“But that is mostly just because the election was so close — determined by only 537 votes in Florida. A fair number of Nader voters actually had Bush as their second choice.”
Not to belittle your point about a three way race: I mostly agree. However, Bush did not win the 2000 presidency. The recount was stopped by SCOTUS with over 100,000 votes to count, not including the 10,000 undercounts with hanging chads, that clearly should have counted for Gore. An audit after the election in Miami Dade and West Palm Peach, the two Democratic counties that hadn’t completed the recount, would prove that Gore won by over 10,000 votes.
As for the three way race, it just goes to show the “dumbing down” of America is real and scary.
Kennedy is a guy who spent his entire formidable years on drugs, including heroin. He had the best schooling and wasted it. He got into Harvard because he was a legacy, and Harvard Law School for the same reason.
His only job after Law School was as an appointed Assistant Boston DA. He didn’t earn the job. And he was fired six months later for failing the Massachusetts’ Bar. Not to mention being arrested for heroin possession and pleading guilty.
Now this man thinks he has a medical degree. Clearly, he soiled the family name, and is an embarrassment. He’s the poor man’s JFK Jr..
He failed at law, thinks he’s a doctor peddling lies and misinformation, and even called mask mandates worse than anything the Nazi’s did. He said even Anne Frank had an attic to hide in; as though, wearing a mask outside is equivalent to gas chambers, starvation and death camps and hiding in a cramped attic, shitting and pissing into a bucket for 20 hours a day.
The man is a fraud on the scale of Trump and Musk. A rich man without a moral compass and clearly invested too much alcohol and drugs; having no semblance of reality.
Sorry, when SCOTUS illegally stopped a constitutional recount before it’s completed and hands it to one party, it’s not denialism, it’s reality!
Florida’s constitution requires a recount if it’s within 1%. More than 5 million people voted. So that means 50,000 votes would have triggered a recount. It was 2,200 in the initial tabulations, and 537 before SCOTUS nullified the recount on made up legal theories.
Secondly, I always thought conservatives believed in states rights; only when it’s to their advantage I guess.
And by the way, regardless of the outcome, Gore gave his concession speech and Clinton completed a peaceful transition of power.
Trump wasn’t within 1% in most swing states, yet he demanded recounts and then additional recounts and they were granted. And even after 62 lawsuits were thrown out and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, the petulant five year, still refused to concede or allow a peaceful transfer of power. Not to mention, his attempts at a coup, threatening Secretaries of States to find votes and sending fake electors to Congress.
As someone who believes Bush was the worst president in history I came across some statistics that prove his tax cuts were disastrous. So first off the headline overall tax revenues in the years after the Bush tax cut are an anomaly in American history as revenue pretty much doubled every decade since 1962 except for the Bush/Cheney decade in which it ended up at the same level over a decade!?! Wtf????? The next metric is tax revenue as a percentage of GDP which hovers around 17.5% since 1950 and went up to 20% in 2000 when we ran a surplus and then hit 15.4% under Bush which was a record low only to be beat on the low end during the Great Recession. So the Bush Tax Cuts are the worst economic policy possibly in American history because we firehosed dollars into the economy and it ended up tanking the economy as it led to dysfunctional economic growth and malinvestment. And keep in mind Obama increased the top rate in 2013 and we actually ended up doubling tax revenue in that decade only we lost an entire decade of tax revenue and economic growth in the last years of the boomers in the labor force!?! Once again, wtf????
Well said. And don’t forget, Bush’s surplus ended with a $1.88 deficit and he more than doubled the national debt from $5.4 trillion, to $11.6 trillion. Obama spent the same in four years, approximately $6.4 trillion, but reduced the deficit from $1.88 trillion to $536 billion, before the orange, Donnie Dumas took the reins, and here we are...:)
Looking at the tax revenue as a % of GDP I believe the Trump Tax Cuts injected the dumb money into our economy that has exacerbated transitory inflation from bullwhip effect. So in 2018/19 we went down to 16% tax revenue as a percentage of GDP and so I think that is what led to asset inflation. I think the Trump Tax Cuts were irresponsible but not as irresponsible as the Bush Tax Cuts which btw led to inflation only Katrina made it appear energy prices were volatile when they were simply rising and so the Fed discounted the headline PCE and stuck with core PCE which was a mistake—we had inflation in 2005-08 and the Fed ignored it because they characterized it as energy price volatility when energy prices were going up and not coming down…until we had an awful Financial Meltdown.
“[Substack] really does seem to attract a more politically diverse audience than my old stomping grounds at FiveThirtyEight.”
You may or may not be reading these comments, but in case you are: the audience was very ideologically diverse at 538 for a long time (we were all nerds together), but at some point there seemed to be an internal coup. The tenor of the site's articles shifted dramatically towards social progressivism. (I read rumours at the time that your staff had staged an intervention struggle session at which they denounced your both-sides-ism and made you agree to back their politics.) More relevantly for this discussion, the site's moderation policies also became radically progressive. One by one I watched as commenters with views that weren't PC/woke were banned from the site. So by the end the comments had become a progressive echo chamber (and far less active).
Yes; I was never much in the comments section, but I was an avid reader up until a few years ago when the shift you so accurately describe drove me away.
That's a pretty rich take, considering they quickly canned Claire Malone as soon as they could.
You could simply be noticing that folks who didn't have fairly normie, inclusive opinions were not able to handle any of the decorum standards the site wanted to maintain.
