Keeping Me Sane

Although I'm normally only moderately interested in politics, I've gotten a little obsessed with the election in these final few weeks, as I did in 2008. I look too much at polling sites. Between that and trying to finish my new album, my brain capacity is pretty much maxed out (I keep some in reserve for work). I thought the President did very well in the final debate tonight, and Romney didn't look crazy, which I guess was his goal,as he tried to portray Obama's foreign policy actions as weak, while saying that he agreed with most of them and would do the same things. But I'm still worried that something like half of the people in this country think that Mitt would be an OK president.

Two things keep me sane in this. One is Nate Silver's number-crunchingly satisfying FiveThirtyEight Blog which takes tons of different polls' data, runs them through an election simulation model, and predicts the odds (and many other things). This helps me avoid panic when some specific poll shows Romney with a 6 point lead. Nate did very well in 2008, calling 49 out of 50 states correctly. Tonight his forecast has the President with a 70% chance of winning the electoral college, with 290 electoral votes. I hope he's right!

The other thing that helps is The Borowitz Report. Andy's often zany fake news articles are most often about Mr. Romney these days, such as this one on his belief in a woman's right to choose... what to make for dinner. I hope Andy doesn't have Mitt to kick around much longer.