MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2016
Press corps assails "fake news:" The press corps has suddenly declared jihad against the scourge of "fake news."
We're sorry, but what a joke! The Easter bunny invented colored eggs. In a similar way, the mainstream press corps invented the culture of fake news.
Fake news didn't get its start in the past few months. We've been deeply sunk in the culture of fake news for a very long time now.
We started this site in 1998 because of all the fake news. The mainstream press was already a leading purveyor/enabler of same.
When Jerry Falwell peddled the tale of the Clinton murders, that of course was fake news. The press corps averted its gaze. It was safer to see no evil.
Remember when Rush pimped the death of Vince Foster? That was fake news too.
In the two months since Labor Day, Paul Krugman has correctly alluded, three separate times, to the way the mainstream press invented a series of lies by Candidate Gore in 1999 and 2000. That twenty-month jihad was an extended example of guild-endorsed, all-hands-on-deck fake news. Incredibly, Krugman is actually plowing new ground by mentioning this conduct now! Everyone else has observed the press corps' code of silence.
On the front page of this morning's Style, the Washington Post's Margaret Sullivan pens the three millionth recent column about fake news. Right next to her column, the page is dominated by a giant, highly worthwhile profile of Alex Jones, a fake news superstar.
Why are they profiling Alex Jones now? And why is the profile in Style, rather than on the Post's front page, identified for what it is—a highly important news topic involving the strangulation of our culture?
It has taken us many years to attain our current advanced state of fake news. Let's create a chronology:
First they let Imus on the air, then they let Howard Stern in. After that, they let Limbaugh go national. Now we have Alex Jones.
(Also, Mika and Joe!)
During these decades of downward spiral, the press corps played footsie with these deliberate idiots. The corps invented fake news of its own. It also averted its gaze from the fake news others were crafting.
In 2011, Donald J. Trump got very busy with the fake news called "birtherism." Our big newspapers refused to pursue his loathsome conduct. This deference continued right on through the recent White House campaign. Last July, the New York Times took an obvious dive on this matter right on a Sunday front page.
Four years after he wed himself to that blindingly stupid fake news, this disordered man announced that he was running for president. Four years after his birther scam, Darling Rachel mugged and clowned and specifically said that she nothing bad to say about him.
(Weeks passed before she thought it was safe to criticize his comments about all the rapists Mexico was sending us. In our view, she's one of our biggest corporate con men we have, though she really can sell the car!)
The press corps is suddenly deeply concerned, but they've invented and enabled fake news every step of the way. Here's what their sudden vigilance has called to mind around here:
During the Clinton/Gore years, fake news often took the form of fake scandals. The press corps invented some of these fake scandals. In other cases, they adopted the fake scandals of others, or they averted their gaze from the purveyors of same.
One fake scandal involved fund-raising calls from the White House. Vice President Gore had made some such calls; so had President Clinton. No one said that Gore couldn't have made any fund-raising calls. They said he should have limo'ed three blocks to DNC headquarters and made the same phone calls there!
Also this: Clinton's phone calls came from rooms in the White House which were officially designated as part of the residence. Gore's phone calls came from rooms in the White House which were designated as offices. On the basis of that non-distinction distinction, the howls went up. Gore had committed a crime, partisan purveyors of fake scandal said.
(Amazingly, Clinton hadn't! By now, it was Gore they were hunting. Just as Comey hunted Clinton, Louis Freeh hunted Gore. In each case, your liberal heroes averted their gaze, said nothing.)
In part, here's how that fund-raising hooey looked to us at the time:
People who have no morality at all will sometimes invent arcane moral codes to which they can fetishistically adhere. This allows them to pretend—to voters, let's say—that they are trying very hard to observe important ethical rules.
"I go to the DNC/RNC to make my phone calls every time," they will declare.
We think of that when we see the press corps assailing a narrow type of fake news. They've been building the culture for twenty-five years. Pointing to narrow examples of same, they're deeply upset by it now.
Cast links arms, hands gift to Trump!
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2016
Everyone knows this but Us: At one time, the assignment would have fallen to one of the nation's politically tone-deaf comedians.
During Campaign 2000, it was Larry David, joking at a Gore fund-raiser about Candidate Bush's "personal relationship with Jesus."
Candidate Cheney brought it up in the vice presidential debate. Trust us—he knew what he was doing.
Four years later, it was Whoopi Goldberg. Deborah Orin tattled in the New York Post. But then, so did everyone else:
Back then, it was a tradition. During every presidential election, some tone-deaf comedian would insist on handing the GOP a political gift—an unsolicited, obvious gift which would be good for at least a week. The Democratic candidates would have to interrupt their scheduled remarks for a week to clean up what had been done.
It's one of the three million ways our self-impressed tribe works to bungle elections. Over the weekend, the cast of Hamilton stepped in to revive this hoary tradition, for which the RNC would be willing to pay a substantial service fee.
Truthfully, no. It isn't polite for a performer or an entire cast to lecture an audience member at the end of a show. Everyone will understand this fact except our tone-deaf tribe. Donald J. Trump surely jumped for joy when he was given the chance to respond to this bit of conduct.
Needless to say, the cast of Hamilton could have written an op-ed column stating their important views about the topics in question. Let's just say that, despite their fervor, they hadn't yet bothered to do that.
Let's also say that, if they had, no one would have read their column. They're in the show because they're performers, not because they're analysts.
Up in The Tower, the Trump gang surely jumped for joy over this unsolicited gift. To see how poorly our tribe understands such transactions, here's what the Washington Post's Peter Marks says at the start of this morning's essay on page one of Style:
Marks tries, and fails, to understand the reason for Trump's angry tweeting. Trump wasn't tweeting for the reasons Marks imagines. Trump was tweeting because he knew that he had been handed an obvious gift—a Christmas present which gave Pence the chance to say this:
Can we talk? Our tribe just managed to lose an election to the craziest person who has ever sought the White House. Even after that performance, our team is still unable to see the ways we engineer defeat.
Actually, our myopia is worse than that. Our team is unable to imagine the possibility that our defeats are somehow connected to our own misbehavior or misjudgments. In that sense, we're very much like Trump himself. It has to be the other guy. The problem can't be coming from us.
If the cast is concerned about Trump and Pence, are they wrong in their judgment? Of course they aren't! We're in completely uncharted waters. There's no way to know what's going to come. The self-impressed statement by Hamilton's lead actor understates the vast potential of the problem we face.
That said, the sheer pomposity of the cast's statement will be apparent to all. They linked arms and handed a gift to Trump. Everyone knows that but Us.
Everyone knows this but Us: At one time, the assignment would have fallen to one of the nation's politically tone-deaf comedians.
During Campaign 2000, it was Larry David, joking at a Gore fund-raiser about Candidate Bush's "personal relationship with Jesus."
Candidate Cheney brought it up in the vice presidential debate. Trust us—he knew what he was doing.
Four years later, it was Whoopi Goldberg. Deborah Orin tattled in the New York Post. But then, so did everyone else:
ORIN (7/9/04): Whoopi Goldberg delivered an X-rated rant full of sexual innuendoes against President Bush last night at a Radio City gala that raised $7.5 million for the newly minted Democratic ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards. Waving a bottle of wine, she fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush’s name in a riff about female genitalia, and boasted that she’d refused to let Team Kerry clear her material.Bush's last name was very dirty! Whoopi let everyone know!
[...]
Kerry could be seen laughing uproariously during part of Goldberg’s tirade—and neither he nor Edwards voiced a single objection to its tone when they spoke to the crowd.
They hailed the fund-raiser as a great event.
Edwards said it was “a great honor” to be there and insisted, “This campaign will be a celebration of real American values.”
Back then, it was a tradition. During every presidential election, some tone-deaf comedian would insist on handing the GOP a political gift—an unsolicited, obvious gift which would be good for at least a week. The Democratic candidates would have to interrupt their scheduled remarks for a week to clean up what had been done.
It's one of the three million ways our self-impressed tribe works to bungle elections. Over the weekend, the cast of Hamilton stepped in to revive this hoary tradition, for which the RNC would be willing to pay a substantial service fee.
Truthfully, no. It isn't polite for a performer or an entire cast to lecture an audience member at the end of a show. Everyone will understand this fact except our tone-deaf tribe. Donald J. Trump surely jumped for joy when he was given the chance to respond to this bit of conduct.
Needless to say, the cast of Hamilton could have written an op-ed column stating their important views about the topics in question. Let's just say that, despite their fervor, they hadn't yet bothered to do that.
Let's also say that, if they had, no one would have read their column. They're in the show because they're performers, not because they're analysts.
Up in The Tower, the Trump gang surely jumped for joy over this unsolicited gift. To see how poorly our tribe understands such transactions, here's what the Washington Post's Peter Marks says at the start of this morning's essay on page one of Style:
MARKS (11/21/16): It is a thoroughly surreal moment. But what a teachable one.Hamilton is "beloved" in the minds of a very small number of people like Marks. One thinks of the New York Times movie critic who had never met anyone who voted for Nixon, who had won like 300 states.
For the first time in our collective lives, a person who is going to run this country has gone to war with a Broadway production. Think about this. For whatever reason—an attempt to deflect attention from other looming scandals, an eternally itchy Twitter finger, a desire to defend a comrade—a president-elect of the most powerful country on Earth is using his pulpit to run down a Pulitzer and Tony-winning musical that is, it’s safe to say, far more beloved than he is.
Marks tries, and fails, to understand the reason for Trump's angry tweeting. Trump wasn't tweeting for the reasons Marks imagines. Trump was tweeting because he knew that he had been handed an obvious gift—a Christmas present which gave Pence the chance to say this:
MARKS: On “Fox News Sunday,” Pence sought to quell the controversy. “Well, first off, my daughter and I and her cousins really enjoyed the show,” he said. “‘Hamilton’ is just an incredible production, incredibly talented people. And it was a real joy to be there. You know, when we arrived, we heard—we heard a few boos, we heard some cheers. And I nudged my kids and reminded them that’s what freedom sounds like. And—but at the end, you know, I did hear what was said from the stage, and I can tell you, I wasn’t offended by what was said. I’ll leave to others whether that was the appropriate venue to say it.”This obvious gift gave Trump and Pence the chance to play good cop/bad cop. Their play is an obvious win.
Can we talk? Our tribe just managed to lose an election to the craziest person who has ever sought the White House. Even after that performance, our team is still unable to see the ways we engineer defeat.
Actually, our myopia is worse than that. Our team is unable to imagine the possibility that our defeats are somehow connected to our own misbehavior or misjudgments. In that sense, we're very much like Trump himself. It has to be the other guy. The problem can't be coming from us.
If the cast is concerned about Trump and Pence, are they wrong in their judgment? Of course they aren't! We're in completely uncharted waters. There's no way to know what's going to come. The self-impressed statement by Hamilton's lead actor understates the vast potential of the problem we face.
That said, the sheer pomposity of the cast's statement will be apparent to all. They linked arms and handed a gift to Trump. Everyone knows that but Us.
THOSE NARROW MARGINS: Trump's victory margin continues to grow!
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2016
Part 2—Millions of "wasted votes:" Donald J. Trump's victory margin has only continued to grow.
As of Saturday morning, with votes still being counted, Trump was ahead in the popular vote by minus 1.26 million. At least, that's what it said at the Washington Post; see Part 1 in this award-winning series.
The Post has maintained a running account of "Live Results" from the November 8 election. Yesterday morning, on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd updated those results from the day before:
(Without stating a source or providing a link, Josh Marshall reported last night that Trump's mandate now stands at a negative "1.677 million votes or a 1.3 percentage point margin." As far as we know, both those numbers are still expected to grow.)
That's right! Trump is now ahead in the popular vote by more than minus 1.6 million votes! Unless you go back to the Washington Post, which hasn't bothered updating its numbers since last Saturday morning, when its count was already running behind the actual state of the tally.
At some point, we'll probably know how the popular vote turned out. Already, though, we're calling that overall situation problematic.
For the second time in the past five elections, the Democratic nominee is going to win the popular vote without winning the White House. That strikes us as a highly significant state of affairs.
But as the slacker Post helps show, this problematic state of affairs is being almost wholly ignored by the "mainstream press." Many people don't know that Candidate Clinton won the popular vote. On TV, they hear about the other candidate's "mandate."
(Our "mainstream press corps" is suddenly shrieking about the rise of "fake news." It's a bit like Santa Claus suddenly coming out against free toys. But as the children shriek and wail, they ignore the problematics involved in this year's popular vote.)
Let's repeat what we've said. In two of the last five elections, the Democratic nominee has won the most popular votes, but has failed to reach the White House.
Only a deeply clueless group would let this phenomenon pass without a full examination and plenty of public comment. Needless to say, we liberals are that group.
Having stated this obvious point, let's try to get clear on the reason for this latest revoltin' development. Let's talk about the "sorting" of America. Also, let's talk about "wasted votes."
Why didn't Candidate Clinton end up winning the White House? She's going to wed up winning the popular vote by a fairly significant amount. So why is Trump on his way to the White House, claiming a "mandate" as he does? Whatever happened to Candidate Clinton? What happened to all those votes?
The answer takes us to the concept of "wasted votes." As most journalists knew by this year, our presidential election is really, on the whole, a set of statewide elections. This leads to an eventual vote in the so-called electoral college, an unlicensed branch of Trump University.
Uh-oh! If you win a state by just one vote, you get all its electoral votes! In terms of who gets to go to the White House, any additional votes in a state can be seen as "wasted."
Under the rules of the electoral college, winning a state by a large amount doesn't help you win the White House. This isn't like the AP college football poll, where victory margin is part of the mix. You either win a state or you don't. Winning big doesn't help.
