Everyone knows that the couch bit is 'misinformation' -- to act like that's the same as misinformation (leading to violence) by MAGA is absolutely ridiculous.
This isn't the first time that Nate the fact checker has helpfully labeled the couch thing as misinformation for us.
I'm personally open to Nate's general assertion that fact checkers tend to be partisan in favor of the Democratic party, but using an obvious joke/meme as the exemplar of this thesis doesn't do the argument any favors.
If Republicans used more facts, they'd also enjoy the benefit of fact checking. Not really sure if it's partisan vs they just can't stop making shit up
Also there are so so many instances of media stating that it's false, so as an example it directly undercuts what Nate's saying. Whole thing has a smell of bothsidesing. I want to know if Nate has any other examples.
“Bothsidesing” - when your head is so far up your own ass that listening to others perspective or admitting your own side isn’t infallible is seen as dangerous
Yeah but “asset” in an intelligence term doesn’t mean active participant. There’s little doubt that Trump is Putin’s useful idiot, and may even be compromised in some way (but what on earth could Putin have on Trump that would shock the American Public when nothing else has). But the narrative that Trump sought to coordinate his campaign with Russia in 2016 was both probability false and verifiably based on a false document.
As a left-Democrat who was very animated about the issue in 2016, I will agree with Nate that Russiagate turned out to be mostly misinformation.
No, it didn't. It was speculation, that was answered with an investigation, and a conclusion with answers. Any remaining speculation is within the parameters of the information we know.
That is not misinformation. That's how it's supposed to work. Misinformation is just another word for lying. You can't lie when no one knows what the truth is yet, unless what you're claiming is that we already know the truth.
“ But the narrative that Trump sought to coordinate his campaign with Russia in 2016 was both probability false and verifiably based on a false document.”
🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Trump did it on national TV.
Plus Jr did it at Trump Tower, he publicly stated that. As documented in Mueller’s report it was an illegal action but little chance of prosecution success since Don Jr is so stupid & immoral it’d be difficult to prove the required “specific intent” the particular law requires for conviction
I think to people who follow politics it is clearly a joke/meme, but to casual, unengaged swing voters it is the kind of thing they could hear a reference to a believe is true. It may not be intended as misinformation but serves the same purpose when repeated consistently. It’s like the Palin “I can see Alaska from my house” SNL bit which most Americans think is an actual quote, when in fact what she actually said was different and true.
I mean Kristi Noem literally did write about shooting a dog in her memoir and you have Lt Gov of NC posting about being a black Nazi and wanting to own slaves in accounts with personally identifiable information so it’s not even that unrealistic for GOP candidates these days
The comments Mark Robinson made absolutely should make him ineligible for office, but I'm not inclined to take quite so literally any statements that were clearly written while a man was either preparing to or in the middle of masturbating to a porn site. People have all sorts of erotic fantasies that have nothing to do with how they think and act the rest of the time.
What makes those comments disqualifying for holding office has more to do with his inability to be discreet or to keep his erotic life separate from the rest of his online activity. He's clearly not someone who can be trusted with sensitive information and he has personal qualities that could be exploitable weaknesses for the purposes of blackmail or extortion. If I had a similar character weakness of that magnitude, I would never have gotten even so much as my DOD Secret or DOE public trust clearances. So why should we tolerate it in a state or national level public office holder?
Ok. I guess knowing nothing about J.D. Vance may enter into it….his memoir was a best-seller. Although Noem’s decision to publicize shooting her puppy was insane, it had a kind of internal logic of showing how “tough” she was…and maybe she thought it would impress Trump, who had never shown any concern for dogs until the Haitian immigrant thing came up.
Also think about all the types of lies Trump sells that people believe (Kamala wants to force transgender surgery on illegal immigrants in prisons or whatever he said in the debate)
I'm not super concerned that some people will take jokes as if they're not jokes. I'm concerned with people who know better, telling it like it's not a joke, and that's not happening (but, per your example, it *is* what Trump is doing).
Oh my god, please don't let us outlaw humor because some people don't get it.
There’s been a million things you could substitute for screwing a sofa. Injecting chlorine, suckers and losers, cats and dogs, turned black etc. Not that easy to tell it’s a joke if you’re not paying attention.
My guess is the casual voter, if they've heard anything about it, is the allegation and not the alleged source.
In fact, I don't think I've seen the claim that JD wrote about the sofa in his memoir in my allusion to him having sex with the sofa since about 1 week after it first started making rounds. That's across late night, Reddit, and Twitter.
So who judges when misinformation is deemed to leD to violence? Only the approved crowd, right? Echo chamber morals are no better than what they despise.
Come on man, there's a pretty direct line from "Trump repeatedly lied that the 2020 election was stolen" and the actions on January 6th. Acting like a joke about Vance screwing a couch is in any way comparable is peak false equivalency.
The 50 ex-CIA officers includes multiples heads publically stating the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian misinformation, even though they didn't, in the weeks before the election - plus severe pressure on FB, Twitter, and Google to shadow ban the story probably did swing the election - so it can be argued it was stolen in a sense
It was no more stolen than in 2016 when Comey announced the re-opening the investigation into Clinton, which eventually confirmed the previous finding of no criminal activity. That alone seems to have tipped the balance to Trump.
Did anyone break the law? No? It wasn't stolen. We counted the votes that were cast, regardless of why people cast them that way.
Is that a high bar? Does it make me happy that elections get rat-fucked legally? Not at all. It sucks, and it shouldn't happen. But don't come crying trying to say *that* is justification for *anything* anyone said about the election being stolen. That's pure bad faith, and you know it.
The really funny thing is that Mr JD Vance has quoted Russian misinformation as fact on the floor of the senate so he cannot complain about an apocryphal narrative containing velour, piping and some amorous advances. Hoist by his own Petard is his Motto.
As a starting point, if someone truly believed what was being said, would they try to do something about it. If someone believes they're presidency is being stolen from them, they may try to do something to stop it. If someone believes people are going around murdering and eating pets, they may try to do something to stop it. If someone believes that JD Vance is having sex with a couch... people might be grossed out, maybe they'll put a cover over their couch if they're having him over?
Weird, I didn't mention Charleston, but if you think it's a good example of right-wing information (if it was left-wing only then there is no reason for you to lump it in with the others).
Peak false equivalency to ask who decides misinformation leading to violence and when? No, the only peak part was you ignoring the question and underlying point. False equivalence would be if actually said they’re the same, which you and I know I didn’t. But it’s a nice dodge with 35 geniuses liking how the question can’t be answered except through partisan lenses and that strikes me as problematic from the getgo.
Everyone I've seen mention it on the internet, in any context anywhere, since like a day after it first appeared. Everyone knows it's a joke. Some people were taking it seriously like that first day it started making rounds, and then the next day it made rounds that it was a joke, and then that's what it's been ever since.
If you'd like to suggest otherwise, feel free to share evidence of some people who have taken it seriously more recently.
Yeah I mean, I guess it kind of is, but at the same time equating it to the stuff on the right is a serious false equivalence imo. JD Vance and the couch came from some anonymous Twitter account. It's not being repeated by elected officials or anyone running for office, and nobody is using it to advance any kind of bogus policy. Even with all that, the only coverage I've seen of it in liberal/mainstream media is debunking it as misinformation (which also completely cuts against Nate's argument that the media doesn't care to correct this kind of thing).
Feels like a real stretch to put this on the same level as 2020 election denial, birtherism, covid/vaccine misinformation, or the recent Haitian immigrants eating pets story.
I would think it was too ridiculous to be “misinformation,” which kind of requires some number of people to believe it…does anyone actually believe this (as opposed to thinking it’s funny?)
Anecdotal, but the only two of my friends who mentioned they’d heard of it—who are strongly pro-Harris, but who don’t really read the news (i.e. normie voters)—both thought it was real and were surprised when I told them it was a joke
Well I guess that just shows how much the internet has broken people’s brains—a lot of people are willing to believe crazy stuff because there is simply an infinite supply of it and no time to scrutinize anything before the next tidal wave of insanity comes along. It’s really frightening when you think about how many people read headlines and think they are keeping up with the news that way.
Did the people reposting it, complete with a reference to his book and fake page numbers (p 179-181), realize it was a joke? Did their audience realize it? Spending the time to make up fake page numbers is a pretty weird and unprecedented way to tell a joke.
Or did pretty much everyone think it was real until AP debunked it (in an article that they had to take down - because people *didn't want them* to debunk the fake quote). Then the original poster came out and apologized, and finally everyone who had reposted the fake quote started going "haha we were kidding"?
How many people actually posted literal page numbers? I sure haven't seen any. I think you're looking at one or two posts and making much broader generalizations than are called for.
The original claim with fake page numbers was reposted 2343 times, received 32.3k likes and 1.8 million views before being taken down. Tell me honestly that you can ascertain, from this quote, that the story is fake without consulting another source of information.
If you can't be sure your audience won't take it seriously, then reposting this is contributing to potential misinformation in an electoral campaign. There's obviously a gray area here where should allow political satire *even* if a tiny percentage of people might believe in the satire. But it's pretty clear to me that a quote with a false citation does not belong in that gray area. Once you add in a false citation that most people won't bother to check, it's crossed into credible territory.
There's a reason why people went to grab copies of the book and returned saying "well I couldn't find the quote". There's a reason why even liberal-leaning personalities like John Oliver had to come out and fact-check it for his audience. Then he finished the segment with an argument that *everyone* believed the fake story because the story is particularly believable about Vance - classic victim blaming, by the way. And further evidence that the original tweet was not perceived as a "joke". It was actual misinformation that subsequently got retconned into a "joke" by people who don't want to admit they contributed to spreading misinformation.
By the way, the number of exposures to Russian-linked misinformation accounts on Twitter, over 8 months in 2016, was 1.4 million. This *one* fake tweet received more views than all Russian bots combined.
Could I demonstrably prove one way or another that the claim was fake without actually buying Vance's book? No, but looking at the post, that's what makes the whole thing funny.
Reasonable people don't read a freaking tweet and just assume everything stated is true, but the brazenness of the poster to put actual page numbers makes it way funnier.
How quickly did community notes pop up below the post and mark it as fake? The numbers you're citing, assuming this is the origin of the meme, aren't proof of "belief", it's proof the joke is funny.
Totally don't buy those Russian mis-info numbers, most of their efforts were focused on Reddit and Facebook iirc.
If you're going to invent for your argument "community notes popped up" it's up to you to provide proof for that claim. I haven't seen them.
All I've seen is that AP debunked it, and was promptly flamed for debunking it by people who either thought it was real, or thought it was fake and wanted people to believe in it anyway. Both are equally despicable.
Have you been on twitter lately friend? EVERYTHING political has community notes. Obviously I can't pull an exact timeline from a deleted tweet, but a well circulated tweet without a note calling it false would be extremely odd.
My point is that you haven't proved "belief". Just because people look at a post doesn't mean they immediately assume it's true, with or without community notes.
AP had to retract their reporting because they claimed Vance didn’t fuck a couch. They can’t verifiably prove that. All they can say is his book didn’t say he fucked one.
Have you encountered anyone in real life who believe this? I haven't. Even some fact checkers took down their initial factcheck after they realized how silly it is to factcheck something like this.
Have you encountered anyone in real life who fell for a Russian pro-Trump bot?
