33 2.0 Is it Me or is LITERALLY EVERYTHING Kamala Harris does Awesome, Amazing, and Totally Based?
Section Introductoin
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 it was 6 days since Joe stepped out of the race.
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 fious, 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:
Conversations about Biden’s age have lacked nuance, says expert — Harvard Gazette
Lacked nuance to say the least. For a contrast for someone who engaged in a far more nuanced conversation, see Lawerence O’Donnell. Find link.
End FN
First question? Does this belong here or at the conclusion?
I sort of feel this belongs further down after the deep dive into the Nate Silver wars. Instead this should maybe focus on Biden and the unfairness of how he was treated. Then maybe go to Nate Silver wars. Then after a deep dive excursion there move onto the good news-Kamala Harris’ shockingly strong start.
Section Thank You President Biden
MORE pro Biden stuff
Before Biden dropped out today I had been working on a chapter which argued Joe Biden had a chance to be 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-in reality former media person- to make a case in favor of Biden was Chris Matthews 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)
Chris had argued that the elites coming out against Biden were going to pay for it.
Biden critics are ‘going to pay for it’
Still as it turned out there was very little time to wallow. Biden endorsed Kamala in his announcement, then immediately the endorsements from the Democratic party bigshots started raining down-the same ones who’d drummed Joe Biden out of the nomination. By the next day pretty much all the alternative candidates who’d been discussed the last three weeks had endorsed Kamala Harris-whose campaign raised $81 million from SMALL DONORS the first day-then there were over $150 million on other donations in that first day, indeed by the evening of Monday, July 22, Kamala Harris had already effectively sown up the nomination surpassing the 1941 required delegates to win the nomination. The DNC announced it would go forward with the same timetable they’d adopted two months before Biden would step down.
Opinion: Biden lacked oomph, but the transcript tells a different tale (msn.com)
Section The Nate Silver wars?
Yet Silver tried to suggest Biden can’t do the job anymore-based on his ‘inability to handle high pressure situation like a debate’
Regarding Silver’s baseless suggestion Biden can’t do the job anymore
This should start with his categorical assertions that there were NO good arguments for keeping Biden and the claim that NO ONE took the idea of the will of the voters seroiusly-the dumbest of dumb Biden deadenders, etc. MAYBE open with that tweet about how most who had opposed dropping Biden the most stridently seamlessly switched to Kamala. But why was that?
Since Biden did go down, not surprisingly Nate Silver has been taking a lot of victory laps.
What happened to Nate Silver or was he always like this?
FN:
GaslitNation makes a similar point
Well speaking as someone who was certainly a charter member of the Can’t-Dump-Biden stans this is not surprising. The issue was never a metaphysical opposition to Kamala Harris per se-quite the contrary for most I’d presume certainly for myself
FN: We can be fairly certain this was not the case for many as many of the biggest skeptics of dropping Biden were African American Dems.
as Kamala was actually my first choice in 2020 and I’ve basically dreamed of the day she became President since that first Senate Judiciary hearing in 2017 when she raked Jeff Sessions over the coals for trying to conceal his Russian ties during the 2016 campaign. I suspect this is when Hillary Clinton first became interested in Kamala as a future Presidential candidate too.
But this hits on a major issue with Nate Silver-in general in recent years perhaps, but particularly during this entire escapade over Biden’s age-his inability to make even the slightest attempt to do any kind of justice to the arguments of his opponents during that extremely tedious, dismal, toxic debate.
But of course there was no way he ever could do this when he simply presumed that there were literally NO good reasons to stay with Biden a position which doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Find tweet by Silver on no good arguments.
This led me to wonder if Silver
FN: Silver himself is no mean giver of bad takes himself
The Fall of Nate Silver | The New Republic
Nate Silver and G. Elliott Morris Are Fighting on Twitter (nymag.com)
In response to Silver’s complaint Biden waited too long:
Central fallacy-counterpoise this to the claim that Silver was a terrible boss
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
Finish with this line?
FN: The good news tonight is that a lot of Dem elites have already endorsed Kamala Harris.
FN: The good news tonight is that a lot of Dem elites have already endorsed Kamala Harris.
DNC poised to move forward with virtual roll call after Biden dropout – Live Updates – POLITICO
Kamala Harris, History and Russia. | by Nadin Brzezinski | Jul, 2024 | Medium
What do the polls say about a Harris vs. Trump matchup? – ABC News (go.com)
Riding With Biden 2024 on X: “The unity is wonderful specially after such a toxic three weeks” / X
The “most midwit take of all time?” Not exactly as we will see below in taking a look at his bright idea at the time he predicted Biden would step down for what the Democrats should do then if that proved to be the case. It was considerably more “midwit” to say the last, indeed it truly didn’t even begin to pass the laugh test.