That said, who received the most "wasted votes" this year? Candidate Clinton did! Below, you see the five biggest statewide victory margins from this year's presidential race. The largest clumps of wasted votes were found in a set of blue states:
When you look at those vote totals, you're looking at several things. You're looking at an accurate record of the way Americans voted in five states. You're also looking at the results of a type of "sorting"—and you're looking at a lot of "wasted votes."
What do we mean by "sorting?" In his widely-discussed 2008 book, The Big Sort, Bill Bishop discussed the way Americans increasingly choose to live near, and associate with, people who share their political views and their cultural outlooks.
Liberals move to liberalish areas; conservatives don't. This tendency may help explain the presence of all those wasted votes in California, where Clinton won by more than three million votes instead of the needed one.
However one explains the process, California is becoming ground zero for wasted votes in presidential elections. Here's how victory margins have changed in the Golden State over the past several years:
Obama survived his wasted votes; this year, Clinton didn't. That's because of a second phenomenon—those "narrow margins."
While Clinton was rolling up tons of votes in California and New York, Trump was squeaking through in some other states by rather narrow margins. As a result, more people voted for one hopeful overall, but the other guy won.
As some journalists knew all along, these are the rules by which our elections have always been run. Trump has said he would have campaigned differently under different rules, and that he still would have won.
That's always possible, of course; after all, everything is! And that's why, under our system, the wasted votes are the smaller story. The larger story here involves those narrow margins.
Tomorrow, we'll look at the relatively narrow margins by which Trump won some decisive states. The man who has promised to build The Wall tore down a famous "blue wall" by a fairly small number of votes.
Trump won those decisive states by relatively narrow margins. Tomorrow, we'll ask you to ponder a horrible question:
Narrow margins turned this election. What sorts of things might we liberals have done to throw away a set of decisive states?
Tomorrow: A look at some narrow margins
Could Trump have won the popular vote: Could Trump have won the popular vote? If our elections were run that way, could Donald J. Trump have won?
It's always possible that Trump could have won under those rules. Of course, it's also possible that he would have lost the popular vote by an even larger margin.
Under those different rules, it's possible Trump could have won! Unless you're reading the kind of site which exists to serve you feel-good partisan pablum.
At sites like that, purveyors seem to know what you want. We don't think it helps.
Part 2—Millions of "wasted votes:" Donald J. Trump's victory margin has only continued to grow.
As of Saturday morning, with votes still being counted, Trump was ahead in the popular vote by minus 1.26 million. At least, that's what it said at the Washington Post; see Part 1 in this award-winning series.
The Post has maintained a running account of "Live Results" from the November 8 election. Yesterday morning, on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd updated those results from the day before:
TODD (11/20/16): And we are back. It's data download time.According to Todd, Trump's victory margin had grown. As of yesterday morning, it stood at more than minus 1.6 million votes!
[...]
Our friend Dave Wasserman over at the Cook Political Report has been keeping track of the national popular vote as it continues to be counted, particularly out west.
Hillary Clinton leads by more than 1.6 million votes nationally. And believe it or not, that's triple of what Al Gore led George W. Bush by in 2000.
(Without stating a source or providing a link, Josh Marshall reported last night that Trump's mandate now stands at a negative "1.677 million votes or a 1.3 percentage point margin." As far as we know, both those numbers are still expected to grow.)
That's right! Trump is now ahead in the popular vote by more than minus 1.6 million votes! Unless you go back to the Washington Post, which hasn't bothered updating its numbers since last Saturday morning, when its count was already running behind the actual state of the tally.
At some point, we'll probably know how the popular vote turned out. Already, though, we're calling that overall situation problematic.
For the second time in the past five elections, the Democratic nominee is going to win the popular vote without winning the White House. That strikes us as a highly significant state of affairs.
But as the slacker Post helps show, this problematic state of affairs is being almost wholly ignored by the "mainstream press." Many people don't know that Candidate Clinton won the popular vote. On TV, they hear about the other candidate's "mandate."
(Our "mainstream press corps" is suddenly shrieking about the rise of "fake news." It's a bit like Santa Claus suddenly coming out against free toys. But as the children shriek and wail, they ignore the problematics involved in this year's popular vote.)
Let's repeat what we've said. In two of the last five elections, the Democratic nominee has won the most popular votes, but has failed to reach the White House.
Only a deeply clueless group would let this phenomenon pass without a full examination and plenty of public comment. Needless to say, we liberals are that group.
Having stated this obvious point, let's try to get clear on the reason for this latest revoltin' development. Let's talk about the "sorting" of America. Also, let's talk about "wasted votes."
Why didn't Candidate Clinton end up winning the White House? She's going to wed up winning the popular vote by a fairly significant amount. So why is Trump on his way to the White House, claiming a "mandate" as he does? Whatever happened to Candidate Clinton? What happened to all those votes?
The answer takes us to the concept of "wasted votes." As most journalists knew by this year, our presidential election is really, on the whole, a set of statewide elections. This leads to an eventual vote in the so-called electoral college, an unlicensed branch of Trump University.
Uh-oh! If you win a state by just one vote, you get all its electoral votes! In terms of who gets to go to the White House, any additional votes in a state can be seen as "wasted."
Under the rules of the electoral college, winning a state by a large amount doesn't help you win the White House. This isn't like the AP college football poll, where victory margin is part of the mix. You either win a state or you don't. Winning big doesn't help.
That said, who received the most "wasted votes" this year? Candidate Clinton did! Below, you see the five biggest statewide victory margins from this year's presidential race. The largest clumps of wasted votes were found in a set of blue states:
Largest statewide victory margins, 2016:We're using the numbers at the Post site. Since California is still counting, we'll assume that Clinton's victory margin is already larger than 3.39 million in that molasses-like state.
California: Clinton won by 3.39 million votes (and counting)
New York: Clinton won by 1.5 million votes
Massachusetts: Clinton won by 880,000 votes
Illinois: Clinton won by 860,000 votes
Texas: Trump won by 814,000 votes
When you look at those vote totals, you're looking at several things. You're looking at an accurate record of the way Americans voted in five states. You're also looking at the results of a type of "sorting"—and you're looking at a lot of "wasted votes."
What do we mean by "sorting?" In his widely-discussed 2008 book, The Big Sort, Bill Bishop discussed the way Americans increasingly choose to live near, and associate with, people who share their political views and their cultural outlooks.
Liberals move to liberalish areas; conservatives don't. This tendency may help explain the presence of all those wasted votes in California, where Clinton won by more than three million votes instead of the needed one.
However one explains the process, California is becoming ground zero for wasted votes in presidential elections. Here's how victory margins have changed in the Golden State over the past several years:
Victory margins in California:Them's a lot of wasted votes! There's wasted votes in them thar hills!
1992: Clinton won by 1.49 million votes
1996: Clinton won by 1.29 million votes
2000: Gore won by 1.29 million votes
2004: Kerry won by 1.24 million votes
2008: Obama won by 3.26 million votes
2012: Obama won by 3.01 million votes
2016: Clinton won by 3.39 million votes (and counting)
Obama survived his wasted votes; this year, Clinton didn't. That's because of a second phenomenon—those "narrow margins."
While Clinton was rolling up tons of votes in California and New York, Trump was squeaking through in some other states by rather narrow margins. As a result, more people voted for one hopeful overall, but the other guy won.
As some journalists knew all along, these are the rules by which our elections have always been run. Trump has said he would have campaigned differently under different rules, and that he still would have won.
That's always possible, of course; after all, everything is! And that's why, under our system, the wasted votes are the smaller story. The larger story here involves those narrow margins.
Tomorrow, we'll look at the relatively narrow margins by which Trump won some decisive states. The man who has promised to build The Wall tore down a famous "blue wall" by a fairly small number of votes.
Trump won those decisive states by relatively narrow margins. Tomorrow, we'll ask you to ponder a horrible question:
Narrow margins turned this election. What sorts of things might we liberals have done to throw away a set of decisive states?
Tomorrow: A look at some narrow margins
Could Trump have won the popular vote: Could Trump have won the popular vote? If our elections were run that way, could Donald J. Trump have won?
It's always possible that Trump could have won under those rules. Of course, it's also possible that he would have lost the popular vote by an even larger margin.
Under those different rules, it's possible Trump could have won! Unless you're reading the kind of site which exists to serve you feel-good partisan pablum.
At sites like that, purveyors seem to know what you want. We don't think it helps.
NARROW MARGINS: Clinton keeps winning the popular vote!
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2016
Part 1—Also, those narrow margins: Whenever Jamison Foser speaks, the analysts sit up and listen.
Two days ago, Foser tweeted. He made a suggestions to pollsters:
"If anyone is polling in the next few weeks I suggest asking 'Who won the popular vote for president?' The results will terrify you."
Thus tweeted Foser. Later, he noted that one polling outfit, YouGov, had already polled this question.
How many people know that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote? YouGov polled that question in a survey conducted from November 12 through November 15. Click here, see questions 19 and 20.
According to the YouGov survey, 52 percent of respondents said Clinton won the popular vote. According to YouGov, 39 percent of respondents mistakenly said that Trump did.
How accurate was that YouGov survey? We can't tell you that. YouGov's presentation strikes us as confusing. Also, its numbers don't seem to make sense in certain basic ways.
Most disturbingly, we can't even blame the whole thing on The Others. According to YouGov, 29 percent of Democrats said Trump received more votes. So did 38 percent of both black and Hispanic respondents—and blacks and Hispanics are commonly known to be Us!
Presumably, someone else will survey this question. Meanwhile, we've been struck by the lack of reporting about the popular vote.
For the second time in the last five elections, the Democratic standard-bearer is going to be "the biggest loser" despite having won the popular vote. That strikes us as an important occurrence.
Inevitably, it's receiving little press coverage. Let's offer some info here:
By now much did Candidate Clinton win the popular vote?
Even now, no one can say. Votes are still being counted, especially, it seems, in California.
Heaven help us if we ever have an election that turns on a narrow Golden State race. The public will have to twiddle its thumbs for weeks while the surfers and the slackers adjust for the three-hour time difference.
How far ahead is Clinton right now in the popular vote?
We've been following the count through a site at the Washington Post. As we type, this is the state of the popular vote, as reported at that site:
The nation's savants have said that Clinton will end up winning by two million votes. We don't know if that prediction is accurate, especially since all their prior assesstimates turned out to be wrong.
That said, our big news orgs have shown little interest in reporting this matter. In part for that reason, a substantial chunk of the public seems to be misinformed. But then, what else is new?
How did Clinton lose the electoral college despite winning the popular vote?
You're asking a good question! In our view, there are several important parts of this horror movie. Between now and Thanksgiving, we plan to review several basic plot points.
For starters, we'll be recording the number of "wasted votes." Principally, this will mean reviewing a lot of votes in California and New York.
We'll also be looking at "narrow margins"—at the slender numbers of popular votes which gave Candidate Trump his wins in several decisive states.
Right up to the bitter end, the nation's geniuses, seers and savants were saying that Trump couldn't win those states. Despite the praise we heap on ourselves for our manifest tribal brilliance, our capacity for cluelessness seems to know few bounds.
As we review those narrow margins, we'll consider one more point. We'll ask you to think about a phenomenon we'll call "needless offense."
Our tribe is never more fulfilled than when we're insulting The Others. In a bit of payback, The Others teabagged us good last week. In the days before Thanksgiving, we'll consider the way our favorite pastime may have flipped this race.
Given the way our system works, there's a large number of "wasted votes" in the data at the Post's site. There are also several painfully narrow victory margins.
Last night, Rachel was giving needless offense again. Arguably, it's the one skill our corporate stars have numbnuttedly mastered.
(Good God! Also this? The Bentley "sex tape" again? Did we actually see and hear that? "The Nun" was busy last night!)
Presumably, the giving of needless offense just keeps bringing us back for more. "Watch this space," our own TV star never fails to remind Us.
Monday: Large numbers of "wasted votes"
Part 1—Also, those narrow margins: Whenever Jamison Foser speaks, the analysts sit up and listen.
Two days ago, Foser tweeted. He made a suggestions to pollsters:
"If anyone is polling in the next few weeks I suggest asking 'Who won the popular vote for president?' The results will terrify you."
Thus tweeted Foser. Later, he noted that one polling outfit, YouGov, had already polled this question.
How many people know that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote? YouGov polled that question in a survey conducted from November 12 through November 15. Click here, see questions 19 and 20.
According to the YouGov survey, 52 percent of respondents said Clinton won the popular vote. According to YouGov, 39 percent of respondents mistakenly said that Trump did.
How accurate was that YouGov survey? We can't tell you that. YouGov's presentation strikes us as confusing. Also, its numbers don't seem to make sense in certain basic ways.
Most disturbingly, we can't even blame the whole thing on The Others. According to YouGov, 29 percent of Democrats said Trump received more votes. So did 38 percent of both black and Hispanic respondents—and blacks and Hispanics are commonly known to be Us!
Presumably, someone else will survey this question. Meanwhile, we've been struck by the lack of reporting about the popular vote.
For the second time in the last five elections, the Democratic standard-bearer is going to be "the biggest loser" despite having won the popular vote. That strikes us as an important occurrence.
Inevitably, it's receiving little press coverage. Let's offer some info here:
By now much did Candidate Clinton win the popular vote?
Even now, no one can say. Votes are still being counted, especially, it seems, in California.
Heaven help us if we ever have an election that turns on a narrow Golden State race. The public will have to twiddle its thumbs for weeks while the surfers and the slackers adjust for the three-hour time difference.
