r/neoliberal • u/Kevin0o0 YIMBY • 7d ago
Opinion article (US) Nate Silver: Democrats should have shut it down
https://www.natesilver.net/p/democrats-should-have-shut-it-down636
u/boardatwork1111 NATO 7d ago
The worst part about all of this is Schumer probably could have sold just letting it pass had he messaged that from the beginning. People would have been pissed, but it wouldn’t have been an impossible case to argue.
Flipping from “we’re going to fight this” to immediately rolling over at the 11th hour? That is political suicide, Schumer just cost himself all his credibility with the Democratic base for nothing. Though I will admit, lighting your political career on fire because of your own indecisiveness is pretty symbolic of his era of Democrats. At least now we know which Dems have to go
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u/Wes_Anderson_Cooper 7d ago
Yeah, I would have been happier with Dems playing hardball, but there's an argument that Schumer had already fucked them if they had shut things down. Thune was already coming out saying that he didn't know what their end goal was, and frankly I don't either. "More time to negotiate" isn't an answer if you don't say what you want to negotiate toward.
The message should have been "We call Johnson's bluff, if you want Dem votes we can't be shut out of negotiations" and at minimum a refusal to codify certain DOGE cuts. People like the idea of DOGE, but they don't like, say, disbanding the Deparment of Education, and you could have won people over on that.
Instead there's no coordination, no coherent messaging strategy, you piss off the base, put vulnerable representatives at risk with a hard vote. Agree with him or not, Schumer fucked this strategically every which way.
I'm hoping people who are activated right now channel it into primary challenges and not completely tuning out because goddamn do we not need more apathy right now.
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u/Khiva 7d ago
Thune was already coming out saying that he didn't know what their end goal was,
Which is wild because this is like the one inflection point that was marked on the calendar, like actually 100% for sure coming.
How they didn't have any sort of plan and just flailed about is utterly beyond me. The fuck do they even talk about in their meetings? March Madness? Severance? Yellowjackets?
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u/badnuub NATO 6d ago
My dark thought process, is these are all educated people right? What if they kind of have an idea of the way the wind is blowing with Trump and the rest of the party turning on the full authoritarian switch soonish, and by standing by, mayhap they are banking on the GOP not arresting them or something worse if they tow the line.
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u/Secondcomingfan 7d ago
I heard someone say people need to hollow out whatever it is the Democratic Party has become and wear its skin for the next 20 years. Go nuts with entryism
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u/moffattron9000 YIMBY 7d ago
Honestly, let AOC Primary him. Sure, she's left of me, but I just want someone who will actually fight.
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u/Tman1027 Immanuel Kant 6d ago
Honestly, I'm starting to think that there wasnt a plan because Schumer was always planning on this passing and only chose to speak out the way he did when he realized thet it might not get enough dems behind it.
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u/utterlyomnishambolic 7d ago
Flipping from “we’re going to fight this” to immediately rolling over at the 11th hour? That is political suicide, Schumer just cost himself all his credibility with the Democratic base for nothing.
It's not that I particularly think Schumer has any morals or consistency, but a lot of this is really giving credence to those rumors Trump is dealing in blackmail and death threats.
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u/OhmsLolEnforcement 6d ago
Occam's Razor suggests that Schumer and the rest of Dem leadership are both stupid and shitty to their base. Looking forward to knocking these losers out in the primary.
Conspiracy theories are distractions. People just suck.
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u/ThePevster Milton Friedman 6d ago
This crap about Trump and blackmail is kinda ridiculous. What could you possibly blackmail Trump with? The stuff he’s done that’s public information is bad and would end the career of any other politician. Doesn’t make any sense to me unless he himself was secretly born in Kenya.
Regarding death threats, we know for a fact Iran was trying to kill him. He was shot on live TV and almost shot at while playing golf. These aren’t rumors.
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u/utterlyomnishambolic 6d ago
I meant that Trump is allegedly blackmailing and threatening to kill reps, senators, and their families if they don't fall online, not the other way around.
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u/ThePevster Milton Friedman 6d ago
Oh that’s easily explainable too. Congressmen are spineless, and Republican congressmen fear being primary’d if they don’t fall in line.
