Category Archives: Uncategorized

Hello world!

Dear readers,

I am experimenting with a blog as a place to post thoughts about matters intellectual and political. I will try to move a few of my older Facebook posts over here, and then see if it works better to post here and then link on Facebook.

Let me know what you think.

Tom

Journalists: please, skip the “momentum” talk

Dear political reporters,
Please reread Nate Silver’s posts (back to 2010) about the mythological status of “momentum,” and then try to report candidates in terms of 1) what polls show that citizens know and DO NOT know; and in that context, 2) what polls suggest people actually think about the issues. If you did that, it would be absolutely unsurprising that there’s substantial support for Bernie Sanders’ positions on the issues out there (for Rand Paul’s, too), and that if many people actually find out what his positions are, they are quite interested. Please ignore polls that actually are dependent on, not independent of, what you report, like name recognition, or citizens’ guesses about electability.
Thanks.

Bernie Sanders, enjoying a rise in early-state and national polls and attracting large crowds at his rallies, has a message for voters: believe the hype. The Vermont senator, an Independent who is running for the Democratic nomination for president,…
POLITICO.COM|BY JONATHAN TOPAZ

Can a business have a soul?

Just in case you thought the corporate individual was merely a legal technicality, not a mythos or ideology, check out this video for a big data corp (“Can a business have a soul?”):

http://spr.ly/RSLB Can a business have a mind? Predict the future? Can a business be alive? It’s simple. The answer is SAP HANA. The breakthrough in-memory p…
YOUTUBE.COM

journalists and social media

What the NYT won’t admit, but what many know (I hope inside the campaign;Phil?) is that one of the main things going on with online media is attracting the attention of and shaping the narrative for MSM journalists. This was true of the Dean campaign; while much of that campaign actually happened off-line, the hook of “the internet candidate” helped generate a lot of early traditional media coverage. Bernie’s many likes on Facebook may or may not have much to do with developing the grass roots campaign he’ll need to have impact, but it’s one of the first things NYT reporters look at. They don’t have to leave their desks. http://www.nytimes.com/…/bernie-sanders-wants-to-be-preside…

Can Bernie win? That’s not the question

Dear Lefty friends,
Underlying the MSM coverage of Bernie Sanders’ run for Prez will be a steady drumbeat of “but of course he can’t win.” Please DO NOT go around repeating that. Here’s why: 1) the goal is a left polity in the US, not a savior who fixes everything for us. This is a decades-long process, involving hearts and minds, not just an election or two. The real question you should raise is what might his candidacy do for that longer project? 2) The MSM’S focus on their perceptions of electability has long had an enormous self-fulfilling prophecy effect, horribly narrowing the range of debate in the country and alienating people from politics altogether. Do not help them with that. 3) Bernie’s strategy is based on the assumption that there are lots of folks who don’t vote and/or often vote Republican who might vote for him. And he’s shown some success: in 2004 he did better than John Kerry in Vermont, which meant there were people voting for George W. Bush and Bernie Sanders at the same time; he’s co-sponsored successful legislation with Republicans (e.g., John McCain); and he’s admired by groups often thought of as “natural” conservatives like veterans. Point-for-point almost all his policy positions poll very favorably with a majority of US citizens. Don’t laugh at that.

So just put the electability question aside, and get involved in the long game for hearts and minds. We don’t know whether or not he’s electable but we do know that if we all shrug and say he’s not, we’re just helping to ensure that he, and we, will lose.

A prediction

How’s this for a prediction of how the first six months of a Bernie campaign for Democratic Nominee will go?:
1) There will be an initial modest flurry of attention from the MSM because they are bored and want a horse race. “But of course he can’t win” will be a background drumbeat of their coverage. (See R. Merton, self-fulfilling prophecy).
2) Bernie will choose a few narratable issues and hammer them over and over (it’s what he does). The MSM will barely address the actual issues he’s hammering on, but will talk endlessly about whether or not populist positions are good strategy. They will mostly conclude they are not, because polls will show that most people think Bernie can’t win and the populist issues the media are ignoring — e.g., fast track, bank regulation — are unknown to a majority of voters. They will show no sense of irony when they say this.
3) The Hillary camp will say little or nothing directly about Bernie. They are already under pressure to take more economically populist stands, and so it’s likely she will make a few statements that sound vaguely populist. (I’d encourage the left not to get too excited when this happens. This early stage is also a good time to make promises you never intend on keeping, as later in the campaign nobody will remember.)

Bernie Sanders could enter the race, Joe Biden’s and John Kasich’s waiting game, and the big stakes of 2016 filled “Inside Politics.”
CNN.COM|BY JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT

Reality and House of Cards

Dear Netflix-watching liberal friends who have a weakness for House of Cards. I like it too, but please stop prefacing your discussions of it with “of course it’s not at all realistic . . . ” Besides being a the-sky-is-blue kind of statement, it covers up the fact that the realistic details that make the series so watchable draw from a particular reality, namely the fact that our government is overrun by people who behave with disdain for democracy, that too many of our politicians use the mechanisms of democracy for mere advancement or gain. If our democracy was not in crisis, the show wouldn’t be interesting, it wouldn’t exist. The series (and its British predecessor) are not depictions of reality, but they are OF a reality where politicians, reporters, and bureaucrats constantly maneuver in ways that undercut the public’s concerns and interests. Frank and Claire are over-the-top Machiavellians, but the legislative maneuvering, kowtowing to big money, too-intimate relations between journalists and politicians, and many other bits are straight out of reality.

Thanks. Now go back to chatting about it.

House of Cards is an American political drama television series developed and produced by Beau Willimon. It is an adaptation of the BBC’s mini-series of the same name and is based on the novel by Michael Dobbs. The…
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

Nate Cohn: paid armchair quarterback

Nate Cohn engages in all kinds of armchair quarterbacking here trying to prove that Warren is no threat to Hillary. But one could just as easily make the opposite case by pointing to the fact that Warren is second to Hilary in the polls AFTER DOING NO CAMPAIGNING AT ALL (and in fact publicly announcing she is not running).

The real question is why does the New York Times pay people to do so much idle speculation when it’s not what people want or need to read? Most people have no idea what Hilary’s actual policies are or would be. Why not inform the voters of something useful?

Even if Ms. Warren ran for the Democratic nomination, she would struggle to build a winning coalition in the primaries against Hillary Clinton.
NYTIMES.COM|BY NATE COHN

Democrats and the exurbs

So the argument is that Democrats have the big cities, Republicans have the exurbs and rural areas. But that brings us back to the “what’s the matter with Kansas?” argument: if Dems actually offered something useful to folks in rural areas — e.g., health care, real support for veterans — those folks might see a reason to vote Democratic. Bernie Sanders does well in rural areas in Vermont, and not just with the hippies. Who besides him is thinking about this?

Thanks to demographics, the Republicans have a virtual stranglehold on the House of Representatives.
NYTIMES.COM|BY NATE COHN