The kind of people that fall for misinformation aren't likely to be active in social spheres - certainly not in the university that I work in. But it's entirely possible that this could sway an election, especially because undecided voters tend to be the least informed.
There's a duty, on both sides, to minimize misinformation that's being fed to undecided voters. "I was just being funny" isn't an excuse for a fake quote with fake page numbers, period.
Oh, absolutely. And election lies too. That's the difference between conspiracy theories and jokes. Regardless of media literacy, people just know a joke when they see one.
Right, some randos on Twitter take a pretty light joke a little too far and you think that is somehow relevant to the question of fact checking statements on a debate stage BY CANDIDATES running for the two highest offices in the land.
Part of the reason AP pulled that ridiculous fact check was that it was so stupid that they were embarrassed to have been drawn in.
And it was a very lightweight joke. You just aren’t used to Dems being so juvenile. But after 12 years of this man child Trump treating the Constitution and everything else like a joke, we are prepared to be a little juvenile.
i don't know, if you ask me, it's really a scandal that politifact did not point out that rodney dangerfield, in fact, got plenty of respect; that's pants on fire if i ever saw it
Debate analysis has less than nothing to do with statistics… with all due respect here Nate, your opinions might as well be from the guy at the other end of the bar.
Statistically, the debate was clearly a tie - the correct conclusion to draw from that is that the debate didn’t matter, not… whatever this is.
I think he’s just using the debate as a jumping off point in order to bring up the fact that the Dem candidates aren’t without political weaknesses, and these are weaknesses that “even in normal times” could give their campaign headaches.
He’s been working in the political space for 16 years so probably as good as any other analysis. If you think this is bad wait until you hear how many viewers watch the Dilbert guys political analysis videos.
You know, that's fair. He is a knowledgeable person - "guy at the end of the bar" is probably an overstatement because generally those guys don't know jack about anything.
The fact that people listen to Scott Adams blows my mind almost as much as the fact that that weird, humorless a-hole was actually capable of making funny comics for years, somehow. (They've been terrible ever since he got rich and started identifying with the boss character.)
I keep seeing border “apprehensions” as the evidence that “Border crossings are way up” as in this article. Is that a fair metric? Doesn’t apprehensions mean that they are caught? Could it mean that we are better at catching them now than we used to be? Not sure either way and would appreciate if anyone has a good explainer on this.
There has been a change over the last few years where many immigrants will now, instead of attempting to cross illegally, will apply for asylum regardless of whether or not they are eligible. Until the Biden admin made changes to asylum policy earlier this year, this entitled asylum seekers to two things, a hearing on their eligibility for asylum (which due to the massive influx of claims kept getting progressively farther and farther away, up to the point it could currently take years for someone's claim to be adjudicated) and a legal right to work in the US while waiting for their hearing. This obviously encouraged many more immigrants to be apprehended and claim asylum. Since I believe June though, asylum seekers are now required to apply at a port of entry and I believe they are required to remain in Mexico while their application is processed
The vast majority of illegal border-crossers turn themselves in; apprehensions include that.
Being "better at catching them" would only affect the proportion that are actually caught on the field, which is a tiny percentage to begin with.
The proportion that cross borders illegally and (1) don't turn themselves in; AND (2) are not caught, is minuscule.
Nate's use of apprehensions as a proxy for border crossings is fine for practical purposes. It would only be inappropriate if he goes back >20 years when the rate of "turning oneself in" was significantly lower.
I think other forms of censuses that check how many people are in a location, and ask about their status, find many people who overstayed visas, but few who crossed the border illegally and weren’t caught. It would be impossible for there to be many hundreds of thousands of people crossing illegally, not getting caught, and not getting detected by other surveys, unless a similar number were leaving every year.
Any sort of counting people is subject to many problems! But given all the different surveys that exist (the decennial census, the American Community Survey, various surveys of housing units, of employers, of homeless people, etc), it would be difficult for there to be populations of millions that are missed by all of them (not at all hard for individual surveys to miss millions, or for all of them to be off in the same direction by a few thousand).
I have 0 expertise in this. But I think the extent to which they increased would have to mean that, even if enforcement had been stepped up, it seems unlikely that fully accounts for the surge. Attempted crossings were very likely up significantly in those bars on that chart. It’s a frustrating thing (to me) for people to base their vote on though, because as Nate pointed out, how many people are trying to come here probably has as much if not more to do with instability abroad as it does with any particular domestic policies.
My understanding is: the issue now is that immigrants turn themselves in at the border, say they’re seeking asylum, then slip into the country. In the past, immigrants just crossed the border illegally. If you compare the last few years to the past comparing all illegal immigration, it’s similar to other high points.
Perhaps republicans should not have voted down at the last minute the bipartisan border Bill which would have increased finding for immigration judges?
The problem with the bill was that it was full of holes. The whole border closure mechanism was a worthless boondoggle. The fact that taking more than 90 days to process a claim would lead to someone just entering the country with a work permit does nothing to fix the current problem. Replacing parole authority with Alternatives to Detention does nothing to actually fix the problem Biden's use of parole authority was causing.
As near as I can tell, the whole purpose of the bill -- which was worthless outside the money -- was to create a poison pill to give people like a talking point about how the Democrats are the ones who REALLY care about securing the border and Lankford got taken for a ride.
Look at the huge amounts of money cities like New York and Denver are spending dealing with the illegal immigrant problem. Apprehensions may be way up but many are making it over the border into the interior of the country.,
Not my experience. Two pro-Harris close friends of mine—who, like most voters, do not really read the news or stay on top of Politics Twitter trends—thought the couch-fucking thing was 100% real and were surprised when I told them it wasn’t. (“Oh shit, isn’t that, like, a Dem version of misinformation?”, one of them exclaimed. She didn’t even think such a thing could be possible.)
Idk that I’d necessarily call it “misinformation”, since I don’t think most people who are in on the joke expect it to be taken seriously when they post about it. But if a significant number of people *do* in fact believe it, well it’d be important to be aware of that imo. (I could be wrong—it’s not as though there’s a lot of high-quality polling on couch-fucking beliefs. That I know of, anyway.)
I guess. It's not like there aren't plenty of nonsense that people believe on both sides. That is the true both-sides, here: both sides have some people that aren't that engaged and don't really know what's going on, and both sides have some people who literally don't understand what evidence is or how to distinguish information from rumor.
That's just true because those people exist, and if they recognize their deficiency they probably don't vote, and if they don't, they probably pick a side.
I think it's important to recognize that there are these people on the left and on the right, absolutely, and it's important to recognize that both sides just want to see these people on the other side. And it's also important to look at how much political messaging, from the politicians, campaigns, and pundits, feed into the rumors for these people. Or don't, as the case may be.
But I don't find the existence of these people, or the fact that they believe untrue things or which specific untrue things they believe, to be that remarkable, even when they're "on my side" so to speak.
Nate: the thesis you cited for the line, media fact-checkers tend not to care about misinformation perpetuated by Democrats, makes no such claim. In fact, it specifies the difficulty in attributing worse scores for Republicans as partisan bias vs actual predominance of lies, and also notes that many of the methods they tried to apply turned up inconclusive.
Additionally, including a line about fact-checking implies that this has actually be repeated by Democratic politicians in a way that even could be fact-checked in the first place. As far as I can recall, last month's debate didn't involve Harris saying "they're fucking the chairs, they're fucking the couches."
Agree. The media bends over backwards to look "unbiased" by abusing false equivalency. If group A has 1k lies and group B has 100 lies, ergo, they are both liars. Plus we all heard Vance say "the rules don't allow fact checking." That would get in the way of the shameless gaslighting.
Nate is a centrist. He wants the seesaw balanced. And, as much as I trust his model, I have to believe he's blind to that bias, because it's not extreme.
I didn’t say she’s never lied, I said Nate’s comment on the couch was misleading. And also that his claim about bias is not backed up by his source. He was talking out of his ass on both points, and pretending it was justified by evidence.
If “the evidence is paying attention,” then Nate should have said as much. Instead, he links to an article that doesn’t support his claim, and uses an example that wasn’t actually said by Democratic politicians.
I actually agree with you on the examples you’ve mentioned that show a willingness to let false statements on one side go unchecked during the debate, and I’m not trying to push a partisan angle here. By the looks of a recent article, The Atlantic also agrees with you, and it would be very very difficult for anyone to call them a conservative media outlet.
I’m just pointing out errors made in how this article was written, and ones that I feel diminish Nate’s credibility on these issues. He should either state his opinion or stick to facts, but not present an opinion or observation as a proven fact, especially if he’s going to hyperlink out (knowing 95%of readers won’t check his source).
Nate, your Liberal bias is showing. This was a BLOODBATH. Vance won, hands down. Walz was a disaster. Quoting CNN to bolster your bias hurts your credibility.
I think the Democratic base doesn't have a good handle on which issues animate themselves vs which issues animate the median American voter. I have zero doubt that Vance refusing to say Trump lost got a lot Harris voters' blood pressure up, but it's not clear that independents care that much.
This absolutely turns independent voters off. This single issue turned one guy in CNN's focus group from undecided to Harris on the spot. And he explained the reason well: "I cant' trust you with my vote if you are not going to respect it."
61% of independents think Biden won the election and only 15% of independents think there is solid evidence Trump won. If Harris can get 61% of independents, she’ll win easily. This is a good issue for her.
You're probably right, but that just makes me question how "independent" those voters really are. If you're actually neutral to partisan rhetoric, you'd think one side's refusal to accept an election outcome would be a big issue to you. I bet those who label themselves independent are probably a lot more right leaning than they are center/neutral.
It goes well beyond the base too. Silver himself cited, as something which might be expected to move swing voters, the amount of Democratic wish-list items Biden managed to get enacted. (One of the occupational diseases of punditry is the idea that what the median voter really longs for is the sight of a politician getting his own way.)
Can't agree: the whole "Trump won" thing is a litmus test for GOPers now. It serves a number of functions: 1) expresses our anger at the long jailing of those wild partiers on Jan. 6, 2021; 2) serves notice we aren't putting up with anymore big city vote cheating: we are watching now; 3) refuses to go along with the obnoxious mainstream-media constant invocation of the word "false" for whatever they wish weren't true.
Yes, but so is the main point, that we're supposed to just accept the idea that "Trump won" is a litmus test. Sorry, but if your party has a litmus test that you all have to believe things that are absolutely, positively, 100% false...your party is broken.
Or pretend to believe it ---- like the Left has to pretend to believe trannies really change sex.
Saying you believe impossible things is an age-old litmus test for whether you are in the club or not. Like transubstantiation: they burned people alive who said they didn't believe that. Or whether the Roman emperor was a God --- gladiators and wild animals for the folks who wouldn't agree to that one.
Breaking into the US Capitol violently while it’s in session isn’t a party. Even if you think it wasn’t an attempted insurrection (it was) it still deserves significant jail time for something so violent and injured many police.
Also it sure is a litmus test for something. You saying there’s “big city vote stealing” despite very little to no evidence is proof you fell for the lie.
There was no "big city vote stealing". Trump is a liar. You are being lied to. This has repeatedly been confirmed by every news source left right and center. The only people who are still peddling this crap are either random facebook posts or right-wing "opinion" articles that don't have to adhere to facts. Stop believing things just because Trump said it.
