To be a good popular art commentator in 2019 you have to have a deep understanding of nerd culture combined with strong critical detachment. It is difficult to find writers who can manage both at once and I don't think anyone does it better than Chipman.
Friday, November 22, 2019
Thursday, November 21, 2019
When your opponents face a no-win scenario, it's in your interest to see that they finish the game
Picking this up from Tuesday...
One of the main implications of this is that the saner conservatives out there have done these calculations and that's why they are desperately looking for a way out. The corresponding implication on the other side of the aisle is that, regardless of how the vote goes, it's in the Democrats' best interest to not only have it, but to make it as public and binding as possible.
I think I'm pretty much in line with Josh Marshall on this (which is generally a good place to be).
51 percent of Americans in New ABC/Ipsos poll want Trump impeached and removed from office.
57 percent of Americans want him impeached.
70 percent believe he did something wrong. https://t.co/tSvzM1AR0F— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) November 18, 2019
One of the main implications of this is that the saner conservatives out there have done these calculations and that's why they are desperately looking for a way out. The corresponding implication on the other side of the aisle is that, regardless of how the vote goes, it's in the Democrats' best interest to not only have it, but to make it as public and binding as possible.
I think I'm pretty much in line with Josh Marshall on this (which is generally a good place to be).
The Democrats’ job is to lay out the evidence in a public setting and get elected Republicans to sign on the dotted line that this is presidential behavior they accept and applaud. That won’t be difficult. They have one last chance to change their answer. Democrats real job is to clarify and publicize that that is their answer.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Another example of Left/Right convergence
One of these days, I’m going to write a big bomb-throwing post proposing that political scientists should completely abandon the use of the left-right spectrum in serious research. It is an innately multivariate concept that cannot be reduced to a scalar. Attempts to create an operational definition have ranged from inadequate to disastrous. On top of all that, since everyone thinks they know what “left” and “right” mean, any use of the terms in a supposedly scientific context inevitably produces more confusion than illumination.
One of the indications that a Euclidean framework won’t work is the existence of beliefs and positions that tend to attract people from the extremes of both the left and the right. We’ve already discussed conspiracy theories and alternative medicine. Perhaps we should add certain segments of anti-war movements.
I’m not talking about strange bedfellow scenarios like the one that temporarily aligned the left with the reactionaries against FDR liberals. This is something more paradoxical, where people supposedly on opposite ends of the spectrum gravitate to the same point not out of convenience or strategic alignment (such as the apocalyptic evangelical wing’s support of Israel).
This isn’t to say that there aren’t differences between the anti-war movement on the left and on the right, but I suspect when you start going through the crowd at a Gabbard rally, it might not be easy to tell which direction a given supporter came from.
From Fresh Air:
One of the indications that a Euclidean framework won’t work is the existence of beliefs and positions that tend to attract people from the extremes of both the left and the right. We’ve already discussed conspiracy theories and alternative medicine. Perhaps we should add certain segments of anti-war movements.
I’m not talking about strange bedfellow scenarios like the one that temporarily aligned the left with the reactionaries against FDR liberals. This is something more paradoxical, where people supposedly on opposite ends of the spectrum gravitate to the same point not out of convenience or strategic alignment (such as the apocalyptic evangelical wing’s support of Israel).
This isn’t to say that there aren’t differences between the anti-war movement on the left and on the right, but I suspect when you start going through the crowd at a Gabbard rally, it might not be easy to tell which direction a given supporter came from.
From Fresh Air:
GROSS: So Enoch is anti-Semitic, racist and promotes those thoughts on his blog and podcast. Did he support Donald Trump during the election? Does he support President Trump now? Did he play any role in promoting Trump?
MARANTZ: Yeah. So he and the rest of the alt-right definitely supported Trump during the campaign and saw him as the best they were ever going to get from a plausible presidential candidate. I mean, they saw him as someone who would give voice to their kind of white identity movement in a tacit way but still in a way that sounded very clear to them.
After he became president, he started to alienate them by being erratic and inconsistent - also by being a little too hawkish. A lot of these people came out of anti-war organizing, either from the left or the right or both. So when he started dropping bombs on Syria, a lot of the alt-right stopped being Trump supporters. And then also when he failed to build the wall and failed to enact what they wanted, which was essentially a proto-white nationalist agenda, he lost a lot of their support, too.
But a lot of them - you know, in a way the anti-Semitism, it's not just a kind of purely irrational - I mean, it's obviously irrational, but it doesn't come out of nowhere. A lot of it for them comes out of what they perceive as libertarian or anti-war politics.
