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What a night! As I indicated in (chapter A) I had intended to have this book published  before the election but the best laid plans… Trouble is there’s so much material and I was so ambitious with it. But any chance I had of getting over the finish line was dashed when I got that stomach virus which turned out to be a blockage in my gallstones. I did get back home Monday night just in time for the election.

UPDATE: I wrote these words on November 7, 2018. Today is August 17, 2019-hopefully this is published before November 7, 2019! It should be at this point I’m rereading my own book and I’m almost done-at least the 1st run through!

But ok this way we get to review my election predictions I made Monday… I deliberately chose to make falsifiable predictions to see how they held up. And we get to see the Dream Walking-a Democratic Congress that will be a check on Trump.

As for predictions the lesson is largely what it was in 2016: listen to Nate Silver. Follow the 538 model. Wether you like what it’s saying or not. Just like in 2016, I and many Democrats didn’t love what 538 was saying. It rightly drives Silver crazy that everyone is always saying the polls were all wrong in 2016 when they really nailed the election-at least the national ones did. He had warned that while Hillary like Obama before him was very likely to win the popular vote but unlike Obama the electoral college was considerably more uncertain. She had about a 90% chance of winning the popular vote-which is as close as you get to certainty predicting messy human affairs but only in the low 70s regarding the EC.

Her 73% odds of winning the EC might have seemed fairly robust but, 27% is a significant uncertainty-almost a 1 in 4 chance. This was something most Democrats on Twitter didn’t want to hear-I certainly didn’t and refused to believe it.

Similarly last night… Throughout October, Silver had told a very consistent and boring story: that the Dems were 85% to win the House but the GOP was 85% to win the Senate. Throughout most of this election cycle-as is clear from most of the book I spoke little about a Dem Senate which seemed remote and focused on a Dem House. However, many of us started to convince ourselves maybe we would win the Senate after all. I pointed out in previous chapters that Silver himself said there was a decent chance that one of the two predictions didn’t happen and that it seems much more plausible that we have a Dem Senate along with a Dem House than a GOP House and GOP Senate-after all this is a Blue Wave right?

Alas perhaps this was motivated reasoning. So yes the big lesson going forward should be listen to Nate Silver and his model. I mean the model nailed the 2008 election-predicting 49 out of 50 states, it got all 50 states in 2012 and it correctly predicted the significant likelihood of Hillary’s popular vote/electoral college split and once again last night the model held to form-Dems picked up the House but fell short in the Senate.

Ok so Nate Silver was right again… Which is not to say Nate Silver is always right: he totally missed Trump in the 2016 primary coming up with implausible argument after implausible argument about why Trump’s poll numbers wouldn’t translate to actual election victories-notoriously claiming in late 2015 that Trump’s odds of winning the primary were 2%-ie 98% likely it wouldn’t be him. Silver would later criticize poll analysts who gave Clinton a chance in the high 90s-arguing we can’t be 98% confident about anything. Makes a lot of sense but that’s how confident he’d claimed to be that Trump wouldn’t win the GOP primary.

 

Even Nate Silver can engage in motivated reasoning…

In that instance I was right as I had argued by August 2015 that Trump was a real threat to win the GOP nomination. If you doubt I was I have the blog posts to prove it…

Still in retrospect Silver has a good explanation-don’t ignore the polls as he did regarding Trump. This is, of course, the opposite of what the MSM pundits took from 2016-ignore the polls they were wrong 

In any case at around 8:30 last night it was feeling eerily like 2016 all over again. 

I was fighting the urge  to get up on the ledge as was Max Boot:

“The second time’s the charm.”

“In 2016, I came to the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village to give election-night commentary on a panel featuring pundits and comics. I went home in shock and spent a restless night tossing and turning with the realization that a capricious and ignorant reality-TV star had been elected president of the United States.”

“I tempted fate by returning to the Comedy Cellar on Tuesday night to comment on the midterms. Early in the evening, I had the queasy feeling so familiar from 2016 as FiveThirtyEight’s election tracker kept lowering the odds of Democrats taking the House and raising the odds of Republicans holding the Senate. But by the time our panel adjourned at 11 p.m., CNN had called the House for the Democrats, even as Republicans increased their edge in the Senate.”

Things had looked good in the 7 PM EST hour: Dems got their first two House pickups-Barbara Comstock-Trumpstock-went down in Virginia 10. And the early numbers in Florida looked good. Taking solace and deriving optimism from Florida was our first mistake. That should have been a bright red flag as Florida has been the scene of so much Dem heartbreak over the years-uh Bush-Gore? Early Andrew Gillum had a 4 point lead and Bill Nelson had about the same. You wondered if they would mirror themselves all the way to victories for Florida Governor and back to the US Senate respectively.

Instead they both mirrored themselves by imploding during the 8 PM hour. Gillum would crash to defeat and Nelson is still talking this morning about a recount. Ironic-Gillum was supposed to be Nelson’s coattails but Nelson ended up considerably closer than Gillum.

UPDATE: Both Gillum and Nelson would have a recount but it wouldn’t change the result for either; Florida remains the home of dashed dreams for the Dems.

