Tag: meta

When it comes to user diaries, we have a few basic requirements that are listed before you are able to hit that magic “Post” button. They are (emphasis added):

   * The Swing State Project is about campaigns & elections. Your diary should be, too.

   * Please preface your diary with headers like “MT-Sen” as appropriate.

   * Aim for three original paragraphs of writing.

   * Don’t copy-and-paste entire copyrighted articles.

We also have an informal rule that users should attempt to limit themselves to no more than two of the ten listed diaries in the “recent diaries” list. We have these rules in the interests of fairness; some people invest an incredible amount of energy and time into their diaries, and we want people to be able to have a fair chance to read and comment on these diaries.

Occasionally, some diarists have neglected to consider rule number three (for instance, see here, here, and here). I realize there is a temptation to post breaking news very quickly via the diaries, but if you do not have time to offer any analysis or information other than a single sentence and a hyperlink, these types of diaries should instead be comments in open threads. And, just to remind you, we now have three types of open threads for your use: one every Friday for weekend chatter, and now, two Daily Digests each weekday: one in the early morning, and another in the afternoon. There really is no excuse not to use these threads for brief “grab-bag” commentary.

So be warned: In the future, we will exercise the right to delete diaries that don’t meet our “three paragraphs” rule. Thanks for your cooperation.

In recent days, several folks have asked for a clearer description of the kind of discourse that’s acceptable at the Swing State Project, and what’s off-limits. Before I get into that, let me explain my personal feelings on the matter. In my not at all humble opinion, I think SSP is one of the best political sites on the Internet, and has been for a long time. A big part of the reason is the comments section – it’s intelligent, civil, thoughtful, and almost entirely free of fights and flamewars. There are good reasons why it is that way, and there are good reasons why it ought to stay that way.

So why are the comments here so great? Well, for one, just based on the general topic of this blog, we attract a lot of very knowledgeable people. But there are plenty of sites out there with super-smart userbases but comment boards that are a total morass. What makes SSP different is focus. We stay relentlessly focused on one subject and one subject only: political horserace analysis. The discussion is always on-point, and you are bound to learn something from reading the comments to every post. What’s more, I think that precisely because it’s not a free-for-all, people are inclined to be more thoughtful in what they say. And it’s a virtuous circle – good comments foster a good site which attracts more good people to visit.

The other thing that makes SSP so excellent – and this something that is both somewhat subconscious and also the thing that people sometimes have the greatest struggles with – is that we strive to be bloodless. What do I mean by that? I think the best analyses tend to avoid a discussion of personal feelings and emotions. We’re trying to describe the political world as it exists – not as what we wish or hope or fear. When we set aside our own emotions, I think we are at are most accurate and astute. On the flipside, when things become heated and emotional, that is when the conversation is most likely to derail.

Now, I am not at all suggesting we never express a personal preference – that would be ridiculous. But it’s important not to let those personal preferences get in the way of clear-eyed analysis. If you like Candidate A more than Candidate B, it’s crucial to be able to step back and acknowledge that Candidate B has a better shot of winning the primary, if that is in fact the case. The same is true for legislation. We don’t debate legislation on the merits here – there are plenty of other sites for that. But to the extent legislation affects the horserace, we need to be able to stand aside from our own feelings and let the cold hard facts take center stage.

I want to be clear: As far as “bloodlessness” goes, I’m not trying to lay out hard-and-fast rules here. Yes, we do have some rules: stick to the horserace; no insults or ad hominems; support your arguments with facts and links. Those are pretty straightforward. The intersection of analysis and emotion is a lot trickier, and we aren’t robots. And we’re also a partisan site, which means it’s generally going to be okay to bash Republicans (though even there, lines can be crossed). It’s usually on our own side of the fence that we run into trouble – primaries or intramural legislative battles.

I’m pretty sad and disappointed that I once again have to perform my least favorite activity. After the derail in this thread, I’ve suspended several users for a week. Those accounts will have access restored next Saturday. Also, one user who had received repeated warnings not to engage in derails (and promised me several times that he would stop doing so) has been permanently banned for his participation in this latest derail.

I will at some point put together an FAQ of some sort outlining my vision for the site. But everyone involved in that thread was a longtime user who knew exactly what was and wasn’t okay here. There weren’t many political sites you could go to during the 2007-2008 presidential primaries and avoid the ceaseless wars between competing factions. SSP was one of those few. And this site will remain a haven for all its days, whether it’s healthcare or some other contentious, emotional issue that crops up.

The very off-topic derailment in this week’s open thread forced me to do something I’d never done before on this site – close comments on a post. I really, really did not enjoy doing that. It also made me wary of posting the summary chart of how the healthcare vote went. People did manage to stay on topic and remain civil for the first couple hundred comments. But I was very disappointed that in the end, a few people wound up derailing the thread yet again.