GROSS: So if Trump were to run again, do you think he'd have the support of Mike Enoch or other people that you've written about in the book?
MARANTZ: Yeah, it's a really good question. A lot of them have moved on to other people like Tulsi Gabbard. A lot of people in my book are really into Tulsi these days.
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Tuesday Tweets
Lots of topics I need to revisit one of these days.
As always, the question here is just how much of this Netflix Original does Netflix actually own.
We knew it was bad, but perhaps not this bad.
SF remains the go to example, despite not being even vaguely analogous to the cities in question.
Today we published a deeply reported story about how Elizabeth Warren got to “yes” on Medicare for all, an idea that was never a driving issue for her but will be a major factor in whether she wins the Democratic nomination or ultimately the presidency. https://t.co/8zdJXiQEi4— Patrick Healy (@patrickhealynyt) November 17, 2019
51 percent of Americans in New ABC/Ipsos poll want Trump impeached and removed from office.
57 percent of Americans want him impeached.
70 percent believe he did something wrong. https://t.co/tSvzM1AR0F— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) November 18, 2019
As always, the question here is just how much of this Netflix Original does Netflix actually own.
People are chuckling that Roma is on Criterion but:
1. Not everyone has Netflix
2. Netflix may not be around forever
3. Like all streaming services Netflix makes things available and can take things away at their discretion— Jesse Hawken (@jessehawken) November 15, 2019
Deval Patrick jumping in & Mayor Pete surging will force the Dem establishment to finally address a question that goes to the very heart of its identity: Bain or McKinsey?— Ilyana Kuziemko (@ikuziemko) November 13, 2019
We knew it was bad, but perhaps not this bad.
The Hill Announces That It Is Reviewing Old John Solomon Columns https://t.co/2Ud14v36bw via @TPM— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 18, 2019
3/ when they moved Solomon from the news side to the opinion side, reasoning that it was less of a problem if his reports were bogus if he was listed as an opinion writer. This really is the most damning part. That move shows they were fully aware of the problems.— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 18, 2019
"Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, said of one of Solomon's stories, 'I think all the key elements were false.' Pressed further on the matter ... Vindman said, 'I haven't looked at the article in quite some time, but you know, his grammar might have been right.'" https://t.co/jAdGsJiBEV— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) November 19, 2019
Leon G. "Lee" Cooperman (born April 25, 1943) is an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager. He is the chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors, a New York-based investment advisory firm managing over $3.3 billion in assets under management, the majority consisting of his personal wealth.
In September 2016 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Cooperman and Omega Advisors with insider trading, more specifically for "trading stocks, bonds and call options of Atlas Pipeline Partners in July 2010 on information he obtained from an executive at the company." Cooperman's firm agreed to a $4.9 million settlement with the SEC in May 2017 but admitted no wrong-doing.
Cooperman through his Omega Charitable Partnership, along with Anthony Melchiorre owns American Media, Inc. (AMI), publishers of the National Enquirer, since August 2014
NEW: Leon Cooperman has responded to Elizabeth Warren's ad. "She’s disgraceful. She doesn’t know who the f--- she’s tweeting. I gave away more in the year then she has in her whole f----ing lifetime” he just told me. https://t.co/8g6VEY3sVl— Brian Schwartz (@schwartzbCNBC) November 13, 2019
For all the talk about "extraordinaire elite generosity", it's important to keep in mind the reality of US billionaires philanthropy:
Forbes 400 total wealth: ~$2.5 trillion
Annual charitable giving by the top 400: ~$10 billion
= 0.4% of their wealth. Like a tiny wealth tax— Gabriel Zucman (@gabriel_zucman) November 14, 2019
the audio here really makes it. i'm not going to ruin it for you, just hit play https://t.co/m1BPYFYWg4— Brendan Karet 🚮 (@bad_takes) November 14, 2019
Another big journalism org answers @sulliview's plea that journalists do their jobs this week. (The answer is "Nope.") https://t.co/QgTGIYdeAl— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) November 14, 2019
SF remains the go to example, despite not being even vaguely analogous to the cities in question.
I wrote this week's @wcp cover story on the future of D.C housing. Can the city avoid the fate of San Francisco? Will it? https://t.co/4dQ8D7wbtp— Rachel Cohen (@rmc031) November 14, 2019
“Historically, journals were the way to disseminate science. Now, with publishers like APA, once published, their primary function is to prevent most people from getting access to the research.”