So are you capable of understanding the chain of events, 538 hired her in 2015, she's a really good writer, and gained notoreity with some systemic critiques of injustice and big media co's, then in 2018 ABC bought 538, all during the 2020 election run up, and once the election was over, and didn't have to be bothered finding a replacement, or interrupting their coverage, they canned her suddenly, as soon as possible.
It's especially counter to your claim, that of all the other journos they could have canned first, the most "woke" one it was, while keeping other more conservative ones.
If there's anything false here, it's your claim that something is objectively false, or can be disproven with a tangent fact.
The chain of events is very simple. 538 hired a bunch of writers. They never made very much money, so after the election, the main event of their calendar, they downsized to use their funding more efficiently during the fallow period. The staff they kept were more in line with their “data journalism” remit. Staff like Malone, who were more purely journalistic and lacked technical skills, were the ones let go. Plenty of very progressive staff stayed—inevitably, because all of the 538 staff were progressives!
Or sure, maybe it was all a grand conspiracy by ultra-MAGA fascists to oppress the #resistance. One or the other.
Also these effects seem larger if you take into account that many voters don't recognise kennedy - when they do, more republicans like him and more democrats dislike him.
Regarding RFK Jr. having higher favorables among Republicans, I think the perception is that that's just because he's a stalking horse to hurt Biden. Republican megadonors backing RFK Jr. may not say anything about who he *actually* hurts, but it may say something about who Republicans *think* he hurts. Republicans aren't going to go abandoning Trump for RFK Jr, because the Republicans who support him think he's bringing the Trump agenda to the Democrat(ic) Party; they aren't Never Trumpers looking for an off-ramp without having to vote for Biden.
I have to say, you can’t look at favorable/unfavorable polls and extrapolate that into vote for/vote against. Republicans have a favorable view of RFK because he speaks honestly rather than blindly backing the ridiculous positions of Democrats, like their support for men competing in women’s sports. I doubt that if Trump is the candidate, Republicans that voted for Desantis, Scott, Haley, or Ramaswamy are going to vote for Independent RFK. Maybe they might pull the lever for a No Labels candidate? I see a 3rd Party RFK candidate as pulling some left leaning Independents or even Democrats that believe Biden is too old. Even if it’s only 1-3% that won’t be helpful for Biden.
I know this is kind of tangential to your point, but the Biden administration is actually supporting a proposed change to Title IX which would allow schools to restrict trans players from competing on opposite sex teams, if done to prevent injuries or foster competitiveness.[1] I'm frankly not really sure RFK Jr. and Joe Biden represent substantially different choices on social/cultural issues except maybe on abortion. He came out in support of affirmative action after the recent supreme court decision, he has called for an end to qualified immunity for police officers as part of an effort to make police officers more responsive to concerns from the Black community, and he has supported indigenous groups frequently in their efforts to block new development like hydroelectric dams. Which I think does support your point that RFK Jr poses more threat to Biden than Nate thinks.
"Honestly." Jeebus. If you mean he doesn't sugarcoat his craziness, then yes, he is very honest. And that craziness is why Rs have a more favorable view of him than Ds.
I think it is worth pointing out that RFK Jr still has some very strong environmental positions that many Republicans would not support. And he is deemphasizing his anti-vax positions, though I am not sure that will work.
Yes, the political awareness goes into reverse here. Republicans are more likely to say they like RFK Jr if they're high-awareness, but they're also the ones who are least likely to switch their vote. Democrats are more likely to say they like RFK Jr if they're low-awareness, and they're the ones who are most likely to switch their vote.
I think ultimately his 3rd-party candidacy will be a null wash that's impossible to conclusively disentangle from all the other factors, same as most others.
Biden lacks the political gifts that Obama and Clinton enjoyed. With his doubling down on immigtation in the face of blue cities opposing and displaying the disastrous results and a VP whose greatest accomplishment is word salad, Biden looks vulnerable
Congress is the entity that has to fix immigration…it’s been an issue since the 1980s and Republicans have no interest in fixing the problem. And remember 2000 when Republicans wanted the illegal immigrant Elian Gonzalez to remain with his American kidnappers??? Republicans just milk the issue for whatever political advantage they can leverage.
As long as we're being pedan-er, nuanced, the issue with a 3-way election is what happens when none of the presidential candidates reach 270 electoral college votes.
The whole "popular" election is thrown out, and the house decides on a per state basis.
It has happened before, and some serious political horse trading was made.
This is a nightmare scenario that may or may not benefit Biden.
As a former editor-in-chief of a website named after the electoral college vote count, you may want to learn the rules of the electoral college.
A strategy American political parties have employed is running multiple regional candidates in order to prevent a candidate from hitting the magic number. Bush Republicans employed that strategy against AG Paxton in 2022 GOP primary running Louie Gohmert who campaigned only in his Congressional district in order to take votes from Paxton and help George P Bush. Gohmert gave up a safe seat in Congress to help Bush’s nephew so W must have ordered him to do it because people think he’s a MAGA when in reality he’s a fairly typical Bush Republican.
I give zero weight to any head-to-head polls now, whether they show Trump or Biden ahead, or a tie. Reagan was tied with Mondale this far ahead of his 1984 landslide. I'm not saying Trump couldn't win, just that people are not making hard choices about who they will vote for in these polls, they are more visceral feelings. I think that the real swing voters now are mostly undecided anyway. Note that tied polls are not 50-50, they are 43-43 or 45-45. Swing voters won't make hard choices this early.