So we’re giving one-week suspensions to certain users. I’m not going to name names, but I’m posting this as a diary since we do not maintain contact information for our users. If, starting today, you logged in and found you can’t comment or post diaries, you’ve been affected. You’ll be able to participate again in a week. Consider this a serious warning.

I’m also going to say this once more: It’s a big Internets. If you want to gripe about policy or simply act uncivilly, there are tons of places you can do that. But not here.

The discussion regarding “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” surprised me in that a number of people volunteered their age and were, on the whole, younger than I imagined the members of this site to be.  To test this hypothesis, (since the Bueller sample may have been self selecting, for obvious reasons) I’ve created a poll.  The age spreads are a bit narrower for the younger ages.  If people enjoy this, I will perhaps do more demographic polls in the future.

During the election season, people seemed to assume that Swing State Project has long been in the business of handicapping congressional races. However, believe it or not, 2008 was the first time that SSP attempted to rate and predict every congressional race. It was an extremely fun project, as we argued back and forth, trying to sell each other on particular candidates’ hidden strengths or districts’ unique quirks, parsing the meaning of “Lean” and “Likely,” or simply trash-talking each other. (In order to briefly return to those golden days, this is a fully collaborative post, and David and James have their say further down too.)

Now that every House race has finally been called and things have settled back down to business as usual here, we thought we’d do a little retrospective and see how our predictions matched up with the actual results. (Our final predictions are here.) Our table is broken into races where Team Blue was on the offense and on the defense, ordered in terms of the margin of victory (or loss). (An asterisk refers to a race that was once on the chart, but dropped off by the end.) Even if you aren’t that interested in our slightly belated soul-searching about our predictive skills, this should be a very useful chart for our readers, as the decreasing margins give a pretty clear picture of who’s vulnerable going into the next cycle.

District	Offense	Margin	Rating	District	Defense	Margin	Rating
NY-13	Open	27.6	Safe D	FL-16	Mahoney	-20.2	Likely R
IL-11	Open	23.9	Lean D	LA-06	Cazayoux	-7.8	Tossup
AZ-01	Open	20.5	Likely D	TX-22	Lampson	-7.0	Tossup
FL-24	Feeney	16.1	Lean D	KS-02	Boyda	-4.4	Lean D
NY-25	Open	12.9	Likely D	LA-02	Jefferson	-2.7	Safe D
CO-04	Musgrave	12.4	Lean D	PA-11	Kanjorski	3.2	Tossup
NM-02	Open	12.0	Tossup	AL-05	Open	3.6	Lean D
VA-11	Open	11.7	Lean D	NY-24	Arcuri	4.0	Safe D *
NM-01	Open	11.4	Lean D	NH-01	Shea-Porter	5.9	Lean D
NC-08	Hayes	10.8	Lean D	TX-17	Edwards	7.5	Safe D
OH-16	Open	10.8	Lean D	WI-08	Kagen	8.1	Lean D
MI-09	Knollenberg	9.5	Lean D	FL-22	Klein	9.4	Safe D
NV-03	Porter	5.1	Tossup	AZ-05	Mitchell	9.6	Lean D
OH-01	Chabot	4.9	Tossup	ME-01	Open	9.8	Safe D
VA-02	Drake	4.9	Lean R	CA-11	McNerney	11.6	Lean D
NJ-03	Open	4.2	Tossup	MS-01	Childers	10.6	Likely D
FL-08	Keller	4.0	Tossup	PA-04	Altmire	11.8	Likely D
CT-04	Shays	3.7	Tossup	AZ-08	Giffords	11.9	Likely D
PA-03	English	2.4	Tossup	PA-10	Carney	12.6	Lean D
MI-07	Walberg	2.3	Tossup	TX-23	Rodriguez	13.9	Likely D
NY-29	Kuhl	2.0	Lean D	IA-03	Boswell	14.3	Safe D
ID-01	Sali	1.2	Tossup	GA-08	Marshall	14.4	Lean D
MD-01	Open	0.8	Tossup	NH-02	Hodes	15.0	Safe D *
OH-15	Open	0.7	Lean D	PA-08	P. Murphy	15.2	Likely D
AL-02	Open	0.6	Lean R	IL-14	Foster	15.4	Likely D
VA-05	Goode	0.2	Lean R	PA-12	Murtha	15.8	Lean D
LA-04	Open	-0.4	Tossup	OR-05	Open	16.0	Likely D
CA-04	Open	-0.6	Tossup	KS-03	Moore	16.8	Likely D
CA-44	Calvert	-2.4	Safe R	NY-01	Bishop	16.8	Safe D
MO-09	Open	-2.5	Tossup	NY-19	Hall	17.4	Safe D *
MN-06	Bachmann	-3.0	Tossup	OH-10	Kucinich	17.9	Safe D
NE-02	Terry	-3.8	Tossup	IA-02	Loebsack	18.4	Safe D
SC-01	Brown	-4.0	Lean R	KY-03	Yarmuth	18.8	Likely D
PA-06	Gerlach	-4.2	RTW *	PA-07	Sestak	19.2	Safe D
CA-50	Bilbray	-5.1	Likely R	IN-09	Hill	19.4	Likely D
AK-AL	Young	-5.2	Lean D	TX-27	Ortiz	19.5	Safe D
IL-10	Kirk	-5.2	Tossup	OH-18	Space	19.8	Safe D *
KY-02	Open	-5.2	Lean R	CT-05	C. Murphy	20.2	Likely D
CA-03	Lungren	-5.5	RTW	TN-04	Davis	21.0	Safe D
WA-08	Reichert	-5.6	Tossup	IL-08	Bean	21.4	Safe D *
MI-11	McCotter	-6.0	Safe R	WI-07	Obey	21.7	Safe D
FL-25	M. Diaz-Balart	-6.2	Tossup	CO-03	Salazar	23.2	Safe D
OH-02	Schmidt	-7.2	Lean R	FL-02	Boyd	23.8	Safe D
SC-02	Wilson	-7.5	RTW	ND-AL	Pomeroy	24.0	Safe D
MN-03	Open	-7.6	Tossup	NY-20	Gillibrand	24.2	Lean D
NJ-07	Open	-8.0	Tossup	SC-05	Spratt	24.6	Safe D
AL-03	Rogers	-8.2	Likely R	WA-02	Larsen	24.8	Safe D
CA-46	Rohrabacher	-9.5	Likely R	NM-03	Open	26.2	Safe D
WY-AL	Open	-9.8	Lean R	NC-11	Shuler	26.2	Safe D *
IL-13	Biggert	-9.9	RTW	NC-04	Price	26.6	Safe D

