The Policy-Free Election Campaign

It was probably made worse this year because one of the candidates didn't have very many policies, but this is also the fruits of a long-term trend towards increasing horserace-style coverage as opposed to issue-based coverage.

Just curious, without googling, can you explain Clinton and Trump's position on the minimum wage? Okay, now try googling. That will at least give you an answer for Clinton.

Not "voter suppression" but still pretty dumb

Yesterday, a Bloomberg article made a splash because it quoted an official in the Trump campaign bragging that they had "three major voter suppression operations underway." This generated a flurry of articles hyping the fact that the Trump campaign admitted it was trying to suppress the vote. If you read past the headlines, the details of what those "voter suppression" meant turned out to be just publicizing stories that might discourage people in a particular demographics in the Clinton coalition from voting. In other words, the Trump campaign was not talking about actual voter suppression. Voter suppression is when you obstruct people's ability to vote when they want to vote. The the Trump official quoted in the Bloomberg article was just talking about trying to demoralize the core voters of their opponent, which is just a part of a political campaign. Real voter suppression denies someone their right to vote, it is not about persuading potential voters that they should not have faith in their candidate.

So while what the Trump campaign actually said was not as bad as the headlines might have suggested, we still learn two things from this: (1) a senior official in the Trump campaign doesn't know what the term "voter suppression" refers to, and (2) that senior official is so dumb he actually thought it was a good idea to brag about "voter suppression" to a reporter.

How hopeless are Trump's chances?

They are so bad, the Clinton people are already working on Hillary's reelection campaign.

Done

Can't believe the latest #Wikileaks release. Hillary is DONE! pic.twitter.com/4YnGZIUjbn

— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) October 24, 2016

(via)

Epistemic closure is a liability

Business Insider has a back and forth between Oliver Darcy and Pamela Engel, on the one hand, and Josh Barro, on the other, about the effects of the right-wing media on the current GOP. Darcy/Engel argue that the Republican Party won't be able to reform until it first changes the rightwing media. Barro views the rightwing media as a symptom of the parties' disfunction and lack of commitment to truth.

While I agree that there are multiple causes of Republican disfunction, I really think Darcy/Engel are more right than Barro on this one. The problem with the right-wing media is that by not reporting or downplaying information that is contrary to the ideology, consumers of that media eventually start living in their own political universe. Because there are not enough people consuming right-wing media exclusively to win a national election, the party is in an impossible situation. A Republican candidate has to appeal simultaneously to people in the alternate wingnutosphere as well as at least a portion of the public who don't share any of the background assumptions of their base. As the right-wing media gets more and more extreme, incorporating elements of what used to be fringe alt-right theories, there is less and less in common with people who are outside that bubble. It just doesn't work.

The right-wing media is really good at getting people angry, and that can be a good motivator to turn out the vote among consumers of that media. In low-turnout elections (such as mid-term elections), the extra motivation to turn out can be a big benefit to Republican candidates. But it dooms them in Presidential years, when the turnout is much greater and whatever extra motivation the wingnuts might have is overwhelmed by the larger electorate.

On top of that, there is also evidence that the candidates themselves are believe in the alternate reality of the right-wing media and, because that reality is not accurate, sometimes make bad strategic decisions in their campaign. There are tons of examples from this campaign, Trump's ridiculousness knows no bounds. But the problem goes back since at least the 2012 campaign. Witness, for example, Mitt Romney being caught flat-footed at the debate when Candy Crawley corrected him and pointed out that Obama had described the Benghazi attack as an "act of terror"--Romney apparently had only been getting his news from places like Fox that were wrongly insisting that the President never said those words while other sources quickly found a tape of Obama and moved on. Or when the Romney campaign jumped all over the false story (pushed by Breitbart) that the Obama administration was suing to prevent members of the military from voting in Ohio. Or when Romney did that mystifying swing through Pennsylvania on election day because he was taken in by "unskewed polls" that contradicted regular polls that showed he had little chance in the state.

