When it comes to converging on a narrative, Politico can still give the NYT a run for its money

Within minutes of the verdict being announced, jokes started to circulate on twitter from people like James Fallows and NYT pitchbot, speculating on how long it would take for pundits and political journalists to start cranking out articles and think pieces explaining how the multiple conditions don't matter. Sure enough, that very afternoon we started seeing examples including an inevitable entry from Frank Bruni.

I'm going to focus on this (also inevitable) Politico piece because it provides such an instructive example of the way the press converges almost instantly on a convenient narrative, even when there is absolutely no evidence to support it.

The article by Melanie Mason and Lara Korte posted at 5:00 AM on the 31st, only a few hours after the verdict, and unlike the Bruni piece, this had some original reporting (though not the reporting the narrative needed, but we'll get to that later).

I'm not sure what the terminology here is, but the title that showed up when I shared the article over email and appears when I mouse over the tab is "Trump's guilty verdict unlikely to sink California's battleground Republicans." Obviously, there is no way that anyone can know this, and the piece itself doesn't really even try to argue it (if anything, the opposite, but I'm getting ahead of myself). Instead, we get a slow walk back through the length of the article, with each successive section failing to support and by the end actually contradicting the thesis.

The moonwalking starts right out of the gate with a title that greatly tones down the previously mentioned subject line.

"Trump’s guilty. Republicans could still win in California."

Notice how we've gone from likely to win to "could still win." Now take a look at the opening paragraph.

California Democrats indulged in some schadenfreude over Donald Trump’s guilty verdict Thursday, but when it comes to pivotal House races, they shouldn’t be celebrating prematurely. There’s no guarantee that his legal troubles will sink California Republicans down-ballot.

This is a perfect Politico lede, and I mean that in the worst way possible, "savvy," snide, disapproving, reporting subjective impressions as fact, and pouring cold water on the Democrats. You'll also notice a disconnect, a strawman, and some subtle moving of the goalposts. Pretty impressive for such a short paragraph. We don't get any examples of the "schadenfreude," not even a link, nor do we get any indication that California Democrats believe this will hand them multiple house seats. There is certainly no indication that anyone thought these gains were "guaranteed." That is, of course, an impossible standard, but it nicely sets up what is already becoming the standard narrative.

Then we get to the only part of the article that briefly even comes close to arguing its thesis.

GOP Rep. David Valadao, for example, eked out a win in his Central Valley seat in 2020, even when that district backed Biden by 11 points. His seat tilted more Democratic after redistricting, yet Democrats were unable to oust him in 2022.

Orange County Rep. Michelle Steel is another Republican who was able to topple a Democrat in 2020, even as the district narrowly sided with Biden. She held her seat in 2022.

...

For the most part, Rob Stutzman, a Republican Trump critic, said he expects GOP House contenders to “stay away” from the former president’s legal troubles. “Probably not much of a factor by [November] in House races,” he said.

That's pretty much it. The fact that two Republican House members had been previously able to win seats in districts that went for Biden, along with a quote from a Republican campaign consultant who unsurprisingly said he didn't expect Trump's legal problems to be much of a factor.

After that, takes a very strange turn. The focus shifts to actual reporting which largely undercuts what had come before.

California Republicans in swing seats have largely stayed silent about the verdict so far. Those who have commented, such as Rep. Ken Calvert, echoed Trump’s complaint that the trial was a partisan frame-up — an argument that reinforces Democrats’ messaging about Republicans doing Trump’s bidding. 

...

Shortly after the verdict, Democratic House candidate Will Rollins tweeted a video clip of his opponent, the GOP’s Calvert, previously urging Republicans to rally around Trump. The Palm Springs Democrat added, “We deserve a representative who cares more about the 750,000 of us in Riverside County than one convicted felon in New York.”

Coby Eiss, Rollins’ campaign manager, predicted the verdict could help Democrats flip Calvert’s seat due to the larger number of independent voters in the inland district that is sandwiched between Los Angeles and San Diego. He argued voters want the government to look “more like what you see on CSPAN, less like a soap opera.”

Despite Stutzman's prediction, at least one (and based on the "Those...such as" phrasing, apparently more than one) of the at-risk house members has lashed himself to the mast on this, and given what's happening to Larry Hogan, there will be considerable pressure for others to do the same. 

While there's no way of knowing how this will play out, California Democrats are clearly looking to make this an issue, which given Trump's unpopularity in the state would seem to be a good bet. Not a sure thing, but not evidence that "Trump's guilty verdict unlikely to sink California's battleground Republicans" either.

Ten years ago at the blog -- a rare Richard Feynman/Tom Lehrer post

 Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Adding in base 8, counting by ten, and other reform fixations

With all of the usual caveats about small samples, I've been reading up on education reform movements past and present recently and I've noticed something. There seems to be a tendency to latch onto some interesting but non-essential concept and impose upon it considerable, even central importance. Mastering these concepts is often seen as necessary conditions for truly understanding the material, despite the generations of students who had managed to get by without them.

Counting by certain intervals and ELA concepts like close reading, and the distinction between perspective and point of view are a couple of examples associated with Common Core, but the richest stake might well belong to the New Math movement of the post-Sputnik era. Some of the concepts were extremely important in higher level math courses (such as set theory). Others (such as performing operations in bases other than ten or two) seldom came up  even for mathematicians.

It's worth noting that both Richard Feynman and Tom Lehrer singled out working in other bases when criticizing New Math, Lehrer in song and Feynman in memorably scornful prose:

I understood what they were trying to do. Many [Americans] thought we were behind the Russians after Sputnik, and some mathematicians were asked to give advice on how to teach math by using some of the rather interesting modern concepts of mathematics. The purpose was to enhance mathematics for the children who found it dull.

I'll give you an example: They would talk about different bases of numbers -- five, six, and so on -- to show the possibilities. That would be interesting for a kid who could understand base ten -- something to entertain his mind. But what they turned it into, in these books, was that every child had to learn another base! And then the usual horror would come: "Translate these numbers, which are written in base seven, to base five." Translating from one base to another is an utterly useless thing. If you can do it, maybe it's entertaining; if you can't do it, forget it. There's no point to it.

Part of the standard narrative about New Math was that the new concepts being introduced were too advanced and unfamiliar for teachers to handle or parents to accept, but in many cases, the greater tension was between authors of the reforms and the people who actually understood the math.