I think its time for something different. https://t.co/wMFZbJyulg— Ed Fuller (@EdFuller_PSU) November 14, 2019
Tom Steyer has accounted for over 67% of *all* TV ad spending by 2020 candidates in the race, through this week, per CMAG data. Steyer has aired over $46.4 million of TV ads in 2019 so far.— David Wright (@DavidWright_CNN) November 14, 2019
Monday, November 18, 2019
Fun with Political Trivia
This picks up on a recent thread (telling which one might be too much of a clue). The ones and zeros represent a trait of Democratic candidates from 1964 to 2004. Take a look and think about it for a moment. Here's a hint, the trait is something associated with each man well before he ran for president.
Johnson 1
Humphrey 0
McGovern 0
Carter 1
Mondale 0
Dukakis 0
Clinton 1
Gore 1
Kerry 0
As you might have guessed, the relationship between this trait and the popular vote didn't hold in the previous or following elections. The trait is not at all obscure. It was well known at the time and figured prominently into their political personas, This is not a trick question.
Johnson 1
Humphrey 0
McGovern 0
Carter 1
Mondale 0
Dukakis 0
Clinton 1
Gore 1
Kerry 0
As you might have guessed, the relationship between this trait and the popular vote didn't hold in the previous or following elections. The trait is not at all obscure. It was well known at the time and figured prominently into their political personas, This is not a trick question.
Friday, November 15, 2019
Thursday, November 14, 2019
"This strategy is cynical enough when the victim is something like Toys ‘R’ Us; it’s a societal crisis when it comes for journalism."
Glad to see that the New York Times ran this important op-ed by former Deadspin editor Barry Petchesky (as excerpted by Lawyers, Guns and Money), but you have to wonder how things might have been different if the NYT had stood with Gawker when these crimes against journalism first started rather than handing over a spot on their opinion page to noted women's suffrage critic, Peter Thiel.
Why would anyone buy Deadspin to change Deadspin? It’s hard to understand why Great Hill Partners demanded that we “stick to sports” — especially at a time when the site was driving the conversation in sports coverage and had the highest traffic in its history — until you realize that this was most likely their plan.It’s the private equity model: Purchase an asset, strip it of everything of value, then turn around and sell the brand to someone else before they realize that what made the brand valuable in the first place has been lost and can never be recovered (the low-quality, un-bylined articles sweatily posted to the site after the mass resignations bear this out).
This strategy is cynical enough when the victim is something like Toys ‘R’ Us; it’s a societal crisis when it comes for journalism.
And come for journalism it has. In recent years, we’ve seen the deaths (and to varying degrees, the troubled rebirths) of the likes of Newsweek, The Denver Post, LA Weekly, Playboy and just last month, the granddaddy of all sports media, Sports Illustrated.It plays out the same way each time: The new owners come in, slash staff and costs and turn a once-proud publication into a content mill churning out bland and unimportant stories that no one wants or needs to read.
It’s going to keep happening, faster than new outlets can rise up to replace the gutted old. For every refreshing new outlet, two will be zombified. Corners will be sanded down. Bitter pills puréed to a beige pap. Everything you liked about the web will be replaced with what the largest number of people like, or at least tolerate enough to click on and sit through three seconds of an autoplay ad. Unique voices will be muted, or drowned out altogether.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
"Yes, $100 million is certainly likely to buy a whole lot of indifference."
That quote alone is worth the price of admission, but it's worth your time to read the rest of this latest example of the increasingly absurd world of executive compensation from the always reliable Joe Nocera.
Everyone Gets Paid in CBS-Viacom Except Shareholders
Is it just me, or does the $100 million “severance” being paid to Joe Ianniello, the acting chief executive officer of CBS Corp., stink to high heaven? For starters, you can make a pretty compelling Elizabeth Warren-esque argument that handing a $100 million “severance” to someone who is not, in fact, leaving the company is exactly why income inequality has become such a hot-button issue.
But let’s be old school about this. Let’s focus on the shareholders and how this is their money that’s being handed to Ianniello. It is also an unpleasant reminder of how the father-daughter combo of Sumner and Shari Redstone seemingly can’t resist throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at executives who have not done much for their stockholders.
...
Which brings us back to Ianniello. Although he has been acting CEO only since Moonves departed late last year, Ianniello has also been the recipient of the Redstones’ largesse: Between 2016 and 2018, as the company’s chief operating officer, his compensation averaged $27 million a year, according to Bloomberg. The stock? It dropped from the low 70s to the mid-40s during those three years. This is what’s known as “pay for pulse.”