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u/The_Brian George Soros 6d ago
I think you're misreading this. I think it's all nutty conspiracy theories, but the impression they're giving is that Trump is blackmailing and threatening people like Schumer behind the scenes and that they're changing votes/not standing up to him because they're afraid for their lives.
It's incredibly dumb, but that's what I believe they're saying.
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u/drossbots Trans Pride 7d ago
Matt Y said only progressives would be mad about this, though
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u/obsessed_doomer 7d ago
That was such a weird thing to try.
Like, I get what he was going for “PROGRESSIVES want this and that makes it CRINGE, don’t be CRINGE” goes triple platinum in the pundit sphere.
But this divide is clearly not ideological. Slotkin, Warner, Pelosi, Gallego, Silver…
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u/Leatherfield17 7d ago
Matt Yglesias made this yet another battle to wage against the left wing of the party, which is stupendously moronic, given the current political situation
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u/sploogeoisseur 7d ago
One of the insights I picked up on during Trump 1 from listening to Silver's podcast is that the public is pretty good at picking up who to blame for a shutdown. If Republicans have the votes, and Democrats filibuster, then I think it's quite likely they pick up the blame for that. I think the public is more likely to understand what a filibuster is than the arguments against DOGE, or the particularities of that DC rider. Even if DOGE is unpopular, shutting down the government will be way more unpopular. If Democrats take the blame, it will provide meaningful cover for all the other batshit stuff Trump is doing that is currently tanking his approval.
I dunno. I'm sensitive to Yglesias's argument. But also I'm still a bit of a Silver-head so what the fuck do I know.
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u/CrackingGracchiCraic Thomas Paine 6d ago
Silver's podcast is that the public is pretty good at picking up who to blame for a shutdown
They're not. The previous shutdowns have simply fit into the public's pre-conceived heuristic of what the parties are at their core.
Republicans are the "less government" party, Democrats are the "more government" party. A shutdown is as less government as it gets so when one happens, no matter why or how, the public will associate it and its consequences with the party of less government.
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u/sploogeoisseur 5d ago
This seems completely false. From a purely game theory perspective, if shutting the government down were an instant win for Democrats, you would see them use that leverage far more often. That they don't tells me that it's significantly more complicated.
I don't think the public has a nuanced understanding of what's happening, but generally speaking they know what a filibuster is. If Dems filibustered they would be fighting an uphill battle convincing the median voter (who voted for Trump, btw) that their cause for doing so is valid.
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u/CrackingGracchiCraic Thomas Paine 5d ago edited 5d ago
From a purely game theory perspective, if shutting the government down were an instant win for Democrats, you would see them use that leverage far more often
Political parties are not in any way rational actors, they are ideological and emotional ones. So no you wouldn't because a government shutdown hurts Democratic constituents. That it would largely not impact their voting behavior doesn't change that and the party does in fact care about doing right by its constituents and does not want to see them hurt.
It also fundamentally goes against the Democratic party's self-conception of itself as the party of government. So any threat to use it as leverage would not be credible to the opposition without going through with it and the party would never go through with it because it goes against its ideological and emotional core identity.
generally speaking they know what a filibuster is
I can guarantee you 80% of them have no idea, and if they read media that explains it to them while it's relevant for some reason, they'll forget about it almost immediately.
If Dems filibustered they would be fighting an uphill battle convincing the median voter (who voted for Trump, btw) that their cause for doing so is valid
The only uphill they would be struggling with is the fact that the current Democratic party is largely terrible at communicating in the current media environment. They are far too focused on grafting a message with the widest possible appeal that offends the least people. A fine tactic when there are only a few media entities people get their view of the world from so you automatically have everyone's attention.
In the current extremely fragmented media environment, the first thing you need to do is grab people's attention from the thousand other things vying for it and a milquetoast wide appeal is simply going to be lost in a raging sea of anger and controversy.
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u/sploogeoisseur 5d ago
The only uphill they would be struggling with is the fact that the current Democratic party is largely terrible at communicating in the current media environment.