As you can see, by the time you get up to 50, the Democratic defense list has started to get kind of uninteresting, while there are still some hotly contested offense seats left to discuss. It’s a pretty good illustration of how lopsided the playing field for the two parties was this year. For instance, there’s only one Democratic defense seat that we had left on our big board that fell off the list: Tim Walz in MN-01, who was Likely D but won by 29.6% (good for 67th place).

On the other hand, here’s the continued list for offense seats!

51) NV-02, Heller, -10.4, Lean R

52) TX-10, McCaul, -10.8, Lean R

54) AZ-03, Shadegg, -11.1, Lean R

57) NJ-05, Garrett, -13.5, Lean R

58) TX-07, Culberson, -13.5, Likely R

59) WV-02, Capito, -14.2, Lean R

60) NY-26, Open, -14.5, Lean R

67) NC-10, McHenry, -15.2, Likely R

68) IN-03, Souder, -15.3, Tossup

72) FL-18, Ros-Lehtinen, -15.8, Likely R

73) FL-21, L. Diaz-Balart, -15.8, Tossup

77) OH-07, Open, -16.4, Likely R

80) NC-05, Foxx, -16.8, Likely R

81) PA-15, Dent, -17.2, Likely R

83) FL-13, Buchanan, -18.0, Likely R

89) VA-10, Wolf, -20.0, Likely R

95) IA-04, Latham, -21.2, Likely R

103) MO-06, Graves, -22.5, Likely R

128) LA-07, Boustany, -27.6, Likely R

142) LA-01, Scalise, -31.4, Likely R

The first thing I notice is that there are only six places where we got it “wrong,” where wrong means we felt that, rather than leaving a race as “Tossup,” we could move it to “Lean” or even “Likely…” only to see it go the wrong way. On the defense side, that means Bill Jefferson at Safe D, whose loss I think absolutely no one saw coming (the NRCC’s four-digit campaign expenditures notwithstanding). It also means Nancy Boyda at Lean D. Although she seemed to have a comfortable edge in polls, her surprise loss provides a nice object lesson for incumbents defending tough districts: don’t try to run a campaign that actually appeals to your constituents’ logic and good judgment. Accept the DCCC’s money, and use it to run negative TV spots, instead of trying to engage them intellectually with policy-specific newspaper ads.

On the offense side, the big screwup is Don Young at Lean D; again, this is one that basically no pundit saw coming, thanks to extremely consistent polling in favor of Ethan Berkowitz. The lesson here: never underestimate Alaskans’ willingness to vote for more pork, even if it means supporting a felon (or soon-to-be felon) in the privacy of the voting booth.

We also had something of a crisis of faith in Bobby Bright in AL-02, in the face of tepid campaigning and a crimson district. Despite our dropping him late in the game to Lean R, his name rec and DCCC spending seemed to pull him over the line. Finally, we were caught off guard by the magnitude of the Obama coattails in Virginia, where we left Glenn Nye (VA-02) and Tom Perriello (VA-05) at Lean R. The polls just weren’t there for them, in GOP-leaning turf, but the bluening of Virginia lifted them far enough. (If there’s one candidate I’m personally shocked that won, it’s Perriello; I was miffed to see the DCCC pouring money into a guy who seemed way too progressive for such a rural and downscale district. Here’s one race where I’m super-happy to eat some crow.)