The right-wing media is not just a symptom of the Republicans' difficulties, they really are part of the problem. But because they do give some benefit in the off years--which means just after a big presidential loss, when they otherwise would have the largest incentive to get things under control, they will immediately start looking ahead to the next election, when their media does give a benefit--I have a hard time imagining that the powers that be in the party will deal with the problem (even if we assume that they are able to do something about the right-wing media, and that's not clear either).

(via Memeorandum)

"You're the puppet!"

I think this exchange in the third presidential debate encapsulates the absurdity of the entire Trump campaign:

Clinton: Well, that's because he would rather have a puppet as president of the United States. 

Trump: No puppet. You're the puppet.

If any normal candidate were accused of being a puppet of a foreign power, he would probably laugh it off and dismiss the claim as absurd, or point out all ways his policies differ from the foreign leader's, or explain that while sometimes his policies might happen to be what foreign leaders also want they still are in the best interests of the United States. But no, Trump went with "you're a puppet."

But that's not all that is absurd about that exchange! That happened in a nationally televised presidential debate and it wasn't even the most talked about moment in the debate. There were so many other wacky and norm-defying moments, the fact that the Republican nominee said "you're the puppet" was not a stand-out moment (although it did make lists of several "top moments").

Then vs. Now

Both conventional wisdom and post-debate polls say that Trump won every debate he participated in during the Republican primary but lost every debate in the general election. Is that more a commentary of who the audience was for each debate (i.e. "winning" in the primary means appealing to the GOP base whereas "winning" in the general means appealing to the whole electorate), Trump's primary opponents (including alleged debate master Ted Cruz), or Hillary Clinton's skills as a debater?

Before you say "all three", of course it's all three to some extent. But is there one reason that predominates? As I have said before, I usually don't buy the idea of a winner or loser in debates. There is no clear measure to determine a winner and so for most debates partisans on each side claim their person won and the actual winner is not universally acknowledged. But according to clear majority Clinton creamed Trump in all three debates. Trump was terrible on both a stylistic and substantive level in each one. Why did the guy who was such an unstoppable force against Republicans come across so abysmally against Clinton? The same shtick that dispatched primary opponent after primary opponent fell completely flat against Clinton, at least to anyone who wasn't deep inside the Trump-tank.

Does the Islamic State believe its own ideology?

The Syrian town of Dabiq is where some Muslims believe a great battle that heralds the end of the world is supposed to take place. The Islamic State embraced that idea, especially after it seized control of Dabiq in August 2014. It naming its magazine "Dabiq" and referred to the coming battle over the town with apocalyptic excitement.

It lost control of the town this week. As rebel armies closed in, ISIS shifted its narrative:

More recently, as Dabiq was surrounded on three sides by the Turkish-backed rebel force, Islamic State followers “began to frantically explain why the approaching showdown in Dabiq would not be THE showdown,” Will McCants, the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse,” wrote on the blog Jihadica.

Islamic State media outlets pointed out that other conditions for the prophesied battle had not materialized, like the appearance of a “crusader army,” or the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure, or an 80-nation coalition of fighters.

Why did they change their story before the battle over the town? Sure, the town was surrounded and the ISIS fighters knew they were outgunned. But if they were really true believers, wouldn't they have insisted that they would still pull off a surprise victory as prophesied in the Hadith? If they really are religious fundamentalists, why don't they buy their own bullshit?

Trump is a bigger fuckup than I thought

I gotta agree with Steve M. on this. I have thought that Trump's one real talent was self-promotion and the ability to play up to a crowd. But having Malik Obama as his guest in tonight's presidential debate is remarkably stupid showmanship.

You could argue that having the women who have accused Bill Clinton of harassment and (in one case) assault might rattle Hillary during the debate. I didn't think that would happen (all of the accuser's claims are old news, so the odds of rattling seemed low to me), but you could at least argue there was a plausible debate strategy there. But with Malik Obama there is no strategy. He is just a non-U.S. citizen who does not support Hillary Clinton. Why would Clinton care? He is not Clinton's relative, I don't think they even know each other, and as a foreign citizen, he can't even vote.(see update) Also, Clinton is not so close to Obama that she would take personal umbrage at some random disaffected relative of Barrack appearing in the room. Remember, Obama's national prominence started in a rivalry with Hillary Clinton. They have gotten along recently, but I don't think they are best friends on a personal level.