(4) Nate Silver on X: “Today was a good day for rational behavior. https://t.co/5WxeS26FNq” / X
Quotes from link
About what you’d expect-he feels vindicated-the world has been proven to be rational as it listened to himself. We can debate wether or not this makes him right or not-that this was the best move.
FN: And as we’ll discuss below, there’s still an argument it wasn’t, or at least it’s not entirely clear this was the best move…
However I completely disagree with this:
‘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
In 2020 Silver and Morris got into some Twitter fights over their respective models and the predictions of the two models.
UPDATE: How much of this Alan Litchman stuff should we use? Maybe below AFTER a deep dive on Silver
Indeed many besides Silver were quick to claim vindication though it’s not clear exactly what they think has been vindicated.
FN: Here he’s more accurate
(15) Biden has a weak hand – by Nate Silver – Silver Bulletin
Josh Marshall expresses well my own extreme reticience to this “just swap this guy for another guy” Nate Silver narrative-he actually mentioned Zack Wilson
It seems astonishing indeed impossible but the NY Times STILL doesn’t think it’s done enough damage to our democracy
I mean literally how has Litchman been proven wrong?
FN: We’ll talk more about Litchman below, but there are a lot of bad and unfair arguments being made against Litchman-that his model is entirely subjective or malleable.
Maybe use it only AFTER I go through a deep dive on Silver’s history-the NR article etc.
What matters in a model is if it has any explanatory power or predictive value and there’s a good argument Litchman’s 13 keys do.
Find tweet of Nate Silver dismissing concerns over will of voters as “dumbest takes of the dumbest dead enders”
UPDATE: On thought is I get into just how seamless a transition was below in the section debunking Nate Silver.
A major part of the concern of many Democrats-like Jim Clyburn who’d warned just the day before Biden stepped down, on Saturday 7/20 that if the Democrats engaged in the kind of fantasy football open primary cum brokered convention fan fiction fiasco that many of the alleged smartest people in the room were proposing-everyone from Nate Silver, to Ezra Klein, to Shadi Hamid-not that this should be a surprise as coming up with the absolutely worst take in every situation is Shadi Hamid’s super power, Ryan Grim, Cenk Uygur etc-as there are too many to list here-the Democrats were going down to defeat.
Unlike alleged election prodigies like Nate Silver or Very Serious Savvy People like Ezra Klein, Clyburn actually remembers history-as he was there-and evoked the dumpster fire that was the Democratic convention in 1968. You had folks like Uygur urging Biden to do a LBJ failing to realize evidently that the Democrats LOST in 1968 and the GOP would go on to hold the WH 20 of the next 24 years.
FN: One of Nixon’s first acts after he stole that election a la Vietnam Collusion-see Chapter Nixon-was to blackmail Abe Fortas off the Supreme Court and since then the Democrats have never had the majority on the SJC again the last 56 years.
This could go in Nate Silver wars section but this history is pretty thin-nothing in it we don’t already know
What I’m particularly curious is how the party came to so quickly and seamlessly coalesce behind Kamala seeing as there were a lot of media stories suggesting that a decent number of the Congressional Democrats wanted to skip Kamala-or were at least open to the idea. Was this a point of contention in the discussions with Biden? Did he demand assurances she’d be the nominee?
To really access what happened we need more information on this question.
A look at the 28 chaotic days between Biden’s disastrous debate and his dropout – POLITICO
Still as it turned out there was very little time to wallow. Biden endorsed Kamala in his announcement, then immediately the endorsements from the Democratic party bigshots started raining down-the same ones who’d drummed Joe Biden out of the nomination. By the next day pretty much all the alternative candidates who’d been discussed the last three weeks had endorsed Kamala Harris-whose campaign raised $81 million from SMALL DONORS the first day-then there were over $150 million on other donations in that first day, indeed by the evening of Monday, July 22, Kamala Harris had already effectively sown up the nomination surpassing the 1941 required delegates to win the nomination. The DNC announced it would go forward with the same timetable they’d adopted two months before Biden would step down.
UPDATE: On thought is I get into just how seamless a transition was below in the section debunking Nate Silver.
A major part of the concern of many Democrats-like Jim Clyburn who’d warned just the day before Biden stepped down, on Saturday 7/20 that if the Democrats engaged in the kind of fantasy football open primary cum brokered convention fan fiction fiasco that many of the alleged smartest people in the room were proposing-everyone from Nate Silver, to Ezra Klein, to Shadi Hamid-not that this should be a surprise as coming up with the absolutely worst take in every situation is Shadi Hamid’s super power, Ryan Grim, Cenk Uygur etc-as there are too many to list here-the Democrats were going down to defeat.