How far ahead is Clinton right now in the popular vote?
We've been following the count through a site at the Washington Post. As we type, this is the state of the popular vote, as reported at that site:
Current state of the popular vote:As such, Trump's mandate currently stands at minus 1.3 million votes. That "victory margin" is expected to grow, although you can't learn much about this matter from our major news orgs.
Clinton: 62.39 million votes (48.0%)
Trump: 61.13 million votes (47.0%)
The nation's savants have said that Clinton will end up winning by two million votes. We don't know if that prediction is accurate, especially since all their prior assesstimates turned out to be wrong.
That said, our big news orgs have shown little interest in reporting this matter. In part for that reason, a substantial chunk of the public seems to be misinformed. But then, what else is new?
How did Clinton lose the electoral college despite winning the popular vote?
You're asking a good question! In our view, there are several important parts of this horror movie. Between now and Thanksgiving, we plan to review several basic plot points.
For starters, we'll be recording the number of "wasted votes." Principally, this will mean reviewing a lot of votes in California and New York.
We'll also be looking at "narrow margins"—at the slender numbers of popular votes which gave Candidate Trump his wins in several decisive states.
Right up to the bitter end, the nation's geniuses, seers and savants were saying that Trump couldn't win those states. Despite the praise we heap on ourselves for our manifest tribal brilliance, our capacity for cluelessness seems to know few bounds.
As we review those narrow margins, we'll consider one more point. We'll ask you to think about a phenomenon we'll call "needless offense."
Our tribe is never more fulfilled than when we're insulting The Others. In a bit of payback, The Others teabagged us good last week. In the days before Thanksgiving, we'll consider the way our favorite pastime may have flipped this race.
Given the way our system works, there's a large number of "wasted votes" in the data at the Post's site. There are also several painfully narrow victory margins.
Last night, Rachel was giving needless offense again. Arguably, it's the one skill our corporate stars have numbnuttedly mastered.
(Good God! Also this? The Bentley "sex tape" again? Did we actually see and hear that? "The Nun" was busy last night!)
Presumably, the giving of needless offense just keeps bringing us back for more. "Watch this space," our own TV star never fails to remind Us.
Monday: Large numbers of "wasted votes"
Megyn Kelly cons the folks!
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016
Completing eight years of Obama: On Wednesday night, we caught this tease by Megyn Kelly:
Kelly teased these "toughest remarks" throughout her hour-long program. Eventually, we got her hard-hitting report.
The segment started with tape of Obama on his 2009 "apology tour." After she'd primed the pump that way, this is all she actually had:
Let's place those remarks in context. In his speech, Obama was discussing the need to maintain democratic institutions and procedures. The two remarks were widely separated in the actual speech:
In the second excerpt Kelly presented, Obama wasn't discussing Trump at all. Kelly's suggestion to the contrary was an hour-long con.
Kelly and Rosen deceived Fox viewers that night. For the record, Rachel Maddow likes conning us gullibles too. As with Fox viewers, so too with us; as true believers, we don't see it. But no one does a slippery edit quite the way Maddow does!
Increasingly, Kelly is a mainstream media darling. We liberals kick down at the people she misleads, sit around twiddling our thumbs as the mainstream kisses her aspic about her daring new book. $20 million or bust!
Regular people get fooled on cable by multimillionaires every night. We liberals love to trash the regular people who get misled on Fox.
Should we look for ways to tell these people that they're getting misled by the big stars they think they can trust? When professors make such suggestions, we think they're weird crazy dumb.
Regarding those who get misled on Fox, they're racists and bigots, we like to cry. It's a prominent part of our dumb, ugly culture. It comes from our weak tribal minds.
People have always loathed The Others. Little about Us is better.
Completing eight years of Obama: On Wednesday night, we caught this tease by Megyn Kelly:
KELLY (11/16/16): Still ahead, President Obama delivering his toughest remarks yet on President-Elect Trump. Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen has all the fall-out.Good lord! There he went again! We decided to stick around to see what Obama had said. And to examine "all the fall-out!"
Kelly teased these "toughest remarks" throughout her hour-long program. Eventually, we got her hard-hitting report.
The segment started with tape of Obama on his 2009 "apology tour." After she'd primed the pump that way, this is all she actually had:
KELLY: You remember that. To me, he looks so much younger there. That was President Obama in 2009 in one of his first trip overseas, an event that critics would label part of the "apology tour" since he shared sometimes harsh language of, about America's treatment of our allies.After an hour of teasing Obama's "toughest remarks," those two remarks were all she had. They were separated by a flash edit. Plainly, we were supposed to think Obama was trashing Trump in that second remark.
Today, on his last trip overseas as president, he delivered new criticism, this time against President-Elect Trump.
Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen joins us with the details. James?
ROSEN: Megyn, good evening. Until today President Obama had spent a post-election period urging divided America to give Donald Trump and his team a chance. But after he toured the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, birthplace of democracy, the outgoing president delivered his toughest remarks yet about the president-elect and the meaning of his victory.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: As you may have noticed, the next American president and I could not be more different.
[flash edit]
OBAMA: Faced with this new reality where cultures clash, it is inevitable that some will seek a comfort in nationalism or tribe or ethnicity or sect.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROSEN: With the Democratic Party he has led for the last eight years now having lost the White House, remaining in the minority in both houses of Congress and suffering deeper losses at the state level, Mr. Obama finds himself about to yield to a successor, who campaign on dismantling the Obama legacy. This has created a tension in his final days between official duty and personal interest as president.
Mr. Obama expresses continuity to reassure allies. As a political figure he seeks to avoid blame for his party's defeat and project confidence that his legacy will endure.
Let's place those remarks in context. In his speech, Obama was discussing the need to maintain democratic institutions and procedures. The two remarks were widely separated in the actual speech:
OBAMA (11/16/16): We compete hard in campaigns in America and here in Greece. But after the election, democracy depends on a peaceful transition of power, especially when you don't get the result you want.Was Obama making "his toughest remarks yet" about Trump? In the first excerpt Kelly offered, Obama said he differed from Trump—but only to say that democracy was bigger than such differences. He stressed the way he and Trump were going to work together.
And as you may have noticed, the next American president and I could not be more different. We have very different points of view. But American democracy is bigger than any one person. That's why we have a tradition of the outgoing president welcoming the new one in, as I did last week. And why, in the coming weeks, my administration will do everything we can to support the smoothest transition possible, because that's how democracy has to work.
[Long gap in speech]
Democracy is simplest where everybody thinks alike, looks alike, eats the same food, worships the same God. Democracy becomes more difficult when there are people coming from a variety of backgrounds and trying to live together. In our globalized world, with the migration of people and the rapid movement of ideas and cultures and traditions, we see increasingly this blend of forces mixing together in ways that often enrich our societies but also cause tensions.
In the Information Age, the unprecedented exchange of information can always accentuate differences, or seem to threaten cherished ways of life. It used to be that you might not know how people in another part of your country, or in the cities versus the countryside, were living. Now everybody knows how everybody is living, and everybody can feel threatened sometimes if people don't do things exactly the way they do things. And they start asking themselves questions about their own identity. And it can create a volatile politics.
Faced with this new reality where cultures clash, it's inevitable that some will seek a comfort in nationalism or tribe or ethnicity or sect. In countries that are held together by borders that were drawn by colonial powers, including many countries in the Middle East and in Africa, it can be tempting to fall back on perceived safety of enclaves and tribal divisions.
In the second excerpt Kelly presented, Obama wasn't discussing Trump at all. Kelly's suggestion to the contrary was an hour-long con.
Kelly and Rosen deceived Fox viewers that night. For the record, Rachel Maddow likes conning us gullibles too. As with Fox viewers, so too with us; as true believers, we don't see it. But no one does a slippery edit quite the way Maddow does!
Increasingly, Kelly is a mainstream media darling. We liberals kick down at the people she misleads, sit around twiddling our thumbs as the mainstream kisses her aspic about her daring new book. $20 million or bust!
Regular people get fooled on cable by multimillionaires every night. We liberals love to trash the regular people who get misled on Fox.
Should we look for ways to tell these people that they're getting misled by the big stars they think they can trust? When professors make such suggestions, we think they're weird crazy dumb.
Regarding those who get misled on Fox, they're racists and bigots, we like to cry. It's a prominent part of our dumb, ugly culture. It comes from our weak tribal minds.
People have always loathed The Others. Little about Us is better.
TEABAGGED: In praise of reductionist solitarism!
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016
—
Epilogue—Our tribe's modern rules for the road: Did we liberal get teabagged last Tuesday night?
We'd have to say that we did. Here's how the bagging went down:
When the teabaggers first appeared on the scene, we were honest enough to push back. We called them racists, homophobes, bigots, misogynists, nativists and Islamophobes. Their xenophobia was also quite clear.
They didn't much care for our truth-telling ways. The baggers have always been like that!
Certain people keep insisting that We should take a different approach. Plainly, Professor Arlie Russell Hochschild is the all-time worst. Please try to follow her "logic:"
According to Professor Hochschild, not only should we speak with teabaggers, we should "take our political and moral alarm system off" when we do! She says we can thereby "establish a floor of respect and liking on which a lot more can be said, ambivalences can be admitted, complexities arrive."
We can even like the baggers, this Berkeley professor has said.
This seems to mean that we shouldn't start off by telling the baggers they're racists. Can you see the way this works? These people would strip our endangered tribe of our top number-one modern skill!
We love to tell the baggers they're racists! Consider two recent manifestations of this part of our culture.
Our first example involves Charlie Pierce. In this November 14 post, he said there's "no point in denying" that Those People are bigots.
His demonstration proceeded like this:
Frank Bruni had written the passage shown below. Before posting the passage, Pierce declared that Bruni had "tugged his forelock until he removed half his scalp" in composing such manifest nonsense:
People like Bruni want you to think there's something odd, dogmatic, peculiar, unkind or inconsistent about that. Pierce gave the lie to his theory:
"Frank, if that woman is not 'on board' with marriage equality at this point in history, she may not be hateful," Pierce replied. "She might not even be a boob. But she's a bigot. There's no point in denying that."
Thank you! Why would we ever deny the fact that Those People are bigots! In his analysis, Pierce helps us see a basic point—Us and Them are often connected to That Was Then / This Is Now.
Hochschild would also stifle Jamelle Bouie. One day after Pierce's post, Bouie posted a RightThinking essay at Slate which carried these TrueThinking headlines:
Bouie works on the brighter end of modern liberal/progressive journalism. For that reason, some will be surprised to see him offer AccurateThink without a hint of "nuance."
Bouie helps us see the basic facts about the 61 million people (and counting) who voted for Candidate Trump. You're right if you notice that his essay doesn't exactly make perfect sense. But the key point is the statement that all 61 million are bad.
The endless construction of Us and Them is our tribe's key modern skill. People like Professor Hochschild want to take this weapon away. They would strip us of our "reductionist solitarism," to use a catchy term David Brooks has coined in today's anti-"Us and Them" column.
There's one more skill we liberals have mastered in recent years. It's the skill of boasting that We don't have the slightest idea what They could be thinking about.
Pierce displays this skill in this paean to puzzlement concerning the people of Maine. "I'll never understand how that pain brings this woman to someone like Donald Trump, who absolutely can do nothing about any of the problems that brought these people to him," Pierce writes.
Might we talk? At one time, the inability to understand others was seen as a type of shortcoming. Today, it more commonly provides an occasion for liberals to boast.
Bouie helps us see that (perceived) bad judgment on the part of Trump voters can't be permitted to serve as a moral excuse for their vote. (We liberals have never shown bad judgment. Why should They be excused?)
Pierce extends the reasoning. He shows that we must continue to declare Their judgments incomprehensible, even after we note that they've been misled by things they've "been told about on their favorite radio and cable television shows." Might their judgment be lousy, imperfect? Have they been misinformed by professional sophists? For Them, there can be no excuse! All 61 million are bad!
These are a few of the basic skills the Hochschilds would make us renounce. They'd ask us to break bread with The Others, creating "a floor of respect." They suggest that such conduct might open the door to future political progress.
If we understand their program correctly, we aren't supposed to tell the baggers that they're bigots right away. Instead, we're supposed to bide our time. We're supposed to let them know later.
Isaac Chotiner also writes from the deeper end of the liberal pool. On November 1, he helped us see the correct way to feel when forced to encounter The Others.
Chotiner interviewed The New Yorker's George Packer for Slate. Late in the piece, he revealed an important point in the form of asking a question:
Chotiner assumes condescension. The question is how to handle this feeling. Chotiner doesn't imagine a world in which we don't look down on Others who may, perhaps, be less bright than he is. We were saddened to see someone so bright making that confession.
Professor Hochschild weirdly claims that beings who come from different species can "communicate" with each other. She seems to think that We can speak respectfully with Them, reaching some type of "understanding" at some point down the line.
She seems to think we should stop the name-calling. She suggests that we shouldn't be arrogant, dumb, unintelligent, vain—all the traits at which we excel.
Being dumb is our stock in trade—has been for some time! Sure, we'll get teabagged but good in return. But dear God! How good it feels when We get to call Them all those names!
How good it felt when Rachel gave us our small tiny brains our two weeks of small tiny dick jokes. How good it feels when we praise our own non-existent greatness by aiming our insults at Them.
Yevtushenko on people: "No people are uninteresting," Yevtushenko wrote.
Plainly, he'd never met us! At any rate, he demanded no perfection:
—
Epilogue—Our tribe's modern rules for the road: Did we liberal get teabagged last Tuesday night?