So why did Shari Redstone feel the need to hand Ianniello an additional $100 million? The reasons are twofold. First, Redstone is recombining Viacom and CBS. She doesn’t want Ianniello to leave — at least not right away — but she also isn’t going to make him the top dog. Second, for legal reasons, she can’t ramrod this deal through by herself, even though she is the controlling shareholder. She needs the CBS board and senior management to support the bid.
“You need Joe to get the merger done,” Robin Ferracone, the CEO of executive compensation consulting firm Farient Advisors, told Bloomberg. “So you need to make him indifferent to whether he’s going to lose his job or not.”
Yes, $100 million is certainly likely to buy a whole lot of indifference. Then again, $10 million probably could have achieved the same result. And in any case, if Shari Redstone needs $100 million to, er, persuade one of her executives to support her merger plan, maybe that suggests the merger’s success is not exactly a slam dunk.
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
"Many years ago, on Monday" -- More Tuesday Tweets
Many years ago, on Monday, Democrats were gripped with panic about how the NYT/Siena showed they could never win again.— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) November 6, 2019
Some experts attribute the slowdown in VC investment in the early ‘20s to a number of entrepreneurs accidentally exploding themselves inside self-made Batsuits https://t.co/HpwBOc8xti— dylan matthews (@dylanmatt) November 10, 2019
So much to argue with here, but let's start by what it says about a business to claim that it can only be viable if it's a monopoly.
Uber needs to buy Lyft to survive, and finally make profits https://t.co/yj3C0tB1oT— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) November 11, 2019
"It amounts to what we might call Schrodinger's Bus, a situation in which a foundational instability is created by people simultaneously being on the team and under the bus depending on the context and which side of Pennsylvania Avenue you're looking from."— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 10, 2019
As a gay man originally from Kentucky, I never thought I'd see the day a candidate who supports marriage equality would be elected KY-GOV. I rallied in 2004 against the state's proposed ban on marriage equality, which was approved by voters that year to my horror.— Joshua Crawford (@JoshCrawfordNE) November 6, 2019
"Decades of research have shown that engaged parents and a stable family are far more important than schools and teachers to a child’s academic achievement..." https://t.co/ogcFiBJ6v6— Barry Ritholtz (@ritholtz) November 10, 2019
Keep in mind that for years the NYT's leading science writer was the climate change skeptic, John Tierney.— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) November 10, 2019
So much to argue with here, but let's start by what it says about a business to claim that it can only be viable if it's a monopoly.
Uber needs to buy Lyft to survive, and finally make profits https://t.co/yj3C0tB1oT— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) November 11, 2019
It's interesting that this method allows us to define multiplication without using any numbers! 🔨✖️🥕 https://t.co/4f4KGOykOL— Luis Batalha 🇵🇹🇺🇸 (@luismbat) November 11, 2019
Monday, November 11, 2019
A bit of perspective on 2016
This piece by Tina Nguyen came out shortly after the election and most of the numbers are familiar to those who have been following the story closely, but recently we've seen the return of the unstoppable Trump myth, back up by the claim that the Republicans hold an enormous advantage in the Electoral College.
Before we all get caught up in the hysteria, it's good to be reminded just how thin the margin was.
Before we all get caught up in the hysteria, it's good to be reminded just how thin the margin was.
You Could Fit All the Voters Who Cost Clinton the Election in a Mid-size Football Stadium
While nearly 138 million Americans voted in the presidential election, the stunning electoral victory of Donald Trump came down to upsets in just a handful of states that Hillary Clinton was expected to win. It has been cold comfort for Democrats that Clinton won the popular vote—at the last count, she was up by about 2.5 million votes, and climbing, as ballots continue to be counted. Even more distressing is the tiny margin by which Clinton lost Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—three states that were supposed to be her firewall in the Rust Belt, but that ultimately tipped the electoral college map decisively in Trump’s favor.
Trump’s margin of victory in those three states? Just 79,316 votes.
This latest number comes from Decision Desk’s final tally of Pennsylvania’s votes, where Trump won 2,961,875 votes to Clinton’s 2,915,440, a difference of 46,435 votes. Add that to the official results out of Wisconsin, where Clinton lost by 22,177 votes, and Michigan, which she lost by 10,704 votes, and there you have it: 0.057 percent of total voters cost Clinton the presidency.