I’m somewhat persuaded by Nick Catoggio’s column at The Dispatch yesterday that Trump voters want Trump and only Trump, and if he is on the ballot, why would you waste your vote on someone Trump-like but who won’t win? I think there will be very few reluctant Trump voters this election -- everyone who votes for him is going to be all-in on what he represents.
If reluctant Trump voters all sit out or vote Biden, Biden wins in a landslide. The hardcore Trump base is like 50-80% of the republican party, not enough to win a general election.
While lots of Democrats would prefer Biden had not run again (I am one of them), that is not remotely comparable to the attitude that former Republican-voting suburbs have about Trump.
Nonetheless, you are correct that in swing states, it is the true independents who will decide the election, but I think the same point applies. Voting for somebody who you think is too old is a far distance from voting for somebody who you think is a criminal - who says he will pardon 1/6 convicts.
Somehow that doesn't seem to be holding much water with swing voters currently. I notice that Trump is essentially tied with Biden in the polls currently and in the ABC outlier he is up by double digits.
Which ignores my point. The issue is not who makes a choice in those polls, but the millions who claim to be undecided - they are the swing voters. They will have to choose between one candidate they think is too old and one who is a criminal. I am inclined to believe they will choose the former.
I think this view is just a failure of imagination. When you imagine someone who votes for Trump, all you imagine is someone who is a huge Trump fan. But obviously, Trump got a lot of votes in both 2016 and 2020 from people who very much dislike him, given how many Republicans dislike him.
Yep, that vaccine loving, never ending war supporting , open borders and LGBTQ supporting African American demographic will definitely stick with vivacious Joe Biden
The “never ending war” supporters? Seriously? Which party started the endless wars? Which party manufactured a war that cost the lives of over 500,000 Iraqi civilians, almost 5,000 Americans, 32,000 wounded and over $1.5 trillion wasted.
Yet, you believe that supporting a democracy in Europe, that accounts for 12% of all global grain, and was invaded twice by a authoritarian kleptocrat, who promised he wouldn’t invade, and his movement on the Ukrainian border was just a special military exercise is supporting an endless war.
Did I mention that the same authoritarian, lying kleptocrat has thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at every major US city? I can see how supporting a nation that was invaded and protecting democracy throughout Europe is t in our national interests.
Oh, that’s right, you’d rather be Russian than a democrat. Good to know!
I am not a Putin fan but an open ended 6-7 year commitment in Europe depleting our weapons ( and Petroleum) inventory while EU nations other than Poland arent pulling their fair share is reckless at best.
I bet you believe Covid evolved in nature and China isnt the biggest environmental, social and military threat we face.
We cannot economically be the world police and fund the social welfare of tens of millions of uneducated immigrants and the defense and reconstruction of Ukraine .
First off, I don’t believe in MMT, or Friedman monetarism. I’m more in line with Keynesian economics with caveats. I’ll leave that discussion for another time since it’s off topic.
Secondly, Ukraine is a democracy. Zelenskyy was elected, and a democratic constitution was adopted on 28 June 1996, which mandated a pluralistic political system with protection of basic human rights and liberties, and a semi-presidential form of government.
The only time democracy was on the line, was when Putin interfered in several Ukrainian elections, and installed puppet’s, who were later defeated at the ballot box, or fled Ukraine during the Orange Revolution in 2004.
Europe is pulling their weight and combined have contributed more money and weapons systems than the US. American Jets, tanks and missile systems that we didn’t provide, were sent by our Allie’s.
The EU gives more in humanitarian and financial aid
But when it comes to humanitarian aid, the EU actually gives twice as much as the US - €7.6 billion compared to €3.6 billion. So I’m not sure where you’re getting your facts and statistics.
Further, should Ukraine fall, Russia would control close to 30% of the grain market and become the largest global provider of natural gas and oil, exceeding the US; giving them greater leverage to hold over Europe as well as global prices of these commodities.
Additionally, if you know Putin’s history, you’d know he’s a product of the Cold War and dreams of the reemergence of a great Russian Empire, similar to the Soviet Union. If Ukraine falls Moldova and Poland would be next and the entire EU upended.
There’s a reason both Finland and Sweden want to join NATO; the declined after WW2, and haven’t been inclined to join even during the height of the Cold War, yet now they are adamant since they view Putin as a clear and present danger to their sovereignty. Let that sink in!
And it’s irrelevant how COVID started. It caused a global pandemic that affected the entire world. I don’t dwell on why, I focus on how best to combat it. Sounds like you’re an anti-vaxxer?
Yes, China is a threat on many levels: environmental and military, although, the biggest issue we have isn’t a direct war, it’s access to the South China Sea, protecting shipping routes. And Ukraine is also important, because like Russia, they think Taiwan is a border dispute. If Putin wins, it will embolden China to act.
That said, China has many domestic issues, and are suffering from high unemployment and a possible major recession in the midsts
As for policing the world, you are right. However, we have an obligation to support our Allie’s for which we rely on each other for trade, and military support. Think NATO and free trade agreements.
I understand your position. Thank you for explaining.
No, I've had 5 Covid shots and just received the RSV vaccine.
My view is its all about priorities and I view the Ukraine situation as a teritiary threat. The odds of Putin rolling into Poland or other NATO territory is close to zero .
If we desire to continue to support Ukraine on a large level through "victory" and reconstruction, we need to do several things:
1) Institute a very progressive war and reconstruction tax fully funding all expenditures in support of Ukraine and #2 below.