We'd have to say that we did. Here's how the bagging went down:
When the teabaggers first appeared on the scene, we were honest enough to push back. We called them racists, homophobes, bigots, misogynists, nativists and Islamophobes. Their xenophobia was also quite clear.
They didn't much care for our truth-telling ways. The baggers have always been like that!
Certain people keep insisting that We should take a different approach. Plainly, Professor Arlie Russell Hochschild is the all-time worst. Please try to follow her "logic:"
According to Professor Hochschild, not only should we speak with teabaggers, we should "take our political and moral alarm system off" when we do! She says we can thereby "establish a floor of respect and liking on which a lot more can be said, ambivalences can be admitted, complexities arrive."
We can even like the baggers, this Berkeley professor has said.
This seems to mean that we shouldn't start off by telling the baggers they're racists. Can you see the way this works? These people would strip our endangered tribe of our top number-one modern skill!
We love to tell the baggers they're racists! Consider two recent manifestations of this part of our culture.
Our first example involves Charlie Pierce. In this November 14 post, he said there's "no point in denying" that Those People are bigots.
His demonstration proceeded like this:
Frank Bruni had written the passage shown below. Before posting the passage, Pierce declared that Bruni had "tugged his forelock until he removed half his scalp" in composing such manifest nonsense:
BRUNI (11/12/16): Liberals miss this by being illiberal. They shame not just the racists and sexists who deserve it but all who disagree. A 64-year-old Southern woman not on board with marriage equality finds herself characterized as a hateful boob. Never mind that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton weren't themselves on board just five short years ago.Leave it to Bruni! He noted our top RightThinkers held the position just five years ago. He further noted that one of Those People was characterized as a hateful boob for holding the same position today.
People like Bruni want you to think there's something odd, dogmatic, peculiar, unkind or inconsistent about that. Pierce gave the lie to his theory:
"Frank, if that woman is not 'on board' with marriage equality at this point in history, she may not be hateful," Pierce replied. "She might not even be a boob. But she's a bigot. There's no point in denying that."
Thank you! Why would we ever deny the fact that Those People are bigots! In his analysis, Pierce helps us see a basic point—Us and Them are often connected to That Was Then / This Is Now.
Hochschild would also stifle Jamelle Bouie. One day after Pierce's post, Bouie posted a RightThinking essay at Slate which carried these TrueThinking headlines:
There’s No Such Thing as a Good Trump VoterThere’s No Such Thing as a Good Trump Voter! What could be simpler than that?
People voted for a racist who promised racist outcomes. They don’t deserve your empathy.
Bouie works on the brighter end of modern liberal/progressive journalism. For that reason, some will be surprised to see him offer AccurateThink without a hint of "nuance."
Bouie helps us see the basic facts about the 61 million people (and counting) who voted for Candidate Trump. You're right if you notice that his essay doesn't exactly make perfect sense. But the key point is the statement that all 61 million are bad.
The endless construction of Us and Them is our tribe's key modern skill. People like Professor Hochschild want to take this weapon away. They would strip us of our "reductionist solitarism," to use a catchy term David Brooks has coined in today's anti-"Us and Them" column.
There's one more skill we liberals have mastered in recent years. It's the skill of boasting that We don't have the slightest idea what They could be thinking about.
Pierce displays this skill in this paean to puzzlement concerning the people of Maine. "I'll never understand how that pain brings this woman to someone like Donald Trump, who absolutely can do nothing about any of the problems that brought these people to him," Pierce writes.
Might we talk? At one time, the inability to understand others was seen as a type of shortcoming. Today, it more commonly provides an occasion for liberals to boast.
Bouie helps us see that (perceived) bad judgment on the part of Trump voters can't be permitted to serve as a moral excuse for their vote. (We liberals have never shown bad judgment. Why should They be excused?)
Pierce extends the reasoning. He shows that we must continue to declare Their judgments incomprehensible, even after we note that they've been misled by things they've "been told about on their favorite radio and cable television shows." Might their judgment be lousy, imperfect? Have they been misinformed by professional sophists? For Them, there can be no excuse! All 61 million are bad!
These are a few of the basic skills the Hochschilds would make us renounce. They'd ask us to break bread with The Others, creating "a floor of respect." They suggest that such conduct might open the door to future political progress.
If we understand their program correctly, we aren't supposed to tell the baggers that they're bigots right away. Instead, we're supposed to bide our time. We're supposed to let them know later.
Isaac Chotiner also writes from the deeper end of the liberal pool. On November 1, he helped us see the correct way to feel when forced to encounter The Others.
Chotiner interviewed The New Yorker's George Packer for Slate. Late in the piece, he revealed an important point in the form of asking a question:
CHOTINER (11/1/16): In your piece, you talk about condescension. I find that it’s a really hard subject, because when you’re talking to someone who says that Obama’s going to take revenge on white people, or you’re talking to someone who says that global warming is a hoax, it’s difficult to know the proper way to respond to that. Do you feel condescension but try not to act on it?How should one of Us react when speaking to one of Them?
Chotiner assumes condescension. The question is how to handle this feeling. Chotiner doesn't imagine a world in which we don't look down on Others who may, perhaps, be less bright than he is. We were saddened to see someone so bright making that confession.
Professor Hochschild weirdly claims that beings who come from different species can "communicate" with each other. She seems to think that We can speak respectfully with Them, reaching some type of "understanding" at some point down the line.
She seems to think we should stop the name-calling. She suggests that we shouldn't be arrogant, dumb, unintelligent, vain—all the traits at which we excel.
Being dumb is our stock in trade—has been for some time! Sure, we'll get teabagged but good in return. But dear God! How good it feels when We get to call Them all those names!
How good it felt when Rachel gave us our small tiny brains our two weeks of small tiny dick jokes. How good it feels when we praise our own non-existent greatness by aiming our insults at Them.
Yevtushenko on people: "No people are uninteresting," Yevtushenko wrote.
Plainly, he'd never met us! At any rate, he demanded no perfection:
In any man who dies there dies with himNot people die but worlds die in them, whom we knew as faulty.
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.
There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.
But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.
Whom we knew as faulty, the earth’s creatures...
We agree with Charlie Pierce about Hanks!
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2016
We see him and raise him one: At least in principle, we tend to agree with Charlie Pierce about Tom Hanks.
Hanks recently gave a heartwarming speech about how there's nothing to look at here. "We are going to be all right," Hanks said. "America has been in worse places than we are at right now."
Pierce suggested that, while Hanks will be fine, many others may not be OK in the wake of last Tuesday's election. He was suggesting that Hanks' reassurances may have come from inside a wealthy man's uber-bubble.
At least in principle, we saw where Pierce was coming from. We'd had a similar reaction to Rachel Maddow the previous night.
More and more, Maddow strikes us as a narcissist built in the image of Trump. On the same night Hanks was giving his speech, she was exhorting us proles to snap out of the funk we'd been in since Trump's election.
She began her show with one of her worthless monologues, this time concerning the super-sexy way Chris Christie prosecuted Ivanka Trump's grimy father-in-law earlier in the "two thousandsies."
(She used that fun term the next night. Rachel is very unusual. It's one of the basic ways she sells us the car.)
Back to Maddow on Tuesday night. The first of her two "very sordid stories" involved multiple references to a "hunky secret Israeli boyfriend." This led to a second "very sordid story" in which a "zillionaire real estate mogul" made illegal campaign contributions to New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey.
Our story picks up there. Go ahead! Immerse yourselves in the sordidness of it all!
Our collection of very sordid stories continues from there:
Also, when someone sends "the tape of them doing it" to the sister! New Jersey is always worth it, you guys!
In the end, Maddow's very sordid stories come to involve Christie and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law. Needless to say, Maddow was in seventh heaven. She also was dispensing advice:
This shit is lurid, hilarious, rollicking. Why are you moping around?
Maddow continued with more humiliating stuff. As she finished her endless opening segment, she played the Hanks card again:
As we watched this garbage unfold, we were struck by how much fun a disaster can be if you're being corporately paid however many millions of dollars per year. One day later, we saw Pierce make a related point about that reassuring speech by Hanks.
Our national systems are melting down. In many cases, they melted down long ago. On Tuesday night, a certain corporate multimillionaire seemed to be richly entertained by the hilarious backwash of the process. She seemed to think we should be entertained too! People, snap out of your funk!
Vast wealth and fame can be very destructive. More and more, Maddow strikes us as a "low-rent" version of our own Donald Trump.
She seems to be deeply narcissistic. You guys, New Jersey is always worth it! People, snap out of your funk!
We see him and raise him one: At least in principle, we tend to agree with Charlie Pierce about Tom Hanks.
Hanks recently gave a heartwarming speech about how there's nothing to look at here. "We are going to be all right," Hanks said. "America has been in worse places than we are at right now."
Pierce suggested that, while Hanks will be fine, many others may not be OK in the wake of last Tuesday's election. He was suggesting that Hanks' reassurances may have come from inside a wealthy man's uber-bubble.
At least in principle, we saw where Pierce was coming from. We'd had a similar reaction to Rachel Maddow the previous night.
More and more, Maddow strikes us as a narcissist built in the image of Trump. On the same night Hanks was giving his speech, she was exhorting us proles to snap out of the funk we'd been in since Trump's election.
She began her show with one of her worthless monologues, this time concerning the super-sexy way Chris Christie prosecuted Ivanka Trump's grimy father-in-law earlier in the "two thousandsies."
(She used that fun term the next night. Rachel is very unusual. It's one of the basic ways she sells us the car.)
Back to Maddow on Tuesday night. The first of her two "very sordid stories" involved multiple references to a "hunky secret Israeli boyfriend." This led to a second "very sordid story" in which a "zillionaire real estate mogul" made illegal campaign contributions to New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey.
Our story picks up there. Go ahead! Immerse yourselves in the sordidness of it all!
MADDOW (11/15/16): Ultimately, after the governor resigned the following year, the rich donor guy who got arrested a week before the governor's resignation, the rich donor guy was ultimately convicted of illegal campaign donations and tax evasion and witness tampering, and most of the story of that trial was about this very sordid story, this real estate mogul having this huge real estate empire, but he got into a feud with the rest of his family about the disposition of the family company.New Jersey is always worth it! No matter where you live!
His brother-in-law—his sister's husband—apparently turned the state's evidence and was cooperating with law enforcement against him. And the real estate mogul apparently retaliated against his brother-in-law by hiring a hooker to seduce the brother-in-law.
The real estate mogul then secretly taped what his sister's husband did with the hooker and then he mailed the tape to his own sister. Gah! Nice, right?
See, it's always worth it to pay close attention to New Jersey politics. Always, no matter where you live.
Our collection of very sordid stories continues from there:
MADDOW (continuing directly): In the end, this real estate mogul, this mega-zillionaire, this major donor and boyfriend-hirer to the governor of New Jersey, he did get convicted in federal court. And they didn't let him do some white collar excuse for hard time.As we've often noted, it's always a good day on Maddow's show when someone is doing hard time in an actual prison. That's especially true when super-humiliating stuff about hookers is involved.
Prosecutors pretty much threw the book at him. And for good measure, they made sure to publicly air all of the super-humiliating stuff about the sister and his sister's husband and sending the hooker to seduce the sister's husband and then sending the tape of them doing it to the sister—they made sure that was all public about it. Then the guy went away to actual prison.
And then the imprisoned real estate mogul's son married Donald Trump's daughter and, as Donald Trump's son-in-law, he became one of Donald Trump's closest advisers in his presidential campaign. And now in the Trump transition into the White House.
Also, when someone sends "the tape of them doing it" to the sister! New Jersey is always worth it, you guys!
In the end, Maddow's very sordid stories come to involve Christie and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law. Needless to say, Maddow was in seventh heaven. She also was dispensing advice:
MADDOW: Chris Christie was put in charge of the Trump transition effort, put in charge of staffing up the Trump administration way back in May when, honestly, I think nobody thought there would be a Trump administration. So, working on a totally hypothetical Trump presidential transition was kind of a hilarious backwater busy-work job for something that would never come to fruition.You guys out there, snap out of it! Why should anyone be in a funk when so many fascinating, super-humiliating stories are flying around?
Once Donald Trump actually freaking won the election, did you notice how fast Chris Christie got demoted from what turns out was now actually a very important job? And now, one of the more lurid aspects of the rollicking reality show that is the Trump campaign trying to become the President Donald Trump administration, one of the astonishingly low-rent plot points in that story is basically seeing Chris Christie get his in a bad way. As the son of the man who he jailed and humiliated all those years ago, as that man's son steps up and relieves Governor Christie of his lunch money.
By Thursday, Jared Kushner gets brought to the White House. He's seen touring the grounds of the White House staff.
By Friday, Chris Christie was out as transition chief. By this morning, Chris Christie's handpicked guy to run the transition at the Department of Justice, he was out, too...The former Republican congressman who Chris Christie tapped to head up national security planning for the transition, as of the today, he's out too.
And a source close to him told NBC News today that his ouster should be seen as a part of a, quote, "Stalinesque purge of people close to Chris Christie."
Stalinesque already, Week One! You guys, pay attention! Snap out of your funk! This is getting really, really fascinating really fast.
This shit is lurid, hilarious, rollicking. Why are you moping around?
Maddow continued with more humiliating stuff. As she finished her endless opening segment, she played the Hanks card again:
MADDOW: Like I said, my friends, no time to dissolve into a funk. This is already the most cockamamie thing any of us have ever seen in federal politics. There's no way any of this stuff can stand. The presidency cannot bear it. It just can't.We should all snap out of our funks! This is so entertaining! And yes, we think that was the gist of Maddow's manic performance. This was about all the fascinating fun we could have with all this sordid stuff.
Stay with us.