It is not entirely unusual for the electoral college to be lost by such a slim margin. In 2000, Al Gore lost Florida (and therefore the election) by 1,754 votes, triggering a painfully drawn out recount drama that only ended with a Supreme Court ruling. And in 2004, John Kerry lost to George W. Bush by losing Ohio by a little over 118,000 votes. But it is worth considering just how few voters ultimately set the country on its current, arguably terrifying course. The 79,316 people who voted for Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—all states that Democrats carried since 1992—is less than the entire student body of Penn State (97,494 students), or only slightly more than the number of people who attended Desert Trip, the Baby Boomer-friendly music festival colloquially known as “Oldchella.” If you put all these voters in the Rose Bowl, there would be slightly over 13,000 seats left over. There are more people living in Nampa, Idaho, a city you have never heard of.
Friday, November 8, 2019
One essential point to keep in mind about "Los Angeles": it's not just bigger than you think; it's way bigger than you think.*
There's a fundamental confusion about LA that pops ups constantly and can be tremendously misleading. If you look up U.S. cities by population, you get the following
1 New York 8,398,748
2 Los Angeles 3,990,456
But when people say "New York," they mean the city of New York, but when people say "Los Angeles" without qualifiers, they almost inevitably mean the county of Los Angeles. Almost no one, including lifelong Angelenos are vague on which areas are neighborhoods and which are cities.
The population of LA County is over 10 million and the area is over 4,000 square miles. It covers mountains, beaches, valleys and, high and low deserts. Multiple microclimates can result in 36 degree temperature differences at the same time of day. The elevation ranges from 0 to over 10,000 feet.
East Coast journalists (and all too often, Bay Area ones, as well) are shockingly ignorant of LA, not to mention San Diego, the Central Valley, and the rest of the state. As a result, issues affecting small slices of the population are over-reported while widespread problems don't get the attention they deserve.
For example, relatively few Angelenos are worried about their houses burning down while the smoke from these fires can create a serious health concern for millions of people.
As bad as this is for us, the ignorance and provincialism of journalists is even worse for most of the rest of the country. If they get this much wrong about LA, imagine how little they know about a place like Phoenix.
* San Francisco, by comparison, is way smaller than you think, but how a city that doesn't break the top 12 in population became the goto example for urban planning narratives is a subject for another post.
1 New York 8,398,748
2 Los Angeles 3,990,456
But when people say "New York," they mean the city of New York, but when people say "Los Angeles" without qualifiers, they almost inevitably mean the county of Los Angeles. Almost no one, including lifelong Angelenos are vague on which areas are neighborhoods and which are cities.
The population of LA County is over 10 million and the area is over 4,000 square miles. It covers mountains, beaches, valleys and, high and low deserts. Multiple microclimates can result in 36 degree temperature differences at the same time of day. The elevation ranges from 0 to over 10,000 feet.
East Coast journalists (and all too often, Bay Area ones, as well) are shockingly ignorant of LA, not to mention San Diego, the Central Valley, and the rest of the state. As a result, issues affecting small slices of the population are over-reported while widespread problems don't get the attention they deserve.
For example, relatively few Angelenos are worried about their houses burning down while the smoke from these fires can create a serious health concern for millions of people.
As bad as this is for us, the ignorance and provincialism of journalists is even worse for most of the rest of the country. If they get this much wrong about LA, imagine how little they know about a place like Phoenix.
* San Francisco, by comparison, is way smaller than you think, but how a city that doesn't break the top 12 in population became the goto example for urban planning narratives is a subject for another post.
Thursday, November 7, 2019
Thursday Tweets (because it's been that kind of week)
Reveal does important work, which makes this all the more appalling.
"Planet Aid’s actions in its lawsuit against Reveal are a manifest example of what deep-pocketed interests can do to a news organization even when the facts are on the journalists’ side." https://t.co/Tf1tbguzHu Three years and millions of dollars in legal fees fighting this.— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) November 6, 2019
Most screwed up story of gaming the metrics I've ever seen.
Colleges are sending brochures to people who get low scores on SAT practice tests so they can reject their applications later because US News uses rejection rate as a factor in ranking schools.https://t.co/ULBzPMRbV0— Dare Obasanjo (@Carnage4Life) November 6, 2019
If you want utopian urbanists to ignore you, bring this up.Add a few miles to the 30 and you could say exactly the same thing about Silicon Valley workers who want to live in a trendy SF zip code. https://t.co/VxW3xXHOLz— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) November 6, 2019
Andrew has some thoughts on this. I wonder how you can account for the substitution effect in the analysis, but getting the musings to thought-status is too much work. An obscure but influential argument made for not worrying about inequality is that the poor face a lower inflation rate than the rich. These arguments were everywhere ~2009 and still remain.
