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[nenjin]

https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1587944281091686401?t=B-Kc2BmqqOltGA3NQK3L6g&s=33

BREAKING: KASH PATEL [close acquaintance of Donald Trump] HAS BEEN GRANTED LIMITED USE IMMUNITY AND WILL TESTIFY BEFORE THE GRAND JURY IN THE DOCUMENTS CASE.

[Loud Whispers]

Kinda suspicious the feds ruined the economy so shortly after the big elections...that only help the GOP

I bet there are right wingers in charge over there or/and trumpers (one in the same really) that did it specifically for that.

They literally are committing treason or at best election interference whoever is in charge over there

I thought it was just a CNN scare story, but actually they actually went and done it. Like why such a massive hit to the economy before big elections.

I recently set out to determine the political affiliation of every Federal Reserve System economist using various state, county and city voter-registration databases. What I found was that in 2021 the overall Democrat-to-Republican ratio was 10.4 to 1. For every Republican economist at the Federal Reserve System, there are more than 10 Democrats. The lack of political diversity is especially pronounced among the economists of the Board of Governors, where the ratio is 48.5 to 1.

The economy is just doing shite in general because the era of giving your rich m8s infinite cheap money was not sustainable

[nenjin]

Interesting that they didn't go back any further than 2019. I wonder why. Maybe it would show that the decision making in the Fed, in good times or bad, is consistent regardless of the political equity among position holders.

[The_Explorer]

fair enough. I guess I just don't think massive decisions should be made one week out from an election. Like put a pause on things, unless its an emergency. But maybe realistically that isn't a thing. I guess the economy could be considered an emergency, its just, while they had to do it, waiting until after the elections I don't think make a massive difference. Then again I'm not an economic expert, but from what I see, dunno why they did that so soon before an election. Two weeks before, thats fine to me thats a ways off. But dunno, don't like it was so soon.

Well either way, it doesn't seem like it makes much a difference anyway who people vote for. And democrats still kicking butt (again especially what was assumed how we'd do) in most polls if polls matter.

[Loud Whispers]

You can compare the Fed with stuff like the Bank of England or Bank of Japan hiking up interest rates or intervening in gilts during elections or leadership selections; these monetary and financial institutions like to stay aloof from partisan politics and politically sensitive times, but sometimes they have a time limit to act before things like inflation become hyperinflation which trumps their desire to be aloof. In such cases they inevitably have to make decisions during the elections, for better and for worse

[nenjin]

fair enough. I guess I just don't think massive decisions should be made one week out from an election. Like put a pause on things, unless its an emergency. But maybe realistically that isn't a thing. I guess the economy could be considered an emergency, its just, while they had to do it, waiting until after the elections I don't think make a massive difference. Then again I'm not an economic expert, but from what I see, dunno why they did that so soon before an election. Two weeks before, thats fine to me thats a ways off. But dunno, don't like it was so soon.

Well either way, it doesn't seem like it makes much a difference anyway who people vote for. And democrats still kicking butt (again especially what was assumed how we'd do) in most polls if polls matter.

If the Fed were to not take a standard measure to combat inflation simply because elections are coming up.....then the economy would be wholly subservient to politics. And it would encourage future Fed decision makers to make monetary policy based on the political winds and make them even more susceptible to political pressure to do or not do something. There's already some of that going on. But on its face, I'd rather the Fed act according to economic data rather than political perception.

Either way, the perception is going to be there. In this era of whack ass politics and bald faced lying to people in broad daylight, some schmuck can produce a poster board claiming some conspiracy theory. If it's going to happen anyways, then why bow to that reality? Continue on as before. The loonies are going to be looney no matter what the Fed does.

[BurnedToast]

fair enough. I guess I just don't think massive decisions should be made one week out from an election. Like put a pause on things, unless its an emergency. But maybe realistically that isn't a thing. I guess the economy could be considered an emergency, its just, while they had to do it, waiting until after the elections I don't think make a massive difference. Then again I'm not an economic expert, but from what I see, dunno why they did that so soon before an election. Two weeks before, thats fine to me thats a ways off. But dunno, don't like it was so soon.

Well either way, it doesn't seem like it makes much a difference anyway who people vote for. And democrats still kicking butt (again especially what was assumed how we'd do) in most polls if polls matter.

