I Got It Almost Right

From November 8th, surveying the "superiority" of the big-data tools that the President used to demolish Governor Romney's campaign:

Holding the Presidency confers an enormous advantage. The incumbent party--whether Democrat or Republican--will have access to oceans of data not necessarily available to its opponent. It is nigh impossible to enforce privacy rules, especially since enforcement is done largely through self-policing.

The error was in thinking that the access to and misuse of big data applied to future campaigns.

Big Data Wins the Biggest Prize

When Rush Limbaugh made fun of the Obama campaign dinner at Sarah Jessica Parker's townhouse, I laughed right along. It was the apotheosis of the Hollywood love-in for President Obama, ripe for mockery. It turns out that the Democrats were playing chess while the Republicans thought the game was checkers (the way things turned out a cute dog might have helped). Key to the President's re-election was

a massive data effort that helped Obama raise $1 billion, remade the process of targeting TV ads and created detailed models of swing-state voters that could be used to increase the effectiveness of everything from phone calls and door knocks to direct mailings and social media.

The dinner with Sarah, and its West Coast counterpart dinner with George Clooney, were not affectations but part of a well-thought-out strategy [bold added]:

For the general public, there was no way to know that the idea for the Parker contest had come from a data-mining discovery about some supporters: affection for contests, small dinners and celebrity. But from the beginning, campaign manager Jim Messina had promised a totally different, metric-driven kind of campaign in which politics was the goal but political instincts might not be the means. “We are going to measure every single thing in this campaign,” he said after taking the job. He hired an analytics department five times as large as that of the 2008 operation, with an official “chief scientist” for the Chicago headquarters named Rayid Ghani, who in a previous life crunched huge data sets to, among other things, maximize the efficiency of supermarket sales promotions.

Michael Scherer's article in Time is a fascinating read. Comments:

1) The Republicans undoubtedly will create, if they haven't done so already, a similar big-data operation.

2) The first important step, which began shortly after 2008, was the 18-month-long project to create a "mega" file that unified the many disparate Democratic databases. This means that work on 2016 has already begun (sigh).

3) Holding the Presidency confers an enormous advantage. The incumbent party--whether Democrat or Republican--will have access to oceans of data not necessarily available to its opponent. It is nigh impossible to enforce privacy rules, especially since enforcement is done largely through self-policing. [Flashback: Big Data is the new Plastics.]

Forecasting is Uncertain, Especially About the Future

The Election
Monday night's debate was the least disputatious of the three debates between President Obama and Governor Romney. The consensus seems to be that the President won the debate but not enough to change the minds of Romney supporters.

For what it's worth, your humble observer thinks that Mr. Obama may still eke out a win, but the likelihood is that Mitt Romney will be the next President, and a good chance that he will win by a significant margin. There is no possibility that President Obama will get even 300 electoral votes (he won 365 in 2008, and 270 are needed to win).

iPad Mini
Tuesday's announcement of the iPad Mini initially triggered disappointment because of its high price relative to the competition:

The iPad Mini tablet, which starts at $329, is a cousin to the original iPad, whose screen is about a third larger. But Apple's smaller tablet is priced well above Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire HD and Google Inc.'s Nexus 7—two tablets which are similar in size and some specs. Those devices cost $199 or $249 depending on the amount of memory.

Apple also announced upgrades to existing products that were understandably overlooked in the hoopla over the Mini. Macintoshes (Mac-minis, iMacs, and MacBooks) and the regular iPad all have become faster under the hood without a price increase. Our household already has ordered a couple of the new Mac offerings.

As for the iPad Mini, critics would do well to remember how the iPhone 4S took off after an underwhelming reception. It could become the hot new gaming platform or be just the right size for the distaff set--the iPhone screen is too small for many applications, yet the regular iPad is too big to fit in a handbag. Besides, Apple still has room to drop the price later to push sales.

World Series
Please, not another post about the Giants, you say, but after tonight's game how can we not comment? The Giants were heavy underdogs in Game 1 to Detroit and its otherworldly pitcher Justin Verlander.

Three home runs in one World Series game by third baseman Pablo Sandoval---a feat matched by only three other players (Babe Ruth, Reggie Jackson, and Albert Pujols) in history---and a superb performance by supposedly washed-up pitcher Barry Zito added compelling drama to a game that an 8-3 final score would normally belie. Some over-the-top sports reporters are completely reversing their original predictions and calling the Series "over" because the Giants beat the Tigers' ace in one game.

Whoa, the ball takes funny bounces, political sentiments can shift overnight, and tech dross can turn into gold and vice versa. Forecasting is uncertain, especially about the future. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Numbers The President Can Brag About

During President Obama's term all indices are much higher - Dow +68%, S&P +78%, NASDAQ +113%

The Republicans have been barraging the airwaves with numbers, e.g., $16 trillion national debt, $5 gasoline, and 8% unemployment, and it appears from the latest poll numbers that the Obama campaign is withering under the onslaught.

But there's one set of numbers that the President can brag about. The stock market has moved substantially higher during his term.

It's surprising that Democrats haven't publicized this more. Perhaps the omission is because of the mistaken belief that only fat cats in the top 1% care about equities (vilifying the 1% is part of the Democratic strategy). But the majority of American households now holds stock market assets through 401(k) plans, IRAs, and regular brokerage accounts and has benefited from the Obama market.

If, for example, a household had $100,000 in stocks and mutual funds when President Obama entered office, that amount now is likely to be worth at least $200,000, assuming reinvestment of dividends and no withdrawals. This appreciation would have gone a long way toward mitigating the effects of the recession and fall in home prices.

Under most measures we wouldn't want the next four years to look like the last four....unless we're talking about the stock market.

If President Obama would give us a plausible reason that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be another 68% higher when he leaves office in 2016, many disillusioned investors-voters would give him another look. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Let's Vote Already

I watched parts of the second Presidential debate, read the transcript, and listened to some of the post-debate spin by supporters of each who said their candidate won. Both men got their points across, and neither said anything that would hurt their candidacy.

I wish we could vote already--yes, we can cast an absentee ballot by mail, but going to the polling place is part of the American civic experience--since I find it hard to believe that there are many Americans who truly haven't made up their minds. Let's get on with it.

Further thoughts:

The instant-polls seem to be saying that President Obama won, but not overwhelmingly. That result is okay, I suspect, even to his detractors. As President he represents everyone, and another embarrassingly bad performance wouldn't help the national self-esteem.

Debating is a specialized skill that doesn't have much to do with good decision-making, the leadership of the armed forces, the selection of competent people (especially judges), or getting legislation passed. Neither, for that matter, is fund-raising.

Political junkies can recite the history of changes to Governor Romney's health care positions or to the Obama Administration's statements on Libya, but the rest of us, probably sensibly, don't choose to spend our lives that way. It's probably unfair that our votes count just as much as those who spend their lives studying issues, but that's the system we've got.

Two quotes from Winston Churchill:

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.