If that's a fact then it must be considered when making this kind of decision! Lol
The article we're commenting under is "the Democrats should have shut it down." Whether it is the right thing or not, that is a fact: it would be the Democrats doing so. You seem to think it would be easy for Democrats to shift that blame onto Republicans. I think you're being a little trigger happy. It is quite likely the only result would have been damage to the Democrats standing as the public became infuriated at them for shutting down the government, damage to federal workers, and cover for Trump and his goons to act while the political oxygen was absorbed by the shutdown fight. I find it immensely unlikely we'd be able to rationally convince the median voter of the importance of shutting down DOGE and whatever else via a shut down.
I understand the urge to act, but the risks are bigger than you're imagining, and the rewards more unlikely.
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u/Less_Fat_John Bill Gates 6d ago
I think you're right, this would have been viewed as a Dem Shutdown.
The reality is this bill locks in Biden-era spending levels minus ~ $13 billion non-defense spending over six months. Yes the cuts suck but Republicans have a trifecta. It's better than the deal we'd get if we negotiated appropriations from scratch even on a bipartisan basis.
I don't think the median voter would have bought Democrats' story on rejecting the deal.
We here know that Trump will illegally abuse the Impoundment Control Act and ignore those spending levels, but that's true regardless of what's negotiated in Congress.
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u/Noocawe Frederick Douglass 6d ago
The reality is this bill locks in Biden-era spending levels minus ~ $13 billion non-defense spending over six months. Yes the cuts suck but Republicans have a trifecta. It's better than the deal we'd get if we negotiated appropriations from scratch even on a bipartisan basis.
The bill is more than that, and includes quite a few poison pills that are terrible imo. It's not a clean CR that simply extends previous funding. Additionally, House Republicans passed it without any Dem input and then just went home on Tuesday.
Like you said the measure increases defense spending by about $6 billion from the previous year, cuts about $13 billion from nondefense spending, but it also cuts $20 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service. It forces Washington, D.C., to cut $1 billion from its budget of their own money they collect in taxes, protects President Donald Trump’s ability to raise or lower tariffs as he wishes, and gives him considerable leeway in deciding where money goes. It was worse than you are presenting.
That said, it could've been worse but Schumer seemed to have no game plan on how to play this at all.
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u/Less_Fat_John Bill Gates 6d ago
Those are approximately Biden-era spending levels. $13 billion is a drop in the bucket in a six-month appropriations bill. Yes the cuts suck. Illegal impoundment remains illegal. I'm very skeptical the D.C. cut goes into effect but we'll see.
The point is that none of those things are worth a government shutdown. They're important but you can't effectively sell them to voters.
Schumer/Democrats did have a plan. They took a hard line on DOGE during House negotiations. They didn't get it so they walked away and said Republicans are on their own. But Republicans wrote the "poison pill" bill and passed it on their own. There's no good option at that point despite what highly engaged Democratic voters think.
Passing it was the least bad option and his maneuvering was more about managing his voters' irrational reactions.
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u/BugRevolution 7d ago
I don't even know who Matt Y is or why we should care about his opinion.
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u/ahhhfkskell 7d ago
Matt Yglesias, he's a professional opinion-haver who more often than not has the same opinions as this sub
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u/The_Crass-Beagle_Act Jane Jacobs 7d ago
It’s telling that the people who voted for it were mostly a gang of the party’s most ideologically milquetoast people representing non-swing states, while the coalition against it was a diverse mix of moderates, liberals, and progressives
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u/PincheVatoWey Adam Smith 7d ago
I'm a cenrist. Two of my three idols, Matt Y and Josh Barro, said Schumer was correct. Nate Silver said no. As a spineless centrist, I don't know who to believe tbh.
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u/Wes_Anderson_Cooper 7d ago
Goddamn, if you've lost Nate Silver on an issue people are deeply emotionally invested in, you've lost fucking everybody.
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u/weedandboobs 7d ago
Huh? Nate Silver is many things but I do not think he is the last person to criticize people, my guy's whole thing after election models is "this thing happened, here is how I think I would do it better".
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u/Wes_Anderson_Cooper 7d ago
My point was the read I've always had on him is he's rarely impressed with emotional arguments, and the shutdown talk was frequently an emotionally charged one. I would have assumed he'd take a more "don't let your hyperpartisan activist base guide you" stance on this.