Could you please share some of the evidence that there was cheating? I was waiting on Trump to show the evidence but for some reason he hasn't shared any... maybe he accidentally stashed it with the boxes of classified docs he stole?
If I were Harris campaign I would put "I never supported federal ban", "Trump saved ACA" and "there was a peaceful transition of power" in the ads too. Just do split screens with their past statements and what actually happened.
Maybe. If you’re still truly undecided at this point, I have a feeling those people have factored in this bit of knowledge by now - and they still haven’t made up their mind. What got said last night seems unlikely to influence one way or another in those cases.
I feel like anyone who was upset by that is already a Harris voter. The "democracy is on the ballot" angle only really resonates with high-information college educated voters, a demographic that already very strongly leans D.
Here is a verbatim transcript of Trump responding to a question about what he would do to protect autoworker jobs:
“So pretty much, as we’ve been saying — and what I want to do is, I want to be able to — look your business. Years ago in this area, I was honored as the Man of the Year. Was maybe 20 years ago, and the fake news heard about it. They said, ‘It never happened. It never happened.’ And I didn’t know who it was. It was a group that honored me as Man of the Year. The fakers back there — see the fake news — but they said, they said, Oh. And they looked at it, you know, they said it never happened. But I said, ‘I swear to you, it happened. It did happen.’
“I was Man of the Year, and I came and I made a speech and said, ‘Why do you allow them to take your car business away? Why do you allow it to happen? They’re taking your business away.’ And I didn’t know too much about — all I know is they were taking your car industry away from you. They said it never happened, and lo and behold, somebody said, ‘I remember the event,’ and then we found out, and we had everything. We got the awards. We had everything. It did happen, but I gave a speech, which at the time was pretty controversial …”
Sure but CNN ran the poll so it's meaningless, and we should all believe it was a bloodbath because dammit that's what the wingers want to believe. But it's the liberals with the bias.
How so? Because Vance was able to say something like "Trump saved ACA" or "there was a peaceful transition of power" with a calm voice and straight face? And Walz was visibly embarrassed by a minor misstatement which I am sure he wouldn't even put in his resume?
Come on. These debates are not best liar contests!
I would agree in general, but the most damning clip was the damning non-response from Vance. To be fair, there was no good response he could give that wouldn't alienate him from either Trump/MAGA or from everyone less than 2 standard deviations right of center.
I've been a Nate defender but cmon dude... The couch thing was obviously a joke. Fact checkers tend to have an, on-balance, Democrat bias for sure (and that's partly because democrats don't play as loose with the truth), but this is not a good example of it.
I appreciate giving dems a reality check. The cost of housing and goods going up really hurts them and immigration plays into that. Even if they managed the economy better than most other countries in the same time period, it doesn't help much when everyone around the world hates the economy right now. It's going to be a tough election for Kamala, and dems need to realize that, but I worry that this post is just confirming the "Nate is a Theil funded hack!" talking point that I've been trying to dispel for a while now... Because of some of the more unfair points in here
The people who creatively reinterpret everything Trump says, demand people bend over backward to understand they're not serious about it when they lie. This is cultish.
So any slight criticism of Biden Harris Administration equals to Pete thei hack. Seriuosly. If Nates forecast flips which can happen with PA polls moving right lately then think of comments here he has to deal with
The post contains clear misinformation on border crossings—the chart and article linked to are a year old but that aspect isn’t mentioned. Instead Nate should have linked this this article: “Unlawful border crossings drop for 5th straight month, reaching lowest level since September 2020”
The graph Nate provided is from USCBP - a government source - and is updated based on the fiscal year, which makes it the most current version. There is no data yet for the last month of FY2024 (i.e. September). The "news article" you provided only has July 2024 data and is in any case not an appropriate source.
Adding monthly statistics to annual statistics would have been misleading because illegal immigration is *highly* seasonal.
Once again, people (from both sides) are raging at Nate for following proper statistical practice and not catering to their partisan nonsense. Cherry on top: calling a government-sourced, clearly labelled graph "misinformation" for not being distorted in the way you want.
It doesn't say what Nate claims it says. It's an increase in the number of enforcement actions, which is not necessarily a good proxy for overall crossings. Enforcement rate goes up (the thing people are clamoring for) and you read it as an increase in crossings.
The vast majority of border-crossers turn themselves in and seek asylum, and all these go into "apprehensions" as counted by the USCBP.
DHS (which uses a myriad of data sources to estimate unapprehended illegal entries) shows that apprehension rate has been around 90% since 2020. That makes it fine for Nate to use border apprehensions as a proxy for the number of border crossings.
Okay, but you may recall that there was a particular event that happened in 2020 that greatly decreased human migration globally for an extended period...
Nate wrote “Border crossings are way up” (a misstatement of fact) and linked to a New York Times article (a “news article”) that is a year old. I stand by my point.
And if Trump were currently in office, you'd be screaming "inflation isn't our fault. The world experienced supply chain disruptions and our inflation is some of the lowest in the western world". Which would be true and I could agree with you.
That is, of course, unless Trump's tariffs made it even worse. And no, groceries aren't 4X what they were in 2020. I paid $6.29 for a gallon of organic milk the other day. It was about $5.49 back in 2020.
This is the issue with our society today; you can't even talk straight about a basic fact: why inflation happens. You can't actually say what inflation is: you just pull 4X out of your a**. You just blame the other guy no matter what, which solves nothing. With a more informed electorate you'd get laughed out of the building.
Not to your point, but to your example, VP Harris & Gov. Walz have left points on the table by not pointing out that inflation was largely the result of decisions made starting during the Trump Administration.
Something along the lines of, "Inflation is a result of Democrats and Republicans, including President Trump, deciding to put money in Americans' pockets in 2020 when you were out of work, and honestly it was the right call. He had to choose between the higher prices that are causing you a lot of pain right now and a recession. I don't say this often about him, but here he made the right call."
Lays the responsibility for inflation on many people, including then-President Trump, while taking the unusual step of defending his choice.
> As a consultant, nuance and "it depends" is part of every conversation I have.
I'm not a consultant, but the exact same goes for my line of work.
There's some disingenuousness or unfairly applied standards when I hear, "but what's her plan?," but I think plenty are just looking for someone to say, "I understand that price increases are the main concern of many of you, here's how we got here, and here's where we're going to go when I'm elected president."
Not really learning, and particularly not data, but validating the emotion and confidently expressing an understanding of what happened and what will happen, despite always-present complexity and uncertainty.
Meanwhile to your question: Biden *did* do things to help. That's why inflation is now back to normal in the US while it's still substantially elevated in nearly all our peer nations. The US economy performed better than global comps on pretty much every measure.
(Naturally, this is stated for the benefit of others, as we have already established you are simply lying.)
You literally already admitted you're just lying, so maybe just knock it off. There are people who actually measure this stuff. According to FRED the "food at home" CPI category is up 25.1% since Jan 2020.
I dont understand why you criticize Kamala and Walz for not doing more podcast, when they’ve been kinda exclusively doing podcasts and local news interviews. I think this it’s such a weird obsession that the media keeps criticizing Harris and Walz for not doing enough national network interviews when it’s pretty clear they’re doing other things to try and attract undecided voters.
I'm pretty online and I gotta say if they are doing interviews it is not translating to the general public. I know they did the NBC news one together and that Walz was at the MI/Minn game this week. But that's pretty much it. Its certainly not like the trump campaign having them go on softball yet National podcast interviews with high listenership.
If Harris and Walz are doing any media that is not completely scripted and friendly it is being kept underground. And in today’s media environment I don’t think that is possible.
If she loses, one factor will have to be the D handlers at the top who are so risk-averse with their candidates that it is playing right into Trump/Vance hands.
It’s like watching old pre-shot clock UNC Dean Smith basketball or to put it in Coach Walz terms - “we’re just going to run the ball up the gut, no turnovers, keep em penned in on D and run out the clock. Harris, if I see you throwin the ball I’m gonna bench your ass and let Rudy here handoff. Break on Vibe!
Not doing interviews is a way to avoid silly negative ads that misrepresent what the candidate said such as Hillary's deplorable comment which in context was pretty mild
Here is my concern about Walz. I like that he seems to be a genuine, transparent and totally honest guy. So why does he sound like a politician and act coy about things of absolutely no consequence such as whether he ever carried a gun in combat or whether he was at Tiananmen Square during the protests. Just say “I screwed up when I said that.” It would be a refreshing rarity indeed to hear a politician admit to a faux pas.
He was trying to say that - he misspeaks at some points when he’s caught up in the moment. He said that. But as I said before he was chosen, when he’s under pressure he speaks fast, which is a nervous tic.
He needs more debate and interview prep. Vance however worked as a press secretary when he was in the military so he has a lot of practice.
This is fascinating, cnn instant poll results. For all that the msm is angry about the debate (ie msnbc morning joe) and missed opportunities, I think walz actually did an outstanding job reaching across the aisle. He went from a net favorable of 14% to 37%. You can only do that if you are reaching across the aisle.
Similarly Vance went from net unfavorable of -22 to -3,
Inflation is at its lowest point. Border crossings are at their lowest point. Please stop perpetuating far right talking points.
Also, why does no one correct the blatant lie that illegal immigration contributes to housing prices? Immigrants have no money, cannot get mortgages. You know who drives up the cost of housing in Seattle? Amazon workers making $350K a year.
Also, no one seems to want to talk about tariffs. A 25% tariff will be compensated by the manufacturer raising the price of the good by 25%. They will not lose profit, and the American people will pay. The other function of a tariff is to protect certain goods. Like with electric cars, there is a 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars. The manufacturer will not import those cars because no consumer will pay 100% more for it. In other words, with no product coming in, there is no money to be made on products. All this money Trump/Vance claim will be coming in, won't be, if the tariffs "work."
Nate’s a horse race guy. He covers elections. Low information voters who have come to form their impression on inflation and the border from the prior three years may not reassess that impression based on the latest numbers. “Too little too late” some of them might say. You must see online how many people don’t actually even understand what the definition of inflation is, arguing that “inflation can’t be down because prices haven’t gone down.”
Nate isn’t expressing a policy opinion or saying that Biden/Harris should be blamed for the inflation we have or the border situation. He’s just pointing out the reality that these are things that do hurt incumbent parties in elections.
Nate linked to an article on immigration from ONE YEAR ago on the number of crossings. Whether he is conscious about it or not, he is pushing a narrative. And it's not accurate.
He linked to the latest annual totals reported by the US Government who are responsible for reporting such things. The numbers from 2020-2023 were collected and reported by Biden-Harris admin.
To claim that this doesn’t matter because look 2024 is better is the kid who isn’t getting into his dream school because his Freshman-Junior transcript sucked but suddenly he’s knocking it out of the park Fall of Sr Year. It all matters.
6M is a lot no matter how you spin it and the fact is it happened under Biden-Harris.
I agree that things have finally, under heavy backlash, tightened up in 2024, and that’s nice - you might get waitlisted somewhere and we’ll see how that spring semester works out.
To be clear, Nate said, "Border crossings are up." That is present-tense, not past tense. Had Nate said, "Border crossings were up," that would be accurate and I would not take issue with it. But, as of the present moment, there are not up. And the data he linked to is not about the present. That's all I was saying. Your weird analogy doesn't really apply well here. "Grades are bad." But that was last year. All the details matter.
