The GOP Convention MegaMittensThread!

[Ed Anger]

He might have been robbing your vending machines.

[DGuller]

Since I guess this has taken over as the general election thread, DGuller, have you been watching the Intrade odds for Romney/Obama?

They are about 43-55 in favor of Obama. I tend to think that is too close to even--the polling is typically within the margin of error but with Obama in the lead, but  the last "no toss up" state map I saw had Obama with over 300 electoral votes. It seems Romney is going to win by several points nationally to win the electoral college, and the polling hasn't shown he can get that kind of lead.

I think I'd handicap it closer to 30-70.

It's been consistently about 40-60 on Intrade when I checked it.  I guess the odds tightened a little. 

When in doubt, I go with Nate Silver's odds.  His statistical analysis is very good at sifting through shit to get nuggets of information (unlike poll aggregators like RCP, which are just garbage).  At this moment Silver's odds are indeed 70% for Obama.

Nate Silver now has 78% chance for Obama victory, I assume due to lack of Republican convention bounce and small Democratic bounce.  Intrade is at 57% chance for Obama, which is where it's been since forever.  That's a whopping differential between the model and the market.  In this case, I'd go with the model.  If Intrade were easy to trade on, I'd put down a $1,000 on Obama, the profit margin is that good.

[Razgovory]

You know, when Romney fails to win, the Republicans are going to blame him being a moderate and get even crazier.

[DGuller]

Let's take it one thing at a time.

[DGuller]

Mitt now supports keeping parts of Obamacare that would be disastrous without other parts.  http://news.yahoo.com/romney-says-keep-parts-obama-healthcare-law-155146420.html  He managed to change his stance to one that is both less principled, and worse.  Oh, boy.

[Ideologue]

He said he was going to reverse the abuses of the Bush administration and not only has he not done it he doubled down.

You make Gitmo and drone Whack-A-Mole sound like a bad thing.

Drones good, Gitmo bad.

See, it's okay to kill people from the air; that makes it sacred.  Caging people, however, is a different animal.  At least he put a stop to torture as SOP (afaik).