2) Invoke the Defense production act and fund the spin-up our defense manufacturing capacity to restock our supply of Javelins, Artillery Shells and other munitions being rapidly depleted in 1 year not 3-7 years, which I understand is the current situation.
I could be more supportive if our country's support for Ukraine is strong enough to fund the support without charging the war on our grandchildren's credit cards while also depleting our critical inventory of wespons.
On the positive side, the Ukraine war is validating the superiority of the West's weapon systems. Conversely, demonstrating this superiority places addition priority on bad actor states acquiring nuclear weapons and "poor mans" asymmetrical strategic weapons like bio and chemical
“My view is it’s all about priorities and I view the Ukraine situation as a teritiary threat. The odds of Putin rolling into Poland or other NATO territory is close to zero.”
Fair enough, but understand we didn’t start this war, nor did we want it. However, I disagree that the threat to Poland and Moldova is near zero. We believed the same in 2014, when Putin invaded Crimea. And he lied again to Zelenskyy and Biden this go round.
How can you honestly trust Putin’s word? He’s always reneged on his promises.
Spending on this war is costly, but it’s cheaper in the long-run than American troops on the ground, which we should never commit to. If it comes to that, the European’s will do the heavy lifting, and we would probably offer special force’s in support and some air cover support as well. It’s in nobody’s interest to escalate further or fight it for decades. That said, if we quit now and leave Allie’s in the lurch, no one will ever trust us again.
Look how Trump betrayed the Kurds who singlehandedly destroyed ISIS in Syria with only 2,500 IS special forces in support, and air cover. We lost less than ten troops and it cost us $50 million over five years. Compare that with Iraq, and it’s the best money ever spent fighting terrorists. And the Kurds paid dearly. 10k dead and 30k wounded, before Trump betrayed them to Erdrogan.
No one wants this to escalate, and if you have solution, feel free to comment. There are no good options, but we have an obligation to stop aggression, at home, and abroad. No more endless wars or manufactured wars: Period!...:)
Great comments. I opposed the Iraq War and I opposed waging war against the Taliban…but I supported enforcing the no-fly zone against Saddam (which was working great) and I obviously supported degrading Al Qaida and bringing Bin Laden to justice and obviously I support our Navy patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. So helping Ukraine defend themselves against a senseless invasion is consistent with a foreign policy that advocates power projection like enforcing no-fly zones and our Navy all over the world.
As an aside I wonder what the Tucker Carlson’s of the world think about the Persian Gulf War in which we sent ground troops to repel an invasion of an ultra wealthy Muslim monarchy??? Republicans are all over the place and obviously just knee-jerk react to whatever Democrats support.
I think the concern now is that it looks like the battle lines are frozen and moving them would require a massive investment in new equipment, far greater than anything the US has provided up to this point.
If none of that happens the alternate scenario is the West providing just enough support to keep the two sides locked in stalemate for a length period of time, maybe even a decade.
The fears around third-party runs tend to reinforce my belief (and who doesn't love a little confirmation bias?) that we as a nation are engaged in voting less *for* one candidate and more voting *against* another. If the idea of the other guy winning wasn't so unpalatable, we'd have the chutzpah to vote for the candidate/party that we actually want. Like, in a capitalist market, signals are sent by what people do and don't buy (among other things); voting for a third party should send a signal to the two major parties that they need to do more to win voters at these margins, but because we're so afraid of spoilers, we don't send those signals.
Anyway, this has little to do with what Nate was really getting at, and as always I deeply appreciate the insight from these newsletters. Thanks for what you do, Nate.
It's not necessarily a societal issue ("we as a nation...") but a structural one. Especially (but not at all exclusively) at the presidential level with the winner-take-all Electoral College, the election system is built to encourage binary splits.
It's touched on in the "Anti-Biden Democrats" section, but does RFK potentially help with the age issue? While your points a few weeks ago about the age difference between Trump & Biden were valid, they were also reasonably subtle, and so it feels like for voters seriously concerned with Biden's age, they may be more likely to go to RFK than Trump.
Of course, having a much younger option might make more likely to abandon Biden than otherwise, so he may lose more than Trump anyway.
From Nate's piece a month ago: "However, the differences can’t entirely be chalked up to partisanship — 74 percent of independents also said that Biden was too old, while just 48 percent said that of Trump."
So let me rephrase my question - does it help Biden if *Independents* with concerns about his age flip to RFK instead of Trump? Given those stats, there's surely a sizable chunk that would consider it.
Have you heard of the passive voice and ever seen it's abuse?
It's a pretty reliable tactic to launder a bad faith claim into a conversation, without taking any responsibility for it. "Mistakes were made" "Many people are saying" "Officer involved shooting"
“But that is mostly just because the election was so close — determined by only 537 votes in Florida. A fair number of Nader voters actually had Bush as their second choice.”
Not to belittle your point about a three way race: I mostly agree. However, Bush did not win the 2000 presidency. The recount was stopped by SCOTUS with over 100,000 votes to count, not including the 10,000 undercounts with hanging chads, that clearly should have counted for Gore. An audit after the election in Miami Dade and West Palm Peach, the two Democratic counties that hadn’t completed the recount, would prove that Gore won by over 10,000 votes.
As for the three way race, it just goes to show the “dumbing down” of America is real and scary.
Kennedy is a guy who spent his entire formidable years on drugs, including heroin. He had the best schooling and wasted it. He got into Harvard because he was a legacy, and Harvard Law School for the same reason.
His only job after Law School was as an appointed Assistant Boston DA. He didn’t earn the job. And he was fired six months later for failing the Massachusetts’ Bar. Not to mention being arrested for heroin possession and pleading guilty.