As we watched this garbage unfold, we were struck by how much fun a disaster can be if you're being corporately paid however many millions of dollars per year. One day later, we saw Pierce make a related point about that reassuring speech by Hanks.
Our national systems are melting down. In many cases, they melted down long ago. On Tuesday night, a certain corporate multimillionaire seemed to be richly entertained by the hilarious backwash of the process. She seemed to think we should be entertained too! People, snap out of your funk!
Vast wealth and fame can be very destructive. More and more, Maddow strikes us as a "low-rent" version of our own Donald Trump.
She seems to be deeply narcissistic. You guys, New Jersey is always worth it! People, snap out of your funk!
TEABAGGED: Teabagger jokes versus listening tour!
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2016
Part 4—Trampling the floor of respect: You might even say that Arlie Hochschild went on a listening tour.
As detailed in yesterday's report, the Berkeley professor found herself puzzled by attitudes in the Tea Party. She went to redder-than-red Louisiana, foolishly saying that she was determined to listen and learn.
It's hard to know why a "distinguished Berkeley sociologist" (New York Times) would think she could "learn" from Those People. Whatever! In a recent book event videotaped by C-Span, this "distinguished" professor said she went to the Bayou State dragging a question behind her:
As she continued, Hochschild noted that Louisiana was actually the poorest state in 2014. Also, "it was very largely, very largely Tea Party and Trump."
"So it was perfect," she weirdly said. "I was there at an exaggerated version of the red state paradox."
(Hochschild especially stressed the paradoxical nature of the environmental attitudes of her Tea Party subjects, given the environmental degradation caused by Louisiana's petrochemical industry.)
We offer these notes to help readers see the weirdness of Hochschild's quest. Her quest resulted in Strangers in Their Own Land, a book which was a finalist for this year's National Book Award.
Before Hochschild embarked on her "journey," she already knew that the views of white Tea Party adherents in Louisiana didn't make any sense. Despite this knowledge, she said she went to the Bayou State determined to "learn."
During her book event, she even said she wanted us "to meet some of the most extraordinary, interesting, complex, lovely, caring people who were at the center of this paradox." No, really—that's what she said! In response to a question from a young woman who'd been taken in by this nonsense, Hochschild even described one of her "learning" experiences.
Master race members, please! Hochschild said she encountered a "wonderful gospel singer" who said she just loved Rush Limbaugh.
"I thought, I'd really like to talk to her," Hochschild strangely told the young woman at her book event. "I have something to learn."
Things spiraled downward from there. The next day, Hochschild met the teabagger, hoping to hear more of her views. According to the Berkeley professor, here's how their "discussion" went:
Plainly, this Deep South bagger had memorized Rush's best lines. According to Hochschild, here's what happened after that bell went off:
We'll grant you, it doesn't make sense. But Hochschild apparently thought she'd established "a floor of respect" with her teabagger pal—a floor of respect which might allow further conversation to occur.
"I just think that after this election, whoever wins, that people, especially liberals, progressives, I think, need to actually reach out, not be turned inward," the bagger-lover now said.
She said that something called "living room conversations" have been started, in which left and right get together and break bread. "And I just love to see those living room conversations all over the country," the professor improbably said.
Hochschild's thought processes are so odd that questions have to be asked. In his review of her "smart, respectful and compelling book," the New York Times' Jason DeParle describes some of the racist, misogynist, homophobic and nativist ideas around which Hochschild is eager to throw gorilla dust.
In some weird way, she seems to think that powerful entities may be involved in the promulgation of these bagger ideas—larger entities like Fox News, to cite just one of her cop-outs. According to DeParle, Hochschild thinks her bagger buddies "aren’t just soldiers in a class war but victims of one, too."
According to DeParle, she's even willing to sit and listen as "the liberal media" is called out for a share of the blame. She doesn't upend the table and leave the roadhouse when people like her backwoods gospel gal complain about the "hail of epithets" directed at them by RightThinking people like Us.
We try to offer constructive critiques. The bagger will hear it that way!
Assuming she isn't working a con, Hochschild seems to be in the grip of a peculiar fantasy. She seems to think the world isn't populated by two famous old groups, Us and Them—by two different species.
She seems to think that listening tours could end up bringing some of Them around to the world views of Us. To the extent that she thinks politically, she may believe that some of Them might end up voting the CorrectWay, like Us.
She may believe that levels of enmity could be reduced. It's even possible that she thinks that We could end up learning something from Them about some topic at some point! It's hard to know why Governor Brown allows this on Berkeley's campus.
Professor Hochschild conned the young woman who praised all her "empathy" talk. It made us think of another youngish woman who found a saner approach to the rise of Those People.
In the spring of 2009, Rachel Maddow was 36. The Tea Party movement had just begun. Unlike the Berkeley "empathy" types, she knew how to react.
Night after night, she assailed the teabaggers with her hilarious dick jokes. Rather, she brought Ana Marie Cox on her show, night after night, to deliver the bagger jokes.
For herself, Maddow pretended to be embarrassed by the nightly array of dick jokes. We love it when Rachel treats us like fools, just as the baggers love Sean.
In November 2010, Jon Stewart told Maddow that she shouldn't have done what she did. He also told her that she should stop clowning around in general.
He seems to love the baggers too. To watch the whole session, click this.
By now, Stewart has returned to the obscurity he so richly deserves. In April 2009, Maddow showed us how it's done. The dick jokes continued for two weeks. So did her feigned embarrassment. We liberals got to enjoy some good solid tribal fun.
Last Tuesday night, we got teabagged real good in return. On the brighter side, every year from then until now, the suits have handed the daring Maddow her annual millions of dollars.
Let Hochschild talk to her teabagger friends! We have our stars, whose work we enjoy within our own cultural enclave.
Tomorrow: Emanations from Us about Them
What Stewart impossibly said: When Stewart appeared on the Maddow Show, he criticized stereotyping as done by the right. Failing to leave well enough alone, he went on to offer this:
It continued through the next week. Last Tuesday, we got teabagged real good.
Stewart kept telling Maddow that she was in an important business, the news business. He kept telling her that she ought to take it seriously.
Maddow continues to mug and clown, and drag Us down, right to this very day. Increasingly, she strikes us as a narcissist a bit reminiscent of Trump.
Part 4—Trampling the floor of respect: You might even say that Arlie Hochschild went on a listening tour.
As detailed in yesterday's report, the Berkeley professor found herself puzzled by attitudes in the Tea Party. She went to redder-than-red Louisiana, foolishly saying that she was determined to listen and learn.
It's hard to know why a "distinguished Berkeley sociologist" (New York Times) would think she could "learn" from Those People. Whatever! In a recent book event videotaped by C-Span, this "distinguished" professor said she went to the Bayou State dragging a question behind her:
HOCHSCHILD (10/15/16): So our voyage starts there with a question.To watch the whole session, click here.
I went with this "red state paradox" in mind. How is it true that, in the United States, most red states are also the poorer states, ones with worse education, with worse health and lower life expectancies. Those states receive more funds from the federal government in aid than they give in tax dollars, and yet are the most suspicious and resistant to the idea of a federal government.
Well, that's really interesting. What, what goes on with that?
As she continued, Hochschild noted that Louisiana was actually the poorest state in 2014. Also, "it was very largely, very largely Tea Party and Trump."
"So it was perfect," she weirdly said. "I was there at an exaggerated version of the red state paradox."
(Hochschild especially stressed the paradoxical nature of the environmental attitudes of her Tea Party subjects, given the environmental degradation caused by Louisiana's petrochemical industry.)
We offer these notes to help readers see the weirdness of Hochschild's quest. Her quest resulted in Strangers in Their Own Land, a book which was a finalist for this year's National Book Award.
Before Hochschild embarked on her "journey," she already knew that the views of white Tea Party adherents in Louisiana didn't make any sense. Despite this knowledge, she said she went to the Bayou State determined to "learn."
During her book event, she even said she wanted us "to meet some of the most extraordinary, interesting, complex, lovely, caring people who were at the center of this paradox." No, really—that's what she said! In response to a question from a young woman who'd been taken in by this nonsense, Hochschild even described one of her "learning" experiences.
Master race members, please! Hochschild said she encountered a "wonderful gospel singer" who said she just loved Rush Limbaugh.
"I thought, I'd really like to talk to her," Hochschild strangely told the young woman at her book event. "I have something to learn."
Things spiraled downward from there. The next day, Hochschild met the teabagger, hoping to hear more of her views. According to the Berkeley professor, here's how their "discussion" went:
HOCHSCHILD: The next day we met for sweet teas, and we talked, and I said, "What was it—what's the appeal of Rush Limbaugh?"Incredible, isn't it? This "woman of the left" (New York Times) actually seemed to say that the bagger's hateful misogynist remarks were OK!
"Well, he hates these feminazis."
Oh, I had a little moment there. "And what is a feminazi?"
"Well, you know, cold, tough, hard, sort of self-centered person destroying families."
Ohhh-kay! And she went on to the "environmental wackos" and all these—
And then she asked me, "Is it hard for you to hear what I am saying?" And a bell went off.
Plainly, this Deep South bagger had memorized Rush's best lines. According to Hochschild, here's what happened after that bell went off:
HOCHSCHILD (continuing directly): I thought—a bell went off. I thought, "Actually, no—it's not hard. I'm not here to have a debate, I'm here to learn, you know? I've spent my life teaching students, but now the fun part is learning."You've established a floor of respect!
She said, "I do that too. That's not hard for me either." And then we had that in common. And then she explained that, actually, she saw Rush Limbaugh defending her against this hail of epithets that came, she thought, from Liberal Land. You know, that she was seen as fat and homophobic, and sexist and racist. And she saw him as defending her from that.
Well. I learned a ton over those sweet teas. So I guess what I'm doing is making an invitation for us to continue this voyage over the empathy wall.
Later, she said, "You're my first Democratic friend."
[LAUGHTER]
I thought, "Good, good. We're getting somewhere."
And you know, you don't agree on a lot of things, but hey! You've established a floor of respect and liking on which a lot more can be said, ambivalences can be admitted, complexities arrive. You know, you're real people on both sides. And it's fantastic.
We'll grant you, it doesn't make sense. But Hochschild apparently thought she'd established "a floor of respect" with her teabagger pal—a floor of respect which might allow further conversation to occur.
"I just think that after this election, whoever wins, that people, especially liberals, progressives, I think, need to actually reach out, not be turned inward," the bagger-lover now said.
She said that something called "living room conversations" have been started, in which left and right get together and break bread. "And I just love to see those living room conversations all over the country," the professor improbably said.
Hochschild's thought processes are so odd that questions have to be asked. In his review of her "smart, respectful and compelling book," the New York Times' Jason DeParle describes some of the racist, misogynist, homophobic and nativist ideas around which Hochschild is eager to throw gorilla dust.
In some weird way, she seems to think that powerful entities may be involved in the promulgation of these bagger ideas—larger entities like Fox News, to cite just one of her cop-outs. According to DeParle, Hochschild thinks her bagger buddies "aren’t just soldiers in a class war but victims of one, too."
According to DeParle, she's even willing to sit and listen as "the liberal media" is called out for a share of the blame. She doesn't upend the table and leave the roadhouse when people like her backwoods gospel gal complain about the "hail of epithets" directed at them by RightThinking people like Us.
We try to offer constructive critiques. The bagger will hear it that way!
Assuming she isn't working a con, Hochschild seems to be in the grip of a peculiar fantasy. She seems to think the world isn't populated by two famous old groups, Us and Them—by two different species.
She seems to think that listening tours could end up bringing some of Them around to the world views of Us. To the extent that she thinks politically, she may believe that some of Them might end up voting the CorrectWay, like Us.
She may believe that levels of enmity could be reduced. It's even possible that she thinks that We could end up learning something from Them about some topic at some point! It's hard to know why Governor Brown allows this on Berkeley's campus.
Professor Hochschild conned the young woman who praised all her "empathy" talk. It made us think of another youngish woman who found a saner approach to the rise of Those People.
In the spring of 2009, Rachel Maddow was 36. The Tea Party movement had just begun. Unlike the Berkeley "empathy" types, she knew how to react.
Night after night, she assailed the teabaggers with her hilarious dick jokes. Rather, she brought Ana Marie Cox on her show, night after night, to deliver the bagger jokes.
For herself, Maddow pretended to be embarrassed by the nightly array of dick jokes. We love it when Rachel treats us like fools, just as the baggers love Sean.
In November 2010, Jon Stewart told Maddow that she shouldn't have done what she did. He also told her that she should stop clowning around in general.
He seems to love the baggers too. To watch the whole session, click this.
By now, Stewart has returned to the obscurity he so richly deserves. In April 2009, Maddow showed us how it's done. The dick jokes continued for two weeks. So did her feigned embarrassment. We liberals got to enjoy some good solid tribal fun.
Last Tuesday night, we got teabagged real good in return. On the brighter side, every year from then until now, the suits have handed the daring Maddow her annual millions of dollars.
Let Hochschild talk to her teabagger friends! We have our stars, whose work we enjoy within our own cultural enclave.
Tomorrow: Emanations from Us about Them
What Stewart impossibly said: When Stewart appeared on the Maddow Show, he criticized stereotyping as done by the right. Failing to leave well enough alone, he went on to offer this:
STEWART (11/19/10): It seems dickish...I think that what also comes out sometimes from the other side is "teabagger."We'll disagree with Stewart on one point. In our view, it wasn't funny for a day. To this day, we recall Maddow's first night of teabagger jokes as the most appalling thing we ever saw on cable.
Now that's I think derogatory, and I don't think that anybody would mistake it for that for anything other than that. And it's been used on this network quite frequently by hosts, by guests.