Unlike alleged election prodigies like Nate Silver or Very Serious Savvy People like Ezra Klein, Clyburn actually remembers history-as he was there-and evoked the dumpster fire that was the Democratic convention in 1968. You had folks like Uygur urging Biden to do a LBJ failing to realize evidently that the Democrats LOST in 1968 and the GOP would go on to hold the WH 20 of the next 24 years.
FN: One of Nixon’s first acts after he stole that election a la Vietnam Collusion-see Chapter Nixon-was to blackmail Abe Fortas off the Supreme Court and since then the Democrats have never had the majority on the SJC again the last 56 years.
End FN.
And so let’s go forward with these improvements that we have been making in this party, opening this party up to everybody, and keep it open to everybody. So the process is there. And I think we ought to utilize that process and go to Chicago and, when we open on the 19th of August, do so on one accord.
So, whatever is going to happen, all these people who are interested in getting into the process, the process is open. Get into it. Look at the rules. It’s there. And I have said, you could use this process to effectively have a mini-primary, if that’s what you are interested in having.
But if you go to the convention, have an open process in the convention, it will come out the same way it came out in 1968, 1972, and 1980, when we had contested processes on the floor of the convention. And, in 1980, we lost an incumbent president. And, in 1972, we carried one state, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia, and all of us know what happened in 1968, when we took — we ran Lyndon Johnson out of the race.
What a great record Lyndon Johnson had. We got rid of him over one issue, the Vietnam War. Here we are now using one issue to get rid of a president. The result would be the same.
FN: Regarding Vietnam, Kudos to Vaush who pointed out just yesterday that the Vietnam protests DIDN’T WORK. AND kudos to Clyburn for saying it: LBJ WAS a great President arguably the greatest other in terms of domestic policy.
I mean they worked-for Nixon and the Far Right they did NOT work despite the mythology of much of the Left in terms of achieving their stated objective of ending the Vietnam war. See 7/26 full stream
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.]
Nadi Brezinski had much the same concern-as like Congressman Clyburn she actually knows history-as the fan fiction brokered convention people don’t appear to. kj
Kamala Harris, History and Russia. | by Nadin Brzezinski | Jul, 2024 | Medium
End FN
An interesting divide during the previous toxic three weeks for the Democrats where the Dem leaders were running not against Donald Trump but Joe Biden had been that the folks engaging in the primary fan fiction stuff were mostly White pundits who even if they personally opposed Trump and see him as a threat to democracy they didn’t necessarily see him as a threat to themselves personally.
It was notable that it was the progressive and Black caucuses who remained loyal to President Biden until the end-and it’s the Black, brown, progressive folks, LGBT, certainly women-who post Dobbs in many parts of the country who if they are raped have less rights than their rapist-who can indeed sue if not prosecute them for “killing their baby.”
Those who actually have something to fear personally from a second Trump term tended to be those most skeptical and distrustful of the effort to take down Biden.
More Thoughts on the Debate and Its Aftermath – TPM – Talking Points Memo
This is Biden stuff but in the context of the fallacy that he had/has NO support in the party
UPDATE: Silver finally discusses incumbency today-he never even touched on it during the whole #DumpBiden debate
7/3024
Rest assured if anyone is guilty of selection Bias it’s him
End of incumbency debate
Sort of reminds you of Yglesias’ absurd take
But the main reason all the Keep Biden stans transitioned so seamlessly to enthusiastic support for Kamala is the process was seamless-she was effectively the presumed nominee in 33 hours after Biden stepped down. Now if they’d taken Silver’s really bad suggestions and had this fan fiction Dem primary reality show in three weeks monstrosity it’d be pretty different.
Like Silver ,Ezra Klein gets it more or less gets it backwards
Kamala is kind of the best of both worlds
Maybe not explicitly but he did use people who did predict it to inform his Deluxe model
Quote Silver from “Dems make rational choice.”
And for this a great deal of credit goes to Joe Biden as Lawrence O’Donnell persuasively argued last night after Biden’s historical speech discussing his decision to step down. Link above. A crucial part of his stepping down was explicitly endorsing Harris. According to some reporting, notably Mark Halperin, it was claimed Biden was going to step down without endorsing her. By endorsing contrary to this reporting, Biden gave the impetus for the party to very quickly unify behind VP Harris seamlessly. Ie thankfully the Dems didn’t follow the path Cenk-Silver and Friends but Biden’s.
End FN.
Section is it me or is Kamala amazing, awesome, amazing and awesome, amazingly awesome and awesomely amazing?
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.
Does following link belong in Kamala is Awesome section or in Nate Silver section?
