“Show Us Your Model”: Once Again, Republicans Outraged By Facts, Especially When They’re Complex And Sophisticated
It might be easy to believe we’re approaching Peak Trutherism, what with good old-fashioned birthers now being supplemented by BLS truthers and poll truthers. But just you wait—should Barack Obama win this election, we’ll see an explosion of election trutherism that will be truly unprecedented in scope. In the meantime, we can content ourselves with the newest variant, Nate Silver trutherism, which isn’t coming just from conservatives.
In case you don’t know, Silver runs the blog FiveThirtyEight, which after producing a series of highly accurate predictions during the 2008 campaign got swallowed up by The New York Times. Silver makes electoral projections by taking as many different polls as he can find and running them through an algorithm. Rather than just averaging the polls’ results, the algorithm uses a series of variables, including state polls and each pollster’s prior record, to produce a number of different estimates. As of today he gives Obama a 77.4 percent chance of winning, higher than it has been at some points but not too far off from where he has estimated for most of the campaign.
In the last few days, we’ve seen a couple of different Silver narratives emerge as attention to him has increased. First, you have stories about how liberals are obsessing over Silver, “clinging” to him like a raft in a roiling sea of ambiguous poll data. Then you have the backlash, with conservatives criticizing him not because they have a specific critique of the techniques he uses, but basically because they disagree with his conclusions (No way is Obama going to win!) and because he’s a liberal so therefore he must be intentionally warping his data to produce more Obama-friendly results. For instance, Joe Scarborough recently declared that Silver has to be wrong, because while Silver says Obama has an advantage, Scarborough knows the race is a toss-up, which I guess he feels in his gut. The most hilarious criticism came in this column in The Examiner, which noted, “Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice.” So there.
Then you’ve got the reporter backlash. At Politico, Dylan Byers raised the possibility that Silver would be completely discredited if Mitt Romney won, because “it’s difficult to see how people can continue to put faith in the predictions of someone who has never given that candidate anything higher than a 41 percent chance of winning.” But of course, if you say there’s a 41 percent chance of something happening and then it happens, you wouldn’t actually be discredited, because 41 is not zero. And that’s not even mentioning the huge number of pollsters who make absurdly wrong predictions all the time and continue to ply their trade. Furthermore, as Ezra Klein points out, a lot of these criticisms come from writers at Politico, the most strategy-obsessed, who-won-the-day publication there is. Looking at the election’s eventual outcome systematically is almost an affront to their business model.
But Silver is only a threat to reporters if they see explaining who is going to win as their primary job. And if that’s how they see their job, they really ought to apologize to the public and find another career. Because there are few things as useless to the citizenry as a reporter giving his or her opinion on who is going to win.
After all, there are lots of interesting and revealing things going on in campaigns. There’s a debate about where the country is now, where it has been, and where it ought to go. There are interesting characters we can learn about. There are policy issues aplenty. Even the dramatic moments of the campaign can be reported on and examined without asking, “Will this change the race?” I’m not saying you have to banish any of the who’s-up-who’s down stuff completely (I certainly talk about it here), but if you actually feel threatened by someone coming along with a persuasive answer to the question of who’s going to win that wasn’t derived from listening to campaign spinners, then you really ought to re-examine what you’re doing.
Finally, let me address the question of Silver’s liberal fans. Do they love the fact that he gives them reason to feel optimistic? Sure. But that’s only half the reason they love him. If he were not as rigorous as he is but was producing the same results, liberals wouldn’t be as taken with him as they are. There are Democratic polling outfits out there, and while liberal blogs might cite them fairly often, none of them have produced the same devotion Nate has. On the other hand, would liberals be as interested in Silver if his analysis consistently predicted a Romney win? Probably not. In other words, it took both to make Silver a liberal hero. His projections had to make liberals feel optimistic, and he had to be going about things in the kind of nuanced, detailed way he is. Liberals are pleased as punch that the thing they want to be true can be supported by a highly complex and sophisticated analysis. They want to feel good, but they also want to feel smart.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, November 1, 2012
“Mark Halperin, Amateur Meterologist”: Not Even Hurricanes Can Stop Dumb Punditry
Will Hurricane Sandy cause an Electoral College tie and turn Ohio into this year’s Florida 2000? PROBABLY. At least, something along those lines is what political pundits are hoping for today.
The two most important events in the world right now are the presidential campaign and a major East Coast weather event, so obviously “politicos” are trying to figure out how to combine the two things into one convenient and snappy cable television hit.