Where else did we whiff? IN-03 and FL-21 seemed like Tossups at the time, given the very close polling and baffled-seeming incumbents, but these ones are languishing up around #70. Apparently the constituents decided late in the game that, in IN-03, they had a challenger they just didn’t know enough about (Mike Montagano), and in FL-21, probably a challenger that they just knew too much about (Raul Martinez).

We may also have been a little generous on the Louisiana challenges in LA-07 and LA-01 (both listed as Likely R). Jim Harlan, with a conservative profile and his own fat pocketbook, seemed like the best possible candidate for LA-01; however, given that this is one of the nation’s most right-wing districts, I guess we have to take a 30-point loss (instead of the usual 50-point beatdown that we take in that district) as some sort of moral victory.

On the flipside, we missed a number of strong performances in California, especially the near upsets of Ken Calvert in CA-44 and Dan Lungren in CA-03. What’s most interesting is that the rising blue tide in California seemed very evenly distributed throughout the state and probably tied to an Obama-driven boost in infrequent voters voting straight-ticket D, as higher-profile challenges to Dana Rohrabacher and David Dreier did only slightly better than completely under-the-radar challenges to guys like Buck McKeon, Wally Herger, and Elton Gallegly.

Where did we buck the odds? I’m pleased with how well we did at moving the right people to “Lean D” in the weeks before the election; at the time, it seemed a little audacious to call a win in advance for Gary Peters, Larry Kissell, Suzanne Kosmas, Betsy Markey, and Eric Massa in their fights against (lame) incumbents, but they all pulled it out… as did last-minute change Mary Jo Kilroy, who finally managed to pull it out in overtime and save us a lot of egg on our faces.

On the whole, we ran up a pretty good track record (while using the ass-covering category of “Tossup” a lot less than certain other prognosticators). The lesson here is that prognosticating is more art than science; your predictions are only as good as your polls and your scuttlebutt.

DavidNYC: This was indeed a very fun project and a tremendous learning experience, and I expect will continue to do race ratings in the future. It was also remarkably time-consuming, especially as we got toward the end – as Crisitunity suggests, there was a lot of back-and-forth as we pored over Google spreadsheets – plus the occasional bit of smack talk. But I think we’d all gladly take more cycles like the one just concluded!

I just have a few additional thoughts. I think our Senate ratings hit the mark, and I think we were in general pretty disciplined in not moving races until we had sufficient evidence to justify a change. Some examples I’m thinking of include OR-Sen and CT-04, where we insisted on seeing polling before concluding that popular, “moderate” Republican incumbents were truly in jeopardy.

On the flipside, I think sometimes you just have to acknowledge an open seat is gone, as we did early on by moving VA-Sen to Safe D in August, and later NY-13 in October. (Both of these were thirty-point races.)

One of our biggest flubs, though, was NY-24. We had the race as Likely D until a week before election day, when we moved it to Safe. A lack of polling, zero outside spending, and a seemingly unimpressive Republican who had been substantially outraised all convinced us that there was nothing to see here.

We couldn’t have been more wrong. In the end, Mike Arcuri raised “just” $1.6 million (unimpressive compared to fellow freshmen like Chris Murphy, Patrick Murphy or even Paul Hodes), while Richard Hanna took in almost $1.1 mil. The final four-point margin was hair-raising, and suggests Arcuri still has a lot of work to do to establish himself. It also tells us that there will always be surprises – and that absence of evidence is not evidence of a Straniere.

James: Crisitunity and David touched on a lot of key points above, but I’ll just add that I think that we all were a bit caught off guard by just how much of a focal point our race ratings exercise became in the day-to-day operations of this blog.

When I first drafted a preliminary set of race ratings at the tail end of 2007, David’s response after I asked him for his thoughts was merely: “Nice work!” David later admitted to me that he felt as if he were a busy parent being handed a crappy piece of crayon art by a proud six year-old son. But once that crayon drawing was slapped on the fridge, if you will, we all realized that we would have to put in a great level of care into making sure we felt that each rating had a strong leg to stand on. In that sense, our race ratings project became the engine of SSP: we all had to step up our game to make sure that no major (or even minor) developments in the key House races would slip past us unnoticed — especially after we achieved some early success by noticing MS-01 before anyone else did.

Our goal of making this ratings project as honest and credible as possible, I believe, had a great impact on our front page coverage, and I know we caught on to a lot of stories and developments that we may have otherwise missed had it not been for our relentless commitment to stay on top of things. There’s no doubt in my mind that our ratings exercise, even if it provided no great revelations to anyone else, helped improve the work and quality of this blog immensely over my output in the summer and fall of 2006.