Turns out new, actual research on the topic finds the opposite. https://t.co/dTxG9TmLjZ— Mike Konczal (@rortybomb) November 5, 2019
"Most useless and over-hyped technology ever!"? -- the hyperloop would like to have a word with you.There is still NOT a single application of blockchain - defined as a public, decentralized/distributed, permission-less, trustless ledger technology - that works or is widely used in spite of billions spent on it for a decade now. Most useless and over-hyped technology ever!— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) November 6, 2019
'It is the right moment for me to leave to pursue an entrepreneurial opportunity.'
G/O Media Editorial Director Who Told Deadspin to 'Stick to Sports' Resigns (after entire staff resigns) https://t.co/WFaAUO3eN3 via @vice— Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) November 5, 2019
Here's another beautiful quote from his resignation note: 'I admire the journalism that you produce and the unique voice that is otherwise missing from mainstream media.'— Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) November 5, 2019
Accidentally duplicated every item in my @zotero library.
A sane person would've written a script to automate the merging process.
I took the analogue approach. pic.twitter.com/kAF9c6tUs3— Dooley Murphy (@DooleyMurphy) November 5, 2019
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Four years ago (more or less) -- something to remember when reading the latest analysis from Nate Cohn (and a lot of others)
Track records matter. Like it or not, unless you're actually working with the numbers, you have to rely to some degree on the credibility of the analysts you're reading. Three of the best ways to build credibility are:
1. Be right a lot.
2. When you're wrong, admit it and seriously examine where you went off track, then...
3. Correct those mistakes.
I've been hard on Nate Silver in the past, but after a bad start in 2016, he did a lot to earn our trust. By the time we got to the general election, I'd pretty much give him straight A's. By comparison, there were plenty of analysts who got straight F's, and a lot of them are playing a prominent role in the discussion this time around..
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Revisiting Nate Cohn -- Scott Walker edition
I was going back and forth on whether or not to revisit this critique of the New York Times' Nate Cohn in the wake of the Walker implosion. If you remember, little over a month ago, Cohn made the argument that:In the end, Mr. Trump almost certainly won’t win the Republican nomination; the rest of the party will consolidate around anyone else. He can influence the outcome only if his support costs another candidate more than others. But for now, he seems to be harming all candidates fairly equally.This was never a convincing claim (at the time I called it "strained and convoluted"), and it has gotten even less defensible in the light of recent events, but that's not necessarily enough reason to dredge things up. There's a difference between keeping score and piling on (and the last post on Cohn was a bit on the harsh side).
I was leaning toward dropping the thread until I read Cohn's piece on the collapse of the Walker campaign and again saw things that bothered me. It was better than the Trump pieces, but it was improvement without progress.
[Yeah, I know, it sounds garbled but let me unpack the oxymoron. If the most recent outcome is better than the previous one, that's an improvement; if conditions change so that we can expect future outcomes to be better than previous outcomes, that's progress. (My blog, my definitions.)]
Over the past three months, Nate Cohn and many of his colleagues have not only failed to anticipate major developments; they've also made a string of predictions that haven't come to fruition. This wouldn't be worrisome if it were leading to a critical examination of the analogies and assumptions that led to these errors, or at least a little less self-assurance.
What we don't want to see is yet is yet another simple narrative presented as the explanation. Which brings us to..
Mr. Walker faltered so quickly because he simply was not skilled enough to navigate the competing pressures of appealing to the party’s establishment at the same time as arousing its base. It was much like the story of Rick Perry.
Though the entry of Donald Trump into the race made things harder for all the Republican candidates, Mr. Trump can’t be blamed entirely for Walker’s troubles. Mr. Walker was tied with Mr. Bush for second place in national polls heading into the first debate, long after Mr. Trump took a lead in those polls. By the time he dropped out, Mr. Walker had the support of less than one-half of 1 percent of Republican primary voters, according to the most recent CNN survey.
The Walker campaign — or perhaps the candidate personally — felt pressure from the rise of Mr. Trump on his right, especially once Mr. Walker started slipping a bit in the polls. This sort of pressure isn’t unusual and was inevitable — he would have felt it at some point, if not from Mr. Trump, then from Ben Carson or Ted Cruz.
