I have to admit, RWM, I have heard a lot of blathery nonsense about Nate Silver hatred from the Right. You're among the first to show actual examples of his predicting things incorrectly, as a substantive rebuttal. Impressive. As long as you recognize that he got all 50 states correct, all but two Senate races, and will be correct within 1 point of the popular vote totals, thus making his model clearly more accurate than just lucky, we've got something. BTW, I think the entire media was judging his model, so he kinda was "putting up his money" (his career) on those stats, and he IS going to make a killing off of that "wager."

But this was what was exactly predicted by the stats and probabilities. Nate Silver crunched all of the polling data, infused with demographic and historical data and likely voter models, etc, and he called all 50 states correctly. You're assuming that the swing states were each exactly tied, and if there were 10 exactly tied states, the odds would have been 1023 to 1 that Obama would win all of them. But he didn't win all of them, he lost North Carolina. And they weren't exact ties, he had a small but steady lead in Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia. He had a fairly large lead in Pennsylvania. The only real "tossup states" New Hampshire and Colorado, each of which Obama had won in 2008, and Florida, which really was a tie.

He absolutely has a mandate. Bush in 2004 won 286 EV's and everyone bowed down to the mandate he claimed he had. Obama is going to win the popular vote by over 3 million and the EV by over 100. And Dems picked up seats in both Houses. The country is SCREAMING for Obama to be more Progressive. Unfortunately, since Obama is fundamentally a Center-Right corporatist, he will squander his mandate and capitulate to Boehner anyway. Because he doesn't really want to be a Democrat on policy. He wants to continue Bush's policies. It is obvious, and yet the entire media and most voters are stuck in 1964 and believe that the Dem leadership is still Leftwing and that the country is still some semblance of "Center Right".

I think he or she means that Scott is a criminal because he was the CEO of Columbia/HCA at the time when it committed 14 different Medicare fraud felonies. Scott wasn't convicted, but the odds that he was unaware of his company's practices...well, I'll let you determine what conclusion you'd come to if even an un-scandaled Democrat like Kirsten Gillibrand or Al Franken had been the CEO.

Thanks for this, AlwaysLearning. Once again, inconvenient facts are met with lunacy. It is positively inconceivable that a 55% Democratic county of 277,000 total residents ended up adding 72,000 fraudulent votes. A third of the entire county voted twice, and no one caught this, and there is no hard evidence and no precedent? This is the peril of being stuck in such a thick echo chamber bubble that, since one cannot fathom that the majority might not agree with one's policies, the explanations quickly devolve into delusion.

about 55% Democrat somehow managed to fraudulently add 72,000 double-votes to its total? In a county of only about 270,000 total people? When the state of Florida can't prove in court that there have been more than 10 total in-person voter fraud cases in the last 12 years?

Not so much. A big problem in our elections has been voter suppression, not voter fraud. When the rolls of states are cut by too wide a net, or some groups of people are told, wink wink, to vote on Wednesday instead of Tuesday, or people throw away completed voter registration forms or put up billboards meant to intimidate or mislead voters about the legality of their vote, that is voter suppression, and is a major threat. Unless there is some way that millions of Democrats are voting twice, and this method is completely unprovable by any incriminating evidence (show it if you've got it), even with Republicans scouring for it year after year, there is no voter fraud. You really think that this county that is 79% White, aging and only

it is unfair that the money is taxed twice, or that it should be stripped from those heirs. But the heirs did nothing to earn that money besides be born to rich parents, and since that tax money helps pay for services for everyone, its abolition likely will lead to cuts in programs like CHIP, which will severely hurt children who did nothing but be born to poor parents. I think that is unfair also. And in choosing between these two imperfect solutions, I err on the side that is likely to help the most people. About 52,000 people in 2013 will pay an Estate Tax, and about 7.3 million will benefit from CHIP. I really don't think that this is an advocacy of scary, country-dissolving "Big Sister."

specific people as my political adversary. Wealthy citizens who use their leverage to do things for what I consider as the larger public good get my full embrace. The Left also doesn't view corporations as evil inherently, but as servants to a system that often rewards paying as little as possible to workers, as few taxes as possible, and avoiding as much regulation as possible, even if that regulation might protect the workers or the public. It isn't the CEO's fault--he doesn't (officially) write the laws, and he should try to make as much money as he can. But the citizenry has an interest in protecting and bettering ourselves also, and the public good is not always in line with the corporate model. As per the Estate Tax, I agree that

1. It is a common misconception, but the Left doesn't hate the rich. What we hate is the system by which the rich wield undue influence over our politicians, in order to rig the rules for privatized gain and socialized risk at the top. We don't believe this represents the ideals of Capitalism or democracy. Politicians will always listen to who pays them the most (for campaigns, kickbacks or future job prospects), and we feel that either they can work for the rich, or we can change the system and have them work for the non-rich majority, and thus for the public good. I don't think any rich person is by definition evil, but if their "speech" (money) drowns out mine and produces policies I think hinder the country, I have to view those