Given that incumbents are quite likely to be re-elected forever, it’s a poor choice to elect a RINO Senator.
Good article. It was my thinking but I didn’t put it into an expected value framework, and it’s a darn good way to analyze a primary choice. If Castle is worth 5 hard choice conservative vote on pieces of legislation and nominations and 45 liberal vote cave ins, and O’Donnell is worth 50 conservative hard choice conservative votes . . . well, it’s a coin flip if O’Donnell has a 5% chance of winning and Castle has 50% chance of winning as to which is better. Expected value is the same. Bet doesn’t really matter. The kicker in this race is that this is a tough year for “sure thing” candidates on the Dem side . . . and moderates don’t seem to ever perform as well as their backers claim they will.
You’re damn right we knew what we were doing.
I wake up every day of late with a smile on my face. For if nothing else, MIKE CASTLE IS GONE!
Sure I want Christine to win and I really think she will. I continue to be amazed at how the Ruling Class is being overlooked for exactly the likes of Christine O’Donnell, the witch whose house was almost foreclosed, you should smile.
But if Coons wins...so what? I’d have either Castle voting for Cap and Trade or Coons voting for Cap and Trade now somebody all big and smart in the ruling class tell me how I am any WORSE off?
And this way, well we’ve got a SHOT at getting a working class congress critter in there, which is the latest trend this election year case y’all didn’t hear.
What’s that you say? That if Castle had won there would be a Republican majority in the senate? And this means what?
Oh wait, the pubs get to head all the committees and get the nicest office.
somembody tell the Ruling Class that this means pretty much nothing to us morons out here in la-la land where we carry this country on our backs.
They just don’t get it but never mind y’all....we got it in spades here in Delaware and y’all probably got lots of it out where you live.
What’s this I speak of?
COMMON SENSE!
The Ruling Class doesn’t have any, hence they cannot grasp.
It’s God’s way of keeping us from being taken over by fools and knaves.
Is it not the political proffesionals who got us into this mess?
If going long-term and wanting to rid the GOP of RINOs, even at the short-term expense of a "gimme" Senate seat is something the pundits choose not to understand, then that's their problem.
The establishment types aren't accepting it gracefully, but the TEA Partiers are force-feeding a long-needed change to the Republican Party.
To begin with, Mr. Ross's "explanation" of statistics is an absolute crock. You don't expect to win $2.50 if you flip that $5 coin -- you expect to win $5, or you expect to win nothing. The expected value is a measure of the probability of getting heads or tails, not the amount you expect to win.
Given his evident ignorance of the statistics behind the metaphor, one already suspects that whatever political advice Mr. Ross attempts to draw from it, will be likewise flawed.
In reality, he's not talking about "expected value" in the statistical sense, he's talking about people's expectations -- their beliefs -- about the possibility of an O'Donnell victory. They're not the same thing, and the difference is important. And more important, those beliefs are not the same as her electoral chances.
"Expected value" (what you believe), can be fine, or a disaster, depending on how realistic your expectations (beliefs) were to begin with.
Just to press the point, a lot of unqualified folks who took out sub-prime mortgages had the expectation that they'd be able to make them work -- if they even thought things through that far. We see how that turned out: it takes more than wishes and beliefs to keep up with your house payments.
What Ross is attempting to do, is lend some sort of mathematical precision to his rather far-fetched explanation of O'Donnell's chances. We see where his beliefs are .... the real question is, where is reality?
O’Donnell is bright, good looking, poised and knows how to keep her head when things get crazy. She’s a pretty good candidate, all in all.
Man, that article’s comments thread is rockin’.