Mr. Walker, to put it gently, did not handle this pressure well. His instinct was to move to the right as fast as possible at any point of vulnerability. He staked out a conservative position on birthright citizenship and a fringe position on considering a wall at the Canadian border. These moves alienated party elites and weren’t credible to conservative voters. He quickly reversed positions; in the end, he reassured no one.
First off there's the argument itself. It seems to be a reasonable, if not all that convincing, little story (not all that different than the one Nate Silver tells, but more an that in a minute) until you consider magnitude of the event being discussed. Walker did have notable missteps (to use Silver's term) but they were relatively minor. If we were talking about a campaign losing momentum or dropping a few points they might make sense as a possible cause, but we're talking about a complete implosion with a well-funded candidate going from near the top of the field to less than one percent support in shockingly little time.
The important part here is the speed of the collapse. Cohn himself was discussing Walker's weaknesses as a campaigner back in July, but he also said Walker had "plenty of time to assuage these concerns."
We now know Walker didn't. A month later, he would already be in free fall.
Scott Walker has sought to reassure jittery donors and other supporters this week that he can turn around a swift decline in the polls in Iowa and elsewhere by going on the attack and emphasizing his conservatism on key issues.And, if you check the dates, you'll notice that the donors got jittery before Walker started talking about that Canadian wall.
Furthermore, probably Walker's most high-profile move to the right was the anti-labor position. I suppose this could have alienated the party elites (though we are talking about Koch brothers here) but if Scott Walker can't make an attack on unions credible to conservative voters, I honestly can't imagine anyone who could.
But the argument itself isn't what really bothers me. What's troubling here is the way that Cohn deals with the failure of his predictions. Even those with a good track record on the GOP race, such as Josh Marshall, admitted to being surprised at just how rapidly the collapse transpired. As a good rule of thumb, if you did not expect something, you should be careful about offering explanations about how it happened. As far as I can tell, Marshall and company are doing their best to follow this rule.
Cohn, by comparison, has perhaps the worst track record of any of the analysts I've been following when it comes to the GOP primary. After calling a premature end to the Trump surge a number of times and making the just-another-Herman-Cain analogy on no less than five separate occasions, he then made the previously mentioned claim about Trump not having any effect on the race.
Despite this, Cohn appears to be one of the most confident commentators when putting forward his theories about the causes of the implosion. The comparison to Nate Silver here is instructive. Silver actually opens his piece by acknowledging just how wrong he and his team were on Scott Walker. In addition to caution, Silver also offers a great deal more in terms of complexity and counter arguments. Cohn actually uses the word "simply" to describe his version of events.
But what's important here is not just the unwarranted confidence. We all have our moments. What merits attention is what Cohn's confidence in this situation tells us about his process. Anyone who works with data long enough will have occasion to see their models break down and their predictions go so far awry that they are no longer even directionally accurate.
When journalists looking in from the outside describe these disasters, they almost invariably use the phrase "go back and check your numbers," but in complex situations that is relatively seldom the source of the problem. More likely and far more difficult to catch are problems with robustness and modeling assumptions.
I realize I may be making too much of this, but there's a bigger issue here that has been bothering me for a long time. When Nate Cohn says this is what happened to Scott Walker, he is displaying a this-is-how-the-world-works tone and mindset that is very common in places like the Upshot, even when it is not at all appropriate. If you read carefully the work of journalists inspired by Nate Silver (though not so much Silver himself), you pick up the implicit belief that the standard methods and assumptions being employed are as true and as reliable as the laws of mathematics , that they have always worked and will always work.
This is a dangerous way to approach the social sciences, particularly when you start running into range of data issues (and between Trump, Carson, and the rise of the tea party, I think we are definitely in new territory now).
As mentioned before, I strongly suspect that the theory that Walker collapsed because his move to the right offended the elites and yet was not credible to the base is wrong, but I would be much more comfortable with it and would certainly have not written this post if it had been clearly framed as a theory.
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Tuesday Tweets
Read the thread.
We all need to relax.
1) So here's where this is all going:— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) November 4, 2019
I submit that Trump may ultimately demand that Republicans *fully* defend his pressure on Ukraine to investigate *Biden in particular,* without any squeamish double-talk about investigating "corruption."