Do Frank Bruni and Politico prove that we are living in a simulation?

[We dive a bit deeper into "what is intuitive? in the comments.]

A few years ago, a Doctor Who episode had the doctor (or more accurately a doctor) figure out that he and everyone around him were simulations because, when asked to name a number, everyone independently always came up with the same answer. (Yes, I have questions about that too, but it's a fun story. Just go with it.) I got to thinking about that plot device Thursday afternoon when multiple sources started popping up with headlines like this:

If you gathered together a group of people and told them that a presidential candidate had been convicted of multiple felonies six weeks before the nominating convention, you wouldn't expect them to all instantly declare that the conviction would have no impact on the upcoming election. Don't get me wrong. It could well be true, but that's not what you'd expect the immediate consensus to be.

And, yes, I know what you're going to say. Trump. Normalization. Everything's different now. But is that true? He was still something of an unknown entity in 2016. Since then, he lost both the popular vote in the electoral college in 2020 and his party either lost or at least underperformed in both midterms. That at least opens up the possibility of electoral consequences for Trump's misbehavior. What's more we have considerable data indicating that being convicted would have a negative impact on Trump's campaign including a sizable protest vote and poll respondents saying that convictions would make them less likely to support the man.

Should we trust that data? I don't know. Some analysts have argued that Trump's protest vote isn't actually that big (I'm not convinced by these analyses, but it's possible I'm wrong). Polling about future actions given hypothetical situations is always questionable. So it's not that this is unassailable; it's that the evidence on the other side the proposition is no better and is possibly even weaker. Other than the fundraising bump (at least some of which will be going toward legal fees), I'm not sure what evidence suggests that this won't have a negative effect on independents or wobbly Republicans. To the extent that there is a preponderance of evidence, it would seem to support the strongly intuitive conclusion that being a scandal-ridden convicted felon is bad for a politician.

I realize some of you out there might disagree with some, perhaps even most of these assertions, but that's not really the point. If we were seeing some pundits and journalists think the problem through then come to the conclusion that the ruling will have no impact (at least no negative impact), while others concluded it will hurt Trump (though possibly not enough to decide in the election), and hopefully a few would defer taking a position until they had more data, I could understand. This is a confusing situation, unprecedented along the number of dimensions, with plenty of conflicting information, misinformation, and disinformation to be dealt with. Any of those conclusions or non-conclusions could be justified.

But that's not what we saw.

Instead, with in a matter of hours, the mainstream, respectable press largely converged on the same somewhat counterintuitive narrative. There was no time to accumulate actual data about how people were responding, no time for opinion makers to ask themselves if the reality was somehow different than the scenarios they considered, no time to think.

If we had a press corps made up of independent-minded people trying to digest information, analyze it, and yes form narratives, but narratives that are evidence-based and data-driven, this would not happen. Instead, the discourse is driven by publications like the New York Times and Politico which appear to be guided by herd mentality and cowardice.

Or we're in the simulation. Believe whichever one gives you the most comfort.

[Great Capaldi moment at the end.]

In the aftermath of the verdict, things are going to get ugly. You'll see things you can't unsee (and that's just in the data journalism section)

Even under the best of circumstances, reading the polls at this point hoping to see who will win the election is a bit like weighing yourself to see whether or not you will be obese in six months. There is some correlation, but it doesn't actually tell you that much. Under the current circumstances, however, it's like weighing yourself on what is probably a worthless scale while jumping up and down like Andrew Gelman's kangaroo.

Why are things going to get so ugly?

1. The inverse relationship of information and certainty, squared. As a general rule, the more uncertain the situation, the greater the demand for reliable information. In the case of big, black swan events, the incentives for journalists not just to speculate, but to speculate wish an air of assurance can be irresistible. Analysts and pundits who were already way too confident before Thursday are about to try to convince you that they are the Oracle of freaking Delphi.

2. We are about to see a wave of thrown-together crappy polls. Part of this will be due to demand, part of this will be due to interested parties trying to grab the reins of the narrative, all of this will lead to noise and distraction.

3. The potential for selection effects is huge. Remember only a very small part of the population bothers to respond to polls. It doesn't take a lot to swap that signal, and we have every reason to believe that different segments of the public will be more or less likely to respond because of this news.

Back in 2012, we hypothesized that self-selection would tend to amplify the impact of good news and bad news through self-selection (a theory that has since been backed up by research*). This would presumably create a false surge for Biden caused by happy Democrats being more eager to talk to pollsters. On the other hand, we have both anger and cognitive dissonance on the right, which would presumably make Trump supporters more likely to pick up the phone either to vent or to convince themselves that their beliefs were not actually being shaken.

Add to that people who will be more eager to talk about something because it's big news and people who will be less likely to respond because they are getting burned out on the whole thing. How big will the selection effects be? How long will they last? How will they play out? I have no idea. And more importantly, neither does anyone you are about to read in the New York Times or see on CNN. Nobody knows.

4. A cannonball in the kiddie pool. Even if you could get a true picture of public opinion through the polls, it would still tell you virtually nothing. We can expect violent swings in the next few weeks, but we have absolutely no way of telling which are transitory and which are permanent. Which shifts will be followed by a backlash? Which moves will be permanent? Nobody knows.

5. Narrative preservation and the coming cherry picking epidemic. We are about to be swarmed by serious sounding journalists all insisting that they are channeling the data like a carny medium communing with the spirits. The trouble is, even more than normal, most of what you can get from the data over the next few weeks will be noise and contradiction. The only way to get a nice, clean, editor-friendly narrative at the moment is to ignore certain parts of the data while credulously accepting others. For example, expect to see I have lot of "this won't change anything" stories that unquestioningly repeat polls that say people are mainly concerned with inflation and the border (despite research suggesting these voter influence results aren't reliable) while dismissing or ignoring polls where Republican voters said that a conviction would make them less likely to vote for Donald Trump. Should we trust those latter polls? How the hell should I know? As I believe I've mentioned earlier, nobody knows.

How should you deal with this?

Here's my advice. It may sound a bit radical at first, but it's really not. Just go cold turkey in June. Unless you have some professional reason for needing to follow the polls and the resulting political commentary, don't. There will be vanishingly little real information in those articles you skip and distinguishing between the worthwhile and the worthless will be next to impossible. Reading these pieces will waste your time, possibly raise your blood pressure, and may well leave you more misinformed than you started. Spend the month reading other things (If you enjoyed Gone Girl, I recommend A Kiss Before Dying). 

