Denial

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A recent topic in the news over the last two weeks is how Republicans are in absolute denial that Romney is losing and they have begun to blame the polls saying so as being biased against them. There is even a guy, Dean Chambers, who has made a site that "unskews" the polls. Talking Points Memo wrote an article about this:

Chambers’ project started in July after he noticed an ABC News/Washington Post poll that “just didn’t look right.” An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted this month showed Obama up over Romney 49 percent to 48 percent. “Unskewed,” however, after applying Rasmussen’s numbers on party ID, Romney leads Obama 52-45 in the poll. It’s like magic. But Chambers insists he isn’t “changing” or “making up” data. “The only thing I’m doing is weighting.” But that’s exactly what most pollsters don’t do. “We don’t have any preconceived notions about the party breakdown of a poll before we conduct it. The only things we make any adjustments for are gender, race, and age,” Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling’s Tom Jensen told TPM in an email. “It makes sense that as support for Obama increases, more people also identify themselves as Democrats. I know conservatives want to think it’s more Democrats in the poll causing Obama to do better, but it’s actually Obama doing better causing more Democrats in the poll.” “The reality is that (Republicans are) losing, they can’t accept it, and they’re going to find some reason to dismiss every poll that makes them unhappy not matter what its composition is,” Jensen added. “This isn’t really about Party ID, it’s about hardcore denial.” I see this as the fundamental problem with the Republican party in 2012. When something doesn't match their preconceived world view, when the facts do not match their version of reality, they attempt to ignore the facts, or simply make up their own. It is the purest form of denial I've seen. They will continue to lose national elections, where their legislative gerrymandering isn't able to help them, as long as this denial continues. I am very grateful that they are not able to gerrymander the borders of actual states.

What Has Gone Wrong For GOP Candidates?

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Nate Silver, at Five Thirty Eight :

More moderate Republican candidates, like Mr. Brown of Massachusetts and Mrs. McMahon of Connecticut, have increasingly sought to distance themselves from the national Republican brand, and sometimes also from the Republican presidential ticket. Some of these theories are speculative, to be sure. A large number of Senate races remain in play: of the several states in which there has been a shift against Republicans in the polls in recent weeks, perhaps only Florida seems completely lost. But if the trend continues, the question may no longer be whether Republicans can win the Senate — but how vulnerable they are to losing the House. Read the entire piece. Let's home this trend continues.

What Bill Clinton Wrote vs. What Bill Clinton Said

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Dashiell Bennett, at The Atlantic Wire:

If you were following any journalists on Twitter last night, one of the most remarked upon aspects of Bill Clinton's nomination speech was how liberally he deviated from the prepared text. What was handed out to the media was four pages of single-spaced, small font text, but — as an exasperated TelePrompTer operator found out —that was really just a guideline to what Clinton actually wanted to say during his 49-minute address. We decided to compare the two versions to see how one of the great speechmakers of his era goes about his business. You really have to take a look at their transcript which clearly shows which was removed, added or left the same from the text vs what he said. Amazing speaker.