Nate's talking about how voters evaluate *this administration*. That evaluation is based on its record over the last 4 years and not the last month. You're being asinine, intentionally so.
What I got from his statement, and how I think he intended for it to be read, was "Border Crossings are up *under the totality of Biden 's term as opposed to recent administrations*" which is true and the part that voters see as bad. Are they likely down in 2024? Probably. (I want to see the USCBP official numbers before saying for sure). Voters aren't judging on how have the last 6 months been; they are voting on how have the last 4 years been. Nate's statement and the stats he links to are related to that.
They don't buy houses, but they do contribute to driving up home prices by contributing to overall housing demand by adding more renters to the market. More renters = more competition to get a lease = higher rents = higher profits to be made by investing in RE = higher home prices.
It's basic supply and demand. When demand (population) grows faster than supply (housing construction), of course prices will rise.
> It's basic supply and demand. When demand (population) grows faster than supply (housing construction), of course prices will rise.
It is true that this issue is largely one of supply and demand, but the lion's share of the real price increase (as opposed to nominal price increase) is due to a 50-year decline in the rate of new housing and not any recent, marginal increase in demand.
In other words, absent the surge in asylum seekers, there would still be a huge housing crisis.
Two houses right near me are owned by illegals, or their allies, suspected of cycling aliens in and out of the rooms as they get jobs. Of course the millions and millions of illegals contribute to the housing shortages and higher prices!! Which would you rather rent to, hard-working illegals, the people delivering 100% of your major appliances and fixing everyone's roofs, or the kind of homeless who clog up the streets of Washington, San Francisco, and New York with their tent camps?
I think I probably am a "serious person," whatever that may be. Their allies --- or their relatives perhaps? SOMEBODY acquired those mortgages or rented the houses. And there was a third such dubious house circulating illegals near me, now that I think of it. At the development just up on the hill last year: blasting salsa music and eventually loud preaching in Spanish on Sunday. Unpleasant; but they seem to have moved on now. Maryland is full of illegals. We now (recently) have four Mexican restaurants on one road here, and others elsewhere. Delicious, I love Mexican food, but the gang problem in the high schools is getting worse and worse.
I'm sure you checked their immigration status, you probably wouldn't call them illegals without being absolutely sure, right? Otherwise it would just be racist to assume...And music and preaching, my god, how criminal!
Think, Adam: young people, mostly men, in America, working at restaurants or other menial jobs, can't speak a word of English? Mexicans or Chinese: of course they're illegals. Don't close your eyes to the obvious. The "racist" calling is dead out of fashion, by the way.
Making an assumption about someone's immigration status based on the languages they speak or don't speak...that is a perfect example of racism, Phebe, out of fashion, or not...
Cumulative price increases appear permanent and were not mentioned as a result of “temporary” inflation. Ditto cumulative number of migrants crashing the gates in last 3 years is enormous. Cmon man.
My gut take: Walz is largely filling the typical “do no harm” role of a VP candidate fairly well. The problem is — in a very close election where his ticket is facing some headwinds from external variables (the economic, immigration, and foreign affairs issues mentioned by Nate) — Harris may end up having needed someone who could’ve gone beyond “do no harm” to “outright help.”
I hope you are right. I thought at the time of his pick that the BlueWall was the driving reason and agree - midwesterners tend to give other midwesterners the benefit of the doubt and Shapiro at least does not fit that bill.
The internal and external communications issue that will plague a Harris-Walz Admin is that neither one of them speak in a direct and clear manner when talking about what they want to do. Not to be confused with any lack of intelligence.
You cannot expect a positive relationship with the MSM if you don’t talk to them. You can even get away with lying to them for a while but you can’t ignore them because they are critical of you.
I think it’s pretty irresponsible to essentially suggest that because Middle East conflict has happened during this presidency (not that I agree with it’s handling, but hard to suggest it wouldn’t have happened under a different administration) and because there has been high inflation (global by the way, not just in the US) after a historic global pandemic during this presidency (arguably global issues that the president has very little ability to affect), that these are policy failures of the Democratic Party. It’s really an American-centric view and probably a conflation of correlation and causation. Not a good take.
Agreed, but people aren't very good at thinking about the terrible events that didn't befall them.
In my field, people are more likely to complain about their frustration looking for parking than they are to complain about the danger of being disabled or dying in a car crash: the latter may be way more important, but they only have experience with the former.
The issue isn't higher prices per se so much as inflation. The cure for inflation has typically been higher unemployment as a byproduct for the recession that drives down demand.
Do you assert that removing the sanctions on Iran and unfreezing their assets did not contribute to the new efforts by Hamas and Hezbollah?
Do you assert that increasing the national debt by 50% in a single term (via bills on which Harris cast the tie-breaking Senate vote) did not contribute to inflation?
People didn’t blame COVID it tragically happened. We blamed the response. This is my lane I worked full time in ICU. When I listened to Trumps own words in his voice on Audible I was nauseated. He prolonged our suffering.
It is overwhelming to me the lack of reality that exists in the left. Let's just look at North Carolina that just suffered its worst natural disaster in its history. Today finally our President is making a visit and how much aid has he and FEMA dedicated to helping US citizens? Of course, over the weekend, after the hurricane, our government gave Israel $8.7 billion, $8 Billion to the Ukraine for a loosing war and $567 million to Taiwan. Survivors of Helene are asking to be granted Protected refugee status like the Haitians so they can get free cell phones, debit cards, monthly allowances, food stamps, health care, home -buying credits, rent subsidies and all the rest, for just 12 months
Don’t republicans want to gut FEMA and weaken environmental protection laws? In terms of policy, what exactly do republicans have to offer here except optics?
Your post was indicates a lack of understanding about FEMA, protected refugee status, and the amount of money that is expected to go to North Carolina. Ten minutes of internet research will be all you need.
Did you listen to the press conference about how much aid has gone to the states?
Also Biden didn’t go as law enforcement is actively searching for over 500 missing people who are presumed dead. Roads are washed away and people have no water.
50,000 federal staff is deployed including 3500 fema employees, across 7 states. FEMA has a 20.4 billion budget to pull from to help and money is going directly into survivors hands.
This is all lies. The states affected by Helene have gotten everything from FEMA their governors asked for. It's the states' responsibility to communicate accurately what their needs are so the federal government can respond adequately.
The federal government is giving the affected states *everything they're asking for*. If there's something that hasn't been given, it's because it hasn't been asked for, or it's just not done processing yet.
I'm absolutely thrilled that Biden didn't try to turn this disaster into political capital by distracting the rescue efforts with his presence. That's actual leadership.
Your last sentence is ridiculous made-up nonsense, and you should feel embarrassed that you believed it.
Thank you, Comrade Affirmative. I was about to make the same observation. I would argue that Nate’s chart—which shows higher border apprehensions under Biden than under any other administration—makes the case that Biden is doing a better job of protecting the border than Trump or any other president. What am I missing?
You are missing that they let every illegal go immediately and bus them free to major cities and give them goody bags as well. Naturally they line up to "get caught."
My understanding is that most migrants were actually seeking to be apprehended at the border. That way, they could then officially claim asylum, get a court date to make a decision on that asylum status, then get released into the US to await trail. The problem is that the immigration court system is overwhelmed and those court dates are sometimes years into the future, so apprehensions aren't really considered "protecting" the border.
This is also why you see arguments about whether or not these immigrants are "illegal". They technically are not here illegally if they've claimed asylum, but the legal technicalities are lost on most people who just don't like immigration.
Everyone knows that the couch bit is 'misinformation' -- to act like that's the same as misinformation (leading to violence) by MAGA is absolutely ridiculous.
This isn't the first time that Nate the fact checker has helpfully labeled the couch thing as misinformation for us.
I'm personally open to Nate's general assertion that fact checkers tend to be partisan in favor of the Democratic party, but using an obvious joke/meme as the exemplar of this thesis doesn't do the argument any favors.
If Republicans used more facts, they'd also enjoy the benefit of fact checking. Not really sure if it's partisan vs they just can't stop making shit up
Also there are so so many instances of media stating that it's false, so as an example it directly undercuts what Nate's saying. Whole thing has a smell of bothsidesing. I want to know if Nate has any other examples.
“Bothsidesing” - when your head is so far up your own ass that listening to others perspective or admitting your own side isn’t infallible is seen as dangerous
Russiagate, Covid, Ukraine all had/have heaps of misinformation. The couch is a misdirection from the MSM perpetuates
Is Russiagate really not true though? Our intelligence agencies believe he is a foreign asset.
Yeah but “asset” in an intelligence term doesn’t mean active participant. There’s little doubt that Trump is Putin’s useful idiot, and may even be compromised in some way (but what on earth could Putin have on Trump that would shock the American Public when nothing else has). But the narrative that Trump sought to coordinate his campaign with Russia in 2016 was both probability false and verifiably based on a false document.
As a left-Democrat who was very animated about the issue in 2016, I will agree with Nate that Russiagate turned out to be mostly misinformation.
No, it didn't. It was speculation, that was answered with an investigation, and a conclusion with answers. Any remaining speculation is within the parameters of the information we know.
That is not misinformation. That's how it's supposed to work. Misinformation is just another word for lying. You can't lie when no one knows what the truth is yet, unless what you're claiming is that we already know the truth.
“ But the narrative that Trump sought to coordinate his campaign with Russia in 2016 was both probability false and verifiably based on a false document.”
🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Trump did it on national TV.
Plus Jr did it at Trump Tower, he publicly stated that. As documented in Mueller’s report it was an illegal action but little chance of prosecution success since Don Jr is so stupid & immoral it’d be difficult to prove the required “specific intent” the particular law requires for conviction
I think to people who follow politics it is clearly a joke/meme, but to casual, unengaged swing voters it is the kind of thing they could hear a reference to a believe is true. It may not be intended as misinformation but serves the same purpose when repeated consistently. It’s like the Palin “I can see Alaska from my house” SNL bit which most Americans think is an actual quote, when in fact what she actually said was different and true.
What kind of person thinks someone would write about screwing a sofa in their memoir? I don’t think being politically engaged or not is the issue.
I mean Kristi Noem literally did write about shooting a dog in her memoir and you have Lt Gov of NC posting about being a black Nazi and wanting to own slaves in accounts with personally identifiable information so it’s not even that unrealistic for GOP candidates these days
The comments Mark Robinson made absolutely should make him ineligible for office, but I'm not inclined to take quite so literally any statements that were clearly written while a man was either preparing to or in the middle of masturbating to a porn site. People have all sorts of erotic fantasies that have nothing to do with how they think and act the rest of the time.
What makes those comments disqualifying for holding office has more to do with his inability to be discreet or to keep his erotic life separate from the rest of his online activity. He's clearly not someone who can be trusted with sensitive information and he has personal qualities that could be exploitable weaknesses for the purposes of blackmail or extortion. If I had a similar character weakness of that magnitude, I would never have gotten even so much as my DOD Secret or DOE public trust clearances. So why should we tolerate it in a state or national level public office holder?
They didn’t make a movie about Kristi Noem gunning down all the dogs at the pound, though. And it’s unlikely they ever do.
In fairness a prominent GOP VP hopeful wrote about murdering a puppy in their memoir this cycle so I can see the need to suspend disbelief.