*MINI-THREAD*
"Truth Might Fracture" said @Wikimedia 's Exec Dir @krmaher to me 3 years ago. It chilled me to my spine. So we redirected much of the @internetarchive for 3 years, and this is where I announce what we have done: https://t.co/WvCSXC6n31 Books<->Wikipedia https://t.co/lz5Bc52edr— Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle) November 4, 2019
You better watch out... https://t.co/hJPW8VwKHF— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) November 4, 2019
The primary work around has been to have journalists from different backgrounds abandon their own identities and adopt the viewpoint of an Ivy league-educated, white, upper class, New Yorker.— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) July 28, 2019
Cement, iron & steel alone account for half of industrial CO2 emissions (1/6th of total). And their production is seriously hard to decarbonize.https://t.co/IoOayIGCpL pic.twitter.com/AxDO9OXolo— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) November 4, 2019
Making that sweet, sweet $25,000 a year (exceptional writers only) https://t.co/fLhvelxRDG— Jesse Hawken (@jessehawken) November 2, 2019
How did I miss this guy for so long? He's the perfect lord of Ithuvania. Came across him taking G/O Media's side over Deadspin and I had to double check to make sure it wasn't a parody account.https://t.co/PQHHespjvz https://t.co/YZC5Pwncnu— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) November 3, 2019
We all need to relax.
The baby’s face when the head scratcher came out 😍 pic.twitter.com/umIVONgWwE— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 3, 2019
Monday, November 4, 2019
To all my friends back East, we're all doing just fine here in LA
Though air quality is always a concern, other than a few hazy days, very few of us have been directly affected by the fires.
Homelessness remains a huge problem on a humanitarian level, but the streets do not run with sewage, used needles do not litter the sidewalks and the housed do not cower in fear.
Housing prices and traffic have definitely taken a turn for the worse over the past five or so years, but for those who are not at the bottom of the income ladder (and we should be doing more for those who are), the city is still manageable if you are flexible about where you live, particularly if you don’t insist on trendy neighborhoods and aren’t afraid of ethnic and economic diversity.
Climate change has us worried about fires and droughts, but not so much about rising oceans. The California coast has lots of high ground. The elevation of downtown LA is almost 300 feet above sea level, with much of the town considerably higher. Perhaps more importantly, being on the western side of the continent, we are not in the path of any tropical cyclones. Rising oceans and more powerful hurricanes make for a bad combination.
Just to be clear, I don’t want to make light of any of these challenges facing the state, but it is possible to take the problems seriously and still recognize the silliness of the dystopian disaster porn coming out of otherwise respectable publications like the New York Times and the Atlantic.
Steve Lopez has the essential summary of the latest wave of California-is-doomed stories.
The political right, of course, has long specialized in the sport of California mockery. But we’re now getting it from the left, as well. People are running for their lives and losing their homes, and the haters can’t wait to do a grave dance.
“It’s the End of California As We Know It,” warned a New York Times headline on an op-ed piece declaring that “at the heart of our state’s rot” is “a failure to live sustainably.”
Yeah, we‘ve got problems and a long way to go, but is there a state in the union that has done more in the interest of sustainability?
“California Is Becoming Unlivable,” screamed the Atlantic.
Speaking of which, do we sit around in California wondering if the Southeast — where many states are governed by Republicans, not wifty liberals — is unlivable because decades of construction on fragile coastal land has put millions of people in the direct path of killer hurricanes?
“Climate change,” the Atlantic said of our state, “is turning it into a tinderbox; the soaring cost of living is forcing even wealthy families into financial precarity. And, in some ways, the two crises are one: The housing crunch in urban centers has pushed construction to cheaper, more peripheral areas, where wildfire risk is greater.”
Some fair points can be found in this article. But even when you have to clear your throat to draw attention to yourself, there is no good reason to use the word “precarity.” Second of all, are some wealthy families, God forbid, selling their Range Rovers and laying off half the domestic staff? Are those among the horrors of financial precarity?
Even before fire season, California was under attack.
“California’s Hobo Paradise” was the title of a September editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The piece parroted President Trump’s bashing of California, particularly San Francisco and Los Angeles, for its tent cities and public health problems.
By the way, please advise Trump he doesn’t need to fuel up Air Force One and fly to California if homelessness is a genuine concern, because there’s a sizable population within walking distance of the White House.
...
“California is a failed state,” said Breitbart News, which, as I recall, was founded by a man who lived rather comfortably here in one of the many affluent areas of our failed state.
“As climate change ravages the Golden State, earthquakes could become the least of residents’ concerns,” said the New Republic, which also questioned whether California is still livable.
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