You'll have plenty of time to catch up with the polls in July. You might even find yourself wishing you'd taken even more time off.

* 

Andrew GelmanOctober 4, 2018 at 11:40 PM

Jesus Christ. Back in 2012, you completely anticipated the main result of our Mythical Swing Voter paper, which is based on data we collected in 2012, analyzed in 2013, wrote up in 2014, and published in 2016, and which other people picked up on in time for the 2016 campaign.

I probably even read your post when it came out, but I didn't get the point.

There's something wrong with the world that your blog doesn't have a million readers.

Thursday Tweets -- If your verdict isn't delivered in thirty minutes or less...

Love that CNN has adopted the Dominos pizza tracker format for trial updates pic.twitter.com/eiiFlmJNo2

— Tyler (@BalloonFlavour) May 29, 2024

I don't know what the impact of RFK jr is going to be in November (nobody knows) but for someone funded in large part by Trump supporters as a stalking horse, he's certainly spending a lot of time playing to the right.

"When you say there are a 'huge amount' of abortions that would necessitate federal intervention, where is the proof of that?"@RobertKennedyJr: "I would have to look at the data again... Do you think you should be able to abort a perfectly healthy child at 9 months?"

"There's… pic.twitter.com/qjnTdTj80n

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) May 26, 2024

Been a long time since I've seen a good Martha Mitchell reference.

Some real Martha Mitchell stuff here, except less cooperative w press

On Jan. 20, 2021 — the day of Biden’s inauguration, which the Alitos did not attend — Barnes went to their home to follow up on the tip about the flag. He encountered the couple coming out of the house.…

— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) May 25, 2024

It’s Blame-Your-Wife-at-Work Day. https://t.co/L9qIJHMjsU

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) May 29, 2024

Remember, don't blame the reporters for the headlines, blame the editors. (Guess which editors we're talking about this time.)

This unintelligible headline is insulting to @jodikantor who has a Pulitzer for her investigative reporting. It deliberately leaves out the conclusion of her “interviews” that show Alito appears to have lied to cover up his support of a right wing political movement https://t.co/Fjmb0yFAFX

— Jamesetta Williams 💕 (@jalexa1218) May 29, 2024

Even my considerable reserves of snark wouldn't be up to this.

Donald Trump is considering an advisory role for Elon Musk, in the event the former president and presumptive Republican nominee reclaims the White House https://t.co/BwoBQ5aPkW via @WSJ

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 29, 2024

I taught math/English at the high school and junior high level and math/statistics at the college level. If my students didn't know basic facts, I considered my responsibility. How much responsibility does the press have for the what the public doesn't know?

If only there was a profession whose job it was to inform the public about the ideas espoused by the parties and not think it is the job of said parties to drive narratives instead. https://t.co/ccgGrkEIbn

— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) May 29, 2024

There's a new narrative in elite-media circles: Trump supporters don't read what we write so don't blame us. I still blame them. https://t.co/VpUPe1ae3S

— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) May 29, 2024

What the fck happened to Felix Salmon? He used to be so good.

No objections to the 2nd paragraph, but not a fan of the 1st one which imho is at best provocative trolling (and possibly just plain wrong) pic.twitter.com/84VSD0s52f

— Guy Berger (@EconBerger) May 26, 2024

The press locked into a doom narrative and it proved comically wrong but rather than admit it, they're changing the meanings of the words. Anything to keep the vibecession going.

For those saying that Americans are righteously angry because the level of prices is up even though the rate of inflation has fallen, a history lesson pic.twitter.com/2n5zQS84aD

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) May 27, 2024

I saw one cable newser reporting on the massive travel increase both air and road and then noting that people are staying home because of gas prices. They can't stop. https://t.co/U8pHbi2YiO

— digby (@digby56) May 25, 2024

Public Misinformed, Says Prominent Member of Public-Informing Industry https://t.co/sGanAz2Te2

— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) May 24, 2024

 

We should have kept up better with the education reform story. Lots to talk about.

It’s not to give average people competitive options. It’s a tax break for rich people already going to private schools, a windfall for the schools, a nuke for public schools, and complete destruction of state budgets. https://t.co/7loRnZFdLJ

— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) May 27, 2024

And while on the subject of ed reform, how about a Goodhart callback?

Did anyone else get to the SEO section and think Goodhart's Law?

How Google RUINED the Internet https://t.co/ZTC6NzhREW via @YouTube

— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) May 28, 2024

Between quotes on abortion and clips like this, the Democrats might want to outsource all of their ads to Republicans this year.

Marco Rubio in 2016:

“I will make this promise to you today, I will do whatever it takes....Donald Trump, a con artist, will never get control of this party...We cannot allow a con artist to get access to the nuclear codes of the United States of America.” pic.twitter.com/H0iZ9dz37U

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) May 29, 2024

Nikki Haley: “Look at what happened to the Republican party…No longer is there any talk about fiscal responsibility…You got Donald Trump who put us on $8 trillion in debt more than any other president…Donald Trump is basically saying he’s going to tell Putin to go invade our… pic.twitter.com/HeEQCLm1SR

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) May 22, 2024

Also useful for those "I can't vote for Biden" leftists.

Flown to Israel on Miriam Adelson's plane https://t.co/gAmlLNgOlf

— lizweil (@lizweil) May 29, 2024

We've talking about ratcheting of the right for years. Good to know we're on the same page.

This is just part of his wind-up but it's very good: https://t.co/rAgfKMM6RX pic.twitter.com/6vJba1YMsI

— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) May 29, 2024

Being disowned by DSA would be the best political gift they could give to @AOC. https://t.co/PYOOdUF5dp

— Charles Gaba ✡️ (@charles_gaba) May 29, 2024

 

Let's see how things are going back in Arkansas.

This is Senator Tedd Budd's watch in the photo he tweeted posing with Gov. Sanders at the Coca Cola 600.
His watch must be a few hours fast or else someone's story has holes in it.#arpx https://t.co/YJ66nxYB2W pic.twitter.com/12mtdxrJHv

— Nate Bell (@NateBell4AR) May 29, 2024

I've been following the Huckabees for around thirty years and I can tell you, they're soulless, every damned one of them. 

“‘Eight people killed in tornadoes this morning and Huckaf-- is in NC. …. Sarah is a governor [who] doesn’t have much interest in governing.’” https://t.co/GByVjeH5zT

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) May 27, 2024

And check in with my birth state.

