34 1.0 Yes We Kam! Is it Me or is Everything Kamala Harris Does Amazing, Awesome, Amazingly Awesome or Awesomely Amazing?
Try to fix screenshot
Section A Introduction
I will admit-I was one of many Democrats on social media greatly concerned about dumping Joe Biden this late in the game. But that seems an awfully long time ago-even though it was just a week ago, indeed just 6 days ago. Yet it feels like 6 lifetimes ago. At least.
Last Sunday afternoon soon after the news that Biden had stepped out of the race, I’d done a poll on my Twitter feed-as like me many of my friends and followers were Ride or Die with Biden.
These numbers pretty much summed up my own feelings-part of me was joyous, but also furious, and a large part of me was ambivalent and bittersweet. Many Democrats felt the same, notably, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett:
Senator John Fetterman also put out a barnburner in the immediate aftermath though he appears to have deleted it in the next few hours and put up a full throated endorsement of Kamala Harris. Whatever else you want to say about Fetterman-and there’s a lot-one very attractive character trait of his is his loyalty, indeed his party loyalty. So he may have terrible Israel takes but he is overall a good Democrat-whatever personal mental issues he may be dealing with-which is good as no matter how some folks hate him for his Israel takes he’s going nowhere until 2028 at the earliest.
Many Dems were upset and disappointed.
The ageism was certainly notable-apparently with all the talk of cancel culture, the one allegedly politically correct line you can engage in with impunity apparently is blatantly crude ageism.
FN: Link to study on problems with the coverage of Biden’s age
Get Screenshot for John Legend
John Ledger quote
Section B Thank you President Biden
Nate Silver quote on part of him wishing the Dems didn’t drop Biden for a kind of intellectual vindication?
Before Biden dropped out today I had been working on a chapter which argued he actually had a chance to run as Harry Truman 2.0 that 2024 was strikingly like 1948 in a number of respects. Among the brutal frenzy against Joe Biden, the only prominent media person to make a case in favor of Biden was Chris Matthews-actually a former media person-who indeed evoked Harry Truman arguing like Truman, Biden could run against the elites in the media and indeed in his own party that didn’t believe in him.
Chris Matthews: Biden critics are ‘going to pay for it’ (msn.com)
There really were a lot of similarities.
Link book.
DonkConnects ♻️™ ➐ on X: “@ProChoiceMike https://t.co/5XvdWcW7ML” / X
Chris had argued that the elites coming out against Biden were going to pay for it.u
Section C The Nate Silver Wars
Nate continued to spike the ball
FN: Here he’s more accurate
(15) Biden has a weak hand – by Nate Silver – Silver Bulletin
End FN
and spike the ball
Part B: A fascinating question in recent years has been: how did Nate Silver get this way? Or was he always like this?
The Fall of Nate Silver | The New Republic
‘Terrible boss’ Nate Silver blasted by ex-employee (nypost.com)
UPDATE: Axelrod who predicted 50 state sweep with Biden insist support for Kamala nothing but
‘Pod Save America’ Hosts Fire Back at ‘Incompetent’ Biden Team (thedailybeast.com)
‘Obama bros’ gang up on Biden as longstanding rumors of tension linger: ‘Hard to watch’ (msn.com)
An interesting comparison to Silver post around 2018 is David Axelrod-like no matter what anyone ever tries to tell me I’ll never believe Axelrod doesn’t have an AX to grind-pun intended. Silver has also seemed to me for a long time to have an ax of some sort not literally the same as Axelrod obviously but both seem to have some kind of resentment towards liberals despite at one time being beloved by the liberals-in very different ways.
FN: Obviously Axelrod’s tie to the Democrats is much deeper as Obama’s campaign manager, Silver was just this guy who as the resident Data Nerd Wunderkind kind of gave liberals good vibes-as his predictions were mostly good news in 2008-2012.
Axelrod seems to feel that after he and Obama ran and won in 2008 no subsequent Democratic Presidential candidate can ever be worth anything-he and Obama did it to perfection in 2008 and now nothing since will ever measure up.