There simply is not strategy there. All it can do is throw red meat to the Breitbart crowd, and even with that only the portion of the Breitbart crowd who are too stupid to reflect on how little sense this makes. This is going to make both Trump and his supporters look really really dumb. How is that going to help him in the debate?

So much for the one thing that I thought Donald could do well.

UPDATE: Oops, apparently Malik is a naturalized citizen. So he can vote for Trump. That doesn't change my point though. He's just one vote, why would Clinton care?

Let the people decide! unless, um, the people decide wrong.

This should be a compelling reason for people to vote Democrat, any Democrat, in their local Senate race. Vote against the party of constitutional crises.

McMullinmentum!

There is one third party candidate who has a real shot at winning a state and it's not Jill Stein or Gary Johnson.

(That said, McMullen probably won't win Utah even if he is tied in the polls right now, and it won't matter much if he does as he won't win any others--he is only on the ballot in 11 states)

Anderson with a sandwich in the conservatory

The powers that be probably just cut off his internet access, and I bet the codes are just Julian's attempt to release some files in retaliation. But the theory that Pamela Anderson killed Julian Assange with a poisoned vegan sandwich is appealing.

The Arizona throw down

As I have mentioned before, there are a lot of election forecasting models this election. 538 seems to be the most popular, partly because it's run by the gay wizard of the 2012 election but also because the site is just better (more interactive and more accessible) than the others. I probably do check 538 the most, but I also try to check in with the others on a regular basis. Luckily, the Upshot has a handy comparison chart of the nine most prominent models.

The models have mostly all pointed in the same direction throughout. Currently, they all point to a Clinton win (as they have almost every day since they each launched). So they are not that far off from one another. But there are a few differences. While the ones that express their prediction in terms of a percentage all put Clinton's victory at between 87 and 98% likely, the ones that don't all say the likely presidential outcome is "lean Dem." "Lean Dem"?!?! how can that be consistent with the others that are giving chances in the 90s or close to it?

My current test case is Arizona. AZ is a weird outlier for the 538 model. As I write this, that model is giving AZ a 53.6% chance of being won by Clinton and the model has shown the state to be leaning Clinton for the past week or so. The other models all have Trump favored to take the state. The Upshot gives Trump an 84% chance, Daily Kos 64% Trump, Huffington Post 83% Trump, Predictwise 63% Trump, Princeton Election Consortium 96% Trump, and the Cook Report, Rothenberg & Gonzales, and Larry Sabato all have AZ as leaning Republican. It is interesting that the biggest contrast for AZ is between Nate Silver (aka 538) and Sam Wang (Princeton Election Consortium) because those two are longstanding rivals.

Maybe the models will start projecting AZ closer as election day approaches. And I realize that even Nate Silver is not predicting a sure thing in AZ--he is still giving Trump just short of a 50-50 chance of carrying the state. But who cares. I have the right to be arbitrary and I am arbitrarily picking what happens to AZ on November 8 to be my test case for which model is correct. Assuming they all pick the overall outcome correctly, if Clinton wins AZ, Nate Silver is the official wizard of this election. If Trump wins AZ, then Wang will get the crown (fuck the other 7). I'm sticking with this even if 538 shifts and starts predicting AZ will go for Trump down the line.

Sinking brand

I've been predicting severe damage to the Trump brand post presidential race for a while now, and here is even more evidence that it is already happening.

When some biographer looks back at all of Trump's business failures, I predict the worst business decision Trump ever made (of all his bad business decisions) will be his decision to run for president.

A new era of ticket-splitters?