Texas gov Greg Abbot succeeded in knocking out rural Republicans who opposed school vouchers by swamping them w/ attack ads that never mentioned vouchers https://t.co/gsRXLT0uV1

— Jennifer Berkshire (@BisforBerkshire) May 29, 2024

Proposed Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide office. https://t.co/bwDX51U60X

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) May 25, 2024

We are truly living at the intersection of the darkest times and the dumbest times.

Conspiracy theories and right wing agendas in healthcare are going to continue to get women killed. pic.twitter.com/BuSmOW4Mzy

— Melanie D'Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) May 26, 2024

This one connects to at least a couple of threads I've been meaning to do about the meangirling of Harris, the growing realization on the sensible left that this was a big mistake, and the general sharpening of the mind we're seeing in a lot of quarters.

What @RealDLHughley did is commendable. The fact that he is big enough to admit he was wrong about @KamalaHarris record coupled with public efforts to reverse the damage from his past criticism, earns my respect.

Thank you, DL. pic.twitter.com/wUH8bOnbtC

— Owning My Space (@OwningMySpace) May 25, 2024

Polling news

want to use polls to steer policy? enlighten lawmakers? advocate for the interests of the common american? bad, polls are dumb, we're a republic not a democracy.

oh trump's winning in these polls? hell yeah take out a twitter ad!

— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) May 29, 2024

Take a minute to think through the implications. The narrative about the election is driven directly and indirectly by "data based" analyses which rely on a misunderstanding of "accuracy" (see below) and consist largely of noisy crosstabs and issue preference data. https://t.co/oXqQ3aqMVH

— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) May 27, 2024

Because of the role that luck plays in determining close political outcomes, Performance Above Replacement Analyst (PARA) for a partisan pundit is close to +0.2 in the short term. However, like in financial markets, over the long term their skill usually reverts to the negative

— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) May 23, 2024

My long-held prior on these attention estimates has been that they are almost certainly an upper bound on the true population share, since interest in news is correlated so strongly with answering surveys. In the past this bias has been bigger with online samples https://t.co/QkGDVoKnXR

— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) May 29, 2024

This sums it up. In the national aggregate, the 2022 polls weren't bad. But they were pretty bad at predicting close races. As Nate says, they had a GOP skew in some key races, but nationally that error was balanced out by having a Dem skew in noncompetitive states. https://t.co/cGh0s6onPO

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) May 23, 2024

AI -- As long as there are tech bros, we'll all have a reason to drink.

Bonus: in 20 years people will think of drinking as antiquated and humorous as attending a seance. "How did people think that was a good idea?!"

— Jonathan Ross (@JonathanRoss321) May 29, 2024

I wish there were more economists involved in discussions of the implications of unicorns. https://t.co/Y7h1HB1bGH

— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) May 28, 2024

it's hard to overemphasize this: Google and OpenAI have no plan for how or why people will generate *new, correct information* in the age of generative AI search https://t.co/M2S6RhEQBQ

— Kyle Chayka (@chaykak) May 23, 2024

Where AI hype comes from pic.twitter.com/Q0VC00DE99

— 📙 Alex Hillman (@alexhillman) May 26, 2024

Some of these screenshots are likely fake but go viral because people are no longer skeptical that Google could be this broken. Given the non-deterministic and transient nature of AI responses there's no way to know for sure. 25 years of trust flushed down the toilet. https://t.co/lFW34Ntkg2

— Arvind Narayanan (@random_walker) May 25, 2024

Misc

Two thoughts: (1) To Serve Man. (2) It's a religion, and its acolytes are prophesying a superhuman savior. https://t.co/6ktQCsMnHw

— Jason Colavito (@JasonColavito) May 29, 2024

Hey, remember when Pixar's Elemental "flopped" according to experts, and it went on to make half a billion dollars in theaters alone? And major media outlets had to publish articles not-quite-admitting they jumped the gun? https://t.co/c9LRnMcCNU

— MZS (@mattzollerseitz) May 29, 2024

Jimmy Carter, on the time that he had a Japanese audience in stitches pic.twitter.com/8pZLkW5THA

— Tom Whipple (@whippletom) May 24, 2024

Great thread for the ag and forestry nerds in the audience.

Healthy forests don't just happen- they need maintenance!

Especially right now when we have new pests that NC's native trees aren't evolved to deal with; changing weather patterns; more development, roads, & foot traffic in forests, etc. pic.twitter.com/gNDJ6ynYbQ

— Dr Sarah Taber (@SarahTaber_bww) May 24, 2024

This is a pretty one.

Here's the proof: x³-1=(x-1)(x²+x+1) and this number is composite unless x-1=1 ⇒ x=2 and x³=8 pic.twitter.com/kHwtnO41ig

— Fermat's Library (@fermatslibrary) May 25, 2024

 What's the point of having a micro-blogging platform if you can't have clips of puppies attacking door stops?

😊 pic.twitter.com/wy27d6RNvV

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) May 25, 2024

"she, like so many Americans before her, could imagine no greater spiritual fulfillment for herself or the nation than an extinction event."

I grew up in the Bible Belt and was still living there in the late 90s when things started to change. We were never evangelical, instead opting for the Fred Rogers wing of the Presbyterian Church (and even by those very lax standards, I still soon qualifed as lapsed). Arguing with evangelicals was something I had done my entire life, sometimes good-naturedly, sometimes with more of an edge. Nonetheless, there was generally at least some level of respect.

Things are  different today. It is a very different movement. Less spiritual. More political. Less interested in theological questions. For what still claims to be a fundamentalist religion, woefully ignorant of scripture (though I personally don't believe in divinely inspired texts, I can still appreciate scholarship and a sincere desire to live up to what you see as holy words). Ironically, the one change which is often held up as a positive sign strikes me as decidedly mixed. Evangelical acceptance of Catholics and Mormons is far greater than what I saw growing up. If this represented a general move toward tolerance, that would be a wonderful thing, but I am mostly convinced that it is the product of expediency and growing disinterest in the religious part of the religion, becoming what I have called previously secular evangelicalism, a movement based more on culture and political beliefs than on faith and spirituality.