Mark Halperin, MSNBC political talking guy, Time political writing guy, blogger and amateur meteorologist, has multiple competing opinions about what this storm that actually threatens to destroy much of the East Coast and kill and displace thousands of people means for the president’s reelection bid.
On “The Morning Joe Show” this morning, Halperin said White House adviser David Plouffe was clever to convince the president to cancel his campaign event in Florida today and go to Washington to be the president of hurricane response.
I think the most important person in this election right now is not the candidates, for today at least, it’s David Plouffe, senior White House adviser, ran the President’s campaign last time. Brilliant at understanding the intersection between the campaign and the government. Lots of control over both, and, obviously, was central to the decision to say the President shouldn’t do this event in Florida today, should come back to Washington. And I think you will see David Plouffe doing a couple things. One, the symbolism of the office, making sure they don’t mess up.
Great, great insight. It took a canny political mind to decide to … go manage the storm response, and the No. 1 goal for Obama right now is “manage the storm response well and not horribly.” Incisive stuff.
Then, like an hour later, Mark Halperin decided, on Twitter, that canceling campaign events to do disaster response was a bad idea, probably.
@MarkHalperin : W/Obama nixing events, gotta ask: what happened to constant White House claim POTUS can do job equally well from anywhere? #bothparties
Just gotta ask!
Will President Obama lose the election if he spends too much of this week running FEMA and not being in Florida and Ohio over and over again? Shouldn’t he take off his coat and roll up his sleeves and direct storm response from … Northern Virginia, maybe? Just one thing is “clear now,” to Mark Halperin: that people who may or may not lose elections next week will think the hurricane is responsible. Fascinating, if true.
(Actual smart people basically agree: There is no way of knowing how this storm will actually affect the election, if it does, which it might or might not.)
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, October 29, 2012
“Follow-Up Questions”: Unlike The Fawning Coverage He’s Received In The Past, Paul Ryan Shows His Thin Skin
Paul Ryan, we are discovering, does not always handle follow-up questions that well.
The latest evidence came yesterday afternoon, when an interview with a local television reporter in Michigan turned testy and was ended by Ryan’s aide.
The dispute was ostensibly over gun control. Asked by reporter Terry Camp of WJRT in Flint if America has a gun problem, Ryan responded that the country has a crime problem. “Not a gun problem?” Camp asked. “No,” Ryan replied, arguing that existing laws should be enforced and that “the best thing to help prevent violent crime in the inner cities is to bring opportunity to the inner cities” – for “charities, and civic groups and churches” to teach people “good discipline, good character.”
“And you can do all that by cutting taxes – with a big tax cut,” Camp replied.
“Those are your words, not mine,” Ryan said, at which point his aide stepped in to end the interview.
“That was kind of strange – trying to stuff words in people’s mouths,” Ryan told Camp as he took his microphone off.
As Erik Wemple points out, it’s unclear what Camp’s intent here was. Ryan interpreted his words about tax cuts as a rude expression of skepticism and editorializing, but Camp and the station insist he wasn’t trying to make any kind of political statement and was merely asking another question. It’s certainly possible that Camp was just trying to prompt Ryan to expand his thoughts, and that he used some clumsy short-hand to do it.
The way Ryan chose to handle this seems noteworthy, though. Several times in the past few months, he’s been pressed by reporters and has had trouble deflecting lines of questioning that make him uncomfortable.
When he first joined the GOP ticket, for instance, Ryan sat for what everyone assumed would be a friendly interview with Fox News’ Brit Hume, who asked him about the long amount of time – not until 2040 – that it would take his fiscal blueprint to produce a balanced budget. Ryan replied that he wasn’t running on his budget plan – he was running on Romney’s. OK, Hume replied, well how long will it take Romney’s plan to bring about a balanced budget.
“I don’t know exactly when it balances,” Ryan conceded, “because we have – I don’t want to get wonky on you, but we have to run the numbers on that specific plan.”
More recently, there was Ryan’s sit-down with Fox’s Chris Wallace, who quizzed him about the Romney tax plan’s lack of specificity. Romney proposes a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut and insists he’ll make it deficit neutral by closing loopholes and deductions, but he hasn’t specified which ones. Wallace challenged Ryan to explain how the math would work.
“Well, I don’t have the time,” Ryan replied. “It would take me too long to go through all the math.”
That answer won Ryan no shortage of ridicule. It points to the steep learning curve he’s faced since being tapped as Romney’s No. 2. As a congressman, Ryan has been unusually visible, but the press coverage he’s received has tended to be rather fawning – reporters, columnists and television hosts giving him a chance to outline his plan and the hailing him as the rare adult in DC who’s willing to produce serious ideas.