Now this man thinks he has a medical degree. Clearly, he soiled the family name, and is an embarrassment. He’s the poor man’s JFK Jr..
He failed at law, thinks he’s a doctor peddling lies and misinformation, and even called mask mandates worse than anything the Nazi’s did. He said even Anne Frank had an attic to hide in; as though, wearing a mask outside is equivalent to gas chambers, starvation and death camps and hiding in a cramped attic, shitting and pissing into a bucket for 20 hours a day.
The man is a fraud on the scale of Trump and Musk. A rich man without a moral compass and clearly invested too much alcohol and drugs; having no semblance of reality.
Good riddance!
Oh, look. Still denying the election of 2000. You ridiculous conspiracy theorists. 🤣
Sorry, when SCOTUS illegally stopped a constitutional recount before it’s completed and hands it to one party, it’s not denialism, it’s reality!
Florida’s constitution requires a recount if it’s within 1%. More than 5 million people voted. So that means 50,000 votes would have triggered a recount. It was 2,200 in the initial tabulations, and 537 before SCOTUS nullified the recount on made up legal theories.
Secondly, I always thought conservatives believed in states rights; only when it’s to their advantage I guess.
And by the way, regardless of the outcome, Gore gave his concession speech and Clinton completed a peaceful transition of power.
Trump wasn’t within 1% in most swing states, yet he demanded recounts and then additional recounts and they were granted. And even after 62 lawsuits were thrown out and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, the petulant five year, still refused to concede or allow a peaceful transfer of power. Not to mention, his attempts at a coup, threatening Secretaries of States to find votes and sending fake electors to Congress.
So there’s that!
As someone who believes Bush was the worst president in history I came across some statistics that prove his tax cuts were disastrous. So first off the headline overall tax revenues in the years after the Bush tax cut are an anomaly in American history as revenue pretty much doubled every decade since 1962 except for the Bush/Cheney decade in which it ended up at the same level over a decade!?! Wtf????? The next metric is tax revenue as a percentage of GDP which hovers around 17.5% since 1950 and went up to 20% in 2000 when we ran a surplus and then hit 15.4% under Bush which was a record low only to be beat on the low end during the Great Recession. So the Bush Tax Cuts are the worst economic policy possibly in American history because we firehosed dollars into the economy and it ended up tanking the economy as it led to dysfunctional economic growth and malinvestment. And keep in mind Obama increased the top rate in 2013 and we actually ended up doubling tax revenue in that decade only we lost an entire decade of tax revenue and economic growth in the last years of the boomers in the labor force!?! Once again, wtf????
Well said. And don’t forget, Bush’s surplus ended with a $1.88 deficit and he more than doubled the national debt from $5.4 trillion, to $11.6 trillion. Obama spent the same in four years, approximately $6.4 trillion, but reduced the deficit from $1.88 trillion to $536 billion, before the orange, Donnie Dumas took the reins, and here we are...:)
Looking at the tax revenue as a % of GDP I believe the Trump Tax Cuts injected the dumb money into our economy that has exacerbated transitory inflation from bullwhip effect. So in 2018/19 we went down to 16% tax revenue as a percentage of GDP and so I think that is what led to asset inflation. I think the Trump Tax Cuts were irresponsible but not as irresponsible as the Bush Tax Cuts which btw led to inflation only Katrina made it appear energy prices were volatile when they were simply rising and so the Fed discounted the headline PCE and stuck with core PCE which was a mistake—we had inflation in 2005-08 and the Fed ignored it because they characterized it as energy price volatility when energy prices were going up and not coming down…until we had an awful Financial Meltdown.
Agreed....:)
As long as you agree that election denial is a falsehood.
Remember when Bush slaughtering innocent Muslims brought joy to your life??? I will never forget.
“[Substack] really does seem to attract a more politically diverse audience than my old stomping grounds at FiveThirtyEight.”
You may or may not be reading these comments, but in case you are: the audience was very ideologically diverse at 538 for a long time (we were all nerds together), but at some point there seemed to be an internal coup. The tenor of the site's articles shifted dramatically towards social progressivism. (I read rumours at the time that your staff had staged an intervention struggle session at which they denounced your both-sides-ism and made you agree to back their politics.) More relevantly for this discussion, the site's moderation policies also became radically progressive. One by one I watched as commenters with views that weren't PC/woke were banned from the site. So by the end the comments had become a progressive echo chamber (and far less active).
Yes; I was never much in the comments section, but I was an avid reader up until a few years ago when the shift you so accurately describe drove me away.
That's a pretty rich take, considering they quickly canned Claire Malone as soon as they could.
You could simply be noticing that folks who didn't have fairly normie, inclusive opinions were not able to handle any of the decorum standards the site wanted to maintain.
FACTCHECK: FALSE
Clare Malone worked at 538 for five years.
She was canned suddenly right after the 2020 election.
You really are not as clever as you think.
Yes, after five years.
So are you capable of understanding the chain of events, 538 hired her in 2015, she's a really good writer, and gained notoreity with some systemic critiques of injustice and big media co's, then in 2018 ABC bought 538, all during the 2020 election run up, and once the election was over, and didn't have to be bothered finding a replacement, or interrupting their coverage, they canned her suddenly, as soon as possible.
It's especially counter to your claim, that of all the other journos they could have canned first, the most "woke" one it was, while keeping other more conservative ones.
If there's anything false here, it's your claim that something is objectively false, or can be disproven with a tangent fact.
