This would be awesome. Of the entire group, those two were the most willing to criticize each other's arguments. It was always respectful and intelligent criticisms. The result was a more thoroughly debated/tested discussion of ideas.
Yeah, I started listening when it was Nate, Clare, Galen, and Micah (with Perry occasionally dropping in). I still like the 538 pod, but it’s definitely not the same.
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s ever any mention of just why she was let go and what ESPN’s considerations were at the time for maintaining, promoting and discarding talent.
It was right after the 2020 election, so I’m guessing it was to save money during COVID. Maybe she was one of the newer employees? Granted, the people in charge also seem to think that you can have 538 without the guy who made it famous, so maybe it wasn’t a terribly well-thought out decision.
My problem with this is that I suspect he lost yield after the debate last night. I watched the debate along with some conservative relatives, and all of them had gone in with a position something like "I've read some stuff about that Ramaswamy guy and he seems cool, I'd vote for him". After the debate, all of them really disliked him and definitely wanted to vote for another candidate instead of him.
Now, of course that was an n=4, and a highly correlated n=4 for that matter, but I suspect that the general dynamic will hold true. He might rise in polls a bit, but some of the people that would potentially support him were also driven away last night and that will definitely hurt his polling numbers. I'd probably give around 50% that he will rise in polls in the next month, definitely not 85%.
Yup Many might have been confirming why he should be disqualified. Cutting off Israel is disqualifying and he doubled down on making U25 join the army to vote, plagiarizing Obama, and taking Soros money in addition to being unmasked as a jerk
It's kind of funny reading the NY Times panel coverage of the debate performances. The overwhelming opinion about Ramaswamy was things like "Irritating", "obnoxious", "preening", "lightweight" - you get the picture. My guess is that's what a good portion of the GOP is looking for.
Yeah, I found that pretty ironic too. They’re judging the debate based on what appeals to them personally rather than who was the most effective. Christie is just as irritating as Ramaswamy, but he was saying what the NYT wanted to hear (and as a New Yorker myself, I think people up here have a bit of a soft spot for his kind of high-strung wise guy. I don’t think that’s the case for most of the country).
Christie came off far better than anyone would have imagined. Next to Vivek, he was a sober statesman. He said unpopular things, but scored far more points than people would have predicted. Pence tried to knock Vivek out all night Christie beat him up. Nikki knocked him out !!!
Nikki probably performed best overall. And Mike Pence has always been a strong debater, despite people continuously doubting him. He’s basically the only person who survived the full four years in the Trump administration without resigning or getting fired. That takes a certain amount of grit.
See Above. He said so many disqualifying things for even the GOP! They were searching for the wrong reasons if you are Vivek Quick start. He will struggle to make the third debate and frankly it was apparent that he is doing recon work for Trump Seeing which crazy ideas are getting push back and from whom. Trump is pulling the strings and getting a free scouting report for when he will have to debate
A large part of why Ramaswamy infuriates the NYT so much is because they really like believing that they're the only sort of people enlightened enough to vote for a candidate surnamed Ramaswamy.
Funny enough, that belief is entrenched enough that I imagine the Dems would sandbag hard against a candidate with two Indian names for "electability" reasons.
The Democrats need to watch out for a huge realignment of neither-white-nor-black voters, particularly once Trump is gone.
If that's true, then how would you explain the fairly good grades they gave for Nimarata Nikki Randhawa (Nikki Haley's birth name) compared to Ramaswamy. Or the really bad grades they gave for Asa Hutchinson and other candidates with more northwestern European sounding names?
I think you misread my statement. It has nothing to do with how the NYT would rank the candidates, and I have no doubt that a guy named Joe Smith would receive the same sort of scathing NYT review if he went up there and said the things Ramaswamy did.
I was referring to the fact that Republicans don't seem to give a shit that the guy is brown and has a 'funny name,' and how that contradicts principles that are VERY closely held among a lot of the NYT-class. If the Republicans ever end up running Vivek, the least nativist-approved candidate possible, the bien-pensants will split a gizzard because it puts a huge dent in their moral superiority complex. I know these people, I'm culturally one of them.
The mindset would be: *we* would vote for (hypothetical Democratic candidate with 'foreign-sounding' name), but *those people* wouldn't, so we can't run him. Whereas the Republican mindset seems to be "anything goes."
Point taken and fair enough. But, given that, I'd be willing to put a pretty good wager that the eventual GOP nominee will have a north-west European sounding name (including birth name).
Sure, but that's also a safe bet for the Democrats.