Ok, I’ll admit it, Morning Joe is right in that all the alleged rock star candidates like Gillum, Beto O’Rourke in Texas and Stacey Abrams in Georgia-she’s also calling for a recount-went down last night but the real story is that the Dems won the House and as Nancy Pelosi says it’s now a new day in America. 

Yes because now there’s a check on Trump. Of course, many in the MSM want to know who the Democratic rising stars are and it does seem like those with the most potential-the Betos, the Gillums, the Stacey Abramses, went down to defeat. Even in my own NY2 district, unfortunately Liuba Grechen Shirley went down to defeat-though she was a lost closer than anyone has gotten to King in many years-losing by just 6-he usually wins by 20, 30, 40 points, He beat DuWayne Gregory in 2016 by 25.

But who says the Democratic party needs stars right now?

Those are the stars-Schiff, Nadler, Cummings, Maxine Waters. And Nancy Pelosi. I was very pleasantly surprised to see the Dems on the Ways and Means Committee putting out the marker immediately that they would be going for Trump’s tax returns-which would not come without Pelosi’s blessing.

 

FN: Of course, Sessions would soon be fired and would eventually be replaced with Coverup AG Bill Barr who’s fake exoneration letter continues to inform the MSM’s coverage of the Mueller Report-NO COLLUSION NO OBSTRUCTION!

That’s the key thing to understand about the MSM-the facts only matter to the extent they confirm their silly narrative.

This is also a very important marker: it’s a warning to Trump who plans to clean house and is chomping at the bit to fire Sessions and perhaps Mueller and do what he can to throw sand in the gears of the Mueller investigation. Indeed, that’s why the big story last night is the Dem House.

FN: Despite that early marker here we are nine months later and Richard Neal still hasn’t taken the case to Court-Trump and Steve Mnuchin naturally refused to hand them over despite the clear wording of the law that directs them to.

At 8:30 I was fighting the urge to hyperventilate. What was causing it was not so much that it was quickly becoming clear that that Gillum-Beto-Abrams and friends were going to break our hearts. No for me what was so worrisome is what Max Boot referenced-the 538 model kept lowering Dem chances to win the House-at one point it was down to 33%. This was after it had hit 95% just 40 minutes earlier. What was going on? Maybe there really more of them than us and always will be? Maybe this really is Donald Trump’s America and not Obama’s?

Then the number of flipped GOP House districts started to growing and it became clear there would be a Democratic House aka #theAccountabilityCongress.

The big star of the night? Checks and balances, accountability, a reassertion of American values. Trump will spin this however he thinks he can-he deserves credit for the GOP Senate increasing its majority but no blame for the House-but at the end of the day he now faces the subpoena power of a Congress that actually does its job of oversight. It’s going to come as a shock.

We noted that a lot of the big rockstar candidates lost but it’s interesting to see who won-the Dems had a record number of women running and a record amount won-we now have 100 women in the House for the first time in history-85 of them are Democrats.

This is only fitting after the way 2016 was stolen from the first female nominee of a major party. Women have rightly been outraged and we’re finally starting to seeing the fruits of it now.

But it’s interesting to note that character of these female nominees. So many of them are from military and intelligence backgrounds. 

That’s what stands out among the Democrats who won-so many female candidates and so many candidates-male and female-from the military and intelligence. We can use more Congress critters in intelligence with all the investigations coming in the next two years.

Trump wanted a referendum on himself and he got it. And the response is not going to be to his liking. While the topline numbers on the exit polls had him with 43% approving and 54% disapproving the real story is the relative strength of this disapproval: only 26% approve strongly while 46%  disapprove of him strongly.

As Nancy Pelosi says: it’s a new day in America.

To paraphrase Joe Biden: this is a big f*cking deal.

America has spoken:

UPDATE: Still what was interesting was the reaction of the Beltway press. Initially they treated it as a kind of split decision-and something of a disappointment for the Dems. It was only in the next few days and weeks that the true breadth and proportion of the Dem victory became clear-they picked up on the high end of pre election predictions-40 seats. It wasn’t a blue wave it was a blue tsunami. 

Yet the MSM narrative was far from what it was when the GOP won it’s landslide wave in 1994-find link Mike.. But the Dem wave of 2018 was even stronger than 1994-it was even stronger than 1974 but thanks to all the redistricting and gerrymandering they picked up 40 seats rather than 62.

Still in the next weeks and months another upside down MSM narrative would develop-ok the Dems won-good for them!-but they need to be careful not to overreach. This begun six weeks before the Dems were even swore in and you wonder if this absurd narrative was successful in infecting House Dem leadership thinking-to be sure the Dem leadership is a very cautious, risk adverse group-too risk adverse for the times.

While as is clear from what I wrote at this time I very strongly supported Pelosi’s return as Speaker I honestly continue to feel ambivalent about this in retrospect.

I guess we’ll only be able to say conclusively if supporting her was a mistake in November 2020-if we never see the tax returns and he’s unimpleached going into the election then it was a mistake.

As it is everyone who opposed her-Seth Moulton,  Tim Ryan, Marcia Fudge, Kathleen Rice now supports impeachment. If only they’d campaigned on the premise that Pelosi’s a confirmed impeachment phobe wrong for the time rather than the GOP says mean things about her so we have to dump her, maybe they would have succeeded in defeating her!

 

 

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