Harry Enton notes that while Clinton has surged to a comfortable lead in the presidential race, Democratic Senate candidates have not experienced a similar surge. One explanation, he notes, is that the Senate race is not polled as much, so there is a lag before the Democrats' gain will show up in the polls.

Another, far less optimistic hypothesis for Democrats is that voters are purposely splitting their tickets. As my colleague Nate Silver pointed out on Tuesday, there’s some evidence that voters split their tickets when they feel confident in predicting who the next president will be. If they’re certain it will be a Democrat, they’ll vote for a Republican for Senate, and vice versa. It’s known in political science as “anticipatory balancing.” With Clinton’s lead becoming clearer by the day even as her favorability rating remains low(albeit not as low as Trump’s), it wouldn’t be surprising to see voters seeking a Republican Congress as a check on a President Clinton.

Can I offer a third hypothesis? A lot of the people turning away from Trump are Republicans. Maybe they are getting increasingly frustrated with Trump, enough perhaps to push them to Clinton, but still identify with the party. When a pollster calls them and asks who they support in the presidential election, and then asks them who they support in their local Senate race, a Republican respondent who just said "Clinton" might feel the need to reassert their party loyalty and commit to a Republican on the second question.

Yeah, this is all hypothetical psychological gobbly-gook, but so much party politics these days is driven by tribalism rather than policies. Party identification has been strengthening and, in my experience, has become more and more an indicator of social identity. One measure of partisanship is the extent to which people resist splitting their ticket when they vote. But I wonder if a weird presidential candidate like Trump won't get more people to split their ticket as a way to reaffirm their partisan identity ('sure I'm voting for Clinton because Trump is awful, but I am still a Republican, look at my vote for Pa Toomey!")

Maldexit!

The sun will get slightly closer to setting.

This presidential election is done

As of this moment, my metric for deeming the election over has been satisfied. The 538 Polls Only forecast has Clinton's chances at winning TX at 15.3% which is greater than Trump's 12.9% chance of winning the presidency. Clinton will never win TX, which means I am completely confident that Trump will pull off an even less likely win of the presidency. Consider me officially overconfident.

(Okay, this is a little volatile. In the brief time it took me to get the above screenshot and write this post, Trump's chances of winning the presidency ticked up to 13.3%. Clinton's chances in TX still stand at 15.3%, so I'm still all good overconfidence-wise. I never really thought about what should happen to my confidence if the threshold is reached, and then not reached later on. I guess I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.)

I don't think he gives a money back guarantee

On the other hand, if Trump really does self-fund his campaign as he claimed in this week's debate, he wouldn't have used any of those donations and he should have no trouble giving the money back.

Putin and Erdogan sitting in a tree...

The sudden revival of this pipeline plan really surprised me. Less than a year ago Turkish-Russian relations were in the gutter. I didn't expect them to become so close so quickly.

I guess mutual distrust of the U.S. makes strange bedfellows for authoritarian leaders.

ISIS is losing

Between their loss of territory and their loss of social media presence (which means a 90% drop in recruitment), the wheels are coming off the Islamic State.

You would never know that listening to the presidential debate, however.

My metric for overconfidence

Everyone has their own way of deciding when the election is so lopsided it's basically over. For this presidential race, mine is whenever the 538 model has Clinton's chances of winning Texas exceeds Trump's chances of winning the presidency. We're not there yet, but today it's really close.

Of course I know this is just an arbitrary metric to use. The 538 model could be wrong, even a small (sub-Texas-for-Hillary) chance of winning is still an actual chance, why pick Clinton's chance in TX instead of, say, AL, etc. But arbitrary or not, once Trump national chances falls below Clinton's Texas chances, I'm going to get to as close to a sense of certainty as is possible in one of these elections.

The no policy campaign

Again, the scariest thing about Donald Trump is that he literally does not know what he is talking about... and that the media coverage, for the most part, doesn't seem to notice.

This will keep his people excited but he can't win like this

I think "you'd be in jail" was the key to the second presidential debate. To Trump die-harders, that comment proved that Donald totally fucking won. To everyone else, it shows he is a dangerous threat to democracy. Luckily, there aren't enough Trump die-harders to win a national election. But this does explain the very divergent views on who did better in the debate I am seeing this morning.