He has been pretty explicitly bearish on every Dem Presidential campaign post 2012.
FN: Find picture at GOP convention a few weeks ago.
Cenk Uygur bad take express on approval rating
(15) Twitter, Elon and the Indigo Blob – by Nate Silver
The argument against dropping Biden WAS compelling-wether or not you ultimately agreed, certainly at least it was more than merely “the most midwit idea of all time” as Silver in his inimitably charitable way would have you believe
The big picture is Silver claims that there’s a kind of liberal hegemony in the media post 2016 which is at least adjacent to the long asserted conservative claim that the media is liberal-Rush limbaugh, etc. To be sure it’s more nuanced and complex a picture than Rush Limbaugh. But that is his view.
I would respond in a few ways-one to deny there is any such liberal hegemony. But also argue in a Devil’s Advocate sense is all hegemony bad? Isn’t there good and bad hegemony? Like the view that the world is flat and that the earth was the center of the universe was the hegemoic view in the 15th century and it was wrong whereas post we now view it as round and revolving around the sun. Yet are these two versions of hegemony the same?
Isn’t in a sense when bad or wrong ideas are defeated like-say slavery-that it becomes a hegemonic view that they’re wrong but that this is actually how it should be? While Silver claims the entire media is liberal this would greatly offend many parts of it. When Chris Licht joined CNN his goal was to revise the sort of “balance” Silver seems to want. This dubious narrative led to the Trump townhall debacle-everyone thought it was a debacle including reporters at Litch’s own network. Whereas Silver seems in danger of adovcating a kind of intellectual nihilism-ironic as he’s so dogmatic on questions he believes he’s right.
This brings us to an interesting catfight between Silver in the 2020 campaign and his good friend-having fun as Silver has explicitly stated he doesn’t like rival data nerd cum polling analyst G. Elliot Morris.
UPDATE: More on Silver’s Weltanschauung
FN: Why I don’t buy 538’s new election model – by Nate Silver
UPDATE:
Silver’s framing of the media universe will only see plausible to the extent that he draws it so broadly with no specifics whatsoever in terms of this alleged “Indigo Blob”
Certainly the executives in charge at outlets like CNN and the NYT would be pretty scandalized by Silver’s assertion that they are basically indisinguishable from Rachel Maddow or Chris Hayes.
The idea that the mainstream media isn’t friendly enough to the Trump Deplorable base has been tried in various incantations at both the NYT and CNN and elsewhere. While Christopher Litcht didn’t call it the indigo Blob he wanted to create something like what Silver sees as this purely “independent” media landscape at CNN-this premise would lead us to CNN’s disastrous Trump townhall in 2023-literally everyone considered it a dumpster fire including CNN’s own reporters.
Clearly Silver’s own alleged media compass is far from infallible as he in the “How Democrats Can Win” final piece in November, 2022 denied that the big narrative in the media was Red Wave-when it very clearly was. This shows that despite his terse dismissal of in any way being a “closet Right winger”-and I’m not asserting he is as I don’t know and take him at his word he’s not at least until there’s clear countervailing evidence-he HAS taken on some narratives and takes the last few years which if not exactly Trumpian are at least Trumpian adjacent including his clear believe that there’s been this unfair “liberal hegemony” dominating the post 2016 news space.
Steve Kornacki against the narrative that Biden COULDN’T WIN:
Kornacki points out that public polling since the debate showed Trump leading by 47-45-ie totally within the margin of error and belying the apocalyptic headlines and the freakout within the party.