Now that the open thread about what Congressional districts the Swing State Project readership hails from has died down, I thought I’d pull together some data to try and make some generalizations about what type of places we inhabit and who represents us.

This is a question that has always nagged me in the past when reading blogosphere calls to action. In other words, when all of us in the blogosphere get off our butts and call our representatives and complain, are we preaching to the choir? It’s been documented that the liberal blogosphere is more metropolitan, more affluent, more educated, whiter, and maler than the population at large. Does that mean that we are concentrated in urban, heavily Democratic districts, to the extent that most of us are represented by progressive reps who are already voting the way we want to, regardless of our demands? Or, based on the fact that many of the most educated and affluent districts are suburban swing districts, where our input might actually have some impact on a representative facing competing demands and potentially competitive elections?

One more Daily Kos demographic post by DrSteveB from May 2007 (so reflecting Congress’ current composition) sheds a little light on this: “Is Your Congressperson a Dem or Rep?” 63% of the respondents (sample of 2,610) said that they are represented by a Democrat, and 47% indicated that they would not support a primary challenge to their representative (most likely indicating satisfaction with the progressiveness of their representative, although it may also indicate resignation to their representative’s conservativeness as being acceptable given the district’s lean). 37% of the respondents were represented by a Republican. Compare this with the overall composition of the House, which is 54% Democrat and 46% Republican. Daily Kos is disproportionately represented by Democratic representatives.

To my surprise, this almost exactly matched the results from the much smaller sample here at Swing State Project. I found a sample of 81, using comments but not the Frappr map (not many Frappr participants actually cited their district, and those that did were often the same people who participated in the comments). Where commenters (usually college students) mentioned living in multiple districts without saying where they were registered, I assigned them to their ‘home’ (i.e. parents’) districts.

Here’s how we at SSP break down:

Democrat-held districts	50	62%
Republican-held districts	31	38%

But by knowing specifically which districts each respondent lives in, we can go a lot further than the Daily Kos survey did. For instance, we can check out what ideological caucuses our representatives are members of. Look at the first line: 16 of the 81 SSPers are represented by members of the Progressive Caucus, or 20% of us. In reality, Progressives are 68 of the 435 in the House, or 16% of the House members.

Caucus	SSPers	%	Actual percentage of House
Progressive Caucus	16	20%	16%
New Democrats	15	19%	14%
Blue Dogs	7	9%	11%
Cong. Black Caucus	7	9%	9%
Cong. Hispanic Caucus	3	4%	5%
Unaffiliated Dems	12	15%	14%
Main Street Partnership	9	11%	9%
Republican Study Comm.	15	19%	25%
Unaffiliated GOP	8	10%	12%

We’re disproportionately represented not just by Progressives but even more so by New Dems. Interestingly, we’re also disproportionately represented by Main Street Partnership members (maybe not surprising, since they tend to be concentrated in affluent and educated suburban districts). We’re under-represented among Blue Dog and RSC constituencies (again not surprising, since these tend to be the rural and less-educated districts). (Don’t look for these numbers to add up to 100, as many members belong to more than one caucus.)

We can also take a look at the ranked liberalness or conservativeness of our representatives. For this, I’ll use National Journal composite scores from 2007 (since they’re already an attempt to scale reps on their liberalness from 0 to 100). On average, our reps are more liberal than average, but, oddly, we’re under-represented by representatives who are in the top decile for liberalness. That may have something to do with the fact that we’re particularly over-represented by New Dems, while not being over-represented by CBC members, many of whom are among the House’s most liberal members.

Liberalness

Our median NJ score: 63.65 (Overall median is 50.75)

Our range: 95 (Al “Ooops, I’d better veer left because of my primary” Wynn in MD-04) to 7.7 (Virginia Foxx in NC-05)

6 of 81 (7.4%) are in top decile for liberalness (score of 87.3 or more)

29 of 81 (35.8%) are in top quartile for liberalness (76.8 or more)

14 of 81 (17.3%) are in bottom quartile for liberalness (21.3 or less)

5 of 81 (6.1%) are in bottom decile for liberalness (14.5 or less)

SSPers also tend to inhabit districts with a lean that is predisposed toward the Democrats at the presidential level. Only 29 out of the 81 of us live in districts with a Cook PVI rating that is Republican-leaning, and only 15 out of 81 live in districts with a rating of R+6 or more (which is where I’d start to say “that’s pretty red”).