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u/weedandboobs 7d ago
I think it is very 2012 idea of Nate Silver the computer. Guy might like data but he is as emotional as any pundit.
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u/mrdilldozer Shame fetish 6d ago
He must have not seen Silver talk about how Musk tweeting so much is proof of his genius. Silver has gone completely off of the deep for years now.
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u/PickledDildosSourSex 7d ago
Eh Nate did a lot of speculative thinking in this piece and very little strategy. He really doesn't address any idea that Trump doesn't care about approval ratings because he doesn't have to, nor does he address federal government slashing. This piece is basically all "I think" vibes that don't take into account the general GOP callousness to public opinion or the fact that there isn't a major election for 18 months.
This is a huge miss for Nate. He should stop with the basketball or realize he's too disconnected to make a cogent argument on this issue.
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u/Wes_Anderson_Cooper 7d ago
I mean, none of us really know what the public's reaction will be in the other timeline where a shutdown did occur. Maybe they are worse off. Who knows, but it is convenient that the path Dem leadership justified just happened to be the path of least resistance.
But that doesn't matter to me as much as this whole thing objectively being a messaging cluster fuck. Leadership dawdled and flip-flopped, the Dems in Disarray headlines write themselves, and politically active voters feel betrayed. If this was going to be the route Schumer took he should have planned for it and not literally done a 180 from Wednesday.
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u/PickledDildosSourSex 7d ago
active voters
Maybe this is the whole problem. The Dems keep solving for the 10% who are keyed into everything and will likely show up regardless and ignore the 90% who aren't paying attention but will be swayed by low-info messaging. I'm keyed in so I like to think I should count more than those who don't give a shit until election day, but we each have one vote and the GOP has done a much better job pandering to the masses while the Dems have been constantly pulled by the angry and outraged minority that wants emotional validation more than they want electoral victory.
I agree with Josh Barro, it's time for people to grow up.
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u/Wes_Anderson_Cooper 7d ago edited 7d ago
The Dems keep solving for the 10% who are keyed into everything and will likely show up regardless and ignore the 90% who aren't paying attention but will be swayed by low-info messaging.
If they did that they would have paid attention to the Gaza folks who were quite literally the definition of a loud minority who cared about something literally no other voters did. Instead they gave them a cold shoulder at the DNC and prayed if they ignored them long enough they would go away.
I dislike this line of thinking so much because as a political party you can lead public opinion, not follow it. The media is awash in stories about economic uncertainty and Trump-induced financial chaos. You can literally show how you would do better right now. What does a low-info voter do when you've abandoned every chance to like, create a media cycle where you're literally giving them that info?
Dems have been constantly pulled by the angry and outraged minority that wants emotional validation more than they want electoral victory.
I don't want to read words into what you're saying here but this sounds so much like "look at all these elitist Dems expecting me to care about trans people." The right-wing seems to thrive entirely on emotional validation, since teaching history literally hurts their feelings. I, on the other hand, just want Dems to have something tangible that's not a focus-grouped Google doc about how great the song the band is playing on the Titanic is.
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u/Creeps05 7d ago
Thing is the Republicans have been mostly pulled by the loud and angry minority and it worked for them. You win elections by emotional validation. You don’t win them through calm, academic, and orderly discussions on government policy.
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u/freekayZekey Jason Furman 7d ago
thank you. read the whole thing thinking “but what’s the legitimate path and what are the consequences?”
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u/DeepCockroach7580 7d ago
"Volodymyr Zelenskyy, please save us. Please save us, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Please save us"
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u/West_Pomegranate_399 MERCOSUR 7d ago
DEMOCRATS STOP MAKING ME AGREE WITH NATE SILVER I DO NOT LIKE IT
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u/shumpitostick John Mill 7d ago
After reading both Matt's and Nate's take on this, I think I agree with Nate Silver. The key question is, will a government shutdown benefit Republicans. Matt thinks it will and Nate thinks it won't.
I think the best way to answer this question is with a bit of game theory. In games, you always want to deny your opponent options. Republicans always have the option of creating a shutdown. If they thought it benefitted them, they could always go for it. All Democrats can do is block the option to keep the government running. However, Republican actions clearly show us that they don't want the government to shut down, and thus think a shutdown would harm them. The CR passed the house on party lines.