I strongly suspect that one of the overlooked causes of the shift was Y2K mania. The denominations' deeply ingrained tendency toward millennialism lined up too perfectly with the popular fascination and anxiety over a possible mass failure of computers and automated systems, something that even mainstream media often described in apocalyptic terms. For those inclined to believe, it very much felt like the nightly news and the cover of Time magazine were laying the groundwork for the Book of Revelations. The overlap between Southern Baptists and preppers grew quite noticeable. I remember seeing a sign in a Bible store window advertising water purification tablets.

With the notable exception of a very good front page story in the Wall Street Journal, all of this passed unnoticed by the national press, but having arguably the country's most influential religious group go through an actual when prophecy fails experience is probably something we should pay more attention to. The non-apocalypse described in this account by Emily Harnett preceded the Y2K bug by a decade, but it's still instructive as well as being a fascinating read.

In 2021, General Michael Flynn, the Christian nationalist and former national security adviser to Donald Trump, gave an address at a nondenominational church in Nebraska that internet sleuths suspected had been plagiarized from one of Elizabeth’s “dictations,” as her dispatches from the Masters were known. One helpful YouTuber spliced together footage of the two for comparison. Both propose a religious call to arms and entreat the “freeborn” to resist becoming “enslaved by any foe,” while making confusing allusions to “sevenfold rays” and “legions.” But Flynn recited this prophetic word salad with the delivery of one’s least-favorite uncle plodding through an ill-prepared wedding toast. Elizabeth—with her precise elocution, her terrifying and obvious sincerity—sounded like a woman on the brink of a great cosmic battle.

QAnon conspiracy theorists, who quickly noted that some of Flynn’s language wasn’t exactly biblical in origin, believed the “occult prayer” exposed Flynn as a satanist. But if the incident reveals anything besides the mutinous humor of Flynn’s ghostwriter, it’s the degree to which millenarian rhetoric has saturated American public life. In 1960, the sociologist Daniel Bell predicted “an end to chiliastic hopes, to millenarianism, to apocalyptic thinking—and to ideology.” But as the historian Paul Boyer has noted, after the great revolutionary movements of the Sixties waned in America, much the opposite came to pass. Prophetic belief—whose adherents, in Boyer’s description, “take very seriously the Bible’s apocalyptic sections and derive from them a detailed agenda of coming events”—exploded in popularity during the Seventies and Eighties. Such beliefs have shaped not only American religiosity but our understanding of the human psyche itself.

In the Fifties, the psychologist Leon Festinger coined the Psych 101 term cognitive dissonance, based in part on research he’d done for the book When Prophecy Fails, which described the mental state of a Fifties UFO cult after its leader’s apocalyptic predictions went unrealized. There have been so many of these groups, flourishing and flaming out in endless cycles, trading places in a Beckettian limbo wherein divine reckoning approaches but never arrives. They have furnished streaming services with an endless supply of podcasts and documentaries rehearsing the history of America’s ill-fated apocalyptic sects and outsider religions. But whenever I try to place Elizabeth in this tradition, I come up short. She would be easier to categorize had she been more like Jim Jones, to whom she was often compared, or Charles Manson, whose Family had allegedly sent her death threats. But while her church was armed to the hilt, they never killed anyone; although Elizabeth could be mercurial and vindictive, she was a beloved mother of five. Were it not for her prophecies of nuclear Armageddon, it’s possible that the church would have remained one of the many fledgling religions eking out its existence far from the center of American life. Perhaps the one thing Elizabeth had in common with the believers of those other faiths was that she, like so many Americans before her, could imagine no greater spiritual fulfillment for herself or the nation than an extinction event.

 

Three quick observations on Donald Trump's not so good Saturday night

🚨 #BREAKINGNEWS During a speech tonight Donald Trump is met with an angry crowd chanting "Hypocrite" and booing constantly the entire speech.

The Libertarian Party has also chanted "Fuck Donald Trump." 🚨 pic.twitter.com/6ak797fZbH

— Ford News (@FordJohnathan5) May 26, 2024

Trump commits to put a Libertarian in his cabinet and then goes off prompter and starts making fun of the Libertarian party after they boo him.

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) May 26, 2024

"Maybe you don't want to win ... keep getting your 3 percent every four years" -- Trump is going full heel on this Libertarian National Convention crowd pic.twitter.com/OkUmBR4Z1A

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 26, 2024

Trumps ends his speech after only 30 minutes after he is practically booed off stage pic.twitter.com/oJugTJTHaw

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 26, 2024

Interesting to compare this to the reception they gave RFK jr.

Al Jazeera: RFK Jr. “earned the applause of many” Libertarian Party members during Convention speech

RFK Jr: “I don’t remember any part of the United States Constitution where there’s an exemption for pandemics.

Is that the kind of country you want to live in?”

Crowd: “No!” pic.twitter.com/dwewUhZ5VZ

— American Values 🗽 (@AV24org) May 25, 2024

Some observers thought it went great, such as this Fox contributor.

Trump gave the smartest speech of the campaign season! He gave the crowd undisputed facts as to why he is the best candidate to Make America Great Again! Grade A+ https://t.co/kHg7TL8HtT

— LeoTerrell (@TheLeoTerrell) May 26, 2024

 "The enthusiasm of the crowd"

Here's the CNN account:

Trump loudly booed at Libertarian convention when he asks attendees to ‘nominate me or at least vote for me’ 

... and here's how it was featured on the NYT site.



It didn't make the front page either. They did run an article... on A15, which is a good lead-in for my first observation.

1. Much of the "respectable" press, particularly the New York Times, is reluctant to pile onto an embarrassing story about Republicans. We won't go into the underlying causes – – God knows we been into that enough times already – – but the end result is often interesting and even important stories getting buried. This story is certainly entertaining, but is it important? Well that depends on...


2. How is the story of RFK Jr and the anti-VAX movement going to play out? This is why we've spent the past two or three years hammering home the importance of feral disinformation. What started out as an attempt from Trump and his supporters to minimize the political fallout of the pandemic has evolved into a political force that no one, least of all its creators, can control. Vaccines and anti-covid measures were arguably the one issue on which DeSantis was able to successfully attack Trump from the right.

We have no way of knowing how big the impact of this issue is going to be or even which direction it's going to break. It is possible that antiscience fringe liberals will go with RFK while like-minded conservatives will come back to Trump. It's possible that the anti-VAX crowd, which is disproportionately Republican, will break for RFK along party lines which would inflict considerably more damage on Trump than on Biden. It's possible that the whole thing will turn out to be a nothing-burger. Nobody knows and anyone who tells you that they do should not be trusted, but we can say that the potential impact could be enough to swing a close election under the right circumstances.