PVI

Our median PVI: D+5 (Overall median is R+1)

Our range: D+43 (NY-15) to R+16 (TX-07)

12 of 81 (14.8%) are in top decile for PVI (D+22 or more)

29 of 81 (35.8%) are in top quartile for PVI (D+10 or more)

10 of 81 (12.3%) are in bottom quartile for PVI (R+10 or more)

5 of 81 (6.2%) are in bottom decile for PVI (R+15 or more)

Let’s look at a few other demographic indicators. Overall, SSPers are an extremely metropolitan bunch (it’s hard to break down ‘urban’ vs. ‘suburban’ because a lot of districts contain elements of both, and the census bureau uses a binary system where someone is either ‘urban’ or ‘rural,’ although I’ve observed that many districts that are 5-10% ‘rural’ tend to be what you’d think of as stereotypical suburban districts). The number, for each district, represents the census bureau’s count of people living in a ‘rural’ environment.

Ruralness

Our median ruralness: 5% (Overall median is 15.7%)

Our range: 64% (VA-05) to 0% (12-way tie)

5 of 81 (6.2%) are in top decile for ruralness (50.6% or more)

10 of 81 (12.3%) are in top quartile for ruralness (35.8% or more)

33 of 81 (40.7%) are in bottom quartile for ruralness (1.5% or less)

12 of 81 (14.8%) are in bottom decile for ruralness (0%)

SSPers tend to come from affluent districts. That, of course, doesn’t mean that they themselves are affluent, just that they live among people with high per capita incomes. (Especially considering that we seem to have a large number of college students and post-collegiate activists here.) These are using 2000 census numbers for each district’s per capita income, so bear in mind that these numbers have gone up even more (at least in some parts of the country).

Per capita income

Our median PCI: $23,208 (Overall median is $20,529)

Our range: $47,498 (CA-30) to $14,021 (CA-38)

21 of 81 (25.9%) are in top decile for PCI ($28,560 or more)

36 of 81 (44.4%) are in top quartile for PCI ($24,527 or more)

7 of 81 (8.6%) are in bottom quartile for PCI ($17,820 or less)

2 of 81 (2.5%) are in bottom decile for PCI ($15,277 or less)

And the area where SSPers seem most out of whack with the nation, even more so than per capita income, is education. Look at the numbers, which are each districts’ percentage of persons 25 or older with at least 4-year college degrees.

Education

Our median education: 30.5% (Overall median is 22.6%)

Our range: 53.8% (VA-08) to 12.5% (CA-38)

22 of 81 (27.2%) are in top decile for education (36.5% or more)

45 of 81 (55.6%) are in top quartile for education (28.9% or more)

6 of 81 (7.4%) are in bottom quartile for education (17.5% or less)

1 of 81 (1.2%) are in bottom decile for education (14.1% or less)

Taken as a whole, we can see that Swing State Project members (or at least the ones who responded to the question) are disproportionately represented by Democrats, and by Progressives or New Dems in particular. We’re coming from districts that are disproportionately urban, affluent, and educated. And when we get in touch with our representatives, many of us are getting in touch with someone who already shares our values.

(I’m probably as good a case in point as anyone. I’m in WA-07, which is Seattle. We’re represented by Jim McDermott, who’s in the Progressive Caucus and in the top quartile for liberalness. The district is in the top decile for PVI, educational attainment, and per capita income, and the bottom quartile for ruralness.)

For those who are interested in the full data set (and I know you’re out there), go to Google Docs for the database.

Well, I’m Crisitunity. David and James were kind enough to ask me to write for the front page when I see fit, so you’ll be seeing more of my contributions. I have no paid connection to the world of politics, and in fact I haven’t since the summer of 1990, which I spent trudging around OR-05 canvassing for Mike Kopetski’s campaign (which, if you do the math, means I’m officially getting to be middle-aged).

As for the “What am I doing here?” part of the question, I’ll mostly be doing more of the big-picture quantitiatve stuff that I’ve been diarying about lately, although I’ll pick up any breaking polls or Republican sex scandals that otherwise fall through the cracks. I’m obsessed with all things demographic, and as we gradually get closer to 2010 and census time, I’ll be focusing more on issues of redistricting and something we need to start worrying about now: state legislature control.

Also, I’d like to keep tinkering with the PVI/Vote Index that many of you are fond of; I’ve been really blown away by the work Poblano (aka Nate Silver) has been doing lately, and would really like to start developing a more comprehensive sabermetric approach to predicting what kind of representative a district can elect and how they might vote once they’re elected. (Unfortunately, I might need something more sophisticated than Excel to make any headway on that! I’m not a professional statistician or demographer or anything close to that, just a dabbler.)

Anyway, SSP has one of the most informed and focused readerships of any blog out there, and I really look forward to hashing things out with you guys. As always, I welcome questions and comments about whatever it is I’m doing.

By the way, if you’re wondering about my handle, it’s a Simpsons reference:

Lisa: Look on the bright side, Dad. Did you know that the Chinese use the same word for ‘crisis’ as they do for ‘opportunity’?

Homer: Yes! Crisitunity.

My friend JanetTinMd, a Yearly Carnacki veteran, made an excellent point at Booman Tribune that the schedule was too ambitious to squeeze in the National Zoo and and Smithsonian Museum in one day. So see revised schedule below.

