unrestricted super PACs that support Democrats have pulled in close to three times what GOP super PACs have so far.

Three times as much as the GOP in super PAC money? Maybe I'd be a buyer up to $2.50 a share, even higher if the wingnuts keep talking.

Listen to Me!

Noted medicinal marijuana convert Sanjay Gupta gets at the heart of wingnuttery in an interview with Dick Cheney, whose Manichean Paranoia keeps him from seeing the degrees of difference between doing your job, and doing it well.

Sanjay Gupta: Did you worry about your physical health impacting your judgment and your cognition?
Dick Cheney: No.
Sanjay Gupta: Not at all?
Dick Cheney: No.
Sanjay Gupta: Were you the best you could be?
Dick Cheney: You know, I was as good as I could be, you know, given the fact I was 60-some years old at that point and a heart patient.

So, yeah, I had limitations, but I'm still 10 times the neocon warmonger all the other possible VP nominees were.

Sanjay Gupta: This idea that you have this respected heart surgeon from Texas [Denton Cooley] who didn't see you, didn't examine you, and then writes something saying that you have normal cardiac function. That just wasn't true, Mr. Vice President.
Dick Cheney: Go ask Denton Cooley about that.

So, "Go fuck yourself. You can call me a liar, Denton Cooley might call me a liar. But you won't get me to call myself one."

Sanjay Gupta: But sir, you saw it.
Dick Cheney: Listen to me, I think the bottom line is: was I up to the task of being vice president? And there’s no question. I think based upon the fact that I did it for eight years that they were right.

"Listen to me..."

As Professor Harry Frankfurt tells us in On Bullshit, a bullshitter changes the rules governing their end of the conversation so claims about truth or falsity are irrelevant. It doesn't matter that Dick lied about the severity of his heart condition before becoming Vice President of the United States, what matters is his circular logic that he did the job, so he must've been fine.

The most important part here, for the purposes of Keep Talking, Wingnuts, is the "Listen to me." This is Dick threatening you. He is saying, listen to me, or I'll shock and awe you into the stone age. This is the right wing infatuation with violence personified and deferred to.

This is a now powerless Dick Cheney saying, because he can't send Navy Seals or a drone to kill you, "I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here while you try to say that the disaster that was the Bush administration is my fault because I ignored the connection between heart disease and memory loss, depression, impaired cognition, and impaired decision making abilities."

That list of the side effects of Cheney's heart condition perfectly describe the 8 disastrous years he uses as evidence that he was fit to do the job. Couldn't have said it better myself. Keep talking, Dick.

Please Proceed, Governor

Seriously. Keep talking.

For what it's worth, Gallup sucked in the Presidential...