I suppose the crux of my point is that the Democratic Party's prominent focus on explicit race/ethnicity/identity issues can cause a negative reaction in normie voters of the form "why do you care so much anyway, isn't that a bit suspicious?" (I specify "explicit" because the Republicans do have a lot of identity-coded messaging, but it's rarely as salient.)
I also suspect that normie voters of a more recent immigration background are, in aggregate:
- Put off by nativism from the Republican side, of course
- Not as put off as pundits often think by anti-illegal-immigration sentiment/policy, as they don't consider themselves to be in the same category as illegal immigrants
- Put off by Dems' identity focus when directed towards their group, because it comes off as pity, pandering, or (worst of all) evidence that they don't actually see first-generation Americans as fully American
- And last and definitely least pleasant, often really put off by all of the pandering to low-income black Americans, who as a group are not really known for welcoming attitudes towards immigrants or those perceived as East/South Asian or Mexican. (Go on Youtube and search "Convicts - Illegal Aliens.")
Or, in short: a realignment seems to be occurring where the Democrats entrench in their degree-white + black demographic coalition while the Republicans ditch the Trumpy nativism and start gathering a lot of 0th/1st/2nd-gen voters.
It might be better to assess Ramaswamy’s impact without actually watching his performance as the level of shameless, exuberant, amoral pandering and radiant self-love could easily lead to a revulsion that impairs judgement. He may be more annoying that Josh Hawley.
This post is good, but also very disappointing. I notice an extreme lack of the word "policy." It basically makes it clear that media attention (and it's fanatical novelty seeking) is the prime mover. And also why Trump is so successful, because he most successfully and consistently feeds it. How can a new candidate break the joint Deep Media-Trump self-reinforcing alliance? The answer would seem to be "consistently attract even more outrageous attention" but is there any venn diagram overlap with that and "good policy"? Would the DMT even let that happen?
Contrarian point, and full disclosure, I watched the whole thing plus 45 minutes of spin room and read NYT analysis: 1/Trump looks foolish telling the world the rest of the candidates were 6th graders! Their goal was to look presidential, and all but Vivek did! It was easy to see that 2023 “Incoherent”Trump would have performed poorly and looked old. Nikki & RDS will close gap in Iowa & NH FoxNews missed this point badly!! In every political contest, it's important to determine, are there more of them or are they just louder? Iowans and New Hampshirites may pull the curtain up on this one. Long way to go folks and there is zero chance Trump would win a debate like this today and there is a zero chance his handlers are going to let him find out
Ramaswamy has a ton of charisma and is highly intelligent. He can learn and grow on policy, more so than DeSantis or a highly intelligent/successful Bergstrum can learn to communicate with energy and excitement. I thought Nikki did well enough to get a boost, and seemed like the only one who tried to speak to women instead of down to women. Will be interesting to see if her polls pick-up as well.
Let's take a deeper dive into why the traffic might be up His followers until tonight trended young, ergo, more online. He had a decent start, and then cracked. So people may want to know, did he say he was cutting off aid to Israel? Prohibit govt workers from joining a union? Give 1/3 or Ukraine to Putin? And not vet what would happen if Putin felt empowered to roll into Poland? Did he really plagiarize Obama extensively? Require those under 25 to join the armed forces to vote? Registered Independent? Voted once in his life? Took a Soros scholars grant as a multi millionaire? Yes to ALL! People are looking to confirm the disqualifying things. Now Look at Nikki Haley! What pundit before and after the debate hyped her? Who would have predicted her traffic would be so high?
Ramaswamy is simply taking positions now based on the mood of the likely GOP primary voters…all of the other candidates have records and so can’t just take irresponsible positions based on the mood of the right wing echo chamber. Judging by DeSantis’ awful performance as governor during Covid…going with the flow of the right wing echo chamber is not beneath him…but because Republicans hated Putin when he was a congressman he can’t take the irresponsible position on Ukraine like Ramaswamy.
Can you and Clare Malone start a new politics podcast? I miss listening to you guys. You made the 2020 election so much fun, especially the primaries.
This would be awesome. Of the entire group, those two were the most willing to criticize each other's arguments. It was always respectful and intelligent criticisms. The result was a more thoroughly debated/tested discussion of ideas.
Yeah, I started listening when it was Nate, Clare, Galen, and Micah (with Perry occasionally dropping in). I still like the 538 pod, but it’s definitely not the same.
Nate, Clare, Galen, and Perry was my favorite setup. Let's get the gang back together!
Would also be great to get Harry Enten back sometimes!
And Perry Bacon Jr! I really miss his analysis on the pod.
She was by far the best non-Nate member of the podcast.
She has landed well at New Yorker.
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s ever any mention of just why she was let go and what ESPN’s considerations were at the time for maintaining, promoting and discarding talent.