Kamala Harris, History and Russia. | by Nadin Brzezinski | Jul, 2024 | Medium
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)
Trump has no answer
Find Rick Wilson quotes, etc.
Section Pretty Weird
What will be unburdened by what has been on X: “Yes-that is pretty weird…” / X
What will be unburdened by what has been on X: “Yes-that is pretty weird…” / X
Even Vaush is impressed
Vautism Speaks 🔞 on X: “When the “you’re weird” argument is both true and effective:” / X
Matthew Sitman 🥥🌴🇺🇸 on X: “This is the good shit, just incredible https://t.co/DIeLVXAlnZ” / X
But much of the mainstream media doesn’t get it. They seem to approve of it as they think it’s a substitue for saying Trump is a threat to democracy-an argument that bothers their sensibililty-American exceptionalism. As we’re an exceptional nation that CAN’T happen here.
See Jill Abramson on Greg Sargent Daily Blast
and MSMer on Stelter’s feed.
See this is what CAN be done with “Weird”
Another bad MSM take on “weird”
I mean by this premise you can’t make ANY historical analogy as by definition ANY time or place is not the same as the current time and place you’re in, or for that matter any other time or place-it’s always distinct. But if you can’t compare anything in history to anything else you’ve pretty much written history off per se, whereas by definition learning is about drawing patterns-it’s kind of a central genius of human cognition as such. How do you say “never again” if you eschew historical analogy in principle?
Analogies are not that different events are the same event-obviously-but that there are nevertheless a number of interesting correlations. But this seems to me to be a common tic of mainstream pundits like Rosenbum-they have no use for history. Is the claim that it’s impossible for a democracy to be imperiled? That what happened in Germany can NEVER happen here? Quite possibly that is what Rosenbaum thinks-as that’s the ideology of American Exceptionalism-it can’t happen here.
FN: You see that also in things like the more scientific fields like Neoclassical economics where it’s treated as self evidently irrelevant “What Keynes really meant”-who cares? Just like the history of economic thought allegedly doesn’t matter-it’s not just the economics field but also in American philosophy: who cares about the history of philosophical thought, you know, we’re PRAGMATISTS. I guess in a sense perhaps we’re talking about a distinctly American attitudes of our intellectual elites? That nothing matters beyond what you happened to eat for breakfast this morning in terms of history? I still remember how by February-March of 2001, liberals were being lectured for STILL talking about Bush v. Gore-and the trivial fact that Bush stole the election; ok but it was a long time ago, three whole months. Get over it.
End FN
In any case I do think this shows a very common attitude on the part of mainstream pundits-they really don’t like people like Annie Applebaum and Timonty Snyder-perhaps even Masha Gessen?-they don’t get it, democracy can never be imperiled-in America.
I love them but don’t think they say anything that matters or is worth listening to. Again, there’s nothing unusual about Rosenblum’s attitude-to the contrary this is the conventional mainstream viewpoint. Jill Abramson-IMO one of the better journalists out there-also seemed to me to kind of misconstrue the whole “Weird” thing in her interview with Greg Sargent on The Daily Blast. And indeed, this is Silver’s basic attitude at least in 2024-election history doesn’t matter, nothing matters other than the one data point where polls show a majority of Americans think Biden is too old to be President a second term. You don’t need to know anything other than that, according to Nate Silver.
DailyBlast link
To be sure for many of these pundits it’s a little ambiguous as to what their point is: is it that the claim Trump is a threat to democracy false or is it that it’s not an effective election strategy? Of course, one way to make a normative point-Trump really isn’t a threat to our democracy- is through the backdoor pretending to be only interested in a positive point-unfortunately while there may be some truth to the claim Trump is a threat to democracy, many Americans DON’T FEEL THAT so it’s not an effective political strategy.
FN: As to how they KNOW what Americans feel or don’t feel, another conceit of MSM journalists is they presume as an article of faith they have deep insights into what Americans feel or don’t feel, they don’t need any actual evidence-which they treat as mere anecdotes to the extent that any actual evidence contradicts the central conventional media narrative.
In any case this is the passive aggressive way that most conventional minded pundits frame their arguments-never on the substance always in the morally and intellectually neutral language of political strategy-‘ok sure, BUT WILL IT WORK?’
So what’s interesting is that while OTOH Silver unlike many of the mainstream pundits seems to dislike the whole “You’re just weird” thing he shares their assumption that saying Trump is a threat to democracy is not an effective political strategy.
OTOH Shadi Hamid says the quiet part out loud-you can always count on Shadi Hamid to come up with the worst possible take in any situation.
Column: With a single word — ‘weird’ — Democrats may have found Republicans’ kryptonite (msn.com)