MADDOW: You don't think it was funny that they were calling them, they were saying "teabag the White House before the White House teabags you?"
STEWART: I thought that it was funny for a day.
MADDOW: Funny enough to play the John Water clips of the teabagging thing on the bar?
STEWART: For a day. Probably wouldn't have run with it with guests so much.
MADDOW: I didn't run with it here for months, but I got criticized for it for months.
STEWART: Because you kind of made more hay of it.
MADDOW: Took the joke too far.
STEWART: Now again, I have the leeway do that. Now we get back to a whole other thing. I do have the leeway to do that. The one thing I don't have, that you have, is the ability to do really something about it. You're in the game, like—
MADDOW: You're in the game too. We're in the same game.
STEWART: I don't think so...
It continued through the next week. Last Tuesday, we got teabagged real good.
Stewart kept telling Maddow that she was in an important business, the news business. He kept telling her that she ought to take it seriously.
Maddow continues to mug and clown, and drag Us down, right to this very day. Increasingly, she strikes us as a narcissist a bit reminiscent of Trump.
Single-paragraph NAFTA primer!
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2016
The assertions no voter heard: Six weeks back, Kevin Drum said that, contrary to conventional wisdom, 2016 was "the most policy-heavy election in decades."
He meant that the candidates, including Trump, had made a lot of policy proposals. Building a 20-foot wall along the southern border to keep Mexican immigrants out? That's a policy proposal, Drum correctly said.
(So is building a 30-foot wall along the northern border to keep potential migrants to Canada in. Based on recent events, Trump may have to build that northern wall first. East Berlin, here we come!)
One week before Election Day, Drum offered a clarifying post. Again correctly, he noted that policy proposals had received very little coverage on network nightly news shows.
Truth to tell, policy matters were barely part of this year's coverage at all. Consider Drum's all-new post about NAFTA.
Will President Trump take action on NAFTA? Drum includes a single-paragraph primer on the noxious trade deal:
Now consider a question:
How many voters of any stripe ever heard anyone advance the highlighted claims from Drum's post? How many voters ever heard it said "that NAFTA had essentially no effect on employment?"
How many ever heard it said "that [NAFTA] had essentially no effect on wages?"
Your answers: no one ever heard such things said. Very few voters for Clinton or Trump ever heard such propositions advanced, discussed or debated.
Let's focus on voters for Trump. As we do, let's think about Cal professor Arlie Russell Hochschild and her suggestions about building conversational forums between voters from different "enclaves." (More on her ideas tomorrow.)
Why is it that no Trump voter ever heard those propositions expressed? Why is it that no Trump voter ever heard it said that NAFTA had essentially no effect on employment and essentially no effect on wages?
In part, the answer is this: We the liberals make little attempt to communicate with Those People. We're full of explanations about how litle good it would do.
Do you mind if we make an obvious point? We're lazy and useless and nobody likes us! Add the word arrogant to the mix, and you're drawing a family portrait of our self-impressed floundering tribe.
In truth, we liberals just aren't real impressive. Unless you hear the story from us, in which case we're God's chosen people.
Hochschild wants to speak with The Others. Why would anyone want to do that when we can insult Them instead?
The assertions no voter heard: Six weeks back, Kevin Drum said that, contrary to conventional wisdom, 2016 was "the most policy-heavy election in decades."
He meant that the candidates, including Trump, had made a lot of policy proposals. Building a 20-foot wall along the southern border to keep Mexican immigrants out? That's a policy proposal, Drum correctly said.
(So is building a 30-foot wall along the northern border to keep potential migrants to Canada in. Based on recent events, Trump may have to build that northern wall first. East Berlin, here we come!)
One week before Election Day, Drum offered a clarifying post. Again correctly, he noted that policy proposals had received very little coverage on network nightly news shows.
Truth to tell, policy matters were barely part of this year's coverage at all. Consider Drum's all-new post about NAFTA.
Will President Trump take action on NAFTA? Drum includes a single-paragraph primer on the noxious trade deal:
DRUM (11/16/16): Trump almost has to do something, considering how central NAFTA was to his campaign. But in the real world, there's not much upside. The OECD estimates that NAFTA had essentially no effect on employment, and the International Trade Commission estimates that it had essentially no effect on wages. So withdrawing wouldn't do any good for all those working-class folks Trump appealed to, but it would cause plenty of upheaval for businesses that are tightly integrated with their Mexican supply chains.For starters, Drum is right. Demon NAFTA played a key role in Trump's bumptious campaign. Endlessly, his supporters heard all about the trade deal's demon effects.
Now consider a question:
How many voters of any stripe ever heard anyone advance the highlighted claims from Drum's post? How many voters ever heard it said "that NAFTA had essentially no effect on employment?"
How many ever heard it said "that [NAFTA] had essentially no effect on wages?"
Your answers: no one ever heard such things said. Very few voters for Clinton or Trump ever heard such propositions advanced, discussed or debated.
Let's focus on voters for Trump. As we do, let's think about Cal professor Arlie Russell Hochschild and her suggestions about building conversational forums between voters from different "enclaves." (More on her ideas tomorrow.)
Why is it that no Trump voter ever heard those propositions expressed? Why is it that no Trump voter ever heard it said that NAFTA had essentially no effect on employment and essentially no effect on wages?
In part, the answer is this: We the liberals make little attempt to communicate with Those People. We're full of explanations about how litle good it would do.
Do you mind if we make an obvious point? We're lazy and useless and nobody likes us! Add the word arrogant to the mix, and you're drawing a family portrait of our self-impressed floundering tribe.
In truth, we liberals just aren't real impressive. Unless you hear the story from us, in which case we're God's chosen people.
Hochschild wants to speak with The Others. Why would anyone want to do that when we can insult Them instead?
Candidate Trump said these things long ago!
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2016
Do journalists pay any attention: Our view? Ever since 1965, the "Goldwater rule" had served our discourse well.
According to the Goldwater rule, you aren't supposed to bring psychiatric analysis into campaign coverage. In normal times, that's a darn good idea.
Sometimes the rule has been honored in the breach. During Campaign 2000, journalists served as amateur shrinks concerning the troubling Candidate Gore. Most strikingly, these amateur shrinks wondered why the candidate kept making ridiculous claims "when the truth would have been just as good."
They invented the ridiculous claims, then psychoanalyzed their alleged perpetrator. Displaying our foremost skill, we liberals stared off into space.
As a general matter, the Goldwater rule has served our discourse well. It did so for fifty years. This year, we'd say it started to fail.
It seemed to us that Candidate Trump's behavior was so strange that it cried out for psychological analysis. Unfortunately, the journalists who invented Gore's lies now tended to avert their eyes from Trump's. In line with that 50-year-old rule, they failed to confront his apparent disturbance. We'll all get to see where it leads.
In our view, Trump's election has extended a long process in which our major systems have been breaking down. Our big newspapers were Trump before Trump. In his own ludicrous conduct, he simply jacked their "fake news" culture up a notch.
Concerning the press, we've had a question since Candidate Trump's big win. Did these people pay any attention to anything Trump ever said?
We had that reaction to Frank Bruni's new column. In our view, he starts with a puzzling claim about Trump's stance on Obamacare, although he's hardly the first:
That wouldn't be our overall bet. That tiny comment about building a fence in spots was a single tiny comment. Does that mean The Wall will turn into a hedge? Maybe Bruni needs a bit of counseling help at this point!
We mention The Wall which may be a hedge to get to the health care matter. Did journalists listen to anything Trump said at any part of this race?
Long ago, Candidate Trump said he wanted to retain the happy-talk parts of Obamacare—for example, the part about pre-existing conditions. He said this in the Republican debate on February 25. He said it in the second debate with Clinton on October 9:
Along the way, he and his savants have also discussed the possibility of letting children stay on their parents’ insurance plans. Here's one such statement quoted in the Huffington Post last May.
Nothing Trump has said about this has ever made any sense, of course. But despite the claim which major journalists have been cutting and pasting this week, these happy-talk statements aren't new.
To our ear and eye, Candidate Trump seemed diagnosable. We'd say that situation still obtains. It's a dangerous state of affairs.
That said, our journalists don't seem enormously far behind him. Their part of the system broke down long ago, long before Trump extended the wreckage last Tuesday night.
Do journalists pay any attention: Our view? Ever since 1965, the "Goldwater rule" had served our discourse well.
According to the Goldwater rule, you aren't supposed to bring psychiatric analysis into campaign coverage. In normal times, that's a darn good idea.
Sometimes the rule has been honored in the breach. During Campaign 2000, journalists served as amateur shrinks concerning the troubling Candidate Gore. Most strikingly, these amateur shrinks wondered why the candidate kept making ridiculous claims "when the truth would have been just as good."
They invented the ridiculous claims, then psychoanalyzed their alleged perpetrator. Displaying our foremost skill, we liberals stared off into space.
As a general matter, the Goldwater rule has served our discourse well. It did so for fifty years. This year, we'd say it started to fail.
It seemed to us that Candidate Trump's behavior was so strange that it cried out for psychological analysis. Unfortunately, the journalists who invented Gore's lies now tended to avert their eyes from Trump's. In line with that 50-year-old rule, they failed to confront his apparent disturbance. We'll all get to see where it leads.
In our view, Trump's election has extended a long process in which our major systems have been breaking down. Our big newspapers were Trump before Trump. In his own ludicrous conduct, he simply jacked their "fake news" culture up a notch.
Concerning the press, we've had a question since Candidate Trump's big win. Did these people pay any attention to anything Trump ever said?
We had that reaction to Frank Bruni's new column. In our view, he starts with a puzzling claim about Trump's stance on Obamacare, although he's hardly the first:
BRUNI (11/16/16): If Election Day seemed to be a dream (or, rather, nightmare) devoid of logic, the week since has done little to render the world more coherent.Regarding The Wall, it sounds to us like Bruni is wishin' and hopin'. It sounds like he's pretending that Trump will turn out to be like all the rest—that he'll backtrack and flip-flop and slip-slide away, and end in the mushy middle.
Let’s review:
Donald Trump, exulting in his big win, addressed the question of The Wall. You know, the central pledge of his candidacy, reiterated at every rally. A mighty barrier between the United States and Mexico that only he was potent enough to erect.
And what did he have to say?
That it might be a mere fence in spots.
A fence! Just three days after his victory, he was downscaling, backtracking. At this rate, he’ll be talking at his inauguration about a glorious hedge along the border. By April it’ll be flowering shrubs, with blossoms that spell out “Welcome to America.” And by June? Some sort of new Christo installation, maybe the world’s largest-ever topiary display.
As for Obamacare, it’s apparently not so awful after all. Trump said he liked the part that lets kids stay on their parents’ insurance plans, which is, if you think about it, sort of what Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric have been doing all along. He also liked the part that prevents insurers from disqualifying people for pre-existing conditions.
That wouldn't be our overall bet. That tiny comment about building a fence in spots was a single tiny comment. Does that mean The Wall will turn into a hedge? Maybe Bruni needs a bit of counseling help at this point!
We mention The Wall which may be a hedge to get to the health care matter. Did journalists listen to anything Trump said at any part of this race?
Long ago, Candidate Trump said he wanted to retain the happy-talk parts of Obamacare—for example, the part about pre-existing conditions. He said this in the Republican debate on February 25. He said it in the second debate with Clinton on October 9:
COOPER (10/9/16): You've said you want to end Obamacare. You've also said you want to make coverage accessible for people with pre-existing conditions. How do you force insurance companies to do that if you're no longer mandating that every American get insurance?That doesn't exactly sound like English. But it isn't new for Trump to say that he wants to retain the provision that prevents insurers from disqualifying people for pre-existing conditions. Despite what people like Bruni keep writing, that isn't new in the past week.
TRUMP: We're going to be able to. You're going to have plans—
COOPER: What does that mean?
TRUMP: Well, I'll tell you what it means. You're going to have plans that are so good, because we're going to have so much competition in the insurance industry. Once we break out—once we break out the lines and allow the competition to come—
COOPER: Are you going—are you going to have a mandate that Americans have to have health insurance?
TRUMP: President Obama—Anderson, excuse me. President Obama, by keeping those lines, the boundary lines around each state, it was almost gone until just very toward the end of the passage of Obamacare, which, by the way, was a fraud. You know that, because Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, was said—he said it was a great lie, it was a big lie. President Obama said you keep your doctor, you keep your plan. The whole thing was a fraud, and it doesn't work.
But when we get rid of those lines, you will have competition, and we will be able to keep pre-existing, we'll also be able to help people that can't get—don't have money because we are going to have people protected.
Along the way, he and his savants have also discussed the possibility of letting children stay on their parents’ insurance plans. Here's one such statement quoted in the Huffington Post last May.
Nothing Trump has said about this has ever made any sense, of course. But despite the claim which major journalists have been cutting and pasting this week, these happy-talk statements aren't new.
To our ear and eye, Candidate Trump seemed diagnosable. We'd say that situation still obtains. It's a dangerous state of affairs.
That said, our journalists don't seem enormously far behind him. Their part of the system broke down long ago, long before Trump extended the wreckage last Tuesday night.
TEABAGGED: Berkeley goes to the Bayou State!
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2016
Part 3—More of Lincoln's nonsense: Let's be honest just for once. By the standards of us fiery liberals, Lincoln just didn't get it.
On March 4, 1865, he delivered his second inaugural address. A conflagration was nearing its end. By the standards of We Who Know Much Better, he delivered one of the most clueless speeches in all of human history.
Lincoln had just won a war, or so such matters get scored. He should have gloried in the pride of his strength, if we might borrow from Homer.