Note to Donald Trump

If you have to rule out the possibility that you will drop out of the race with only a month from the election, then your campaign is in crisis.

election projection

There are a lot of forecasts for this presidential election. There's 538 (currently showing an 81.6% chance of a Clinton victory), the Upshot (83% for Clinton), the DailyKos (90% for Clinton), the Huffington Post (84.7% for Clinton), Predict Wise (87% for Clinton), the Princeton Election Consortium (93% for Clinton), the Cook Political Report (lean towards Clinton), Rothenberg & Gonzales (leans towards Clinton), and Sabato's Crystal Ball (Clinton victory projected). They all use different methodologies, but they are all analyzing polling data, and sometimes factoring in other "fundamentals" that have a record of predicting the outcome of presidential elections. Some are sponsored by organizations that have a partisan slant (Kos is overly on the left, Huffington Post is viewed as a site that leans left, Sabato has a reputation of having a slight conservative slant) and some don't seem to. There are a lot of places if you want to find a mathematical model that tries to predict the outcome of next month's presidential election. And all of them, every single one, says that a Clinton victory is the likely outcome, and all the models that try to calculate a percentage of victory are predicting very high odds of her victory.

And then there's Scott Adams, yes the guy who makes Dilbert. He's giving a 98% chance of a Trump victory. What polls is he factoring in and how is he counting the electoral votes to reach that conclusion? He's not. He has just pulled the 98% number out of his ass. He's not "unskewing" the polls, he is ignoring the polls altogether and giving his own gut feeling. Maybe Adams is on to something.

Maybe all of the polls are completely off base, or there is some other way of Trump reaching 270 electoral votes (or I guess just 269, with the GOP in control of the House that is all he would need) that only Adams is privy to. But I suspect not. The models could all be wrong. But to convince anyone but the wingnuts, he needs to give me some reason that isn't just an argument about what he imagines will appeal to the American voter. He needs to explain a plausible path for Trump to reach 269.

Trump in the archives

In two different political arguments on Facebook, I have seen different Trump supporters make essentially the same argument. They each claimed that Trump critics all loved "the Donald" back when he was a TV celebrity, but that us liberals only decided that he was a failed businessman and bigot when his presidential campaign took off and the liberal media turned on him. Obviously, I don't buy the story, but it did get me wondering what I might have thought about Donald Trump before he entered the current presidential race. Luckily. I have been blogging for a while and this site has a searchable archive, so here is every post that mentions Donald Trump from before 2015:

February 13, 2004. I write a post about this new show called "The Apprentice" and mention how I am not just avoiding it because I dislike Trump so much. The post does not give lot of details about why I disliked him. But it does mention a massive statue of the guy with a smug smile, implying that might have something to do with it.

April 18, 2011.  Trump floats the idea of a presidential run and I hypothesize that it was just a publicity stunt. Nevertheless I characterized it as "pretty freaking awesome" that his publicity stunt campaign was leading in the polls. (This is the post that looks the most naive in retrospect)

December 1, 2011.  I wonder why all the Republican presidential candidates are kissing up to Donald Trump, a guy who was recently on record being pro choice and pro single payer healthcare.

December 2, 2011. I quote Jon Huntsman (remember him?) who mocks the other GOP candidates for sucking up the Donald.

February 9, 2013. I post a video of Trump with Bill Maher. The video link no longer works, but in my commentary afterwards I indicate that Trump is just a failed businessman whose biggest accomplishment is marketing the idea that he is a successful businessman. I also suggest that he's not that smart because he seems to believe his own bullshit.

March 15, 2013. I mock Trump for thinking that the average European would vote Republican (what with their free tax-subsidized university system, government-run health care, etc).

And that's it until he began his current run in 2015. It doesn't look to me like I ever had a favorable impression of him. But check the links if you don't believe me.