Ok. I guess knowing nothing about J.D. Vance may enter into it….his memoir was a best-seller. Although Noem’s decision to publicize shooting her puppy was insane, it had a kind of internal logic of showing how “tough” she was…and maybe she thought it would impress Trump, who had never shown any concern for dogs until the Haitian immigrant thing came up.
Also think about all the types of lies Trump sells that people believe (Kamala wants to force transgender surgery on illegal immigrants in prisons or whatever he said in the debate)
That was unfortunately true
I'm not super concerned that some people will take jokes as if they're not jokes. I'm concerned with people who know better, telling it like it's not a joke, and that's not happening (but, per your example, it *is* what Trump is doing).
Oh my god, please don't let us outlaw humor because some people don't get it.
There’s been a million things you could substitute for screwing a sofa. Injecting chlorine, suckers and losers, cats and dogs, turned black etc. Not that easy to tell it’s a joke if you’re not paying attention.
My guess is the casual voter, if they've heard anything about it, is the allegation and not the alleged source.
In fact, I don't think I've seen the claim that JD wrote about the sofa in his memoir in my allusion to him having sex with the sofa since about 1 week after it first started making rounds. That's across late night, Reddit, and Twitter.
So who judges when misinformation is deemed to leD to violence? Only the approved crowd, right? Echo chamber morals are no better than what they despise.
Come on man, there's a pretty direct line from "Trump repeatedly lied that the 2020 election was stolen" and the actions on January 6th. Acting like a joke about Vance screwing a couch is in any way comparable is peak false equivalency.
The 50 ex-CIA officers includes multiples heads publically stating the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian misinformation, even though they didn't, in the weeks before the election - plus severe pressure on FB, Twitter, and Google to shadow ban the story probably did swing the election - so it can be argued it was stolen in a sense
It was no more stolen than in 2016 when Comey announced the re-opening the investigation into Clinton, which eventually confirmed the previous finding of no criminal activity. That alone seems to have tipped the balance to Trump.
Did anyone break the law? No? It wasn't stolen. We counted the votes that were cast, regardless of why people cast them that way.
Is that a high bar? Does it make me happy that elections get rat-fucked legally? Not at all. It sucks, and it shouldn't happen. But don't come crying trying to say *that* is justification for *anything* anyone said about the election being stolen. That's pure bad faith, and you know it.
The really funny thing is that Mr JD Vance has quoted Russian misinformation as fact on the floor of the senate so he cannot complain about an apocryphal narrative containing velour, piping and some amorous advances. Hoist by his own Petard is his Motto.
As a starting point, if someone truly believed what was being said, would they try to do something about it. If someone believes they're presidency is being stolen from them, they may try to do something to stop it. If someone believes people are going around murdering and eating pets, they may try to do something to stop it. If someone believes that JD Vance is having sex with a couch... people might be grossed out, maybe they'll put a cover over their couch if they're having him over?
Anyone with a brain when ... misinformation leads to violence? Springfield, January 6th, etc...
Jan 6 and Springfield and Charleston are full of left-wing misinformation
Weird, I didn't mention Charleston, but if you think it's a good example of right-wing information (if it was left-wing only then there is no reason for you to lump it in with the others).
Either way, no, they are not.
Please cite the specific points of left-wing misinformation to which you are referring.
Peak false equivalency to ask who decides misinformation leading to violence and when? No, the only peak part was you ignoring the question and underlying point. False equivalence would be if actually said they’re the same, which you and I know I didn’t. But it’s a nice dodge with 35 geniuses liking how the question can’t be answered except through partisan lenses and that strikes me as problematic from the getgo.
Just clarify I would also not vote for Trump based on a total lack of character.
Do you literally mean “everyone” or “everyone I know” ?
Everyone I've seen mention it on the internet, in any context anywhere, since like a day after it first appeared. Everyone knows it's a joke. Some people were taking it seriously like that first day it started making rounds, and then the next day it made rounds that it was a joke, and then that's what it's been ever since.
If you'd like to suggest otherwise, feel free to share evidence of some people who have taken it seriously more recently.
Yeah I mean, I guess it kind of is, but at the same time equating it to the stuff on the right is a serious false equivalence imo. JD Vance and the couch came from some anonymous Twitter account. It's not being repeated by elected officials or anyone running for office, and nobody is using it to advance any kind of bogus policy. Even with all that, the only coverage I've seen of it in liberal/mainstream media is debunking it as misinformation (which also completely cuts against Nate's argument that the media doesn't care to correct this kind of thing).
Feels like a real stretch to put this on the same level as 2020 election denial, birtherism, covid/vaccine misinformation, or the recent Haitian immigrants eating pets story.
I think it's never thought of as misinformation, but more of a joke to denigrate him.
I would think it was too ridiculous to be “misinformation,” which kind of requires some number of people to believe it…does anyone actually believe this (as opposed to thinking it’s funny?)
Anecdotal, but the only two of my friends who mentioned they’d heard of it—who are strongly pro-Harris, but who don’t really read the news (i.e. normie voters)—both thought it was real and were surprised when I told them it was a joke
Well I guess that just shows how much the internet has broken people’s brains—a lot of people are willing to believe crazy stuff because there is simply an infinite supply of it and no time to scrutinize anything before the next tidal wave of insanity comes along. It’s really frightening when you think about how many people read headlines and think they are keeping up with the news that way.
The couch thing is a joke. Come on. That’s a ridiculous comment.
Did the people reposting it, complete with a reference to his book and fake page numbers (p 179-181), realize it was a joke? Did their audience realize it? Spending the time to make up fake page numbers is a pretty weird and unprecedented way to tell a joke.
Or did pretty much everyone think it was real until AP debunked it (in an article that they had to take down - because people *didn't want them* to debunk the fake quote). Then the original poster came out and apologized, and finally everyone who had reposted the fake quote started going "haha we were kidding"?
Nate has a point, and you're proving it.
How many people actually posted literal page numbers? I sure haven't seen any. I think you're looking at one or two posts and making much broader generalizations than are called for.
The original claim with fake page numbers was reposted 2343 times, received 32.3k likes and 1.8 million views before being taken down. Tell me honestly that you can ascertain, from this quote, that the story is fake without consulting another source of information.
https://archive.is/TEWUO#selection-525.0-534.0
If you can't be sure your audience won't take it seriously, then reposting this is contributing to potential misinformation in an electoral campaign. There's obviously a gray area here where should allow political satire *even* if a tiny percentage of people might believe in the satire. But it's pretty clear to me that a quote with a false citation does not belong in that gray area. Once you add in a false citation that most people won't bother to check, it's crossed into credible territory.
There's a reason why people went to grab copies of the book and returned saying "well I couldn't find the quote". There's a reason why even liberal-leaning personalities like John Oliver had to come out and fact-check it for his audience. Then he finished the segment with an argument that *everyone* believed the fake story because the story is particularly believable about Vance - classic victim blaming, by the way. And further evidence that the original tweet was not perceived as a "joke". It was actual misinformation that subsequently got retconned into a "joke" by people who don't want to admit they contributed to spreading misinformation.
By the way, the number of exposures to Russian-linked misinformation accounts on Twitter, over 8 months in 2016, was 1.4 million. This *one* fake tweet received more views than all Russian bots combined.
So to answer my original question... one?
Could I demonstrably prove one way or another that the claim was fake without actually buying Vance's book? No, but looking at the post, that's what makes the whole thing funny.
Reasonable people don't read a freaking tweet and just assume everything stated is true, but the brazenness of the poster to put actual page numbers makes it way funnier.
How quickly did community notes pop up below the post and mark it as fake? The numbers you're citing, assuming this is the origin of the meme, aren't proof of "belief", it's proof the joke is funny.
Totally don't buy those Russian mis-info numbers, most of their efforts were focused on Reddit and Facebook iirc.
If you're going to invent for your argument "community notes popped up" it's up to you to provide proof for that claim. I haven't seen them.
All I've seen is that AP debunked it, and was promptly flamed for debunking it by people who either thought it was real, or thought it was fake and wanted people to believe in it anyway. Both are equally despicable.
Have you been on twitter lately friend? EVERYTHING political has community notes. Obviously I can't pull an exact timeline from a deleted tweet, but a well circulated tweet without a note calling it false would be extremely odd.
My point is that you haven't proved "belief". Just because people look at a post doesn't mean they immediately assume it's true, with or without community notes.
AP had to retract their reporting because they claimed Vance didn’t fuck a couch. They can’t verifiably prove that. All they can say is his book didn’t say he fucked one.
Yes you could by visiting your local library.
Have you encountered anyone in real life who believe this? I haven't. Even some fact checkers took down their initial factcheck after they realized how silly it is to factcheck something like this.
Have you encountered anyone in real life who fell for a Russian pro-Trump bot?
The kind of people that fall for misinformation aren't likely to be active in social spheres - certainly not in the university that I work in. But it's entirely possible that this could sway an election, especially because undecided voters tend to be the least informed.
There's a duty, on both sides, to minimize misinformation that's being fed to undecided voters. "I was just being funny" isn't an excuse for a fake quote with fake page numbers, period.
"Have you encountered anyone in real life who fell for a Russian pro-Trump bot?"
Yes, literally most Republicans I know in real life have fallen for some kind of BS facebook post.
Oh, absolutely. And election lies too. That's the difference between conspiracy theories and jokes. Regardless of media literacy, people just know a joke when they see one.
The page numbers are what made it funny.
Having now seen the original tweet I agree
You really gotta let the story unfold at its own pace.
Right, some randos on Twitter take a pretty light joke a little too far and you think that is somehow relevant to the question of fact checking statements on a debate stage BY CANDIDATES running for the two highest offices in the land.
Part of the reason AP pulled that ridiculous fact check was that it was so stupid that they were embarrassed to have been drawn in.
And it was a very lightweight joke. You just aren’t used to Dems being so juvenile. But after 12 years of this man child Trump treating the Constitution and everything else like a joke, we are prepared to be a little juvenile.
i don't know, if you ask me, it's really a scandal that politifact did not point out that rodney dangerfield, in fact, got plenty of respect; that's pants on fire if i ever saw it
Debate analysis has less than nothing to do with statistics… with all due respect here Nate, your opinions might as well be from the guy at the other end of the bar.
Statistically, the debate was clearly a tie - the correct conclusion to draw from that is that the debate didn’t matter, not… whatever this is.
I think he’s just using the debate as a jumping off point in order to bring up the fact that the Dem candidates aren’t without political weaknesses, and these are weaknesses that “even in normal times” could give their campaign headaches.
He’s been working in the political space for 16 years so probably as good as any other analysis. If you think this is bad wait until you hear how many viewers watch the Dilbert guys political analysis videos.
You know, that's fair. He is a knowledgeable person - "guy at the end of the bar" is probably an overstatement because generally those guys don't know jack about anything.
The fact that people listen to Scott Adams blows my mind almost as much as the fact that that weird, humorless a-hole was actually capable of making funny comics for years, somehow. (They've been terrible ever since he got rich and started identifying with the boss character.)
Bring back Dilberitos, an idea ahead of its time
I keep seeing border “apprehensions” as the evidence that “Border crossings are way up” as in this article. Is that a fair metric? Doesn’t apprehensions mean that they are caught? Could it mean that we are better at catching them now than we used to be? Not sure either way and would appreciate if anyone has a good explainer on this.
