Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I am not sure what's happening (I am in LV but safe in my hotel room) but this also in part a result of conditions on the Las Vegas Strip. Casinos are confusing, exits not marked clearly, *lots* of bottlenecks for pedestrian traffic, lots of drunk people. This must be improved. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MileHighBrendan It is hard to figure out what is going on (I am in LV but safe in my room) but The Strip is kind of a nightmare for any type of panic situation because casinos are disorienting and there are lots of bottlenecks for pedestrian traffic. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@NickRiccardi I agree although I think it's a story about a communications failure to some fairly large degree. I also think BBB didn't really have a centerpiece which is also a strategic and communications failure. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If you had asked people to predict on 1/20/21 what Biden would get done (and they had an incentive to be accurate rather than sell false hope as the White House and progressive groups sometimes did) I think this outcome would have been well in line with expectations. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The vast majority of every president’s legislative agenda fails and most of them had far wider Congressional majorities than Biden does. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Don't get me wrong, Grassley might underperform the "fundamentals" which is interesting in its own way but it's just a very, very heavy lift for a Democrat to defeat an incumbent in Iowa in what is likely to be an R-leaning year. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is more of an indication that fundraising is an increasingly unreliable metric than that IA-SEN is competitive. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Biden got a lot of COVID relief, an infrastructure bill, a gun bill, and had a progressive Supreme Court justice confirmed and didn't have too many problems with his cabinet nominations. All with a 50-50 Senate. The narrative about how his legislative agenda failed is dumb. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@helaineolen It's a very understandable attitude, for sure. I just think there are times when it's also a costly attitude — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@helaineolen Manchin has pretty strong political incentives to behave as he does, though, and it seems to have helped his re-election chances. People with a lot of leverage are often unreliable negotiating partners but sometimes they're still worth bargaining with. https://t.co/SDkLgb10lA — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Any votes a D gets out a Trump +39 state like *West Virginia* is a huge bonus, and Manchin has voted with Ds on many important issues from confirming KBJ to impeaching Trump. If he'd converted to the GOP years ago and they controlled the Senate 51-49, he'd get way less crap. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Democrats tend to hate people who disagree with them on *some* things more than people who disagree with them on *everything*, and that helps to explain why Joe Manchin is viewed as History's Greatest Monster while no one says a word about some random senator like Pat Toomey. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I have a longish take on Biden's approval rating and the midterms so going to encourage you to go read it rather than summarizing on Twitter! https://t.co/v5ubdUyEQD — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DanSmithHolla Hard to prove but I feel like there's been a vibe shift and people lie about their hand contents (particularly what they claim to have folded) more often. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@conorsen I take the coastal part somewhat literally as I think there's always going to be some snobbery from born-and-bred coastals toward "flyover country". So Miami seems like the more obvious candidate for this list. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@EricTopol @OurWorldInData So you're cherrypicking the country with the highest death rate? (And it still isn't that high)? And it also happens to be one with a highly unusual immunological profile? (Since NZ pretty effectively contained COVID thru Feb. 2022.) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@EricTopol @OurWorldInData Note the Y-axis: 3 people per million. Not only is that a small number of people, it's also small enough in a small country like New Zealand (5 million people) that it's going to be subject to a fair amount random statistical variation. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

After 2.5 years of this pandemic, treat the reader with some respect. Don't try to scare or scold or shame them; it isn't working. They have some pretty good idea of the complex facts on the ground based on their own experience with COVID and that of their family and friends. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

People tune out COVID news out because of coverage like this. Literally almost nobody in the US treats COVID as a top priority in polls. Maybe we eventually DO get a variant that is very deadly (even to people with immunity). People may ignore that too b/c of these headlines. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The infection fatality rate is likely to be *much* lower from BA.5 than previous variants like Delta. Yes, a lot of that is because of immunity acquired from vaccines and previous infections. But calling it the 'worst variant' is badly misleading. https://t.co/xY8pT3jp2e https://t.co/DihlmJnk8z — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@RichardHanania I don't think senators are a great comparison because they can basically be fossils and outsource everything to staff. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's not just presidents BTW it's executive positions in general. No current governor is as old as Biden. Just 2 Fortune 500 CEOs are. There's a pretty steep cliff between early/mid 70s and late 70s/early 80s. https://t.co/CZJGjOZHp2. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

You sometimes hear the argument that presidents are almost always renominated so the speculation about whether Biden will be is silly, but Biden is also a *big* outlier in terms of age. We don't really have any data for a case like this. https://t.co/9u3qajoVDU — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Ehh, this is a dubious narrative. Twitter is down 17% from right before when Elon bought a stake on April 4, causing the stock price to spike. But it's been a horrible period for tech stocks and the NASDAQ is down 20% in the same period. https://t.co/axeUXzVMO3 https://t.co/gCEvl5wsKj — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One clear case of liberal media bias is the relative lack of focus on the constant screw-ups at the FDA and CDC. It's a huge failure of government. But there's reluctance to critique "the experts" and perhaps too much presumption of organizational competence. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@berkey11 I also think that tournament coverage could be more equitable in various respects, i.e. someone with a novel route to poker is probably more newsworthy than a generic high-stakes player, but coverage choices are hard and it's easy to armchair QB. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@berkey11 I will say that in general I tend to prefer straightforward just-the-facts reporting and get nervous when journalists introduce *too much* "context" into stories where it's not necessarily germane but that's a BIG argument in political journalism right now and many disagree. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@berkey11 OK but if Manziel makes the Toronto Argonauts and throws an interception in a game against Saskatchewan, his past isn't terribly relevant when the local paper is just writing up the game story. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@berkey11 It's a problem with news in general in that a subject can be newsworthy for the wrong reasons. e.g. Johnny Manziel gets in lots of off-the-field trouble so it makes news when he signs a CFL contract. But deciding who/what to cover is hard in all journalism and not just poker. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@berkey11 Of course they should be reporting on the allegations. And if they're doing a big profile on Ali because he wins a bracelet or whatever, they need to be mentioned prominently. But blacklisting or asterisking him in their coverage of hand-by-hand play would be bad journalism IMO. — PolitiTweet.org