Instead, he gave a short and ridiculous speech. He was soon offering this:
By fiery modern standards, Lincoln was badly off course. But as he continued, his cluelessness surpassed all understanding:
Lincoln, the "victor" in a war, was saying that the terrible war had been "woe due to those by whom offense came?" Woe which had been delivered by God to each of the two warring sides?
Is that what the backwoods bumpkin was saying? We'd say it actually was:
To our ear, he didn't seem to mean that. Indeed, even as he finished, he seemed to suggest that we humans see through a glass darkly (our italics):
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
"With malice toward none?" Not even toward The Others, the bad people Over There?
"With firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right?" Does that suggest that we, the victors, could imaginably be limited or wrong in some of the things we see? Can that be what Lincoln meant?
Fortunately, the modern liberal has learned to reject such radical constructs. We know that God and/or evolution has given Us to see the right, full and complete freaking stop.
Our leading sages have spent the past week reasserting this divine truth. It's a true belief to which all tribes have clung, extending back into prehistory.
We modern liberals have come to see that Lincoln was pitifully clueless. We know the same thing about Dr. King, who, at age 26, refused to hate the Montgomery city fathers who, he believed, had helped create the atmosphere which led to the firebombing of his home, with his wife and baby inside.
"Even their ministers" had taught them their values, Dr. King said in Stride Toward Freedom. Dr. King was describing the thought process by which he rejected "corroding anger" and reaffirmed "the love ethic of Jesus," an ethic he'd come to fully embrace partly through study of Gandhi.
Crazy old man! As modern progressives, we have come to understand how clueless King's attitude was.
Within the past year, a third clueless wonder has appeared upon the American scene. We refer to Arlie Russell Hoschschild, whose current book is a finalist for a National Book Award—in the non-fiction category, no less!
Professor Hochschild's book is called Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. In his review of the book for the New York Times, Jason DeParle described Hochschild as "a distinguished Berkeley sociologist" and "a woman of the left."
DeParle describes Strangers in Their Own Land as "a smart, respectful and compelling book." He also describes the foolishness which now links Hochschild to historical figures like Lincoln and Dr. King.
The book is "a generous but disconcerting look at the Tea Party," DeParle says.
Good lord! Hochschild's book is a study of attitudes among some Tea Party adherents in Louisiana. In a mid-October book event taped by C-Span, Hochschild described the way the project began:
Fellow liberals, please! Why would we want to do that?
Hochschild went to Louisiana. She says she chose the Bayou State because only 14 percent of white Louisianans had voted for Obama in 2008. (In California, the corresponding figure was over 50 percent, she noted.)
More specifically, she said she sought out "older whites, maybe especially religious older whites, in Louisiana. So our voyage starts there, with a question," she mysteriously said.
By now, the modern liberal has already turned this lunacy off. Hochschild has already referred to "two truths." In this way, she has produced a clear offense against our modern RightThink.
You might even say she was walking the path Lincoln had walked in that speech. She wanted to "turn her alarm systems off?"
Why would she want to do that?
Already, Hochschild had crossed the line. Having acknowledged that obvious fact, we're going to make a confession.
For ourselves, we've always been suckers for those who want to cross over those lines. For those who, possibly drawn by a certain "love ethic," refuse to loathe The Others, even after their behavior has possibly led to the firebombing of their own homes or the such.
History remembers those people—the Lincolns, the Kings, the Mandelas. For ourselves, we've watched Hochschild's C-Span tape with that puzzling fact in mind.
Hochschild journeyed to Calcasieu Parish to speak with Tea Party adherents. The people she met weren't Trump voters yet; her project predated that episode.
Her voyage started "with a question." By October 15, it had led to that book event which, for us, was highlighted by the first question Hochschild was asked.
The question came from a young woman who said she was a nurse. "So first, I wanted to thank you for bringing some empathy to this election cycle," this young woman said, right around the 25-minute mark on that tape.
Oh, what the heck! Here's what the young woman asked. For what it's worth, we'll guess that she voted for Clinton:
In response to the young woman's question, Hochschild described her attempt to climb "the empathy wall" in the wilds of the Bayou State. She described drinking sweet teas with a woman who had told her that she loved Rush Limbaugh.
"What's the appeal of Rush Limbaugh?" Hochschild asked her, over sweet teas. The answer took several forms.
We haven't read Hochschild's book; we think her tape is fascinating. We were most struck by what that young woman said after Hochschild replied to her question.
"I would just add, I'm a nurse," that young woman said. "And I would say that it's just incredible what happens when people feel heard."
Hochschild was describing an approach to people in an enclave which differed from hers. We thought of a different reaction to those people, one we observed on the TV machine in April 2009.
We thought about those dueling approaches to those people in Tea Party land. We also thought about this:
We thought about how completely we got ourselves teabagged just last Tuesday night.
Tomorrow: Two attitudes toward Those People
Part 3—More of Lincoln's nonsense: Let's be honest just for once. By the standards of us fiery liberals, Lincoln just didn't get it.
On March 4, 1865, he delivered his second inaugural address. A conflagration was nearing its end. By the standards of We Who Know Much Better, he delivered one of the most clueless speeches in all of human history.
Lincoln had just won a war, or so such matters get scored. He should have gloried in the pride of his strength, if we might borrow from Homer.
Instead, he gave a short and ridiculous speech. He was soon offering this:
LINCOLN (3/4/65): Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.Say what? "But let us judge not, that we be not judged?"
By fiery modern standards, Lincoln was badly off course. But as he continued, his cluelessness surpassed all understanding:
LINCOLN: The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?Say what? God had given this terrible war to both North and South?
Lincoln, the "victor" in a war, was saying that the terrible war had been "woe due to those by whom offense came?" Woe which had been delivered by God to each of the two warring sides?
Is that what the backwoods bumpkin was saying? We'd say it actually was:
LINCOLN (continuing directly): Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."Did Lincoln mean it would be righteous and just for the others to lose their wealth and shed their blood? The Others, and nobody else?
To our ear, he didn't seem to mean that. Indeed, even as he finished, he seemed to suggest that we humans see through a glass darkly (our italics):
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
"With malice toward none?" Not even toward The Others, the bad people Over There?
"With firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right?" Does that suggest that we, the victors, could imaginably be limited or wrong in some of the things we see? Can that be what Lincoln meant?
Fortunately, the modern liberal has learned to reject such radical constructs. We know that God and/or evolution has given Us to see the right, full and complete freaking stop.
Our leading sages have spent the past week reasserting this divine truth. It's a true belief to which all tribes have clung, extending back into prehistory.
We modern liberals have come to see that Lincoln was pitifully clueless. We know the same thing about Dr. King, who, at age 26, refused to hate the Montgomery city fathers who, he believed, had helped create the atmosphere which led to the firebombing of his home, with his wife and baby inside.
"Even their ministers" had taught them their values, Dr. King said in Stride Toward Freedom. Dr. King was describing the thought process by which he rejected "corroding anger" and reaffirmed "the love ethic of Jesus," an ethic he'd come to fully embrace partly through study of Gandhi.
Crazy old man! As modern progressives, we have come to understand how clueless King's attitude was.
Within the past year, a third clueless wonder has appeared upon the American scene. We refer to Arlie Russell Hoschschild, whose current book is a finalist for a National Book Award—in the non-fiction category, no less!
Professor Hochschild's book is called Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. In his review of the book for the New York Times, Jason DeParle described Hochschild as "a distinguished Berkeley sociologist" and "a woman of the left."
DeParle describes Strangers in Their Own Land as "a smart, respectful and compelling book." He also describes the foolishness which now links Hochschild to historical figures like Lincoln and Dr. King.
The book is "a generous but disconcerting look at the Tea Party," DeParle says.
Good lord! Hochschild's book is a study of attitudes among some Tea Party adherents in Louisiana. In a mid-October book event taped by C-Span, Hochschild described the way the project began:
HOCHSCHILD (10/15/16): Five years ago, I sensed, like so many of us did, a split between left and right that was getting more extreme. Each side was hardening. And that we lived in kind of enclaves, so that I would talk to my husband and best friend, we'd chatter away, and we'd agree, and then I would open the newspaper and say, "Oh my gosh, look! There are two truths here. There's—I'm not living in the whole world." Or I'd look at television and feel the same.Hochschild explained what came next. "So I thought, I want to get out of my enclave, take my political and moral alarm system off and permit myself to get very curious about the lives of people who lived in an enclave as far away and as distant from my own as I could."
And I knew that, actually, other Americans were in the same situation, that we live in media enclaves, in technological enclaves and in geographic enclaves. Berkeley, California, teaching sociology—I was in a super enclave!
[LAUGHTER]
Fellow liberals, please! Why would we want to do that?
Hochschild went to Louisiana. She says she chose the Bayou State because only 14 percent of white Louisianans had voted for Obama in 2008. (In California, the corresponding figure was over 50 percent, she noted.)
More specifically, she said she sought out "older whites, maybe especially religious older whites, in Louisiana. So our voyage starts there, with a question," she mysteriously said.
By now, the modern liberal has already turned this lunacy off. Hochschild has already referred to "two truths." In this way, she has produced a clear offense against our modern RightThink.
You might even say she was walking the path Lincoln had walked in that speech. She wanted to "turn her alarm systems off?"
Why would she want to do that?
Already, Hochschild had crossed the line. Having acknowledged that obvious fact, we're going to make a confession.
For ourselves, we've always been suckers for those who want to cross over those lines. For those who, possibly drawn by a certain "love ethic," refuse to loathe The Others, even after their behavior has possibly led to the firebombing of their own homes or the such.
History remembers those people—the Lincolns, the Kings, the Mandelas. For ourselves, we've watched Hochschild's C-Span tape with that puzzling fact in mind.
Hochschild journeyed to Calcasieu Parish to speak with Tea Party adherents. The people she met weren't Trump voters yet; her project predated that episode.
Her voyage started "with a question." By October 15, it had led to that book event which, for us, was highlighted by the first question Hochschild was asked.
The question came from a young woman who said she was a nurse. "So first, I wanted to thank you for bringing some empathy to this election cycle," this young woman said, right around the 25-minute mark on that tape.
Oh, what the heck! Here's what the young woman asked. For what it's worth, we'll guess that she voted for Clinton:
QUESTIONER (10/15/16): So first, I wanted to thank you for bringing some empathy to this election cycle. I've been so disheartened, being sensitive to all the tone of derision that has really permeated, especially among the left—"How could these people think this way?" And there's so much "othering," which is just furthering the process in the first place."There's been so much othering?" Are youngsters permitted to say that?
HOCHSCHILD: Right.
QUESTIONER: But I think there's a lot of misperception of this election as the endgame. And it's not a—you know, it's just an event. So how do we think beyond the election? Because if Trump gets elected, the left is going to feel hurt and alienated. If Hillary gets elected, it just continues this "strangers in their own land" paradox. How do we continue the empathy after the election?
In response to the young woman's question, Hochschild described her attempt to climb "the empathy wall" in the wilds of the Bayou State. She described drinking sweet teas with a woman who had told her that she loved Rush Limbaugh.
"What's the appeal of Rush Limbaugh?" Hochschild asked her, over sweet teas. The answer took several forms.
We haven't read Hochschild's book; we think her tape is fascinating. We were most struck by what that young woman said after Hochschild replied to her question.
"I would just add, I'm a nurse," that young woman said. "And I would say that it's just incredible what happens when people feel heard."
Hochschild was describing an approach to people in an enclave which differed from hers. We thought of a different reaction to those people, one we observed on the TV machine in April 2009.
We thought about those dueling approaches to those people in Tea Party land. We also thought about this:
We thought about how completely we got ourselves teabagged just last Tuesday night.
Tomorrow: Two attitudes toward Those People
The weird incompetence of our elites!
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2016
Big polling experts in action: Credit where due! Among cable stars, Lawrence O'Donnell took the cake when it came to crazily bogus predictions.
In this earlier post, we recalled the ridiculous way he assured the world that Candidate Clinton was running away with Florida. A few nights later—on Friday, November 4—he opened his show with the number-crunching prediction savant, Princeton professor Sam Wang.
Professor Wang said the Senate could go either way. No so with the White House!
Next, O'Donnell asked Wang to detail his methodology. The skillful professor explained that he only uses the most accurate polls. Along the way, O'Donnell displayed the mawkish behavior TV performers tend to direct at mental giants from Princeton:
It's amazing how little is currently being said about the three interventions in this campaign performed by Comey the God. Also, how little is being said about the failure of the predictive giants who sailed the ship of state into an iceberg, as was done with the unsinkable Titanic of old.
In this morning's New York Times, Julie Turkewitz filed a fascinating report from the conference of the International Association of Political Consultants. She described a remarkable panel discussion involving three polling experts.
Who knows? Maybe Turkewitz is misreporting what these experts said. But if Turkewitz is reporting it straight, they made some remarkable statements.
The experts seem to have described themselves as complete incompetents. Presumably, the word "some" really means "two" in this three-panelist context:
Omero theorized that pollsters simply withheld data which favored Trump. That's pretty much what Trump said all along.
Omero further said it had been impossible to conceive of Trump winning. Anderson seemed to say that he simply refused to believe that a key segment of voters could possibly break for Trump. He'd been reading the flight of birds.
We've suggested for years that you shouldn't put your faith in our professors and experts.
We've long been amazed by the general incompetence of the nation's education experts. If Turkewitz is reporting this straight, it may be time for a pair of top polling experts to go.
Big polling experts in action: Credit where due! Among cable stars, Lawrence O'Donnell took the cake when it came to crazily bogus predictions.