Schedule and details below.

The Zoo is pretty good-sized.  You could spend a whole day there, if you really wanted to walk around and see animals, stand in line for the pandas, and give the children a chance to beg for ice cream and goodies from the gift shop or chase each other in circles ’til they’re dizzy (and give the adults a chance to sit on benches and hang out and foment revolution).  🙂
It’s also easy to spend hours in just ONE of the Smithsonian buildings and then wonder where the time went….. 

Not to mention that it will take at least a good half-hour to get from the Zoo to the Mall via Metro. 

Remember our experiences from Harpers Ferry, and trying to keep a group of any size together hopping between two places that are not especially near each other — maybe it might be more relaxing to pick one or the other, either the zoo or one of the museums? (Maybe zoo if the weather is good, one of the museums if it’s raining?) It’s been a while since I went to the zoo, but I’m sure they have places to sit and eat, either picnic or purchase food there… 

Just thinking of a slower pace so we can actually talk and not be too stressed over watching the clock…. though I’ll certainly tag along with what other folks want to do.

The Mid-Atlantic meetup has always been on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Probably more so than other meetups that tend to involve lots of alcohol and wild orgies (I wrote that for any freepers reading this), Yearly Carnacki is a laidback affair, with people bringing their children and with an emphasis on fun as well as politics.

Here’s the plan, and we’re trying to have two meetup times to accomodate those who just want to attend later in the day, a request in past years. Bring a brown bag lunch or pick up something for a picnic.

11 a.m. — Meet us at the visitor’s center of the National Zoo. More information about the zoo here. Zoo map here (PDF)

1 p.m. — Picnic at the zoo (or lunch at the snack bar for those inclined).

In the event of thunderstorms — severe rain and not just a sprinkle — the alternative location is the Smithsonian Castle near the information desk where we will then pick a museum to tour. Meet there at 11 a.m. in the event of severe rain.

For information on how to meet up with the group if you want to meet us later in the day, shoot me an email.

Think back to the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Criminals seized four airliners and crashed them into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

Many on board the planes realized they were going to die and many trapped in the towers knew their end was near too.

Families watched horrified, knowing they were unable to save their loved ones.

3,000 people died on Sept. 11th, taken away from their families before their time, leaving behind grief and voids where their lives were.

Cancer creates a Sept. 11th every other day.

Cancer kills 1,500 people every day. Unlike Sept. 11th, the deaths are spread out across the country and not televised. Nevertheless, the victims die before their time. Loved ones watch in sadness and fear. The deaths leave voids in the lives of others.

This year, cancer will kill about 559,650 people. Grandparents. Fathers. Mothers. Children.

To those of you who have read this before, I apologize. But I realize not everyone reads political blogs on Friday nights. So I will repeat my tale from Friday:

I’m probably best known on Daily Kos for when I wrote happy stories on Friday nights.

Tonight, I want to tell you about the worst day of my life. Then I’m going to ask you to help me do something about it.

I loved my father a great deal. He was a good, decent, hard working man. He worked his eight-hour shift at the paper mill as a mechanic and electrician and then came home and worked on the farm often until dark and sometimes beyond.

One cold January night when I was 19, the two of us were digging a trench to run electrical wiring underground from the house to a new barn.

“Boy, I just can’t seem to catch my breath,” he said, leaning on his shovel.

My father never took sick days. The only time I recalled him missing work was when he passed kidney stones.

He went to the doctor about his shortness of breath. The doctor scheduled a biopsy. I remember well the growing feeling of fear as we sat in the hospital waiting room. My younger sister left because we did not know how long the procedure would take. Soon after she walked out, we saw the doctor coming down another hall and I raced to get her. The two of us sprinted back. The biopsy showed he had inoperable cancer. It had been in his lymph nodes and spread to his heart and lungs. The doctor told him he had less than a year to live.

That night my mother’s best friend from childhood came out to the farm after she finished working her shift at the hospital.

My mother had known when she was 10 years old she wanted to marry my father. He joined the Navy at 17 during the Korean War and was stationed at Norfolk, Va., when she turned 18. He sent an engagement ring to her friend and arranged for her to be at my mother’s when he phoned to propose and then her friend slipped the engagement ring on my mother’s finger. That night she was there to explain my father’s cancer treatment options to my mother and to comfort her. I walked her out to her car and then I cried for a long time on her shoulder. Twenty three years later I can remember how wet my face was with tears.

Twenty three years of life later, that remains the saddest and worst day of my life. Even his death seven months later was not as sad for by then death was a release for him.

I often wish my father was still alive to see my daughters and to see them sitting beside him on the tractor just as he did my brother’s daughters. I would have liked that. He was a good grandfather.

Many of us have seen the scourge that is cancer in our lives, either in our own or in those we love. Mcjoan’s brother. Jane at Fire Dog Lake is fighting it again. Dreaming of Better Days is undergoing treatment for it.

