Is Trump on tilt?
Plus, book events and newsletter pricing.
I originally had plans to publish a longer story about Joe Biden today, but plane connectivity options weren’t cooperating — I flew out to the West Coast today for a couple of book events — so instead I spent the morning listening to esoteric podcasts.1 So this is going to serve as a utility post instead, then we’ll post a model update later today.
New York Times column
In the New York Times today, I have a story about the respective campaigns’ risk-management decisions so far. It argues that Democrats have played their hand better — despite the overlap that the party has with the generally risk-averse community that I call “the Village” in On the Edge:
Yet since the book went to press, something surprising has happened. So far in the 2024 election, the Village has been making better risk-management decisions — out-Rivering the River. The presidential race remains close, but at least for now it looks like the Village is winning.
At least the Village got the most important decision right: kicking President Biden to the curb. In so doing, they roughly doubled their chances of winning, from Mr. Biden’s 27 percent chance in my election forecast model at the time he withdrew from the race to Ms. Harris’s 54 percent the week of the Democratic National Convention.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, has made a series of poor decisions, particularly in his selection of JD Vance — a risky decision, but not one with a lot of obvious upside:
There’s another term from the poker world that describes Mr. Trump’s recent decision-making: He may be on tilt, the condition of making suboptimal choices because your emotions get in the way. Every poker player has seen it: An opponent builds up a huge stack, looks forward to treating himself to a steak dinner and bragging to his buddies. But then he loses a big pot — and before he knows it, the rest of his chips are gone as he tries to chase his losses.
You should feel more than welcome to use the comments to discuss the article, as you would with a typical Silver Bulletin post.
Tickets going fast for Seattle book event on Thursday
The book events are tonight in San Francisco, tomorrow (Wednesday) in Menlo Park and Thursday in Seattle. Unfortunately, the San Francisco event is sold out. We are told the Menlo Park event, at Kepler’s Literary Foundation, is nearly sold out as well, though there is some waitlist availability. There are a few dozen tickets left for the Thursday event, however, at Town Hall Seattle.
As an aside, I really love doing events at smaller indie venues, but it’s going to be tough add much more travel during the election peak. If you’re a retailer and would be interested in having us early next year instead, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. And we’re also looking at doing Silver Bulletin and/or Risky Business meetups, probably starting with New York.
A short-term change to monthly pricing for new subscribers
Finally, I want to use this space to announce a change in plans for monthly subscription pricing. This is temporary and only affects new subscribers; if you’re already signed up, you can stop reading here.
We’d originally said that we were going to temporarily turn off monthly subscriptions off at some point before the election. This was based on our experience with the NCAA tournament forecast, which got a lot of signups but also a lot of churn (people signing up for one month and then immediately canceling). But we’ve rethought this, and we figured, why not give people a choice? So here’s the plan:
Annual subs will remain at $95/year.
The price for newly-initiated monthly subs will increase to $20/month from September 1 until early November once the election is resolved.
We’re announcing this today — almost two weeks ahead of time — so you have plenty of time to lock in the $10/month price. Our policy is to always let you permanently lock in whatever price you originally sign up for, provided you remain continually subscribed.
And yes, you can cancel a monthly sub at any time. So if you sign up for a monthly subscription after Sept. 1, Substack will continue to charge you $20/month, but you’re totally welcome to cancel and resubscribe at the $10/month price once it goes back into effect in November. Obviously, we’re trying to heavily incentivize annual subs, which helps a lot with post-election hiring and planning plans. But it’s totally up to you. The basic heuristic is that we’ll be delivering twice as much value in the Sept. 1 through Nov. 5 period — when (paid) Model Talk columns will increase from 1x to 2x per week and, also we’ll continue to update the election forecast nearly every day. We do hope to continue to publish a lot of free posts too — it’s just going to be a busy couple of months here. You can sign up for any flavor of subscription using the link below. Speaking of flavor, model update coming after I get myself some lunch.
In particular, this 80,000 Hours podcast with Annie Jacobson on the logistics of nuclear war and the American command-and-control system. I haven’t read Jacobson’s book yet, but it’s highly recommended too if it’s anything like the podcast; she’s a rigorous journalist and a compelling story-teller.
Honestly, I've felt that the "River" and "Village" metaphor is getting strained lately, especially in that NYT article. Is it supposed to be analyzing inherent features in existing groups in society? Or describing patterns of behavior that some groups tend to take? Is it really useful to say "the Village" is acting like "the River" or in a "Riverian" way? I would think the point would be clearer if it was "many establishment groups act in a risk averse way, and it's interesting that the Democratic party is making risky but sound decisions lately."
I felt like the NYT article today would have been better without the River and Village framing, which didn't map cleanly on. Also, I assume Nate probably didn't write the headline.