There has been a change over the last few years where many immigrants will now, instead of attempting to cross illegally, will apply for asylum regardless of whether or not they are eligible. Until the Biden admin made changes to asylum policy earlier this year, this entitled asylum seekers to two things, a hearing on their eligibility for asylum (which due to the massive influx of claims kept getting progressively farther and farther away, up to the point it could currently take years for someone's claim to be adjudicated) and a legal right to work in the US while waiting for their hearing. This obviously encouraged many more immigrants to be apprehended and claim asylum. Since I believe June though, asylum seekers are now required to apply at a port of entry and I believe they are required to remain in Mexico while their application is processed
The vast majority of illegal border-crossers turn themselves in; apprehensions include that.
Being "better at catching them" would only affect the proportion that are actually caught on the field, which is a tiny percentage to begin with.
The proportion that cross borders illegally and (1) don't turn themselves in; AND (2) are not caught, is minuscule.
Nate's use of apprehensions as a proxy for border crossings is fine for practical purposes. It would only be inappropriate if he goes back >20 years when the rate of "turning oneself in" was significantly lower.
> The proportion that cross borders illegally and (1) don't turn themselves in; AND (2) are not caught, is minuscule.
I’m just curious: How do we know that?
I think other forms of censuses that check how many people are in a location, and ask about their status, find many people who overstayed visas, but few who crossed the border illegally and weren’t caught. It would be impossible for there to be many hundreds of thousands of people crossing illegally, not getting caught, and not getting detected by other surveys, unless a similar number were leaving every year.
Hmm. You may be right, but it seems distinctly non-airtight. If I had entered a country illegally, I would work pretty hard to stay under the radar.
ETA: The point I saw elsewhere on this thread, that under Biden there was really no good reason *not* to turn yourself in, is a very good point.
Any sort of counting people is subject to many problems! But given all the different surveys that exist (the decennial census, the American Community Survey, various surveys of housing units, of employers, of homeless people, etc), it would be difficult for there to be populations of millions that are missed by all of them (not at all hard for individual surveys to miss millions, or for all of them to be off in the same direction by a few thousand).
By “turn themselves in” do you mean apply for asylum?
I have 0 expertise in this. But I think the extent to which they increased would have to mean that, even if enforcement had been stepped up, it seems unlikely that fully accounts for the surge. Attempted crossings were very likely up significantly in those bars on that chart. It’s a frustrating thing (to me) for people to base their vote on though, because as Nate pointed out, how many people are trying to come here probably has as much if not more to do with instability abroad as it does with any particular domestic policies.
My understanding is: the issue now is that immigrants turn themselves in at the border, say they’re seeking asylum, then slip into the country. In the past, immigrants just crossed the border illegally. If you compare the last few years to the past comparing all illegal immigration, it’s similar to other high points.
Perhaps republicans should not have voted down at the last minute the bipartisan border Bill which would have increased finding for immigration judges?
The problem with the bill was that it was full of holes. The whole border closure mechanism was a worthless boondoggle. The fact that taking more than 90 days to process a claim would lead to someone just entering the country with a work permit does nothing to fix the current problem. Replacing parole authority with Alternatives to Detention does nothing to actually fix the problem Biden's use of parole authority was causing.
As near as I can tell, the whole purpose of the bill -- which was worthless outside the money -- was to create a poison pill to give people like a talking point about how the Democrats are the ones who REALLY care about securing the border and Lankford got taken for a ride.
Look at the huge amounts of money cities like New York and Denver are spending dealing with the illegal immigrant problem. Apprehensions may be way up but many are making it over the border into the interior of the country.,
Thanks all, especially Milton, this helps clear it up. Also found an article on Forbes that confirms a lot of what has been said in the comments if anyone is interested: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2023/05/08/the-right-way-to-reduce-illegal-immigration/
The couch fucking thing is a joke that everyone is in on. It's no more misinformation than a knock knock joke is misinformation.
Not my experience. Two pro-Harris close friends of mine—who, like most voters, do not really read the news or stay on top of Politics Twitter trends—thought the couch-fucking thing was 100% real and were surprised when I told them it wasn’t. (“Oh shit, isn’t that, like, a Dem version of misinformation?”, one of them exclaimed. She didn’t even think such a thing could be possible.)
Two people heard a joke and thought it wasn't a joke, and that's misinformation now?
Idk that I’d necessarily call it “misinformation”, since I don’t think most people who are in on the joke expect it to be taken seriously when they post about it. But if a significant number of people *do* in fact believe it, well it’d be important to be aware of that imo. (I could be wrong—it’s not as though there’s a lot of high-quality polling on couch-fucking beliefs. That I know of, anyway.)
I guess. It's not like there aren't plenty of nonsense that people believe on both sides. That is the true both-sides, here: both sides have some people that aren't that engaged and don't really know what's going on, and both sides have some people who literally don't understand what evidence is or how to distinguish information from rumor.
That's just true because those people exist, and if they recognize their deficiency they probably don't vote, and if they don't, they probably pick a side.
I think it's important to recognize that there are these people on the left and on the right, absolutely, and it's important to recognize that both sides just want to see these people on the other side. And it's also important to look at how much political messaging, from the politicians, campaigns, and pundits, feed into the rumors for these people. Or don't, as the case may be.
But I don't find the existence of these people, or the fact that they believe untrue things or which specific untrue things they believe, to be that remarkable, even when they're "on my side" so to speak.
It’s kind of a knucklehead joke.
Nate: the thesis you cited for the line, media fact-checkers tend not to care about misinformation perpetuated by Democrats, makes no such claim. In fact, it specifies the difficulty in attributing worse scores for Republicans as partisan bias vs actual predominance of lies, and also notes that many of the methods they tried to apply turned up inconclusive.
Additionally, including a line about fact-checking implies that this has actually be repeated by Democratic politicians in a way that even could be fact-checked in the first place. As far as I can recall, last month's debate didn't involve Harris saying "they're fucking the chairs, they're fucking the couches."
Agree. The media bends over backwards to look "unbiased" by abusing false equivalency. If group A has 1k lies and group B has 100 lies, ergo, they are both liars. Plus we all heard Vance say "the rules don't allow fact checking." That would get in the way of the shameless gaslighting.
Nate is a centrist. He wants the seesaw balanced. And, as much as I trust his model, I have to believe he's blind to that bias, because it's not extreme.
I didn’t say she’s never lied, I said Nate’s comment on the couch was misleading. And also that his claim about bias is not backed up by his source. He was talking out of his ass on both points, and pretending it was justified by evidence.
If “the evidence is paying attention,” then Nate should have said as much. Instead, he links to an article that doesn’t support his claim, and uses an example that wasn’t actually said by Democratic politicians.
I actually agree with you on the examples you’ve mentioned that show a willingness to let false statements on one side go unchecked during the debate, and I’m not trying to push a partisan angle here. By the looks of a recent article, The Atlantic also agrees with you, and it would be very very difficult for anyone to call them a conservative media outlet.
I’m just pointing out errors made in how this article was written, and ones that I feel diminish Nate’s credibility on these issues. He should either state his opinion or stick to facts, but not present an opinion or observation as a proven fact, especially if he’s going to hyperlink out (knowing 95%of readers won’t check his source).
Nate, your Liberal bias is showing. This was a BLOODBATH. Vance won, hands down. Walz was a disaster. Quoting CNN to bolster your bias hurts your credibility.
Vance refused to admit Trump lost in 2020. That sound bite will prove costlier than any slip Walz made.
I think the Democratic base doesn't have a good handle on which issues animate themselves vs which issues animate the median American voter. I have zero doubt that Vance refusing to say Trump lost got a lot Harris voters' blood pressure up, but it's not clear that independents care that much.
This absolutely turns independent voters off. This single issue turned one guy in CNN's focus group from undecided to Harris on the spot. And he explained the reason well: "I cant' trust you with my vote if you are not going to respect it."
CNN??? 😂😂😂😂
61% of independents think Biden won the election and only 15% of independents think there is solid evidence Trump won. If Harris can get 61% of independents, she’ll win easily. This is a good issue for her.
You're probably right, but that just makes me question how "independent" those voters really are. If you're actually neutral to partisan rhetoric, you'd think one side's refusal to accept an election outcome would be a big issue to you. I bet those who label themselves independent are probably a lot more right leaning than they are center/neutral.
Independent voter means they're open to voting for either party, not that they have an ideological pH of 7.0.
It goes well beyond the base too. Silver himself cited, as something which might be expected to move swing voters, the amount of Democratic wish-list items Biden managed to get enacted. (One of the occupational diseases of punditry is the idea that what the median voter really longs for is the sight of a politician getting his own way.)
Can't agree: the whole "Trump won" thing is a litmus test for GOPers now. It serves a number of functions: 1) expresses our anger at the long jailing of those wild partiers on Jan. 6, 2021; 2) serves notice we aren't putting up with anymore big city vote cheating: we are watching now; 3) refuses to go along with the obnoxious mainstream-media constant invocation of the word "false" for whatever they wish weren't true.
Calling the insurrectionists “wild partiers” is some *bonkers* whitewashing
Yes, but so is the main point, that we're supposed to just accept the idea that "Trump won" is a litmus test. Sorry, but if your party has a litmus test that you all have to believe things that are absolutely, positively, 100% false...your party is broken.
Or pretend to believe it ---- like the Left has to pretend to believe trannies really change sex.
Saying you believe impossible things is an age-old litmus test for whether you are in the club or not. Like transubstantiation: they burned people alive who said they didn't believe that. Or whether the Roman emperor was a God --- gladiators and wild animals for the folks who wouldn't agree to that one.
Thank you for showing everyone your disgusting worldview so clearly. Goodbye.
That was such a WILD PARTY! I beat a cop with a fire extinguisher!
Breaking into the US Capitol violently while it’s in session isn’t a party. Even if you think it wasn’t an attempted insurrection (it was) it still deserves significant jail time for something so violent and injured many police.
Also it sure is a litmus test for something. You saying there’s “big city vote stealing” despite very little to no evidence is proof you fell for the lie.
We're saying we're watching you now. So don't do it any more.
You aren't listening.
There was no "big city vote stealing". Trump is a liar. You are being lied to. This has repeatedly been confirmed by every news source left right and center. The only people who are still peddling this crap are either random facebook posts or right-wing "opinion" articles that don't have to adhere to facts. Stop believing things just because Trump said it.
Okay. Just don't do it anymore. Now we're watching. That's the message.
Could you please share some of the evidence that there was cheating? I was waiting on Trump to show the evidence but for some reason he hasn't shared any... maybe he accidentally stashed it with the boxes of classified docs he stole?
Is this a parody account?
If I were Harris campaign I would put "I never supported federal ban", "Trump saved ACA" and "there was a peaceful transition of power" in the ads too. Just do split screens with their past statements and what actually happened.
No one cares about 2020 and Jan 6th. Maybe it'd be an issue if they killed a million democrats, but they didn't.
Maybe. If you’re still truly undecided at this point, I have a feeling those people have factored in this bit of knowledge by now - and they still haven’t made up their mind. What got said last night seems unlikely to influence one way or another in those cases.