It was part of a round of layoffs at Disney in 2020. ABC News laid off 5%, and fivethirtyeight roughly matched that, letting go 2 out of 40.
It wasn't directly related to the 2020 election, although the timing would certainly have limited any ability Nate might have had to push back.
It was right after the 2020 election, so I’m guessing it was to save money during COVID. Maybe she was one of the newer employees? Granted, the people in charge also seem to think that you can have 538 without the guy who made it famous, so maybe it wasn’t a terribly well-thought out decision.
Steal Perry Bacon Jr. too while you're at it!
My problem with this is that I suspect he lost yield after the debate last night. I watched the debate along with some conservative relatives, and all of them had gone in with a position something like "I've read some stuff about that Ramaswamy guy and he seems cool, I'd vote for him". After the debate, all of them really disliked him and definitely wanted to vote for another candidate instead of him.
Now, of course that was an n=4, and a highly correlated n=4 for that matter, but I suspect that the general dynamic will hold true. He might rise in polls a bit, but some of the people that would potentially support him were also driven away last night and that will definitely hurt his polling numbers. I'd probably give around 50% that he will rise in polls in the next month, definitely not 85%.
The polling done by FiveThirtyEight/Ispos/The Washington Post confirmed this, with Ramaswamy's net favorability rating going down by 8.7%.
Yup Many might have been confirming why he should be disqualified. Cutting off Israel is disqualifying and he doubled down on making U25 join the army to vote, plagiarizing Obama, and taking Soros money in addition to being unmasked as a jerk
It's kind of funny reading the NY Times panel coverage of the debate performances. The overwhelming opinion about Ramaswamy was things like "Irritating", "obnoxious", "preening", "lightweight" - you get the picture. My guess is that's what a good portion of the GOP is looking for.
Yeah, I found that pretty ironic too. They’re judging the debate based on what appeals to them personally rather than who was the most effective. Christie is just as irritating as Ramaswamy, but he was saying what the NYT wanted to hear (and as a New Yorker myself, I think people up here have a bit of a soft spot for his kind of high-strung wise guy. I don’t think that’s the case for most of the country).
Christie came off far better than anyone would have imagined. Next to Vivek, he was a sober statesman. He said unpopular things, but scored far more points than people would have predicted. Pence tried to knock Vivek out all night Christie beat him up. Nikki knocked him out !!!
Nikki probably performed best overall. And Mike Pence has always been a strong debater, despite people continuously doubting him. He’s basically the only person who survived the full four years in the Trump administration without resigning or getting fired. That takes a certain amount of grit.
You can’t fire a VP as it is an elected office…but the president doesn’t have to pick them again when they run for re-election.
Tell that to Spiro Agnew.
See Above. He said so many disqualifying things for even the GOP! They were searching for the wrong reasons if you are Vivek Quick start. He will struggle to make the third debate and frankly it was apparent that he is doing recon work for Trump Seeing which crazy ideas are getting push back and from whom. Trump is pulling the strings and getting a free scouting report for when he will have to debate
Interesting take. However, other than Nicki Haley, they all look like they'll struggle to make the third debate.
A large part of why Ramaswamy infuriates the NYT so much is because they really like believing that they're the only sort of people enlightened enough to vote for a candidate surnamed Ramaswamy.
Funny enough, that belief is entrenched enough that I imagine the Dems would sandbag hard against a candidate with two Indian names for "electability" reasons.
The Democrats need to watch out for a huge realignment of neither-white-nor-black voters, particularly once Trump is gone.
If that's true, then how would you explain the fairly good grades they gave for Nimarata Nikki Randhawa (Nikki Haley's birth name) compared to Ramaswamy. Or the really bad grades they gave for Asa Hutchinson and other candidates with more northwestern European sounding names?
I think you misread my statement. It has nothing to do with how the NYT would rank the candidates, and I have no doubt that a guy named Joe Smith would receive the same sort of scathing NYT review if he went up there and said the things Ramaswamy did.
I was referring to the fact that Republicans don't seem to give a shit that the guy is brown and has a 'funny name,' and how that contradicts principles that are VERY closely held among a lot of the NYT-class. If the Republicans ever end up running Vivek, the least nativist-approved candidate possible, the bien-pensants will split a gizzard because it puts a huge dent in their moral superiority complex. I know these people, I'm culturally one of them.
The mindset would be: *we* would vote for (hypothetical Democratic candidate with 'foreign-sounding' name), but *those people* wouldn't, so we can't run him. Whereas the Republican mindset seems to be "anything goes."
Point taken and fair enough. But, given that, I'd be willing to put a pretty good wager that the eventual GOP nominee will have a north-west European sounding name (including birth name).