The chain of events is very simple. 538 hired a bunch of writers. They never made very much money, so after the election, the main event of their calendar, they downsized to use their funding more efficiently during the fallow period. The staff they kept were more in line with their “data journalism” remit. Staff like Malone, who were more purely journalistic and lacked technical skills, were the ones let go. Plenty of very progressive staff stayed—inevitably, because all of the 538 staff were progressives!
Or sure, maybe it was all a grand conspiracy by ultra-MAGA fascists to oppress the #resistance. One or the other.
Also these effects seem larger if you take into account that many voters don't recognise kennedy - when they do, more republicans like him and more democrats dislike him.
Or at least that's what this seems to show: https://echeloninsights.com/in-the-news/which-kennedy-is-it/
Regarding RFK Jr. having higher favorables among Republicans, I think the perception is that that's just because he's a stalking horse to hurt Biden. Republican megadonors backing RFK Jr. may not say anything about who he *actually* hurts, but it may say something about who Republicans *think* he hurts. Republicans aren't going to go abandoning Trump for RFK Jr, because the Republicans who support him think he's bringing the Trump agenda to the Democrat(ic) Party; they aren't Never Trumpers looking for an off-ramp without having to vote for Biden.
I have to say, you can’t look at favorable/unfavorable polls and extrapolate that into vote for/vote against. Republicans have a favorable view of RFK because he speaks honestly rather than blindly backing the ridiculous positions of Democrats, like their support for men competing in women’s sports. I doubt that if Trump is the candidate, Republicans that voted for Desantis, Scott, Haley, or Ramaswamy are going to vote for Independent RFK. Maybe they might pull the lever for a No Labels candidate? I see a 3rd Party RFK candidate as pulling some left leaning Independents or even Democrats that believe Biden is too old. Even if it’s only 1-3% that won’t be helpful for Biden.
I may not agree with your implicit politics but I think you have the thinking of politicos in both parties spot-on.
I know this is kind of tangential to your point, but the Biden administration is actually supporting a proposed change to Title IX which would allow schools to restrict trans players from competing on opposite sex teams, if done to prevent injuries or foster competitiveness.[1] I'm frankly not really sure RFK Jr. and Joe Biden represent substantially different choices on social/cultural issues except maybe on abortion. He came out in support of affirmative action after the recent supreme court decision, he has called for an end to qualified immunity for police officers as part of an effort to make police officers more responsive to concerns from the Black community, and he has supported indigenous groups frequently in their efforts to block new development like hydroelectric dams. Which I think does support your point that RFK Jr poses more threat to Biden than Nate thinks.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/trans-athletes-biden-title-ix-28c6c78e9cd60a4c334de15bfdd624fe
"Honestly." Jeebus. If you mean he doesn't sugarcoat his craziness, then yes, he is very honest. And that craziness is why Rs have a more favorable view of him than Ds.
I think it is worth pointing out that RFK Jr still has some very strong environmental positions that many Republicans would not support. And he is deemphasizing his anti-vax positions, though I am not sure that will work.
Yes, the political awareness goes into reverse here. Republicans are more likely to say they like RFK Jr if they're high-awareness, but they're also the ones who are least likely to switch their vote. Democrats are more likely to say they like RFK Jr if they're low-awareness, and they're the ones who are most likely to switch their vote.
I think ultimately his 3rd-party candidacy will be a null wash that's impossible to conclusively disentangle from all the other factors, same as most others.
Looks like you lost a footnote in the formatting or something?
> However, a strong1 scholarly consensus
Biden lacks the political gifts that Obama and Clinton enjoyed. With his doubling down on immigtation in the face of blue cities opposing and displaying the disastrous results and a VP whose greatest accomplishment is word salad, Biden looks vulnerable
Congress is the entity that has to fix immigration…it’s been an issue since the 1980s and Republicans have no interest in fixing the problem. And remember 2000 when Republicans wanted the illegal immigrant Elian Gonzalez to remain with his American kidnappers??? Republicans just milk the issue for whatever political advantage they can leverage.
As long as we're being pedan-er, nuanced, the issue with a 3-way election is what happens when none of the presidential candidates reach 270 electoral college votes.
The whole "popular" election is thrown out, and the house decides on a per state basis.
It has happened before, and some serious political horse trading was made.
This is a nightmare scenario that may or may not benefit Biden.
As a former editor-in-chief of a website named after the electoral college vote count, you may want to learn the rules of the electoral college.
A strategy American political parties have employed is running multiple regional candidates in order to prevent a candidate from hitting the magic number. Bush Republicans employed that strategy against AG Paxton in 2022 GOP primary running Louie Gohmert who campaigned only in his Congressional district in order to take votes from Paxton and help George P Bush. Gohmert gave up a safe seat in Congress to help Bush’s nephew so W must have ordered him to do it because people think he’s a MAGA when in reality he’s a fairly typical Bush Republican.
I give zero weight to any head-to-head polls now, whether they show Trump or Biden ahead, or a tie. Reagan was tied with Mondale this far ahead of his 1984 landslide. I'm not saying Trump couldn't win, just that people are not making hard choices about who they will vote for in these polls, they are more visceral feelings. I think that the real swing voters now are mostly undecided anyway. Note that tied polls are not 50-50, they are 43-43 or 45-45. Swing voters won't make hard choices this early.