At least they're not damaging each other's brains

Over the years I have been increasingly concerned that some of the norms that made Congress work were coming undone. A filibuster used to be a relatively rare occurrence, but then it just became a new 60-vote threshold for just about anything (except not for most judicial and all legislative appointment after Reid nuked the filibuster for confirmation votes). Routine budget bills and debt ceiling votes used to be, well, routine. But now they are epic battles with threats of government shutdowns and default.

Then I read this, and realize that all the norms haven't fallen. At least not yet...

Veep debate

I wonder how many people are going to bother to watch the debate tonight. Mike Pence seems pretty irrelevant to Trump. There is no indication that Pence's social conservatism or his personality has influenced Trump in any way. He has all but vanished since he was announced as the running mate. If Trump does get elected president, Pence would only be relevant if Trump dies or is impeached (actually, the latter could happen if Trump turns into the disaster I would expect him to be).

Of course, there is that story that when Trump offered the VP spot to Kasich he told Kasich that as Trump's VP, he would make all the decisions of a President. However: (1) we don't know if that story is true, (2) even if true, we don't know if Trump offered the same thing to Pence, and (3) no matter what Trump may have offered Pence, there is no reason to believe Trump would follow through on his promise, especially when it would mean not exercising the immense powers of the presidency. Pence is not all that important in this race.

Kaine might be. The Democrats have a really thin farm team for presidential candidates (compare all the people running for the GOP nomination, compared to the two, both pretty old, candidates the Democrats had) and being a relatively young Vice President would position Kaine to be the future of the party.

But even so, I have a hard time seeing how tonight's debate will decide much of his fate as possible future leader. If he destroys Pence, it will still be overshadowed by Trump's massive debate failure last week. After all, as I noted above, it is not clear if Pence matters at all in this race. If Kaine loses to Pence, well, who cares? They are just the VPs to a pair of bigger personalities. And in all likelihood, tonight's debate will be some kind of a draw. Unless someone is crushed, debates are always a draw, with each side furiously trying to spin their guy's performance into a victory.

I don't see how tonight's debate will matter and I have no inclination to tune in. Am I an outlier, or will most of the public do the same thing? I mean, without a lunatic like Trump on the stage, why bother? If there are any good bits, you will be able to watch the clips on social media and chances are there won't be any good bits.

Teleprompter

This picture was on the cover of the dead tree edition of today's New York Times. Not too long ago, conservatives took the fact that President Obama used a teleprompter as evidence that he was both clueless and unfit for the presidency. For the last few months the Trump campaign has allowed its candidate to be photographed with a teleprompter to show that he can be a responsible person who is fit for the presidency.

Sure the Obama-teleprompter thing was always stupid. And it was just part of a larger effort to make stuff that all presidents routinely do look incompetent or evil when Obama does those same things. It is just remarkable to see the sudden U-turn on the teleprompter issue.

How bad was last week for Donald Trump?

It was so bad that even articles about how bad his week was left our major anti-Trump stories  (stories that, on their own, could have given any candidate a bad week), like how Trump illegally did business in Cuba in violation of the U.S. embargo, or how he pressured his second wife to pose nude for Playboy.

Yes, they really are this stupid

I keep seeing Trump's supporters doing the same stupid thing. They try to counter an attack on Donald Trump without ever asking a simple question: what is the criticism really saying. So when Hillary Clinton brought up Alicia Machado at last week's debate, Trump's followers jumped into attack mode and sought to discredit the former Ms. Universe, bringing up her alleged criminal or pornographic past. But they never reflected on the fact that Clinton didn't bring up Machado to claim that she was perfect or was a role model. Clinton brought her up as an example of Trump horrendous treatment of women. Further trashing Machado to discredit her did not undermine Clinton's point, it supported the point--especially when the candidate himself joined in on the trashing.