In this earlier post, we recalled the ridiculous way he assured the world that Candidate Clinton was running away with Florida. A few nights later—on Friday, November 4—he opened his show with the number-crunching prediction savant, Princeton professor Sam Wang.
Professor Wang said the Senate could go either way. No so with the White House!
O'DONNELL (11/4/16): Your consortium has put out a projection of a 99 percent chance of [Clinton] winning, is that correct?Professor Wang had even worked in a joke, so sure was he of the outcome. At any rate, he was reporting a probability of more than 99 percent.
WANG: Yes. We should be careful about probabilities this high because once the probability gets that high, it's not so clear that it matters whether it's 91 percent, 95 percent or 99 percent. But yes, that's right. The probability is high enough that my side is reporting it as currently above 99 percent.
O'DONNELL: Just— Is it possible to get a hundred percent probability on one of these things?
WANG: It is never possible to get exactly a hundred percent probability. If my site says 101 percent, then you should worry.
O'DONNELL: OK, so she got the best score she can get. That's the highest score on the SATs here, as it were, of this thing.
WANG: Yes.
Next, O'Donnell asked Wang to detail his methodology. The skillful professor explained that he only uses the most accurate polls. Along the way, O'Donnell displayed the mawkish behavior TV performers tend to direct at mental giants from Princeton:
WANG: The Princeton Election Consortium and election.princeton.edu uses entirely state polls. State polls are the most accurate of the polls that are available to polling analysts in the U.S.If a hurricane hit the East Coast, Wang's prediction might be affected, he said. Four nights later, in beautiful weather, Dewey beat Truman again!
And so what we do is we take each state, take the available polls for the last two weeks, actually a little bit shorter period now, calculate a median, so arrange them in order and calculate the median of those polls, figure out the possibility from that of who's ahead in either state, in each of those states, and then take that and compound that across all 56 races.
There are 56 races that determine the Electoral College and that's over 72 quadrillion possibilities and so I have a little script that I've written on my computer that does that. It figures out what the median is, or the midpoint of all those possibilities. And the median currently is at 312 electoral votes, and so the general idea is that is our sharpest snapshot of where the race appears to be, based on today's state polling.
O'DONNELL: That is the first time I've heard "72 quadrillion" used in a sentence, but that's because I'm not in your class at Princeton. And so between now and poll closing Tuesday night, what could change this?
WANG: It would be really unusual for anything to change. I would say that opinion doesn't move very quickly. In the last two decades of polarized politics, voters have gotten more and more entrenched and the only thing that can change is small variations in turnout.
So for instance, if there's a really bad storm on the East Coast then that could depress turnout maybe one or two points, same on the West Coast. So I think given the way things stand right now, it would take a very large weather event to change things and, you know, the forecasters in that domain are not expecting a giant weather event.
It's amazing how little is currently being said about the three interventions in this campaign performed by Comey the God. Also, how little is being said about the failure of the predictive giants who sailed the ship of state into an iceberg, as was done with the unsinkable Titanic of old.
In this morning's New York Times, Julie Turkewitz filed a fascinating report from the conference of the International Association of Political Consultants. She described a remarkable panel discussion involving three polling experts.
Who knows? Maybe Turkewitz is misreporting what these experts said. But if Turkewitz is reporting it straight, they made some remarkable statements.
The experts seem to have described themselves as complete incompetents. Presumably, the word "some" really means "two" in this three-panelist context:
TURKEWITZ: In one session dedicated to polling, three panelists who had predicted Mrs. Clinton would win took to the stage, framed by a royal blue backdrop. Instead of PowerPoint presentations and state-by-state voter analyses, there was morose self-flagellation, as some admitted they had spent the election seduced by “magical thinking,” unable to envision a Trump presidency and therefore blind to the story in front of them.If Turkewitz is reporting this straight, two of the pollsters confessed to "magical thinking." They'd been unable to envision a win by Trump. For that reason, they were blind to what was occurring.
Margie Omero of PSB Research theorized that pollsters had held back Trump-leaning data, unwilling to release something that looked like an outlier. Or that Trump supporters had simply not told pollsters the truth, either embarrassed by their choice or angry at callers whom they perceived as part of a conspiracy against him.
“It was impossible to conceive of an incoming President Trump,” said Ms. Omero, whose firm has worked for both former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton over the years. “A couple-point advantage seemed comforting to prevent something so catastrophic.”
Mr. Anderson, the Democratic pollster, said he should have seen the win all along.
“The story that played out was right in front of me,” he said. (Mrs. Clinton never went above 45 percent in his surveys.) “But my basic assumption, and why I think why I was wrong was I continued to say to myself: ‘This segment of voters, about 15 percent, who view both of them unfavorably, they think Clinton has the judgment, temperament and qualifications to be president. They do not think the same of Trump.’ So I believed that at the end of the day they would vote for Clinton.”
Omero theorized that pollsters simply withheld data which favored Trump. That's pretty much what Trump said all along.
Omero further said it had been impossible to conceive of Trump winning. Anderson seemed to say that he simply refused to believe that a key segment of voters could possibly break for Trump. He'd been reading the flight of birds.
We've suggested for years that you shouldn't put your faith in our professors and experts.
We've long been amazed by the general incompetence of the nation's education experts. If Turkewitz is reporting this straight, it may be time for a pair of top polling experts to go.
The way Amy Chozick handles her facts!
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2016
One episode out of a million: As we type, Hillary Clinton has expanded her lead in the popular vote to roughly 860,000 votes, with votes still being counted.
As Kellyanne Conway parades around citing the "mandate" received by Trump, this is a serious news topic. On Sunday, The Atlantic published an actual news report concerning the ongoing count.
The Atlantic's actual news report contained some real information. The Atlantic's Andrew McGill linked to David Wasserman, an editor at Cook Political Report who is tracking turnout. According to McGill, Wasserman "estimates that Clinton could be ahead by 2 percentage points in the popular vote" by the time all the counting is done.
We don't know where the count will end up, but this is an important news topic. Along with the rest of our systems and practices, it seems that the Electoral College is starting to break down.
On Sunday, The Atlantic offered some real reporting about the ongoing count. As we noted yesterday, the New York Times' Amy Chozick played Goofus concerning this topic in her own front-page news report.
As we noted yesterday, we were struck by another factual claim in Chozick's front-page report. Her language went something like this:
It was April 11, 2015. The Times still hadn't published its gong-show report about the scary uranium deal; that would come at the end of the month. But on April 11, out of nowhere, Chozick and Haberman published an unsourced assertion:
As usual, Chozick offered no source for her snark-ridden claim. But so what? One day later, you-know-who swung into action in a snarky column headlined "Grandmama Mia!"
Chozick repeated her unsourced claim in an April 15 news report. On April 17, the editors of the New York Times complained about all the unfairness and ugliness which now surrounded the claim:
Two days later, Patrick Healy reported more of the good solid fun on the trail:
The inflated estimate had been "widely circulated." The fellows forgot to say where the inflated claim got its start.
The inflated estimate got its start in Chozick's unsourced report. Dowd called it "obscene" the next day. Within days, the whole world was watching.
This was a fairly minor episode in this long, appalling, gong-show campaign. That said, a mathematical certainty obtains:
A million such episodes, all tilted one way, add up to a "narrative." After a million such episodes, a candidate has been "defined."
When we saw Chozick's report this Sunday, we thought back to her initial unsourced statement. Her "inflated estimate" traveled around the world. Last Sunday morning, the campaign done, the truth finally got its pants on.
Our Electoral College system seems to be breaking down. By way of contrast, the New York Times broke down long ago. It's just that the children aren't willing to tell you.
Dearest darlings! Use your heads! It simply isn't done!
One episode out of a million: As we type, Hillary Clinton has expanded her lead in the popular vote to roughly 860,000 votes, with votes still being counted.
As Kellyanne Conway parades around citing the "mandate" received by Trump, this is a serious news topic. On Sunday, The Atlantic published an actual news report concerning the ongoing count.
The Atlantic's actual news report contained some real information. The Atlantic's Andrew McGill linked to David Wasserman, an editor at Cook Political Report who is tracking turnout. According to McGill, Wasserman "estimates that Clinton could be ahead by 2 percentage points in the popular vote" by the time all the counting is done.
We don't know where the count will end up, but this is an important news topic. Along with the rest of our systems and practices, it seems that the Electoral College is starting to break down.
On Sunday, The Atlantic offered some real reporting about the ongoing count. As we noted yesterday, the New York Times' Amy Chozick played Goofus concerning this topic in her own front-page news report.
As we noted yesterday, we were struck by another factual claim in Chozick's front-page report. Her language went something like this:
CHOZICK (11/13/16): Before Mrs. Clinton spoke on Saturday, her finance director, Dennis Cheng, thanked the donors on the call, each of whom had raised at least $100,000. The campaign brought in nearly $1 billion to spend heavily on data efforts, to disperse hundreds of staff members to battleground states, and to air television advertisements—only to fall short to Mr. Trump’s upstart operation."The campaign brought in nearly $1 billion?" We thought back to one of Chozick's characteristic fails.
It was April 11, 2015. The Times still hadn't published its gong-show report about the scary uranium deal; that would come at the end of the month. But on April 11, out of nowhere, Chozick and Haberman published an unsourced assertion:
CHOZICK/HABERMAN (4/11/15): But even as Mrs. Clinton attempts to set aside her celebrity and offer herself as a fighter for ordinary voters, her finance team and the outside groups supporting her candidacy have started collecting checks in what is expected to be a $2.5 billion effort, dwarfing the vast majority of her would-be rivals in both parties.There Mrs. Clinton went again! She was trying to seem like one of Us. But her team had started collecting checks which would total $2.5 trillion!
As usual, Chozick offered no source for her snark-ridden claim. But so what? One day later, you-know-who swung into action in a snarky column headlined "Grandmama Mia!"
DOWD (4/12/15): On the eve of her campaign launch, [Clinton] released an updated epilogue to her banal second memoir, “Hard Choices,” highlighting her role as a grandmother.Within one day, the unsourced claim had been rated "obscene." Around the crackpot conservative world, every blogger and his funder began to scream about the vast obscene sum.
“I’m more convinced than ever that our future in the 21st century depends on our ability to ensure that a child born in the hills of Appalachia or the Mississippi Delta or the Rio Grande Valley grows up with the same shot at success that Charlotte will,” she wrote, referring to her granddaughter.
This was designed to rebut critics who say she’s too close to Wall Street and too grabby with speech money and foundation donations from Arab autocrats to wage a sincere fight against income inequality.
But if Hillary really wants to help those children, maybe she should give them some of the ostensible and obscene $2.5 billion that she is planning to spend to persuade us to make her grandmother of our country.
Chozick repeated her unsourced claim in an April 15 news report. On April 17, the editors of the New York Times complained about all the unfairness and ugliness which now surrounded the claim:
THE EDITORS (4/17/15): Deanna Alexander, a member of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, has apparently begun calling Hillary Clinton "Ovary." On Wednesday, she tweeted:Ovary Clinton had set a ridiculous goal of $2.5 billion! The fun had begun with a sad subhuman in Wisconsin, had apparently spread to Rush.
Did Ovary's campaign REALLY set a $2.5 BILLION goal just for her own #POTUS run? Yet SHE claims there's too much $ in politics? Sheesh #tcot
—Deanna Alexander (@DAinWIS)15 Apr 15
If Ovary's campaign spends its $2.5 Billion goal, that's $20.00 +/- for every single voter in America. She's desperate. @rushlimbaugh #tcot
—Deanna Alexander (@DAinWIS)15 Apr 15
Via The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
"Alexander, who is considered a possible candidate for the state Senate, said she found it interesting that people have jumped to the conclusion that she was referring to Hillary Clinton when she discussed 'Ovary's campaign.' She noted that Time Magazine ran a 'sexist' article on the former secretary of state earlier this month by suggesting that Clinton is ready to run for president now that she's past menopause."
Two days later, Patrick Healy reported more of the good solid fun on the trail:
HEALY (4/19/15): Mr. Rubio offered ambitious ideas for restructuring the nation's higher education system, such as having colleges tell students how much money they might earn with certain degrees before they take out loans. But first, he warmed up the crowd by noting that Mrs. Clinton might try to raise as much as $2.5 billion for her campaign.Healy didn't address the accuracy of the claim, for which no source had been given. By the end of May, the Times was reporting that the Clinton campaign had pushed back against it:
''That's a lot of Chipotle, my friends,'' he said to laughter.
LICHTBLAU/CONFESSORE (5/31/15): Inflated estimates of Mrs. Clinton's campaign budget—a figure of $2.5 billion was widely circulated—have also been a headache for her campaign and for Priorities USA. A more realistic fund-raising target for her campaign, they say, is around $1 billion.According to Lichtblau and Confessore, some bad acid had been going around in the form of an "inflated estimate."
The inflated estimate had been "widely circulated." The fellows forgot to say where the inflated claim got its start.
The inflated estimate got its start in Chozick's unsourced report. Dowd called it "obscene" the next day. Within days, the whole world was watching.
This was a fairly minor episode in this long, appalling, gong-show campaign. That said, a mathematical certainty obtains:
A million such episodes, all tilted one way, add up to a "narrative." After a million such episodes, a candidate has been "defined."
When we saw Chozick's report this Sunday, we thought back to her initial unsourced statement. Her "inflated estimate" traveled around the world. Last Sunday morning, the campaign done, the truth finally got its pants on.
Our Electoral College system seems to be breaking down. By way of contrast, the New York Times broke down long ago. It's just that the children aren't willing to tell you.
Dearest darlings! Use your heads! It simply isn't done!
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