It’s easy to get accustomed to that kind of treatment. But since August (and particularly since his vice presidential acceptance speech), the media has treated him with more skepticism, demanding that he and Romney fill in the blanks on their plans. Ryan doesn’t always seem used to aggressive scrutiny and follow-up questioning in interviews, and it’s shown on several occasions now. The interview with Camp isn’t a huge deal, but Ryan probably could have handled it in a way that didn’t create a big story. It’s a reminder that he’s still learning. And it makes this week’s VP debate that much more interesting, since Ryan figures to come in for some aggressive questioning from his opponent, Joe Biden.
By: Steve Kornacki, Salon, October 9, 2012
“Liberals Need To Get A Grip”: While Others Push Opinions To Extremes, Feel Free To Stop Rending Your Garments
As a liberal who writes about politics for a living, I’ve spent the last few days talking to increasingly panicked Democrats, who have begun to overreact to the fact that President Obama had a poor debate performance, which then produced a movement in some polls toward Mitt Romney. I think David Weigel put it well yesterday: “The first presidential debate has come to remind me of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Democrats walked out of the theater/turned off the TV saying ‘huh, well, I wanted it to be better.’ After a few days of talking to friends, it changes from a disappointment into the worst piece of crap in human history.” Andrew Sullivan kind of went nuclear after seeing the Pew poll I discussed yesterday, writing a post titled, “Did Obama Just Throw the Entire Election Away?” I can answer that: No.
For many years, psychologists and sociologists have known that in small groups, a uniformity of opinion can push opinion to the extremes. For instance, if you get a group of liberals together and tell them to talk about military spending, by the time the discussion is over, each individual will end up favoring spending cuts even deeper than they favored before the discussion began. There’s an analogous movement in the opinions liberals have undergone since last Wednesday, but here conservatives and the mainstream media play a role as well. There’s no question that reporters, eager for a new storyline and an invigorated race, have seized on the idea that the debate changed everything. And as Kevin Drum explains, conservatives benefit from their large stable of hacks:
Here’s how things would have gone if liberals had their fair share of hacks. Obviously Obama wasn’t at his best on Wednesday. But when the debate was over that wouldn’t have mattered. Conservatives would have started crowing about how well Romney did. Liberals would have acknowledged that Obama should have confronted Romney’s deceptions more forcefully, but otherwise would have insisted that Obama was more collected and presidential sounding than the hyperactive Romney and clearly mopped the floor with him on a substantive basis. News reporters would then have simply reported the debate normally: Romney said X, Obama said Y, and both sides thought their guy did great. By the next day it would barely be a continuing topic of conversation, and by Friday the new jobs numbers would have buried it completely.
Instead, liberals went batshit crazy. I didn’t watch any commentary immediately after the debate because I wanted to write down my own reactions first, and my initial sense was that Obama did a little bit worse than Romney. But after I hit the Publish button and turned on the TV, I learned differently. As near as I could tell, the entire MSNBC crew was ready to commit ritual suicide right there on live TV, Howard Beale style. Ditto for all their guests, including grizzled pols like Ed Rendell who should have known better. It wasn’t just that Obama did poorly, he had delivered the worst debate performance since Clarence Darrow left William Jennings Bryan a smoking husk at the end of Inherit the Wind. And it wasn’t even just that. It was a personal affront, a betrayal of everything they thought was great about Obama. And, needless to say, it put Obama’s entire second term in jeopardy and made Romney the instant front runner.
Kevin is absolutely right about this, and it shows not only that there’s a difference between the conservative and liberal media worlds, but between MSNBC and Fox specifically. While MSNBC made a decision a while back that it would go ahead and become the liberal cable network, particularly in prime time, the individuals who appear on those shows have limits to how hackish they’re willing to be. On Fox, there really are no limits. It’s not as if Steve Doocy and the rest of the crew at “Fox and Friends” are going to say, “Wait, we’re supposed to say the jobs numbers are manipulated by a White House conspiracy? I really don’t think that’s supported by the facts.” I guarantee you that even if Obama performs spectacularly in the second debate and Romney stumbles terribly, Sean Hannity will still get on the air immediately afterward and tell everyone watching that Romney was fantastic and Obama was terrible. This will not only help buck up conservatives, it will encourage reporters to discuss the debate in the way Kevin describes.