And now I'm seeing the same thing in the reaction to the New York Times' story that Trump used the tax code to avoid paying taxes for almost two decades. The main point of the criticism coming out of that story is not that Trump did anything illegal in his tax scheme, it is that the scheme can only work if Trump lost almost a billion dollars in the Atlantic City mid-90s debacle, which undermines his claim that he is good at businessman. The fact that Clinton herself used the same tax deduction when she lost $700k a few years ago is not relevant to that argument. Clinton is not running on any claims of prowess as a businessperson. (And even if she were, her six figure loss is nothing like Trump's almost ten figure loss).

Once again, the Trumpites are responding to an attack without any awareness of what the attack is. And once again I marvel at the sheer cluelessness fueling the Trump movement.

(via Memeorandum)

The pluses of AirPods

The iPhone 7 was release 3 weeks ago, so I'm late to this party. But I have been watching the coverage and I'm a little surprised by how universally negative the coverage of the switch to wireless AirPods has been. I am an avid podcast listener, so I use the earbuds on my iPhone 6 at least an hour every day. The biggest disadvantages to earbuds are: (1) that fucking wire ties itself in a knot every time I take them off, making me spend precious seconds of non-listening time trying to untangle them, and (2) as I'm moving around the wires often get caught on stuff, causing them to be wrenched violently out of my ears.

#2 happens to me all the time. The wires catch on something on the seat in front of me as I get out of my seat on the train, or they catch on the knobs in my kitchen as I do the dishes or cook, etc. They catch on everything. A few times the sudden extraction of the earbuds has broken the jack plug, leaving half of it lodged in my iPhone. One time I managed to fish out the stub of the jack myself. But the other times I had to pay someone to do it for me. It was an expensive pain in the ass.

Which is why the people who assume an AirPod without a cord will fall out of their ears strikes me as so miguided. The cord is not what holds my earbuds in my ear. My earbuds never fall out on their own. They only fall out if they are yanked out by the cord. No cord, means no yanked out buds. In other words, Conan O'Brien's parody of the classic iPod commercial is misguided.

Meanwhile, in exchange for losing a headphone jack, the new iPhone is water-resistant and can be fully submerged. As someone who wrecked his first iPhone by dropping it in the toilet, a water resistant phone is a big deal. Ever since that toilet incident I have been overly cautious if my phone is ever in the vicinity of water, or even just during the rain. The opportunity to relax would be most welcome. And this can't just be me. At least three of my friends have also admitted toileting their smart phone. When it happened to me I googled "dropped iPhone in toilet" to see what to do and I got thousands of results. (I just did it again and google says there are 526,000)

I'm not saying that the loss of a headphone jack is all good. I do wonder about sound quality, whether the wireless setup will be an extra drain on the battery, the ease of losing the little wireless pods, and the cost of the new AirPods. But the sound quality will probably improve and the cost will go down, so I expect at least two of my four concerns will be at least partially, if not fully, remedied before I get around to getting a new phone (next year at the earliest, if not in 2018).

Trading the jack for water resistance and not having an easily tangled catchable cord is clearly the kind of cost-benefit analysis that different people might reach different conclusions over. I'm just surprised that the people writing about it are so focused on the cost with so little attention to the benefits.

Senate

With Trump doing his best to ruin his presidential prospects, my focus has turned to the Senate races. I'm convinced that even if Clinton wins the presidency, that ninth seat on the Supreme Court won't be filled unless the Democrats control the Senate. It's still close, but 538 currently gives the Dems a 54.7% chance of taking the Senate, which is too close for me. My own state's Senate race is much closer than it should be, but at least McGinty is currently favored to win.

The real disappointment is Florida. When he first reluctantly decided to run for reelection after all, I thunked that Rubio was toast. At the time he was just coming off being flayed alive by Trump in the primary and he was so obviously uninterested in actually being a senator, I didn't think he could pull off another win. Unfortunately, that's completely wrong. Trump's evisceration of Rubio didn't leave any permanent scars and he has been consistently ahead of his opponent for the Senate seat for months. C'mon Floridians, you still have time to toss little Marco out. Without that seat, a Democratic majority would be pretty certain. But Rubio has got to go even if the chamber's control was not at stake.