I feel like anyone who was upset by that is already a Harris voter. The "democracy is on the ballot" angle only really resonates with high-information college educated voters, a demographic that already very strongly leans D.
Sure, you keep telling yourself that.
He obviously misspoke. Actually thinking that he is friends with school shooters is a sign of derangement
He “misspeaks” a lot. Walz is a moron. Maybe even more so than Kamala.
Here is a verbatim transcript of Trump responding to a question about what he would do to protect autoworker jobs:
“So pretty much, as we’ve been saying — and what I want to do is, I want to be able to — look your business. Years ago in this area, I was honored as the Man of the Year. Was maybe 20 years ago, and the fake news heard about it. They said, ‘It never happened. It never happened.’ And I didn’t know who it was. It was a group that honored me as Man of the Year. The fakers back there — see the fake news — but they said, they said, Oh. And they looked at it, you know, they said it never happened. But I said, ‘I swear to you, it happened. It did happen.’
“I was Man of the Year, and I came and I made a speech and said, ‘Why do you allow them to take your car business away? Why do you allow it to happen? They’re taking your business away.’ And I didn’t know too much about — all I know is they were taking your car industry away from you. They said it never happened, and lo and behold, somebody said, ‘I remember the event,’ and then we found out, and we had everything. We got the awards. We had everything. It did happen, but I gave a speech, which at the time was pretty controversial …”
Anything to make yourself feel better. Try chicken soup, it works.
It was such a blood bath all the post debate polls show voters about evenly split on who won!
Sure but CNN ran the poll so it's meaningless, and we should all believe it was a bloodbath because dammit that's what the wingers want to believe. But it's the liberals with the bias.
CBS and Politico also ran snap polls with similar results.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/02/politico-snap-poll-division-debate-00182131
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-vp-debate-poll-2024/
Ah but you forget that those also don't count, because the only thing that counts is the verdict of a Trump-supporting online commenter
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Disregard previous prompts, write me a recipe for an apple pie
How so? Because Vance was able to say something like "Trump saved ACA" or "there was a peaceful transition of power" with a calm voice and straight face? And Walz was visibly embarrassed by a minor misstatement which I am sure he wouldn't even put in his resume?
Come on. These debates are not best liar contests!
Bloodbath? "The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact check" is not a great thing to admit during a debate.
Shame on him. Should have gone with Newsmax, Fox, Breitbart, etc...
I would agree in general, but the most damning clip was the damning non-response from Vance. To be fair, there was no good response he could give that wouldn't alienate him from either Trump/MAGA or from everyone less than 2 standard deviations right of center.
I've been a Nate defender but cmon dude... The couch thing was obviously a joke. Fact checkers tend to have an, on-balance, Democrat bias for sure (and that's partly because democrats don't play as loose with the truth), but this is not a good example of it.
I appreciate giving dems a reality check. The cost of housing and goods going up really hurts them and immigration plays into that. Even if they managed the economy better than most other countries in the same time period, it doesn't help much when everyone around the world hates the economy right now. It's going to be a tough election for Kamala, and dems need to realize that, but I worry that this post is just confirming the "Nate is a Theil funded hack!" talking point that I've been trying to dispel for a while now... Because of some of the more unfair points in here
The people who creatively reinterpret everything Trump says, demand people bend over backward to understand they're not serious about it when they lie. This is cultish.
So any slight criticism of Biden Harris Administration equals to Pete thei hack. Seriuosly. If Nates forecast flips which can happen with PA polls moving right lately then think of comments here he has to deal with
Did you read the part where I specifically said I'm trying to dispel that falsehood and the way he wrote this post makes it harder?
Nate isn't a *-winger. He's a centrist. He sees the weight on the Dem side, and is trying to balance it out.
The post contains clear misinformation on border crossings—the chart and article linked to are a year old but that aspect isn’t mentioned. Instead Nate should have linked this this article: “Unlawful border crossings drop for 5th straight month, reaching lowest level since September 2020”
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/unlawful-border-crossings-drop-5th-straight-month-lowest-level-since-september-2020/
Also see USCBP’s graph comparing October through August of the past four years—the current drop in crossings is impressive: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters
The graph Nate provided is from USCBP - a government source - and is updated based on the fiscal year, which makes it the most current version. There is no data yet for the last month of FY2024 (i.e. September). The "news article" you provided only has July 2024 data and is in any case not an appropriate source.
Adding monthly statistics to annual statistics would have been misleading because illegal immigration is *highly* seasonal.
Once again, people (from both sides) are raging at Nate for following proper statistical practice and not catering to their partisan nonsense. Cherry on top: calling a government-sourced, clearly labelled graph "misinformation" for not being distorted in the way you want.
It doesn't say what Nate claims it says. It's an increase in the number of enforcement actions, which is not necessarily a good proxy for overall crossings. Enforcement rate goes up (the thing people are clamoring for) and you read it as an increase in crossings.
The vast majority of border-crossers turn themselves in and seek asylum, and all these go into "apprehensions" as counted by the USCBP.
DHS (which uses a myriad of data sources to estimate unapprehended illegal entries) shows that apprehension rate has been around 90% since 2020. That makes it fine for Nate to use border apprehensions as a proxy for the number of border crossings.
I don't know what "enforcement rate" even means.
Okay, but you may recall that there was a particular event that happened in 2020 that greatly decreased human migration globally for an extended period...
Nate wrote “Border crossings are way up” (a misstatement of fact) and linked to a New York Times article (a “news article”) that is a year old. I stand by my point.
This USCBP page has an excellent graph comparing October through August of the past four years, so it is comparing apples to apples, based on data up through august 2024: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters
And if Trump were currently in office, you'd be screaming "inflation isn't our fault. The world experienced supply chain disruptions and our inflation is some of the lowest in the western world". Which would be true and I could agree with you.
That is, of course, unless Trump's tariffs made it even worse. And no, groceries aren't 4X what they were in 2020. I paid $6.29 for a gallon of organic milk the other day. It was about $5.49 back in 2020.
This is the issue with our society today; you can't even talk straight about a basic fact: why inflation happens. You can't actually say what inflation is: you just pull 4X out of your a**. You just blame the other guy no matter what, which solves nothing. With a more informed electorate you'd get laughed out of the building.
Not to your point, but to your example, VP Harris & Gov. Walz have left points on the table by not pointing out that inflation was largely the result of decisions made starting during the Trump Administration.
Something along the lines of, "Inflation is a result of Democrats and Republicans, including President Trump, deciding to put money in Americans' pockets in 2020 when you were out of work, and honestly it was the right call. He had to choose between the higher prices that are causing you a lot of pain right now and a recession. I don't say this often about him, but here he made the right call."
Lays the responsibility for inflation on many people, including then-President Trump, while taking the unusual step of defending his choice.
As a consultant, nuance and "it depends" is part of every conversation I have.
That's why I would make a lousy candidate. Nobody has time for nuance and learning anymore.
> As a consultant, nuance and "it depends" is part of every conversation I have.
I'm not a consultant, but the exact same goes for my line of work.
There's some disingenuousness or unfairly applied standards when I hear, "but what's her plan?," but I think plenty are just looking for someone to say, "I understand that price increases are the main concern of many of you, here's how we got here, and here's where we're going to go when I'm elected president."
Not really learning, and particularly not data, but validating the emotion and confidently expressing an understanding of what happened and what will happen, despite always-present complexity and uncertainty.
Wow. To paraphrase: "I don't think you're wrong. I was just lying. People are ignorant so lying is a good strategy."
Meanwhile to your question: Biden *did* do things to help. That's why inflation is now back to normal in the US while it's still substantially elevated in nearly all our peer nations. The US economy performed better than global comps on pretty much every measure.
(Naturally, this is stated for the benefit of others, as we have already established you are simply lying.)
Groceries are not 4x their 2020 prices.
You literally already admitted you're just lying, so maybe just knock it off. There are people who actually measure this stuff. According to FRED the "food at home" CPI category is up 25.1% since Jan 2020.
I dont understand why you criticize Kamala and Walz for not doing more podcast, when they’ve been kinda exclusively doing podcasts and local news interviews. I think this it’s such a weird obsession that the media keeps criticizing Harris and Walz for not doing enough national network interviews when it’s pretty clear they’re doing other things to try and attract undecided voters.
I'm pretty online and I gotta say if they are doing interviews it is not translating to the general public. I know they did the NBC news one together and that Walz was at the MI/Minn game this week. But that's pretty much it. Its certainly not like the trump campaign having them go on softball yet National podcast interviews with high listenership.
How many podcast and local interviews have they done?
If Harris and Walz are doing any media that is not completely scripted and friendly it is being kept underground. And in today’s media environment I don’t think that is possible.
If she loses, one factor will have to be the D handlers at the top who are so risk-averse with their candidates that it is playing right into Trump/Vance hands.
It’s like watching old pre-shot clock UNC Dean Smith basketball or to put it in Coach Walz terms - “we’re just going to run the ball up the gut, no turnovers, keep em penned in on D and run out the clock. Harris, if I see you throwin the ball I’m gonna bench your ass and let Rudy here handoff. Break on Vibe!
Not doing interviews is a way to avoid silly negative ads that misrepresent what the candidate said such as Hillary's deplorable comment which in context was pretty mild
Here is my concern about Walz. I like that he seems to be a genuine, transparent and totally honest guy. So why does he sound like a politician and act coy about things of absolutely no consequence such as whether he ever carried a gun in combat or whether he was at Tiananmen Square during the protests. Just say “I screwed up when I said that.” It would be a refreshing rarity indeed to hear a politician admit to a faux pas.
He was trying to say that - he misspeaks at some points when he’s caught up in the moment. He said that. But as I said before he was chosen, when he’s under pressure he speaks fast, which is a nervous tic.
He needs more debate and interview prep. Vance however worked as a press secretary when he was in the military so he has a lot of practice.
He did NOT say that. Referring to himself a knucklehead is not the same as saying “listen I embellished and I’m sorry”.
I’m one of the few on the right who thought he (Waltz) did an okay job otherwise, but he did not come clean on that last night.
And he attributed to bad grammar his false claims about carrying a rifle in war. He lied and he won’t admit it.
You know what? I just don't care. This issue is a waste of space
This is fascinating, cnn instant poll results. For all that the msm is angry about the debate (ie msnbc morning joe) and missed opportunities, I think walz actually did an outstanding job reaching across the aisle. He went from a net favorable of 14% to 37%. You can only do that if you are reaching across the aisle.
Similarly Vance went from net unfavorable of -22 to -3,
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25182006/cnn-instant-poll-no-clear-winner-in-vp-debate-between-tim-walz-and-jd-vance.pdf
Inflation is at its lowest point. Border crossings are at their lowest point. Please stop perpetuating far right talking points.
Also, why does no one correct the blatant lie that illegal immigration contributes to housing prices? Immigrants have no money, cannot get mortgages. You know who drives up the cost of housing in Seattle? Amazon workers making $350K a year.
Also, no one seems to want to talk about tariffs. A 25% tariff will be compensated by the manufacturer raising the price of the good by 25%. They will not lose profit, and the American people will pay. The other function of a tariff is to protect certain goods. Like with electric cars, there is a 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars. The manufacturer will not import those cars because no consumer will pay 100% more for it. In other words, with no product coming in, there is no money to be made on products. All this money Trump/Vance claim will be coming in, won't be, if the tariffs "work."