There had been some worrisome polls in places like VA, NM, NH, and Maine though as Kornacki points out not enough to be definitive and some of those polls weren’t necessarily high quality polls
Part D. Why I opposed dumping Biden
UPDATE: Axelrod who predicted 50 state sweep with Biden insist support for Kamala nothing but
‘Pod Save America’ Hosts Fire Back at ‘Incompetent’ Biden Team (thedailybeast.com)
‘Obama bros’ gang up on Biden as longstanding rumors of tension linger: ‘Hard to watch’ (msn.com)
I mean Axelrod in some ways reminds me of Nate Silver-like no matter what anyone ever tries to tell me I’ll never believe Axelrod doesn’t have an AX to grind-pun intended. Silver has also seemed to me for a long time to have an ax of some sort not literally the same as Axelrod obviously but both seem to have some kind of resentment towards liberals despite at one time being beloved by the liberals-in very different ways.
Axelrod seems to feel that after he and Obama ran and won in 2008 no subsequent Democratic Presidential candidate can ever be worth anything-he and Obama did it to perfection in 2008 and now nothing since will ever measure up.
He has been pretty explicitly bearish on every Dem Presidential campaign post 2012.
FN: Find picture at GOP convention a few weeks ago.
Cenk Uygur bad take express on approval rating
Mr. President: You’re Going to Lose to Trump. We’re Begging You to Step Down | Opinion – Newsweek
Cenk’s entire argument in this piece amounted to Biden had an approval rating in the mid 30s, arguing-falsely-that no incumbent has ever won with approval numbers this low-actually Harry Truman who we touched on above did, this was another similarity with Biden 2024.
Josh Shapiro is progressive?
Don’t Fall for the Misinformation Campaign: Josh Shapiro Is the Progressive Choice for VP | Opinion (msn.com)
Part of response: Opinion | Hillary Clinton: How Kamala Harris Can Win and Make History – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Cenk offers some consolation.
Here’s his bad take-Biden should do an LBJ
UPDATE: As does Shadi Hamid
Kornacki points out that public polling since the debate showed Trump leading by 47-45-ie totally within the margin of error and belying the apocalyptic headlines and the freakout within the party.
There had been some worrisome polls in places like VA, NM, NH, and Maine though as Kornacki points out not enough to be definitive and some of those polls weren’t necessarily high quality polls
‘Terrible boss’ Nate Silver blasted by ex-employee (nypost.com)
This brings us to an interesting catfight between Silver in the 2020 campaign and his good friend-having fun as Silver has explicitly stated he doesn’t like rival data nerd cum polling analyst G. Elliot Morris.
FN: Why I don’t buy 538’s new election model – by Nate Silver
UPDATE: Silver 2022
The Case For A Democratic Surprise On Election Night | FiveThirtyEight
Nov 4: What’s pretty interesting is that Silver’s foil, Bleu, was right-the lite was more accurate than deluxe. j
UPDATE: Belatedly Silver tries to reverse engineer an argument why incumbency doesn’t matter historically by factoring in some Deadball Era elections in the 19th century. He also in a post at one point suggests incumbency is NOW not so important anymore-when did this happen? The strong correlation between running your incumbent unopposed and winning the election continues through to 2012-Sean Trende’s argument in 2011 that suddenly it didn’t matter anymore-or never did or maybe both-was meant as an argument Obama was going to lose in 2012…
Rest assured if anyone is guilty of selection Bias it’s him
UPDATE: G Elliot Morris kind of agrees with this.
Nate Cohn-GOP EC had lessened under Biden believe it or not
How Kamala Harris Changes the Race – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Again more below but past is prologue view is well encapsulated by this piece by Nadi Brizeninski soon after Joe announced his decision to step out of the race.
Kamala Harris, History and Russia. | by Nadin Brzezinski | Jul, 2024 | Medium
Part E. Still not sure if this belongs in this part of Section B-thinking B for now
Sort of reminds you of Yglesias’ absurd take
In response to Silver suggesting Biden can no longer even do the job of President based on the debate
Mike Madrid on X: “Truly a shameful episode for this country.” / X
Thinking about Silver baselessly arguing he can’t do the job NOW based on not being able to “handle a high pressure situation like a debate.”