3. And what effect will this have on Trump and his campaign? Lots of moving parts on this one. As we have mentioned before, Trump has neither money nor surrogate, and his old go to, earned media, has become a decidedly mixed bag to say the least. Trump can't rely on ads and he can't send his running mate out on the campaign trail. His only real option to advance his message and shape the narrative is personal appearances, and yet, unless I forgot one, in the past month or so he has been exactly one day campaigning in swing states (his recent stop in NC didn't seem to include any events beyond waving). Since that day, he has given speeches in New Jersey, New York, and Texas. There were places he badly needed to be last Saturday.

The decision to appear at the libertarian conference (not to mention the considerable albeit failed effort to game the event) indicated that the campaign is worried about at least some of the third-party candidates taking support away from Trump, a notion further supported by the increasingly virulent attacks that he has been making on RFK.

If the objective was to shore up support among libertarians and the anti-VAX crowd, it appears to have been not only a failure, but a costly one in terms of embarrassment, opportunity cost, and wear and tear. Donald Trump is under a tremendous amount of stress and we have numerous anecdotes and indications that it is getting to him. What effect might this have on the election? There's really no telling. We are, once again, way out of the range of observed data.

Memorial Day Repost

A good day for a recommendation

There is, of course, no such thing as the military perspective -- no single person can speak for all the men and women who have served in the military -- but if you are looking for a military perspective, my first choice would be Lt. Col. Robert Bateman who writes eloquently and intelligently on the subject for Esquire. Here are Bateman's recent thoughts on Memorial Day.

When the guns fell silent in the Spring of 1865, they all went home. They scattered across the country, back across the devastated south and the invigorated north. Then they made love to their wives, played with their children, found new jobs or stepped back into their old ones, and in general they tried to get on with their lives. These men were no longer soldiers; they were now veterans of the Civil War, never to wear the uniform again. But before long they started noticing that things were not as they had been before.

Now, they had memories of things that they could not erase. There were the friends who were no longer there, or who were hobbling through town on one or two pegs, or who had a sleeve pinned up on their chest. There were the nights that they could not shake the feeling that something really bad was about to happen. And, aside from those who had seen what they had seen and lived that life, they came to realize that they did not have a lot of people to talk to about these things. Those who had been at home, men and women, just did not "get it." A basic tale about life in camp would need a lot of explanation, so it was frustrating even to talk. Terminology like "what is a picket line" and "what do you mean oblique order?" and a million other elements, got in the way. These were the details of a life they had lived for years but which was now suddenly so complex that they never could get the story across to those who had not been there. Many felt they just could not explain about what had happened, to them, to their friends, to the nation.

So they started to congregate. First in little groups, then in statewide assemblies, and finally in national organizations that themselves took on a life of their own.

The Mid-1860s are a key period in American history not just because of the War of Rebellion, but also because this period saw the rise of "social organizations." Fraternities, for example, exploded in the post-war period. My own, Pi Kappa Alpha, was formed partially by veterans of the Confederacy, Lee's men (yes, I know, irony alert). Many other non-academic "fraternal" organizations got their start around the same time. By the late 1860s in the north and south there was a desire to commemorate. Not to celebrate, gloat or pine, but to remember.

Individually, at different times and in different ways, these nascent veterans groups started to create days to stop and reflect. These days were not set aside to mull on a cause -- though that did happen -- but their primary purpose was to think on the sacrifices and remember those lost. Over time, as different states incorporated these ideas into statewide holidays, a sort of critical legislative mass was achieved. "Decoration Day" was born, and for a long time that was enough. The date selected was, quite deliberately, a day upon which absolutely nothing of major significance had occurred during the entire war. Nobody in the north or south could try to change it to make it a victory day. It was a day for remembering the dead through decorating their graves, and the memorials started sprouting up in every small town in the nation. You still see them today, north and south, in small towns and villages like my own home of Chagrin Falls -- granite placed there so that the nation, and their homes, should not forget the sacrifices of the men who went away on behalf of the country and never came back.

We can no longer say "the most disastrous vehicle launch since the DeLorean." We might not be able to say "since the Edsel."

You can make the case that no auto has ever achieved punchline status faster than the Cybertruck. Certainly none have ever achieved it more deservedly.
 

Back in Black | The Daily Show

Deferred Tuesday Tweets -- “Would it be too much to pray for a day when the Bible gets a ‘Book of Trump,’ much like it has a ‘Book of Esther’"

Some stories are just made for Pitchbot...

NEW YORK (AP) — A video posted to Donald Trump’s account on his social media network Monday included references to a “unified Reich” among hypothetical news headlines if he wins the election in November.

⁦@AP⁩ https://t.co/JSzINcRWiI

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) May 21, 2024

My model shows a 40% chance that Trump will establish a unified reich. And I tell you the best places to get hefeweizen in Munich. All that and more in the next Silver Bulletin.

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) May 21, 2024

Even if Trump does establish a unified Reich, it’s unlikely that it will last 1000 years, so it’s hard to see what liberals are so worried about.

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) May 21, 2024

Opinion | I would rather live in a unified reich than in a divided democracy

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) May 21, 2024

Poll: 27% of voters believe Biden is the one who would establish a unified reich

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) May 21, 2024

Weird convergence of Fox and Nate Silver/Alex Shepard/Ezra Klein

More inanity on Fox: Larry Kudlow and his guest speculate that Joe Biden’s public challenge of a debate with Donald Trump is really part of that secret Democratic contingency plan to replace Biden as the nominee. pic.twitter.com/QDBf5QmGWP

— Eric Kleefeld (@EricKleefeld) May 15, 2024

This is never going to stop, they will keep doing this until the end. This is what 2024 is- people you once thought were smart convincing themselves and no doubt many others that a Sorkinian Switcheroo is always just around the corner. They'll be doing it in October and November https://t.co/beh2hfKrgk

— Aaron Fritschner (@Fritschner) May 15, 2024

More on this from Scott Lemieux  here and here.
 

Elsewhere in polling news

Tragic that 538 took Rasmussen out of their polling averages after Nate left https://t.co/9xyePRDCnx

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) May 18, 2024

On to politics.