I’m somewhat persuaded by Nick Catoggio’s column at The Dispatch yesterday that Trump voters want Trump and only Trump, and if he is on the ballot, why would you waste your vote on someone Trump-like but who won’t win? I think there will be very few reluctant Trump voters this election -- everyone who votes for him is going to be all-in on what he represents.
If reluctant Trump voters all sit out or vote Biden, Biden wins in a landslide. The hardcore Trump base is like 50-80% of the republican party, not enough to win a general election.
The exact same argument could be made about Biden. Independents will decide this election.
While lots of Democrats would prefer Biden had not run again (I am one of them), that is not remotely comparable to the attitude that former Republican-voting suburbs have about Trump.
Nonetheless, you are correct that in swing states, it is the true independents who will decide the election, but I think the same point applies. Voting for somebody who you think is too old is a far distance from voting for somebody who you think is a criminal - who says he will pardon 1/6 convicts.
Somehow that doesn't seem to be holding much water with swing voters currently. I notice that Trump is essentially tied with Biden in the polls currently and in the ABC outlier he is up by double digits.
Which ignores my point. The issue is not who makes a choice in those polls, but the millions who claim to be undecided - they are the swing voters. They will have to choose between one candidate they think is too old and one who is a criminal. I am inclined to believe they will choose the former.
The polling at this point is completely wrong in that case. Again, Trump is tied in most polls and in the last ABC/WaPo poll he is up by 10 points.
No one is claiming that Biden has hardcore supporters or opponents. Only Trump does.
The Democratic Party has hardcore supporters (and opponents). For all practical purposes it's the same thing.
I think this view is just a failure of imagination. When you imagine someone who votes for Trump, all you imagine is someone who is a huge Trump fan. But obviously, Trump got a lot of votes in both 2016 and 2020 from people who very much dislike him, given how many Republicans dislike him.
Hi Nate,
I think you're showing that RFK running would be a little more likely to help Biden than hurt him (based on the way things stand currently).
However, if things stay as they are currently I assume Biden would very likely lose if RFK ran or not.
My question is if Biden turns things around in the way he needs to to have a chance of winning, would RFK running hurt him then?
Yep, that vaccine loving, never ending war supporting , open borders and LGBTQ supporting African American demographic will definitely stick with vivacious Joe Biden
The “never ending war” supporters? Seriously? Which party started the endless wars? Which party manufactured a war that cost the lives of over 500,000 Iraqi civilians, almost 5,000 Americans, 32,000 wounded and over $1.5 trillion wasted.
Yet, you believe that supporting a democracy in Europe, that accounts for 12% of all global grain, and was invaded twice by a authoritarian kleptocrat, who promised he wouldn’t invade, and his movement on the Ukrainian border was just a special military exercise is supporting an endless war.
Did I mention that the same authoritarian, lying kleptocrat has thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at every major US city? I can see how supporting a nation that was invaded and protecting democracy throughout Europe is t in our national interests.
Oh, that’s right, you’d rather be Russian than a democrat. Good to know!
Democracy in Ukraine? 🤔
I am not a Putin fan but an open ended 6-7 year commitment in Europe depleting our weapons ( and Petroleum) inventory while EU nations other than Poland arent pulling their fair share is reckless at best.
I bet you believe Covid evolved in nature and China isnt the biggest environmental, social and military threat we face.
We cannot economically be the world police and fund the social welfare of tens of millions of uneducated immigrants and the defense and reconstruction of Ukraine .
Maybe you believe in "Modern Monetary Theory"?
First off, I don’t believe in MMT, or Friedman monetarism. I’m more in line with Keynesian economics with caveats. I’ll leave that discussion for another time since it’s off topic.
Secondly, Ukraine is a democracy. Zelenskyy was elected, and a democratic constitution was adopted on 28 June 1996, which mandated a pluralistic political system with protection of basic human rights and liberties, and a semi-presidential form of government.
The only time democracy was on the line, was when Putin interfered in several Ukrainian elections, and installed puppet’s, who were later defeated at the ballot box, or fled Ukraine during the Orange Revolution in 2004.
Europe is pulling their weight and combined have contributed more money and weapons systems than the US. American Jets, tanks and missile systems that we didn’t provide, were sent by our Allie’s.
The EU gives more in humanitarian and financial aid
But when it comes to humanitarian aid, the EU actually gives twice as much as the US - €7.6 billion compared to €3.6 billion. So I’m not sure where you’re getting your facts and statistics.
Further, should Ukraine fall, Russia would control close to 30% of the grain market and become the largest global provider of natural gas and oil, exceeding the US; giving them greater leverage to hold over Europe as well as global prices of these commodities.
Additionally, if you know Putin’s history, you’d know he’s a product of the Cold War and dreams of the reemergence of a great Russian Empire, similar to the Soviet Union. If Ukraine falls Moldova and Poland would be next and the entire EU upended.
There’s a reason both Finland and Sweden want to join NATO; the declined after WW2, and haven’t been inclined to join even during the height of the Cold War, yet now they are adamant since they view Putin as a clear and present danger to their sovereignty. Let that sink in!
And it’s irrelevant how COVID started. It caused a global pandemic that affected the entire world. I don’t dwell on why, I focus on how best to combat it. Sounds like you’re an anti-vaxxer?
Yes, China is a threat on many levels: environmental and military, although, the biggest issue we have isn’t a direct war, it’s access to the South China Sea, protecting shipping routes. And Ukraine is also important, because like Russia, they think Taiwan is a border dispute. If Putin wins, it will embolden China to act.