Opinion | Biden the president excels as Biden the candidate gives way – The Washington Post
Part F. The story remains to be told as to how Kamala ended up the nominee so quickly and seamlessly
IF this is true it’d suggest Biden’s move was seismic-and it would correlate with AOC’s IG video and Roland Martin’s argument before Biden dropped out that Pelosi had asked Biden to drop Kamala Harris
Part G: Silver’s candidate centered focus jibes well with the GOP’s tendency to focus on the candidate rather than policy and ideology as their own policy agenda and ideology is so toxic-Dobbs, Paul Ryanism-ending deep cuts to Social Security/Medicare, regressive tax and economic policies, pro Putinist foreign policy-these are very unappealing ideas for women, POC, young people, to say nothing of the cross racial and ethnic supermajority of working Americans living paycheck to paycheck.
Basically all the GOP has is “the politics of personal destruction”-a phrase that was used a lot during the Whitewater years in the 1990s-if you look at GOP strategy going back to the Clinton years it’s always the same: focus on making Democratic President or Presidential candidate personally unpopular and toxic-from Whitewater to Benghazi, to But Her Emails, to Hunter Biden, to Biden’s 81-none of it has anything to do with which candidate has the better policy agenda for the American people but on trying to destroy their Democratic opponents personally.
This completely ignores that what matters far more than the candidate is the party-in this way the Parliamentary system is superior to our Presidential system as it makes clear it’s not about the personal idiosyncrasies of a particular candidate-Bill Clinton was a womanizer, Obama was “academic”, Hillary Clinton was evil and used private email, Biden had a son named Hunter and was very, very old-but which party will do right but the majority of the people?
As that’s how I vote-more for the party than the candidate-I found Nate Silver’s obsession over Biden’s age kind of besides the point. There’s this fallacy that the famous independents are the cream of the electoral crop, they’re these wonderfully informed, thoughtful, earnest people who see through partisanship and focus on what really matters. In reality years ago, Gary Wills rightly argued the opposite-more highly informed voters the frankest partisans.
FN: Confessions of a Conservative pg. 86
It seems to me that a defining part of the models of polling analysts-not just Nate Silver but his fellow Nate, Nate Cohn, is that party ideology and party don’t matter, what matters far more is candidate quality-ignoring the fact that this itself is a subjective judgment.
FN: If Harris Is the Nominee, It Still Won’t Be Easy to Beat Trump – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Final part: At the end of the day Biden kept his promise-he WAS a bridge in every sense of the word-but that’s just it: when does a bridge get any credit for enabling millions of motorists to get safely across itself every day? The only time a bridge gets attention is those very rare but dangerous moments when the bridge fails to get motorists safely cross.
Section D. Is Kamala more amazing, awesome, based, or all of the above?
Opinion | Why Trump and Republicans don’t like it when Kamala Harris laughs – The Washington Post
koofal on X: “republicans whenever they try to cancel kamala harris https://t.co/S91BlwvrNq” / X
‘Kamala-mania’ also catching on in Europe (msn.com)
(15) Pro-Wrestling Explains Why Trump Is Scared of Kamala (thebulwark.com)
The Lincoln Projecton X: “”Thanks for bringing us home.” President Biden is a remarkable leader. https://t.co/dOxGsGcRUj” / X
UPDATE:
9:55 AM 8/2/24
Nate Silver going all in for Shapiro with the hard sell.
Nate Silver on X: “She. Should. Pick. Shapiro. https://t.co/vrOiYiKKCI” / X
UPDATE: 8/3
OK, now onto the question. Carlos Zevallos asks:
Since you just wrote about asking non model questions, but allowed other political questions, I would love to get your view on the dem veepstakes: specifically, if you were a Harris advisor, who would you suggest she pick and why? And also, do you think Shapiro’s advantage for possibly getting her over the top in PA outweighs the critiques some progressives are making of his pro Israel stance, to the point of say, possibly depressing pro Palestinian turnout in Detroit or Minneapolis? I know vp nominees don’t matter too much, but in such a close election?
I’d tell her to pick Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania.