Some people have said that Obama’s performance was the worst in history, but that’s just ridiculous. George W. Bush was much worse in all his debates in 2004, Bob Dole was terrible in 1996, George H.W. Bush was awful in 1992, and the worst debate performance was without question Ronald Reagan’s in his first debate in 1984, where he was barely coherent and, in retrospect, probably showing some initial signs of Alzheimer’s. You’ll note that two of the people I just mentioned ended up winning. Obama didn’t do particularly well last Wednesday, it’s true. But he’s a very competitive guy, and I’m sure he’s going to show up next week with plenty more focus and vigor. There are a lot of other factors—a recovering economy, the fact that it now looks like he’ll have more money, a superior ground operation—that continue to make him the favorite. So liberals can feel free to stop rending their garments.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, October 9, 2012
“Policy Is Less Important Than Character”: Romney Escapes Punishment For Lying, Continues Lying
We may be talking a lot about Medicare, but on the airwaves, Mitt Romney is just not giving up on the welfare attack. As you should know by now, over the last couple of weeks Romney has been airing ads featuring an unusually brazen lie about the Obama administration, claiming that Obama has eliminated work requirements from welfare. It’s just false, as every fact-checker has attested and anyone who is not actually in Mitt Romney’s employ will tell you. Romney has been repeating this lie on the stump as well. Everybody understands the racial subtext underneath the welfare attack, so we needn’t dwell on that at the moment. But what’s remarkable is that despite the judgment of journalists, Romney just keeps on telling the lie. Here’s the third ad his campaign has produced about it: http://youtu.be/NHPa_LZOM2s
Why does Romney keep saying this? Because he isn’t getting punished for it, that’s why. It isn’t enough that the fact-checker columns say it’s false. What’s required to really chasten a political liar is stories specifically about the fact that he’s lying and asking whether that makes him, deep down in his soul, a liar. But that hasn’t happened yet, and Steve Benen asks why:
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the political world’s strange standards. If a super PAC puts a video online with a dubious timeline, it’s a multi-week scandal, and evidence of a campaign stuck in the gutter. If Vice President Biden uses a poorly-worded, off-the-cuff metaphor, it’s a multi-week scandal, and proof that 2012 has become excessively ugly.
But if Mitt Romney gets caught repeatedly making an unambiguous, racially-charged lie, it’s seen as somehow routine.
Why do gaffes and unaired web ads dominate the political world’s attention, while shameless lying leads to shrugged shoulders?
Why gaffes get so much attention is its own story, but the reason a lie like this one doesn’t generate more condemnation is simple: It’s about policy. That has no legitimate justification, but the fact is that reporters believe that if Candidate A says something false about Candidate B’s personal life, it’s a terrible lie and he should be called out about it, but if Candidate A says something false about Candidate B’s policy positions and policy record, hey, that’s just rough-and-tumble politics. Two years ago I wrote about the utterly nonsensical unspoken rules reporters follow when deciding how bad a lie told by a candidate is:
The first rule is that lying about yourself is worse than lying about your opponent. Candidates routinely fib about their opponents’ records and histories with little notice. Perhaps it’s because reporters presume that in the rough-and-tumble of a campaign, a certain degree of hyperbole is to be expected and therefore can’t be judged too harshly. If you claim, though, to have done something you haven’t, reporters will usually be all over you. Look at what happened to [Christine] O’Donnell’s fellow Senate candidates Mark Kirk in Illinois, who was caught inflating his military record in multiple ways, and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who said at various times that he had served “in” Vietnam when really he had served “during” Vietnam. This is the kind of lie reporters find outrageous — when candidates make themselves look more heroic or accomplished than they actually are. A lie about your opponent may draw attention, but the discussion will be about whether the attack was out of line; in other words, what you did. A lie about yourself, on the other hand, will spur a discussion about who you are.
Which leads to the second rule: Lying about personal matters is worse than lying about policy. That may be because reporters think policy is less important than “character,” but whatever the cause, candidates can, with few exceptions, get away with murder when it comes to policy. O’Donnell herself has benefited from this double standard; lots of people heard about her comments about witchcraft, but nearly no one knows that she revived the claim that the Affordable Care Act will create “death panels” — perhaps the most despicable lie to have coursed through our political bloodstream in recent years.
So that’s my explanation: because Mitt Romney is “only” lying about policy, reporters find it no big deal. Trouble is, lying about policy during the campaign is a pretty good indication that you’ll lie about policy when you’re president. At this point, is there anyone who thinks that Mitt Romney is a fundamentally honest guy who won’t ever deceive the public if he thought it would serve his political ends?
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 20, 2012
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