Sample: "In 2019, Adelson wrote, “Would it be too much to pray for a day when the Bible gets a ‘Book of Trump,’ much like it has a ‘Book of Esther’ celebrating the deliverance of the Jews from ancient Persia?”"

— Lindsay Brown (@Lidsville) May 21, 2024

We keep hearing about Trump and MAGA appealing to more black voters while we keep seeing and hearing things like this. pic.twitter.com/oBIes2LdqZ

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 12, 2024

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Republican voters are saying they’re going to skip our names on the ballot. They’re not going to vote for us pic.twitter.com/Y1x8B31F7r

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) May 12, 2024

The GOP continues to have a vetting problem.

This is who the Minnesota Republican Party just nominated to run against Amy Klobuchar. There are far worse tweets still live on his page that I'm not posting because I don't want to overly disturb people. pic.twitter.com/VjrckOYHoB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 20, 2024

Good morning.

I don’t know if my “go-to” discriminator for not voting Democrat is an old fat man grunting out a public deuce on stage.

It means Royce is comfortable with mental illness, or has some extreme sexual fetishes.

I go with both. https://t.co/pwRguCOvmq

— Denver Riggleman (@RepRiggleman) May 20, 2024

That’s one hell of a community note. pic.twitter.com/2E2zZo8Ad8

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) May 21, 2024

Dems in relative array

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Republican voters are saying they’re going to skip our names on the ballot. They’re not going to vote for us pic.twitter.com/Y1x8B31F7r

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) May 12, 2024

Kari Lake advisor: Democrats are raising so much more money from grassroots donors. No one is buying this crap from Republicans, we have no message pic.twitter.com/mYWHnz7dnu

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) May 20, 2024

👀 At tonight’s House Oversight hearing, Marjorie Taylor Greene made a derogatory comment about Jasmine Crockett and “false eyelashes.” Then the committee erupted. AOC trashed MTG, demanded an apology (MTG refused); then demands for clarifications on whether personal attacks are… pic.twitter.com/o90T36DkBV

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 17, 2024

BOEBERT VOTED NO https://t.co/SvKu11ToKK

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) May 17, 2024

Just another normal Arizona Republican precinct committee meeting. pic.twitter.com/QpihXjMlAS

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 21, 2024

As we mentioned before, a substantial part of the GOP is convinced that the Black Lives Matter protests left many if not most American cities in smoldering ruins.

A substantial number of Republicans also believe this.

I made sure that he knew.

The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.

Does everyone get it yet???!!!!

What are Republicans going to do about it?

I tried to oust our Speaker who funded Biden’s DOJ AND FBI, but Democrats stopped it. https://t.co/XSTevEQsNI pic.twitter.com/o0lUjcEdix

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) May 21, 2024

Yep, every FBI operations order contains a reminder of FBI deadly force policy. Even for a search warrant. Deadly force is always authorized if the required threat presents itself. https://t.co/OolEwoDmoQ

— Frank Figliuzzi (@FrankFigliuzzi1) May 21, 2024

This is wildly irresponsible, even for professional troll like Marjorie Taylor Greene. FBI knew Trump wasn’t there. It was all coordinated with Secret Service in advance. This is deeply dangerous bullshit. https://t.co/tcc7lnLmqQ

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) May 21, 2024

You really need to watch this video. The descriptions don't do it justice.

Trump posts another weird cult video, which includes, “The rest of us just want to touch that greatness. We need you in these shoes, not so you have meaning in your life, but so that we have meaning in ours..”https://t.co/jUYYdV9cJy

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 21, 2024

Right-wing interviewer says he is so excited that Trump promised to testify: “It’s the right thing to do. The man wants to get up there, look those jurors in the eyes, and fight. That’s what he does. He’s gonna get up there, say what he has to say, and fight to his last breath.” pic.twitter.com/zKZeveuKd1

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 20, 2024

Trump and vaccines -- something to please everybody.

Trump: I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate pic.twitter.com/8XNfHS27zG

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 11, 2024

This is pretty much RFK Jr’s platform for pulling right-wing voters from Trump. Kirk made RFK Jr’s best pitch for him. pic.twitter.com/3BaMq93StB

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 20, 2024

Another one for our brilliant billionaires file (# lords of Ithuvania)

This lawsuit is like Dan Snyder's sponsored content for his new "I'm a complete idiot" advertising campaign. Like imagine for investment convo. Dan, we've got this Hollywood movie abt Trump. We've lined up Jeremy Strong to play Roy Cohn. Totally spotlights how awesome Donald is.… https://t.co/796tF7G7za

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 20, 2024

First and last in our Red Lobster series.

selling the land to the PE investor and then leasing it back to chain at above market rates doesn't sound like mismanagement. Sounds like running the co into the ground intentionally. https://t.co/3R9sNnTf08

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 20, 2024

This is a pretty good explainer video about how private equity works. https://t.co/wtePaI7Z99 via @YouTube

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) May 20, 2024

"Keep watching the skies!"

This isn’t really news as much as the shared Nexstar UFO media universe. George Knapp, who works for Nexstar, pushes material to Congress and podcasts that gets a write up in Nexstar’s The Hill and then legitimized on Nexstar’s NewsNation. Corporate claim laundering. https://t.co/BhwI8R3YnI

— Jason Colavito (@JasonColavito) May 12, 2024

Explain: the junk science on skinwalker ranch to chase down goblins and UFOs wanted to be renewed and escalated to focus on reverse engineering materials although there was no evidence that it actually existed? Is he talking about Kona Blue? Context: @blackvaultcom @ddeanjohnson… https://t.co/gvVXdXcbpV

— Art Levine (@ArtL7) May 12, 2024

How can you tell when a word is starting to lose all meaning.

"Zionist Turkey" pic.twitter.com/p2fTEJS0MZ

— Kareem Rifai 🌐 (@KareemRifai) May 19, 2024

AI and tech bros

This is less a well formed line of thinking and more the sort of thing you would throw out to students to get them thinking along different lines. A Zen koan for a comp sci class.

