correlation, or causality?

Above is a graph of the predicted probabilities over the past year of Barack Obama being the Democratic nominee for president, as available on intrade.com. The red line corresponds to when I officially endorsed Obama on this weblog.

it's seems wrong that something with a 31.8% chance of not happening should feel like a foregone conclusion, but it does

Current market-based estimates of the probability of candidates winning the 2008 Democratic nomination:

Clinton: 68.6%
Gore: 11.5%
Obama: 11.2%
Edwards: 3.5%

So, Obama has fallen behind someone who has given no indication of running for President. It's becoming harder to imagine what that 1 in 3 scenario would be under which Clinton does not win the nomination.

I am no longer as pessimistic about Clinton's chances of winning the general election, although I'm not sure if this is just me being lulled into denial about how nasty the Republican negative campaigning against her is going to be.

Prediction markets, incidentally, have consistently failed to reflect the idea that Clinton faces a particular disadvantage over other Democratic candidates should she get the nomination. So while people such as myself like to opine that idea, it doesn't have traction among anyone willing to put money where their mouth is.

dispatch from my apartment, surrounded by boxes

So, I spent an inordinate amount of time this week getting the stuff in my apartment 75% packed, and now someone is here being incredibly efficient with the remaining 25%. It confirms my then-untutored suspicion that the two people who did the equivalent task in Madison were totally inept (because, in effect, they did the task roughly only as fast as I would have, and I take for granted that I'm inept.)

Anyway, I'm sitting here on my laptop, and apropos of nothing I was wondering about how the presidential candidates who have no chance are doing. As in, not how they are doing in the polls, but how they are maintaining a positive presence despite the absolute futility of how they are spending their time. Chris Dodd apparently has received an endorsement from a firefighters union. This fact is announced on his webpage by his banner photo being with a group of firefighters, the endorsement being the "Live Update" at the top, the endorsement being the photo headline, and the endorsement being two of the last five posts on his blog. Perhaps he will show up at the next debate in a spiffy dalmatian suit.

What propels these men forward? Back in 2004, I was convinced that Kucinich was just staying in the race to find some cute young wife out of the deal, a conviction regarded by friends as preposterous right up until it was shown to be exactly right. But what propels him forward this time? I was looking on his website for a position paper regarding legalizing bigamy, but did not see it.

I can't really look at the Republican minor candidates sites without being quickly made surly, but something to note more generally is that, on the prediction markets, Ron Paul (at 4.5% estimated probability of winning) might one day soon catch John McCain (at 5.6%). A guy in Cambridge is inkjet-printing paper signs supporting Ron Paul and stapling them to telephone poles around Cambridge. You don't see anyone doing that for John McCain.

BTW: I feel good about all I've discarded as part of my War On Clutter. I was particularly pleased with how many no-longer-needed cables of one kind or another I had thrown out, until I realized that the cable I need to upload photos from my digital camera has gone mysteriously missing.

fifteen months until the general election, and i still feel like i'm late in choosing a candidate

You've been waiting on pins and needles long enough. The coveted official JFW endorsement for President goes to Barack Obama. The two thoughts this evening that finally pushed me decisively out of the "uncommitted" category:

1. Idle googling regarding Ricky Ray Rector, the retarded murderer that Bill Clinton made a special trip to Arkansas to see executed in order to help win a few extra votes in New Hampshire in 1992. (At least according to Wikipedia, Rector's mental ability was such that he saved the dessert from his last meal so he would have it to eat later, after his execution.) I tried to imagine how the different presidential candidates would contemplate the Ricky Ray Rector situation if they had been governor, and Obama was the only electable one I could imagine actually tossing and turning over it. Honestly, I would not be at all surprised if Hillary Clinton was keeping a retarded killer in a hotel somewhere that she will bring out in January and execute with her bare hands just so everybody knows she's tough.

2. Walking by that [expletive deleted] Paul McCartney poster yet again at Starbucks, and realizing how much I would love to have somebody who was not a baby boomer elected President. This, in conjunction with the realization that, with Hillary Clinton as the nominee, there would be the possibility of me spending my entire adult life up to age 45 with only members of two different families being my President.

Mostly, though, what I want is a Democrat who will win. It's only because I've become convinced that there is no reason that Obama would be a weaker candidate than anybody else that I'm allowing the fact that I can vote for him with genuine enthusiasm prevail.

intrigue

Due to a ten point swing, Barack Obama now leads Hillary Clinton in the predicted probability of being the Democratic nominee as indicated at intrade.com. (See the "Last" column above.) What's going on? I don't see anything in the news that would cause it. I wonder if it is some kind of market manipulation.

Hmm, in the time that it took me to post this, Hillary has gone back up to 42.6 vs. 38.4 for Obama. Very strange.

It could have been caused by someone who owned a large number of Hillary shares deciding to dump them. I wonder why. I wonder if it was Martha Stewart.

resourceful! (provided that you consider the capacity for cruelty a resource)

From CNN.com:

The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney station wagon. How it got there: Romney strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus's rather visceral protest.

Of course, not mentioned in the story is that the whole reason the family was driving to Ontario was to have Mitt Romney's dog fight one of Michael Vick's dogs.

Where are the voices of public sociology here? Where are the animals & society folks? I want to see the "Deconstructing Playing with Katie" guy deconstructing traveling with Seamus.

People have asked me if I'm going to get a pet when I go to Northwestern. No. Well, maybe a turtle. If I do, I'm not strapping it to the top of my car, even if I would like to be President, or having it fight one of Michael Vick's dogs. Maybe just a plant.