Nate’s a horse race guy. He covers elections. Low information voters who have come to form their impression on inflation and the border from the prior three years may not reassess that impression based on the latest numbers. “Too little too late” some of them might say. You must see online how many people don’t actually even understand what the definition of inflation is, arguing that “inflation can’t be down because prices haven’t gone down.”
Nate isn’t expressing a policy opinion or saying that Biden/Harris should be blamed for the inflation we have or the border situation. He’s just pointing out the reality that these are things that do hurt incumbent parties in elections.
Nate linked to an article on immigration from ONE YEAR ago on the number of crossings. Whether he is conscious about it or not, he is pushing a narrative. And it's not accurate.
He linked to the latest annual totals reported by the US Government who are responsible for reporting such things. The numbers from 2020-2023 were collected and reported by Biden-Harris admin.
To claim that this doesn’t matter because look 2024 is better is the kid who isn’t getting into his dream school because his Freshman-Junior transcript sucked but suddenly he’s knocking it out of the park Fall of Sr Year. It all matters.
6M is a lot no matter how you spin it and the fact is it happened under Biden-Harris.
I agree that things have finally, under heavy backlash, tightened up in 2024, and that’s nice - you might get waitlisted somewhere and we’ll see how that spring semester works out.
Have fun at Prom!
To be clear, Nate said, "Border crossings are up." That is present-tense, not past tense. Had Nate said, "Border crossings were up," that would be accurate and I would not take issue with it. But, as of the present moment, there are not up. And the data he linked to is not about the present. That's all I was saying. Your weird analogy doesn't really apply well here. "Grades are bad." But that was last year. All the details matter.
Nate's talking about how voters evaluate *this administration*. That evaluation is based on its record over the last 4 years and not the last month. You're being asinine, intentionally so.
Incredible how you're inside my head and definitively know my motivations and intentions. Absolutely incredible.
What I got from his statement, and how I think he intended for it to be read, was "Border Crossings are up *under the totality of Biden 's term as opposed to recent administrations*" which is true and the part that voters see as bad. Are they likely down in 2024? Probably. (I want to see the USCBP official numbers before saying for sure). Voters aren't judging on how have the last 6 months been; they are voting on how have the last 4 years been. Nate's statement and the stats he links to are related to that.
They don't buy houses, but they do contribute to driving up home prices by contributing to overall housing demand by adding more renters to the market. More renters = more competition to get a lease = higher rents = higher profits to be made by investing in RE = higher home prices.
It's basic supply and demand. When demand (population) grows faster than supply (housing construction), of course prices will rise.
> It's basic supply and demand. When demand (population) grows faster than supply (housing construction), of course prices will rise.
It is true that this issue is largely one of supply and demand, but the lion's share of the real price increase (as opposed to nominal price increase) is due to a 50-year decline in the rate of new housing and not any recent, marginal increase in demand.
In other words, absent the surge in asylum seekers, there would still be a huge housing crisis.
Two houses right near me are owned by illegals, or their allies, suspected of cycling aliens in and out of the rooms as they get jobs. Of course the millions and millions of illegals contribute to the housing shortages and higher prices!! Which would you rather rent to, hard-working illegals, the people delivering 100% of your major appliances and fixing everyone's roofs, or the kind of homeless who clog up the streets of Washington, San Francisco, and New York with their tent camps?
"or their allies" lol you are not a serious person.
I think I probably am a "serious person," whatever that may be. Their allies --- or their relatives perhaps? SOMEBODY acquired those mortgages or rented the houses. And there was a third such dubious house circulating illegals near me, now that I think of it. At the development just up on the hill last year: blasting salsa music and eventually loud preaching in Spanish on Sunday. Unpleasant; but they seem to have moved on now. Maryland is full of illegals. We now (recently) have four Mexican restaurants on one road here, and others elsewhere. Delicious, I love Mexican food, but the gang problem in the high schools is getting worse and worse.
I'm sure you checked their immigration status, you probably wouldn't call them illegals without being absolutely sure, right? Otherwise it would just be racist to assume...And music and preaching, my god, how criminal!
Think, Adam: young people, mostly men, in America, working at restaurants or other menial jobs, can't speak a word of English? Mexicans or Chinese: of course they're illegals. Don't close your eyes to the obvious. The "racist" calling is dead out of fashion, by the way.
Making an assumption about someone's immigration status based on the languages they speak or don't speak...that is a perfect example of racism, Phebe, out of fashion, or not...
And they worship God. Dios mio!
If they are asylum applicants they are not illegal.
Faster claim processing would help, but the Republicans decided not to fund that.
That is really a bureaucratic sleight of hand to flip their status from Red to Yellow.
Cumulative price increases appear permanent and were not mentioned as a result of “temporary” inflation. Ditto cumulative number of migrants crashing the gates in last 3 years is enormous. Cmon man.
My gut take: Walz is largely filling the typical “do no harm” role of a VP candidate fairly well. The problem is — in a very close election where his ticket is facing some headwinds from external variables (the economic, immigration, and foreign affairs issues mentioned by Nate) — Harris may end up having needed someone who could’ve gone beyond “do no harm” to “outright help.”
Ummm … did someone just mention Josh Shapiro cuz I’m pretty sure he was considered ‘outright help’.
Don’t get me wrong I think Tim Walz is a great guy and leader, cares about people, is a decent normal human being, etc.
Is he actually helping this ticket. I.e. converting undecided voters or even pulling votes away from Trump/Vance. It’s hard to make that case.
I desperately hope I am wrong.
I hope you are right. I thought at the time of his pick that the BlueWall was the driving reason and agree - midwesterners tend to give other midwesterners the benefit of the doubt and Shapiro at least does not fit that bill.
The internal and external communications issue that will plague a Harris-Walz Admin is that neither one of them speak in a direct and clear manner when talking about what they want to do. Not to be confused with any lack of intelligence.
You cannot expect a positive relationship with the MSM if you don’t talk to them. You can even get away with lying to them for a while but you can’t ignore them because they are critical of you.
I think it’s pretty irresponsible to essentially suggest that because Middle East conflict has happened during this presidency (not that I agree with it’s handling, but hard to suggest it wouldn’t have happened under a different administration) and because there has been high inflation (global by the way, not just in the US) after a historic global pandemic during this presidency (arguably global issues that the president has very little ability to affect), that these are policy failures of the Democratic Party. It’s really an American-centric view and probably a conflation of correlation and causation. Not a good take.
He's suggesting they are potentially effective political campaign points for Republicans to use, not weighing in on the substantive merits.
The argument is that a lot of countries made the same mistake--too much stimulus--and suffered the same consequence with ruinous inflation.
At some point it's irrelevant because voters just blame whoever's in charge when conditions are bad.
Perhaps, but choose your poison, deal with higher prices or deal with unemployment. There's a balance there.
Agreed, but people aren't very good at thinking about the terrible events that didn't befall them.
In my field, people are more likely to complain about their frustration looking for parking than they are to complain about the danger of being disabled or dying in a car crash: the latter may be way more important, but they only have experience with the former.
The issue isn't higher prices per se so much as inflation. The cure for inflation has typically been higher unemployment as a byproduct for the recession that drives down demand.
Do you assert that removing the sanctions on Iran and unfreezing their assets did not contribute to the new efforts by Hamas and Hezbollah?
Do you assert that increasing the national debt by 50% in a single term (via bills on which Harris cast the tie-breaking Senate vote) did not contribute to inflation?
Do you have google? I suggest you check your facts before posting
Gosh, what did I get wrong?
Immigration is different…. Intentionally abrogated Trump policies.
True. But the same people blamed the previous administration for Covid when it affected the whole world. You can't have it both ways
There's a difference between how you handle a challenge and where it may have initially originated from.
True. But in Harris case the border issue was created by opening up the border by current administration. A country without border is no country.
People didn’t blame COVID it tragically happened. We blamed the response. This is my lane I worked full time in ICU. When I listened to Trumps own words in his voice on Audible I was nauseated. He prolonged our suffering.
It is overwhelming to me the lack of reality that exists in the left. Let's just look at North Carolina that just suffered its worst natural disaster in its history. Today finally our President is making a visit and how much aid has he and FEMA dedicated to helping US citizens? Of course, over the weekend, after the hurricane, our government gave Israel $8.7 billion, $8 Billion to the Ukraine for a loosing war and $567 million to Taiwan. Survivors of Helene are asking to be granted Protected refugee status like the Haitians so they can get free cell phones, debit cards, monthly allowances, food stamps, health care, home -buying credits, rent subsidies and all the rest, for just 12 months
Don’t republicans want to gut FEMA and weaken environmental protection laws? In terms of policy, what exactly do republicans have to offer here except optics?
Your post was indicates a lack of understanding about FEMA, protected refugee status, and the amount of money that is expected to go to North Carolina. Ten minutes of internet research will be all you need.
Did you listen to the press conference about how much aid has gone to the states?
Also Biden didn’t go as law enforcement is actively searching for over 500 missing people who are presumed dead. Roads are washed away and people have no water.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2024/09/30/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-homeland-security-adviser-dr-elizabeth-sherwood-randall/
50,000 federal staff is deployed including 3500 fema employees, across 7 states. FEMA has a 20.4 billion budget to pull from to help and money is going directly into survivors hands.
None of what you said is true, it’s an amazing track record
Yeah!!!
Trump should have helicoptered into a downtown rooftop in Asheville and tossed mops, bottles of Clorox, and Paper Towels.
THAT’s how we do hurricanes in America goddamit
Screw FEMA and their coordinated responses….
Why not. It was highly successful in Puerto Rico during their storm disaster.
This is all lies. The states affected by Helene have gotten everything from FEMA their governors asked for. It's the states' responsibility to communicate accurately what their needs are so the federal government can respond adequately.
Furthermore, the congressional representatives for the affected districts are voting to cut FEMA funding even as their constituents are about to need it: https://www.ibtimes.com/full-list-republicans-who-voted-against-fema-relief-before-helene-battered-their-home-states-3745209
The federal government is giving the affected states *everything they're asking for*. If there's something that hasn't been given, it's because it hasn't been asked for, or it's just not done processing yet.
I'm absolutely thrilled that Biden didn't try to turn this disaster into political capital by distracting the rescue efforts with his presence. That's actual leadership.
Your last sentence is ridiculous made-up nonsense, and you should feel embarrassed that you believed it.
Thank you, Comrade Affirmative. I was about to make the same observation. I would argue that Nate’s chart—which shows higher border apprehensions under Biden than under any other administration—makes the case that Biden is doing a better job of protecting the border than Trump or any other president. What am I missing?
You are missing that they let every illegal go immediately and bus them free to major cities and give them goody bags as well. Naturally they line up to "get caught."
Funded by the taxpayers of Texas and Florida thanks to their generous governors.
Please provide a source for this claim.
My understanding is that most migrants were actually seeking to be apprehended at the border. That way, they could then officially claim asylum, get a court date to make a decision on that asylum status, then get released into the US to await trail. The problem is that the immigration court system is overwhelmed and those court dates are sometimes years into the future, so apprehensions aren't really considered "protecting" the border.
This is also why you see arguments about whether or not these immigrants are "illegal". They technically are not here illegally if they've claimed asylum, but the legal technicalities are lost on most people who just don't like immigration.