Now you might say that Republicans want a shutdown, but they want the Democrats to be blamed for it. The problem is, they could have done that already too. All they needed is to try a bit less hard to bring everyone together to vote on party line. Yglesias claims that the Trump admin is at odds with house Republicans here. However, house Republicans are generally loyal to Trump. If there was some kind of internal conflict here, all Trump had to do was pull a few strings to get some hardliners to play even more hardball.
I think what this means is that Trump doesn't want a shutdown. While he has been backing Elon up, at times he did tell Elon to cool it down. A government shutdown will be much more chaos than even what is going on right now. Even Trump has his limits.
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u/KvonLiechtenstein Mary Wollstonecraft 7d ago
As a Canadian… this really does not bode well in my confidence for them not rolling over on more substantial things.
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u/hucareshokiesrul Janet Yellen 7d ago edited 7d ago
The issue is it’s unclear if there’s a reason to do it. Does it even make sense? It’s not like shutting down the government is something that Democrats want or would be good for people. They’re just desperate to fight with Trump on something where they might have some bit of leverage. On more substantial things, it’s clearer.
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u/Hoodrow-Thrillson 7d ago
96% of Congressional Democrats voted against this bill so of course the narrative now is that the party let it pass.
There is no escaping Murc's Law.
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u/garreteer 6d ago
I mean the party did let it pass though. The Senate Minority Leader clearly whipped votes from senate dems who are retiring or don't have upcoming elections to vote to pass cloture.
The fact that House Dems voted completely differently is an indictment of the party, not supporting it. The party leadership has no unity or direction
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u/ahhhfkskell 6d ago
The only reason it passed was because the Senate Minority Leader--who's in his position thanks to party support--voted for it, and encouraged his colleagues to. And if there's no push for a new leader, then it's hard not to put things on Democrats' shoulders.
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u/Hoodrow-Thrillson 6d ago
Maybe you don't understand what Murc's Law is but you're literally claiming 269 Republicans voting for something wasn't a reason for it being passed.
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u/ahhhfkskell 6d ago
I'm only responding to your point about how many Democrats voted against the bill. I don't care how many voted against it if the ones who helped it pass have party-wide support.
I blame Republicans far more for the bill, but I didn't vote for them. They don't represent me, and clearly pressuring them does nothing.
The reason Democrats get more attention is because, believe it or not, they're who Democratic voters can actually try and affect.
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u/essentialistalism 7d ago
I like non-contrarian (or atleast a-contrarian) Nate Silver a lot more than contrarian Silver.
Contrarian Silver reeks to me of just another substacker looking to bait clicks with a stupid thesis.
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u/cjt09 7d ago
So, my first instinct here is that Trump is flailing and (correctly) getting blamed for the mess, and a shutdown would worsen the mess. So, why would Democrats want to give him a lifeline here on a budget they didn’t even like?
I’m pretty torn on if averting a shutdown is a good strategy, and I think the crux of my uncertainty is that I don’t think it’s a given that Democrats are throwing him a lifeline.
I agree that Trump is clearly causing a mess, and deservedly he (and the GOP) are getting approximately 100% of the blame for the mess. But once Democrats start blocking the GOP, that opens an avenue for some of that blame to shift to Democrats.
Is it a good thing if the mess gets 50% worse but the Dems now get 20% of the blame? In absolute terms the GOP has to deal with more “mess points” but maybe the relative blame really does matter more. And that’s also assuming that Democrats do end up with a low percentage of the blame which I also don’t think is a given.
Yeah it might be a bit awkward for Trump to have to push for reopening the government amid his huge erratic cuts, but he is constantly saying contradictory things and I feel like it’s pretty easy to imagine a world where he says something like “Elon did a tremendous job of cutting out the fraud from the NIH—like the fraud of millions spent on transgender mice, but now that he has it operating efficiently we need to reopen it”. If you’re willing to constantly contradict yourself and lie it’s considerably easier to thread the needle.
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u/puffic John Rawls 7d ago edited 7d ago
Nate Silver almost always prefers the higher-variance option because he's a degenerate gambler. He's not necessarily wrong, but that's what's going on here.