Sure, but that's also a safe bet for the Democrats.
I suppose the crux of my point is that the Democratic Party's prominent focus on explicit race/ethnicity/identity issues can cause a negative reaction in normie voters of the form "why do you care so much anyway, isn't that a bit suspicious?" (I specify "explicit" because the Republicans do have a lot of identity-coded messaging, but it's rarely as salient.)
I also suspect that normie voters of a more recent immigration background are, in aggregate:
- Put off by nativism from the Republican side, of course
- Not as put off as pundits often think by anti-illegal-immigration sentiment/policy, as they don't consider themselves to be in the same category as illegal immigrants
- Put off by Dems' identity focus when directed towards their group, because it comes off as pity, pandering, or (worst of all) evidence that they don't actually see first-generation Americans as fully American
- And last and definitely least pleasant, often really put off by all of the pandering to low-income black Americans, who as a group are not really known for welcoming attitudes towards immigrants or those perceived as East/South Asian or Mexican. (Go on Youtube and search "Convicts - Illegal Aliens.")
Or, in short: a realignment seems to be occurring where the Democrats entrench in their degree-white + black demographic coalition while the Republicans ditch the Trumpy nativism and start gathering a lot of 0th/1st/2nd-gen voters.
It might be better to assess Ramaswamy’s impact without actually watching his performance as the level of shameless, exuberant, amoral pandering and radiant self-love could easily lead to a revulsion that impairs judgement. He may be more annoying that Josh Hawley.
This post is good, but also very disappointing. I notice an extreme lack of the word "policy." It basically makes it clear that media attention (and it's fanatical novelty seeking) is the prime mover. And also why Trump is so successful, because he most successfully and consistently feeds it. How can a new candidate break the joint Deep Media-Trump self-reinforcing alliance? The answer would seem to be "consistently attract even more outrageous attention" but is there any venn diagram overlap with that and "good policy"? Would the DMT even let that happen?
Contrarian point, and full disclosure, I watched the whole thing plus 45 minutes of spin room and read NYT analysis: 1/Trump looks foolish telling the world the rest of the candidates were 6th graders! Their goal was to look presidential, and all but Vivek did! It was easy to see that 2023 “Incoherent”Trump would have performed poorly and looked old. Nikki & RDS will close gap in Iowa & NH FoxNews missed this point badly!! In every political contest, it's important to determine, are there more of them or are they just louder? Iowans and New Hampshirites may pull the curtain up on this one. Long way to go folks and there is zero chance Trump would win a debate like this today and there is a zero chance his handlers are going to let him find out
Nate, The link to Schelling focal point is broken. Not sure if it was supposed to go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) or something else.
The 15% happened, Ramaswamy's pre-debate polling surge (10%) was a mirage, he's back to 7%.
This poll rise doesn't seem to have materialized.
Describing 85% confidence results as "physics" is like the crime of stolen valor.
Ramaswamy has a ton of charisma and is highly intelligent. He can learn and grow on policy, more so than DeSantis or a highly intelligent/successful Bergstrum can learn to communicate with energy and excitement. I thought Nikki did well enough to get a boost, and seemed like the only one who tried to speak to women instead of down to women. Will be interesting to see if her polls pick-up as well.
Let's take a deeper dive into why the traffic might be up His followers until tonight trended young, ergo, more online. He had a decent start, and then cracked. So people may want to know, did he say he was cutting off aid to Israel? Prohibit govt workers from joining a union? Give 1/3 or Ukraine to Putin? And not vet what would happen if Putin felt empowered to roll into Poland? Did he really plagiarize Obama extensively? Require those under 25 to join the armed forces to vote? Registered Independent? Voted once in his life? Took a Soros scholars grant as a multi millionaire? Yes to ALL! People are looking to confirm the disqualifying things. Now Look at Nikki Haley! What pundit before and after the debate hyped her? Who would have predicted her traffic would be so high?
Ramaswamy is simply taking positions now based on the mood of the likely GOP primary voters…all of the other candidates have records and so can’t just take irresponsible positions based on the mood of the right wing echo chamber. Judging by DeSantis’ awful performance as governor during Covid…going with the flow of the right wing echo chamber is not beneath him…but because Republicans hated Putin when he was a congressman he can’t take the irresponsible position on Ukraine like Ramaswamy.
I think the "irresponsible position" line here misses this critical question:
How, exactly, are Russian military forces to be ejected from Ukraine? With whose army?
That’s for Ukraine to decide. Forcing Ukraine to cut a deal with Putin eve equally as bad as the Bush/Cheney foreign policy.