"Drunk Nate Silver" became a Twitter thing recently, which makes perfect sense. People intuitively know prophecy is a gift...and a burden. In the face of such relentless clarity he might well crave some oblivion--if you or I had to deal with that kind of insight we'd probably go straight to the bottle and get messy as Rasmussen.

And cm'on, if you don't buy his book you're going to have a much harder time pretending you've read it. Don't be the last person at the party to act like you understand Bayesian processes vis-a-vis free market economics, you're going to look like a real a-hole.

So if the web wants to superimpose Charles Bukowski on Nate Silver, let it. No matter how unlikely it is, I would personally rather fantasize that he's a booze-hungry seer of visions than learn all that damn math. Reality sounds like a lot of work.

It's the trends, baby, just like I said. This is a screenshot of Nate Silver's projections based on state polls reported back today. Those polls aren't pretty for Mitt. Ohio dropped out of the tossup zone and into "lean Obama" territory, along with Colorado and Nevada. TPM's PollTracker has been conservative for the whole election cycle, and even it crossed over this week, putting Obama in winning territory, albeit not by much. Daily Kos' Steve Singiser had even more bad news for Romney:

Despite the (comparably) modest sample size, the trajectory of today's numbers are pretty unmistakeable. This was, on balance, the worst polling day for Mitt Romney since the heady days (for Democrats, at least) of mid-to-late September. Not only did all the old "battleground" states come in a little weaker for him than recent polling averages would indicate, a couple of them (Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin) came in significantly worse.

What's more: the one state where he did get some halfway decent data yesterday (Michigan) betrayed him today, as a new poll there shows the state quite a bit more comfortable for him than yesterday's Glengariff poll suggested.

As for methodology, one pollster says the samples aren't representative of likely or registered voters, because they are not including enough cell phone only users in their samples. Mother Jones:

Why does this uptick in cell-only users matter? Because, as Greenberg writes, some polls used to gauge the state of the presidential race don't reach these people—and could therefore be lowballing Obama's standing. (Robocalls are used by many pollsters, but cellphones are blocked from receiving robocalls.) Greenberg went back and analyzed 4,000 of his polling firm's interviews this election season and found that cell-only voters break for Obama in significant numbers.

Meanwhile, in the secret back rooms of the Romney campaign, they're busy telling everyone not to worry, they'll win it in a landslide. They're so confident of this they're going to pour a whole lot of ad money into Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan, states with such a solid Obama lead they've been conceded for weeks.

I think that would be part of Karl Rove's "pretend there's Mittmentum" strategy. It goes hand in hand with Dick Morris standing tall and predicting a Republican landslide. Confession: Reading Morris' stupid predictions made me feel much better about the election, since Morris is wrong about everything.

Here's a little picture of the most current Rand poll as a chaser. Still, it's going to depend on everyone actually voting, and that may be a problem in New Jersey and New York.

I like the trends. I'm told these final polls are the most predictive, and if they hold and everyone votes, we can toast to four more years on November 6th.

While Mitt Romney continues to dash the hopes of all but the most stalwart conservatives, the Senate is slipping from Republicans' grasp, state by state, drip by drip. Nate Silver has the latest:

An unusually large number of Senate races remain competitive, meaning that a wide range of outcomes are still possible. Republicans have about a 10 percent chance of winning a net of at least six seats from Democrats, according to the forecast, which would give them control of at least 53 seats next year. However, there is also about a 20 percent chance that Democrats could actually gain Senate seats on balance, giving them at least 54. The only thing that seems completely assured is that neither party will control enough seats next year to hold a filibuster-proof majority.

But the odds of a favorable overall outcome for Democrats have increased in recent weeks. The forecast model now gives them a 70 percent chance of controlling the chamber, either by having at least 50 seats and the presidency, or 51 without it.

As Elizabeth Warren's odds get better, Todd Akin's are falling farther and farther short. Just yesterday his wife likened the GOP abandonment of her husband's candidacy to -- wait for it -- rape.

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Last time we checked in with Nate, he was busy getting cursed at by wingnut radio talk show host and "documentary filmmaker" John Ziegler for daring to question a poll Ziegler commissioned that purportedly "proved" that Obama voters were somehow misinformed, and therefore Obama only got elected because his supporters are dumb. I'm sure Ziegler would disagree with that characterization, but it's pretty clear that's what he's supposedly trying to prove. The transcript Nate posted of their first exchange was rather lively. This second encounter doesn't disappoint.

I completely agree with Nate Silver: the Obama campaign needs to make better ads.

It's not that Obama's ads are bad by any normal metric. They're well produced and they usually hit the right themes. The problem is that they're very conventional. Obama is supposed to exude change. But his ads don't. They look like the ads we see every election cycle: images, text, and video footage linked together by the voice of a professional narrator. They may be marginally effective, but they are exceedingly forgettable and often make Obama come across as just another politician playing the same old game (even though his ads are much more honest than McCain's).

The Obama campaign needs to think a little more outside of the box. They should aim to produce ads that are either more creative/funny than a typical campaign ad, or more sincere.

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Nate Silver has written a piece called "Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy To Oppose the Senate Bill." He says we need to stop being "polite" (who's polite these days?) and start being "real." In the spirit of impoliteness and reality (realness?), he offers some numbers in order to argue that the Left is nuts not to embrace the Senate health reform bill.

In that same "no-politeness" spirit, here's my response: Garbage in, garbage out. Is that "real" enough for ya? Progressives - and everyone else, for that matter - should keep fighting.

Silver's heart may be in the right place, and his math is right, but many of his assumptions are flat-out wrong. More importantly, he fails to place his work in the proper human and political context. It's like this: You can build the best model in the world for predicting the outcome of hockey games. But if you knew that sometime during the third period Rahm Emanuel was going to drive out on the ice in a Zamboni and flatten your team's entire defense, wouldn't that change your model a little? And if you knew half the hockey players would wind up bleeding and broken ... (Oh, wait - they do. Bad example.)

Progressives would be insane to do as Silver suggests. He tells us that "a picture's worth a thousand words" (and then gives us 1,795 words - but who's counting). Let's review both his analysis and his conclusions.

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