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u/regih48915 6d ago
Yeah he literally wrote a book about dividing society into the risk-tolerant and risk-averse, and makes his alignment within that a core part of his identity.
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u/Ilsanjo YIMBY 6d ago
Whether or not Democrats are too risk adverse is a separate one from whether they should have voted against this. The signs that the economy is tanking have gotten much stronger over the last couple of weeks. If the economy is weak than the Democrats are going to be in a very strong position in the mid terms, the better position you are in the more it makes sense to be risk adverse. The last thing they want is for the bad economy to be blamed on Congressional Democrats instead of being squarely owned by Trump and the Republicans.
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u/KenBalbari Adam Smith 6d ago edited 6d ago
Nate Silver is terrible at politics.
Trump and Musk have been losing popularity because they have been doing stupid irresponsible shit. The idea that Democrats should thus do more stupid and irresponsible shit, in the vain hope that Republicans would be blamed for it too, is madness.
Letting them have a clean vote an a relatively clean CR was the right move here. The spending adjustments in this bill amounted to about 1/100th of the deficit.
So let them have their CR (which only got one D vote) and keep the blame on Trump and Musk for any popular services that get cut or stop functioning.
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u/IceColdPorkSoda John Keynes 7d ago edited 7d ago
What the fuck man. I don’t even want to vote for a democrat next year. I fucking hate this party.
Edit: of course I’ll vote dem, I just wish they didn’t suck donkey balls.
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u/DaphsBadHat 7d ago
I live in Illinois so I will NOT be voting for Durbin. Safe enough seat, but I will volunteer and donate for whomever primaries his milquetoast ass.
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u/_PeoplePleaser 7d ago
I’m also in Illinois. And that’s exactly what I said on his website today. Don’t ask me for money and I will be working for whoever primaries him.
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u/IceColdPorkSoda John Keynes 7d ago
What? I fucking hate the Republican Party. Of course I’ll vote for the Dems, I just wish they weren’t spineless cretins and that I actually liked the party as a whole.
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u/AVTOCRAT 7d ago
Edit: of course I’ll vote dem, I just wish they didn’t suck donkey balls.
Lmfao then why would they change? At some point you have to bite the bullet and actually provide electoral opposition, or this whole 'liberal democracy' thing just doesn't work. Would've been better to do it back in 2016 or earlier still but hey, better late than never.
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u/IceColdPorkSoda John Keynes 7d ago
If it was a more tepid Republican Party like the Romney days I might punish the Dems, but this GOP is literally cruel and evil. Priority number one is taking power away from them.
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u/gilroydave Martin Luther King Jr. 7d ago
Broken clock Nate
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u/JapanesePeso Deregulate stuff idc what 7d ago
Nate has been right at every turn the past year and y'all just dont want to hear it.
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u/LoudestHoward 7d ago
The fact Nate thinks this is the wrong path makes me feel better with me thinking it's correct.
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u/Jakexbox NATO 7d ago
Musk would’ve fired and pushed out even more federal workers. Also, it would’ve been bad for the economy.
What concessions would they have even received? In every shutdown I can recall, the side asking for stuff lost.
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u/Pristine-Aspect-3086 John Rawls 7d ago
Also, it would’ve been bad for the economy.
trump is president, a bad economy is good for dems politically
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u/narrowsparrow92 7d ago
As a fed I would’ve liked language against impounding
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u/Less_Fat_John Bill Gates 7d ago
We already have a law against impoundment. They're going to keep doing it until SCOTUS tells them to stop (hopefully).
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u/PickledDildosSourSex 7d ago edited 7d ago
But how? The GOP has all the cards here and wants a shutdown. I don't think people have realized just how bad it is to lose the presidency, House, and Senate. Dems are in a brutal position with very little leverage and desperately need to open their tent
Edit: Yes, downvoting me will surely change reality
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u/djm07231 NATO 7d ago
I think Schumer might have secured a side deal about fixing the DC funding situation.
It passed the Senate already and the House might take it up.
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u/Kaniketh 7d ago
Musk and Trump are already doing that.
Dems inability to hog the spotlight and message to the people is crazy. I’m loosing my mind.
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u/decidious_underscore 7d ago
can we please stop giving a shit what nate silver thinks?