Now station wagon:

sad news and a BIG F-ING PROBLEM (78+ / 0-)

in stationwagonville.  It has been 11 days since I went to my doctor with nausea and vomiting and a distended upper abdomen to an appointment with an oncologist yesterday who told my husband and me that I have advanced, too advanced to treat, liver cancer.  Monday I have a biopsy on the tumors literally squeezing out functioning liver cells to see if the cancer is primary or secondary- they have not been able to locate any source outside of my liver.  But the oncologist has a hunch that it might be my pancreas- which can be hard to see even with a CAT scan.  If it’s secondary, chemo might be able to buy me a little time, but the prognosis is grim.  We can’t process this all at once (mercifully) we keep cycling between waiting to wake up and being overwhelmed with sadness for our kids and other loved ones. 

Liver cancer is a mean mofo.  Symptoms don’t usually show up until it’s too advanced to treat.

I love you all, Kossacks.  I just needed to come here and dump this out.  I’m going to watch a movie with my son now.  I’m grateful to all of you for giving me a learning place and a haven.

In order to hide their embezzlement behind a posse of demented hicks, Republicans’ slogans must be short and superstitious. Grand Moff Texan

by station wagon on Sat Mar 03, 2007 at 08:51:36 PM EST

As I mentioned on Friday, Prayers are important. I know enough about cancer that amazing treatments are being developed. Cancer treatment has come along way since my father died of it in 1984.

Many of us have been through this terrible disease, either suffering from it or losing someone dear to us from it.

I well recall the anger I felt at seeing my father ill. That anger creates an energy to this day.

Let us put that anger and energy to use.

Let us do our part to fight this scourge upon humanity.

As I said before, I can’t research a cure or new treatment for patients or donate millions for those who do.

But I can write to Congress and urge that they fully arm those who can. We spend hundreds of billions on defense projects while people are dying at home from illness and poverty.

We need to do more as a nation to find out why cancer rates are rising, what environmental factors might be causing certain cancers to appear at younger age groups.

As I wrote Friday:

I am not asking for us to fight against death. Death is as natural as life. Our motality is what makes each day count and our time on earth is better by knowing that.

But I am saying we can work to eradicate a disease that is horrific.

What we can do as a political blog is to advocate to make certain those on the frontline of cancer and scientific research have the tools and people they need.

From the comments on Friday, it is clear that not only do we as a nation need to fully fund the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, but also fully fund the National Science Foundation. It should not be a question of one agency played off another in order to research a cure. It should be more funding for all research. The secret to eradicate cancer and other diseases might not come from direct research, but from other, seemingly unrelated research in other fields.

I’d like to have titled this diary: “Let’s kick cancer’s ass”. It’s not going to happen easily. This has to be a long term committment from us and from our government.

Here’s the American Cancer Society’s page to email Congressional legislators. We’re not going to use their form letter however. Many of us have our own issues with the American Cancer Society for one reason or another. I’m going to include some talking points for you to feel free to use, but write of your tale of cancer. Reach inside and remember your fear and your anger and most importantly your love for those hurt by it to write from your own heart:

(Your cancer story here)

As my Congressional representative, here is what I want you to do:

? A minimum increase of 6.7 percent for the National Institutes of Health in 2008 in your program request letter to the Appropriations Subcommittee.

? Keep the promise of increasing funding for the National Science Foundation. Don’t just say you want to double the budget. Provide funding for it.

? In addition, stop looking at funding for scientific research at NIH, NCI and the NSF in five year cycles. Look at this as a long-term committment because cures won’t be found over night. Take a long term approach and develop budget plans for scientific research grants that look ahead 20 to 50 years. Developing a PhD researcher takes longer than the current budget cycles for scientific research.

? Let us work together to save lives. The economic benefits from such research can be tremendous. The lifesaving benefits can be priceless.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[City, State ZIP]

Feel free to use any aspects of my diary in writing your emails. Feel free also to print out your letters and send them to your Congressional representative.

I’m working on other diaries for this project. One of the diaries will urge people to donate to their local hospices and Meals on Wheels programs. The fight against cancer is long term. Sometimes victory will have to be measured by such things as pain-free days. Or helping someone go home to spend their final days. Another diary will ask people to write letters to their local newspapers to increase public awareness of the importance of tax-dollar supported federal and state research. And I also want us to write to the American Cancer Society to push them to fully support all areas of scientific research, no matter how controversial.

More than 10 million people in the United States are currently being treated for cancer or have survived cancer. Countless others love those people and are glad they are alive today. Politically, this is an effort that should be bipartisan because President Nixon created the National Cancer Institute out of memory of his sister who had died from the disease. In reality, we’ve seen too many right wingers declare a war on scientific research and play shell games with funding. Let’s change that. Let’s do what we can to save lives.