That said, China has many domestic issues, and are suffering from high unemployment and a possible major recession in the midsts
As for policing the world, you are right. However, we have an obligation to support our Allie’s for which we rely on each other for trade, and military support. Think NATO and free trade agreements.
I hope this helps...:)
I understand your position. Thank you for explaining.
No, I've had 5 Covid shots and just received the RSV vaccine.
My view is its all about priorities and I view the Ukraine situation as a teritiary threat. The odds of Putin rolling into Poland or other NATO territory is close to zero .
If we desire to continue to support Ukraine on a large level through "victory" and reconstruction, we need to do several things:
1) Institute a very progressive war and reconstruction tax fully funding all expenditures in support of Ukraine and #2 below.
2) Invoke the Defense production act and fund the spin-up our defense manufacturing capacity to restock our supply of Javelins, Artillery Shells and other munitions being rapidly depleted in 1 year not 3-7 years, which I understand is the current situation.
I could be more supportive if our country's support for Ukraine is strong enough to fund the support without charging the war on our grandchildren's credit cards while also depleting our critical inventory of wespons.
On the positive side, the Ukraine war is validating the superiority of the West's weapon systems. Conversely, demonstrating this superiority places addition priority on bad actor states acquiring nuclear weapons and "poor mans" asymmetrical strategic weapons like bio and chemical
“My view is it’s all about priorities and I view the Ukraine situation as a teritiary threat. The odds of Putin rolling into Poland or other NATO territory is close to zero.”
Fair enough, but understand we didn’t start this war, nor did we want it. However, I disagree that the threat to Poland and Moldova is near zero. We believed the same in 2014, when Putin invaded Crimea. And he lied again to Zelenskyy and Biden this go round.
How can you honestly trust Putin’s word? He’s always reneged on his promises.
Spending on this war is costly, but it’s cheaper in the long-run than American troops on the ground, which we should never commit to. If it comes to that, the European’s will do the heavy lifting, and we would probably offer special force’s in support and some air cover support as well. It’s in nobody’s interest to escalate further or fight it for decades. That said, if we quit now and leave Allie’s in the lurch, no one will ever trust us again.
Look how Trump betrayed the Kurds who singlehandedly destroyed ISIS in Syria with only 2,500 IS special forces in support, and air cover. We lost less than ten troops and it cost us $50 million over five years. Compare that with Iraq, and it’s the best money ever spent fighting terrorists. And the Kurds paid dearly. 10k dead and 30k wounded, before Trump betrayed them to Erdrogan.
No one wants this to escalate, and if you have solution, feel free to comment. There are no good options, but we have an obligation to stop aggression, at home, and abroad. No more endless wars or manufactured wars: Period!...:)
Great comments. I opposed the Iraq War and I opposed waging war against the Taliban…but I supported enforcing the no-fly zone against Saddam (which was working great) and I obviously supported degrading Al Qaida and bringing Bin Laden to justice and obviously I support our Navy patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. So helping Ukraine defend themselves against a senseless invasion is consistent with a foreign policy that advocates power projection like enforcing no-fly zones and our Navy all over the world.
As an aside I wonder what the Tucker Carlson’s of the world think about the Persian Gulf War in which we sent ground troops to repel an invasion of an ultra wealthy Muslim monarchy??? Republicans are all over the place and obviously just knee-jerk react to whatever Democrats support.
I think the concern now is that it looks like the battle lines are frozen and moving them would require a massive investment in new equipment, far greater than anything the US has provided up to this point.
If none of that happens the alternate scenario is the West providing just enough support to keep the two sides locked in stalemate for a length period of time, maybe even a decade.
The fears around third-party runs tend to reinforce my belief (and who doesn't love a little confirmation bias?) that we as a nation are engaged in voting less *for* one candidate and more voting *against* another. If the idea of the other guy winning wasn't so unpalatable, we'd have the chutzpah to vote for the candidate/party that we actually want. Like, in a capitalist market, signals are sent by what people do and don't buy (among other things); voting for a third party should send a signal to the two major parties that they need to do more to win voters at these margins, but because we're so afraid of spoilers, we don't send those signals.
Anyway, this has little to do with what Nate was really getting at, and as always I deeply appreciate the insight from these newsletters. Thanks for what you do, Nate.
It's not necessarily a societal issue ("we as a nation...") but a structural one. Especially (but not at all exclusively) at the presidential level with the winner-take-all Electoral College, the election system is built to encourage binary splits.
It's touched on in the "Anti-Biden Democrats" section, but does RFK potentially help with the age issue? While your points a few weeks ago about the age difference between Trump & Biden were valid, they were also reasonably subtle, and so it feels like for voters seriously concerned with Biden's age, they may be more likely to go to RFK than Trump.
Of course, having a much younger option might make more likely to abandon Biden than otherwise, so he may lose more than Trump anyway.
From Nate's piece a month ago: "However, the differences can’t entirely be chalked up to partisanship — 74 percent of independents also said that Biden was too old, while just 48 percent said that of Trump."
So let me rephrase my question - does it help Biden if *Independents* with concerns about his age flip to RFK instead of Trump? Given those stats, there's surely a sizable chunk that would consider it.
The exact quote from Kennedy, as quoted in the linked article, was, "There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted".
Could you correct your quote above to reflect that?
Have you heard of the passive voice and ever seen it's abuse?
It's a pretty reliable tactic to launder a bad faith claim into a conversation, without taking any responsibility for it. "Mistakes were made" "Many people are saying" "Officer involved shooting"
This is why people hate lawyers.
Thank you. Good analysis.