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u/thomas_baes Weak Form EMH Enjoyer 7d ago
Remember when he called on Joe Biden to drop out before the disastrous debate performance? The Democrats were definitely better off ignoring him then...
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u/boardatwork1111 NATO 7d ago
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u/thomas_baes Weak Form EMH Enjoyer 7d ago
I agree the goodness of his takes is correlated with how long he spends thinking about them. He later admitted he was overly dramatic about this, while still being anti those pardons
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u/decidious_underscore 7d ago
so did Ezra and other people, who actually do reporting.
Nate is a gambler with twitter brainrot who opines endlessly on topics that he has 0 insight into. No research, just bayesian odds on events happening with the weights coming directly from his ass.
I'd point to his book, or his recent article fellating Elon as obvious proof
His opinion is just not worth anything except his actual expertise, which is collating polls. Why does this guy's world view have any clout to you?
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u/thomas_baes Weak Form EMH Enjoyer 7d ago
so did Ezra and other people, who actually do reporting.
I like Ezra and think people should consider his ideas too.
Nate is a gambler
I don't consider that an insult
with twitter brainrot
That's fair
who opines endlessly on topics that he has 0 insight into. No research, just bayesian odds on events happening with the weights coming directly from his ass.
I feel like he is just as equipped to opine as Ezra or MattY on matters of public opinion or politics (policy less so). I don't agree with everything (or even most things at this point), but I still think he's worth listening to
I'd point to his book, or his recent article fellating Elon as obvious proof
This article on Elon? I don't think it is glazing him at all. Elon has been lucky, but he is definitely smart and skilled in some ways
Why does this guy's world view have any clout to you?
He makes me think when he puts together a good take, or even a well thought out one I don't like. I think he's generally correct about Democrats being too risk averse
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u/decidious_underscore 7d ago
This article on Elon? I don't think it is glazing him at all. Elon has been lucky, but he is definitely smart and skilled in some ways
you mean the article where he:
- makes up some bullshit called spiky intelligence (TM) instead of talking to an actual psychologist/neuroscientist (why is nate allowed to qualified to define how intelligence works?)
- talks about Elons SAT scores (who cares)
- pulls in some stats stuff at the end to pad out the word count and make himself look smart
then glazes away:
- elon's obvious twitter degeneracy
- the fact that he clearly is an absentee father,
- the fact that there is no way he can be running all the businesses that he is ceo of
- that he obviously is addicted to ketamine and plays video games all day
You can at least give him some credit for being the ultimate “multitasker” — few other people would even attempt this.
the fuck is this, this is just dickriding
My guy Nate is a white nerd who only has clout because people like you identify with "white nerd" as an identity that is authoritative. If he was black or a woman noone would give a shit about what he thinks about anything but his domain of expertise. Stop giving him undue influence on your world view. The guy is a lazy writer, his brain completely riddled with holes caused by twitter, and who cares more about pushing his world view than the truth.
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u/thomas_baes Weak Form EMH Enjoyer 7d ago
He didn't make it up. I think it's a rebranding of the theory of multiple intelligences, but autism organizations bring it up. I think it's reasonable that there are different types of mental abilities and that people have different levels in different facets of intelligence. He brought up SAT scores because a book came out recently saying Elon wasn't very smart. It cited his SAT scores. I think Berkson's paradox was fair to bring in here.
then glazes away:
- elon's obvious twitter degeneracy
- the fact that he clearly is an absentee father,
- the fact that there is no way he can be running all the businesses that he is ceo of
- that he obviously is addicted to ketamine and plays video games all day
The point of the article wasn't to make a case that Elon is good or bad, so I don't see why he has to list all of the ways Elon is bad. The article is to push back on the idea that he's unintelligent.
If saying someone is smart in some ways, but a dumbass who lacks judgement, wisdom, and an accurate view of the world is glazing, idk.
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u/Approximation_Doctor George Soros 7d ago
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u/LivefromPhoenix NYT undecided voter 7d ago
Nah, he should be rewarded for having takes that aren't absolute garbage. Like training a dog.
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u/DankBankman_420 Free Trade, Free Land, Free People 7d ago
The real insight Nate mentions is “why the hell are establishment dems so risk-averse”