Ok so this framing sets it up a pretty easy layup for Nate here if you focus solely on Israel-Palestine. Without even reading what he says he’s going to argue-accurately I believe-that the amount of voters for whom Israel-Palestine is any kind of litmus test is pretty small as a percentage of the electorate.
FN: He wrote a piece back in May about this; ironically while he and Christopher Bouzy have butted heads on Twitter they both agreed on this one issue-that the electoral impact of the war in Palestine is likely to be small to nonexistent.
CF Bouzy on Spoutible
However there are OTHER objections to Shapiro. Note that my position here isn’t the mirror image of Silver he’s categorically certain she should choose Shapiro; I myself had thought for the first few weeks Shapiro was the obvious natural choice but have come to think MAYBE Walz is the better choice-and put a small wager that she’ll choose him-because the rise reward was so favorable-a $1 dollar bet wins you $5 if it is Walz. But I’m not as deadset against Shapiro as Silver is in favor of him. If Shapiro wins that’s fine-again as I stated above, whoever she chooses is the right choice in my mind.
Immediately you see Silver frames it in a way very favorable for his position and very uphill if you want to argue against Shapiro
There’s a certain species of political writer — defining characteristics include overestimating the importance of “vibes” and underestimating the importance of the median voter theorem — that George Orwell may have had in mind with his aphorism “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
I cop to basing my argument on Walz based on vibes.
David Roberts for instance:
Why Shapiro? What’s the positive case?
Geez just because Shapiro ASKED A QUESTION Silver acts as if he’s shown some pathological level of refusal to see what’s in front of his nose
Well, Shapiro is the extremely popular governor of what is by far the most important swing state. He’s highly charismatic and he’s qualified. He seems to want the job. This is about as obvious as things get in politics. You need a good reason to not pick Shapiro — and as I’ll cover here, the arguments against Shapiro are pretty bad.
Note this is the same structure as his argument against keeping Biden was analyzed above. The arguments for the position Nate doesn’t agree with are always few to none. But let’s see if he looks at any other objections besides Palestine which by itself I would agree isn’t enough to decide against him.
There are other objections too-let’s see if Silver mentions those-seeing as Carlos Zevallos, the questioner, doesn’t it will be easy for Silver to ignore the other objections to Shapiro if he’s aware of them at all.
Heck, you could argue that Shapiro was the best pick even in the absence of the Pennsylvania factor. Say he was the extremely popular governor and two-term former attorney general of New Jersey instead — not deep blue, exactly, but also not a swing state. He still laps the rest of the white dudes Harris is considering in telegenic political talent, he’s in prime VP age (51) and he has executive experience. He’d certainly be on Harris’s short list and he might be #1.
Pennsylvania is one hell of a tiebreaker, though. It has a 35 percent chance of being the tipping-point state, the state that’s decisive in a close election, much higher than any other.
I mean sure he’s an impressive political talent with an impressive resume but there are others in the race who have the same. And again I’m NOT metaphysically opposed to Shapiro in the way Silver is opposed to anyone but Shapiro-as I stated above I’ll get behind whoever Kamala ultimately chooses. But while Shapiro is in many ways a very natural choice the other choices are hardly chopped liver.
UPDATE: Silver’s theory of the “Indigo Blob”
(15) Twitter, Elon and the Indigo Blob – by Nate Silver
UPDATE:
Walz’s case is pretty impressive in its own right.
Part F
Wæs on X: “incredible things are happening on reddit https://t.co/KhhTa6oRzW” / X
Section E. The whole Weird Thing.
Mom,Veteran,Consumer on X: “@RonFilipkowski @ProChoiceMike #Weird https://t.co/3EajwjOYht” / X
Mainstream media: it’s NOT the Democrats have given up on calling Trump a threat to democracy but rather “Weird” is a terser, more concise short hand to say that and the many other weird things about Donald Trump about fascism in general.
Already wrote about this in previous draft-cut and paste?
Vaush take
Gene Wu on X: “https://t.co/UQ5qwZyrbG” / X
Section F. Democracy is on the ballot and fascism too.