Geoff is exactly the kind of guy you want to run into at the department seminar to hear all the crazy stories about things from decades ago they could never get published. He is not the kind of person you want advising governments on policy. https://t.co/SFTkt8xd2U

— David Pfau (@pfau) May 19, 2024

Exactly how stupid was what OpenAI did to Scarlett Johansson? https://t.co/K292Q0KNlS

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) May 21, 2024

This aged well. https://t.co/5y1oObdYII

— Charles Gaba ✡️ (@charles_gaba) May 21, 2024

"Open" AI is now a company that:

-keeps all of its training data and key operations secret
-forced employees to sign powerful NDAs or forfeit equity
-won't say whether it trained its video generator on YouTube
-lies to movie stars then lies about the lies

"Open." What a farce. https://t.co/c3pMumbF1b

— Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) May 20, 2024

Time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll. https://t.co/OLFBYHInhA

— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) May 20, 2024

Andrew Huberman is scientifically illiterate

pic.twitter.com/Dvm3ddzpxP

— Andrew Côté (@Andercot) May 9, 2024

Balaji Srinivasan just posted a 1000+ word tweet to explain why Huberman displaying statistical incompetence and issuing a self congratulatory correction (after it went viral) proves he’s actually a better source of information than out of touch elites & moribund institutions. pic.twitter.com/eg44LBl8iu

— Chris Kavanagh (@C_Kavanagh) May 11, 2024

One does not need AI to make such visualizations

Lots of humans have done exactly this over the years.

Stop giving AI more credit than it deserves https://t.co/ROJ5raazp8

— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) May 21, 2024

Kinda flows naturally from the first sentence.

You meet a woman in a coffee shop and bond over health issues and cannabis.
You invite her home with friends to get mellow on potent THC and show her your desert mountain.
She's acting bizarrely on the drug. An ambulance arrives for a welfare check. It kills the mood...🧵 pic.twitter.com/hZ8H799jr0

— Charlie Wiser (@likeitmatters3) May 18, 2024

The history of mathematics is filled with people who obviously had too much time on their hands.

Amicable numbers are two numbers for which the sum of the proper divisors of each is equal to the other

Ancient Greeks knew of only a single pair: 220, 284

Although 1.2B amicable numbers since been found, the question of whether there are infinitely many remains an open problem pic.twitter.com/fF98ENXuMY

— Fermat's Library (@fermatslibrary) May 20, 2024

The narration is annoying but the excited back paws/front paws rocking is really cute. https://t.co/QbwFVigSR6 via @YouTube

— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) May 19, 2024

Ten years ago at the blog -- when ed reform met Peanuts

Friday, May 23, 2014

Good grief! -- Sally Brown on New Math

 I have been working on a long piece on the parallels between the New Math of the Sixties and the Common Core math of today. As part of my research, I came across an amusing quote from a Peanuts strip of the time.

From Wikipedia:

In 1965, cartoonist Charles Schulz authored a series of Peanuts strips which detailed kindergartener Sally's frustrations with New Math. In the first strip, she is depicted puzzling over "sets, one to one matching, equivalent sets, non-equivalent sets, sets of one, sets of two, renaming two, subsets, joining sets, number sentences, placeholders." Eventually she bursts into tears and exclaims, "All I want to know is, how much is two and two?"

What surprised me was how well Schulz captured the terminology. The part about one to one matching was particularly apt.

[Found it]

 

The cost of being wrong – – political polling edition

Note: in this context, when I talk about the accuracy of the polls, I mean the correlation between the election results and where the polling averages were at the time the polls were being discussed. If I write a post today and ask if the presidential polls are accurate, I mean is what we're seeing in May a good indicator of what the results will be in November.

This is what pretty much everybody means when they talk about the accuracy of the polls except for pollsters and political scientists who generally mean the correlation between the election results and what the polls will be in the final three or so weeks of the campaign. These are very different concepts often producing very different numbers and those of us who work with or talk about numbers for a living should really clean up her act on this one.

Let's start with the recent primary in Maryland.

 

There were some very strange things about the polling around this election and probably the election itself, but the one aspect are interested in here is how it affected the decision to do this...

Trone spent over $60 million on his failed Senate bid. Will he dig deep to help his rival beat Hogan? https://t.co/q35QrvE3X3

— The Baltimore Banner (@BaltimoreBanner) May 17, 2024

I have to admit I have not read the article (my queue is full and you'll notice there's no revenue coming in from this blog) so if I'm wrong about this, please let me know in the comments, but I doubt that Trone would have spent what is for most of us a substantial fortune had the polls consistently shown him behind by 10 to 15 points instead of ahead by that margin.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, the impact wasn't that big a deal one way or the other. Billionaires often spend their money on even more wasteful things. At least this stimulated the state media economy. For a case of inaccurate polling causing truly disastrous results we would need to go back about eight years.

This article by Amy Chozick is essential reading whether you're interested in the history of the 2016 election or in the workings of the New York Times. In the case of the latter, this is the most honest and unflinching writing I've seen about the paper from anyone still in its employ since they lost Margaret Sullivan.

[Emphasis added]

It’s dizzying to realize that without even knowing it, you’ve ended up on the wrong side of history. Months after the election, every time I heard the words “Russia” and “collude,” this realization swirled in my head, enveloping everything.

...

 Editors and reporters huddled to discuss how to handle the emails. Everyone agreed that since the emails were already out there — and of importance to voters — it was The Times’s job to “confirm” and “contextualize” them. I didn’t argue that it appeared the emails were stolen by a hostile foreign government that had staged an attack on our electoral system. I didn’t push to hold off on publishing them until we could have a less harried discussion. I didn’t raise the possibility that we’d become puppets in Vladimir Putin’s master plan. I chose the byline.

...

A few weeks before Election Day, I was stuck in my cubicle poring over John Podesta’s emails. I wanted to be on the road. “I just feel like the election isn’t happening in my cubicle,” I said. “But it’s over,” an editor replied, reminding me that the Times’s Upshot election model gave Mrs. Clinton a 93 percent chance of winning. The ominous “they” who would keep the glass ceiling intact didn’t look that powerful then.

We can go back and forth as to whether the polls were wrong or the NYT model was wrong (I'm inclined to say more the second than the first), but either way, if the editors and reporters at the paper had believed that Hillary Clinton had a 60% chance of winning or worse yet a 50-50 chance, it is unlikely they would have made those same decisions. As the account spells out explicitly, they knew they were at best in that ethically gray area, helping a foreign power influence a national election in exchange for revelations of limited news value. I am a bit of a cynic, especially when it comes to the New York Times, but even I don't believe they would have been so reckless had they known what they were likely to unleash.

Journalism professor and press critic Jay Rosen says reporters should focus on the the stakes of the election, not the odds, but when you focus on the odds and get them wrong, that's the worst of both worlds.