I'm uh.... not sure what polls you're looking at, but the republicans are currently *heavily* favored to win the house, and slightly favored to win the senate. 538, for example, is giving the GOP an 85% chance of taking the house and a 55% chance of taking the senate. I'm not sure in what world a 54% chance of losing both the house and senate is considered "kicking butt".

[Lord Shonus]

Polling analysis is often iffy, even this close to the election.

Ignoring polling bias (the recent polls are from instituitons that generally favor Republican), and polling error (a consistent issue in this round of elections has been very poor response to polls), 538 is openly counting "historical trends" in their forecasts. By most historical trends, an incumbent with this economy would be looking down the barrel of opposition supermajorities in both houses - not a margin of two in the Senate and 15 in the House. Sticking to that is incredibly good performance.

And 538 themselves point out that normal polling margins of error could generate a landslide in either direction. If the polls are even slightly underestimating Democrats (perhaps because they've had two recent elections where Republicans outvoted the polls), it will be crushing.

[Telgin]

Lest we forget the 2016 elections as an example of polling error.

Nevertheless, I'm not getting my hopes up and fully expect us to end up with professional conman Dr. Oz as a senator at the very least.  It's the natural next step in American politics.

[BurnedToast]

Yes of course, it's not certain. I'm not saying the republicans are absolutely going to win (though the house is looking really bad) and yes of course analysis can be and often is inaccurate.  What I'm saying is that there is no reasonable interpretation that suggests the democrats are "kicking butt" At best you can say the house is a probable but not certain loss, and the senate is a toss-up and that it's going to be an extremely tight election.

Though I'll give you a point about historical trends. I don't personally consider "well, they only lost a little bit instead of losing a lot" as kicking butt since assuming the republicans don't get a 2/3rds super-majority the effect is the same for our country. But yes - they look like they are going to do less bad than history would suggest, and even if it's just a token moral victory it's still not nothing.

Lest we forget the 2016 elections as an example of polling error.

Nevertheless, I'm not getting my hopes up and fully expect us to end up with professional conman Dr. Oz as a senator at the very least.  It's the natural next step in American politics.

Fetterman's stroke really crushed his chances, even I have to admit he did bad in his last debate. Oz is so goddamn awful fetterman might win anyway but yikes. It's not really fair because apparently he has no cognitive defects (other than a speech processing problem) but it didn't look good, and sadly appearances are extremely important.

[Doomblade187]

Apparently polling on the debate wasn't actually that crushing lol.

[TamerVirus]

Polls really shouldn’t matter to the average voter, right? You’ll gonna vote for who you’re gonna vote for anyways. Unless you’re the type that goes ‘I’m not gonna vote because X is already polling to win!’

[Doomblade187]

Polls really shouldn’t matter to the average voter, right? You’ll gonna vote for who you’re gonna vote for anyways. Unless you’re the type that goes ‘I’m not gonna vote because X is already polling to win!’

No, i mean that apparently not everyone thought Fetterman did terribly.  I didn't watch it so idk.

[BurnedToast]

Polls really shouldn’t matter to the average voter, right? You’ll gonna vote for who you’re gonna vote for anyways. Unless you’re the type that goes ‘I’m not gonna vote because X is already polling to win!’

No, i mean that apparently not everyone thought Fetterman did terribly.  I didn't watch it so idk.

I did watch most of it, and it's not like he was consistently bad but he clearly struggled sometimes. Even if you had no idea he'd suffered a stroke, it was obvious something was wrong with him. And to be clear - I really hope he wins not just because the GOP is literally becoming literally hitler, I actually genuinely like the guy and think he will do a good job.

FWIW, the worst moment is probably right here: https://youtu.be/_Uaf-4nzY_Y?t=121 (at 2 min in, if the link does not work correctly).

Apparently polling on the debate wasn't actually that crushing lol.

Yeah, you're right, somehow I misread and/or misremembered something. It's not so much that he's doing worse (though he is, slightly), it's mostly that oz has been doing better and even that does not match up as well as I remembered. The debate didn't help him, but it didn't hurt him much either - the biggest narrowing was a few days before. If anything, the debate was just a gentle push to oz's already rising numbers, and possibly had no real actual effect at all.

So it was extremely unfair of me to say it was crushing, the current numbers are largely unrelated. That's my mistake.

[Micro102]

I find it hard to express how disturbing it is to me that the republicans are running obvious con artists and lunatics, and it's still a bunch of close races. I know they gerrymander a lot, but it seems like 1/4th of the population prefers hatred over democracy.