I think one of the most irritating aspects about the current status of journamamalism is that it is largely dominated by jackasses like this:
In an interview with The New Republic, Politico editor-in-chief John Harris admitted that Silver wasn’t one of his lifelines in the 2012 campaign.
“I will be drummed out of the profession, but I didn’t [read Silver]. My plate is full here,” Harris said. “I know why people found him interesting and entertaining, and some people found him illuminating. There are people in our gang who think he is overblown and get worked up about Nate Silver. I don’t give a damn.”
He later tipped his hat to Silver before levying the criticism.
“I admire how he has built a franchise,” Harris said. “I roll my eyes at how he gets up on his high horse quite a lot on different topics.”
Jim VandeHei, Politico’s executive editor who helped found the publication with Harris, also participated in the interview, saying that some of Silver’s “stuff goes on and on” and that he uses “numbers to prove stuff that I don’t think can be proved by numbers alone.”
Of course Silver wasn’t the lifeline for Politico- Silver basically said for months that Obama was going to walk away with the election, while the Politico staff needed a horse race so they could write the ten thousand inside baseball faux drama bullshit that they churn out every day just hoping for a link from Drudge or a call from the Morning Joe booking staff.
Not only are folks like Harris worthless, they are openly contemptuous of people who know things.
BTW- Here is the entire interview.
bill d
Politco is the weatherman who tells you not to look out your own window.
Capri
It appears that accuracy is invisible and who is more often correct not a concern. Odd that the fact that Silver was correct doesn’t enter into it.
balconesfault
“I roll my eyes at how he gets up on his high horse quite a lot on different topics.”
Yep. When Silver hears someone offering an opinion that is demonstrably wrong, he takes the effort to demonstrate why it’s wrong instead of hyping the opinion as if it were a valuable data point unto itself.
Those a-holes who keep introducing actual data into the discussion are pains in the arse to the established media, be it baseball beat writers, or politics beat writers …
hildebrand
Oh. My. God. These are the kinds of people who sat in the back of calculus and made fun of the kids who actually knew what the fuck they were doing.
Ahasuerus
Ahem. If I may borrow your words…
Makes a nice bumper sticker, doesn’t it?
BGinCHI
Silver responded that the Pravda dudes “lack curiosity for the world outside the bubble,” (TPM) which is I think a pretty measured thing to say.
He could have gone with “whoring yourself to the establishment neither makes you a journalist or correct.”
Krugman and Silver: “for wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it.”
Senyordave
Harris is pissed because Silver ceated a franchise based on knowledge, accuracy and hard work. Politico is a franchise built on dick-whispering.
Harris is actually irritated when someone relies on anything other than innuendo and having the right contacts.
Bobby Thomson
Shorter Vandehei “He uses numbers to prove stuff that I don’t believe.”
Or maybe just “I don’t think.”
It’s always this way with people who won’t let empirical evidence stand in the way of their preconceived biases. In some fields, that sort of thing sets you up for failure. In political journalism, it gets you a promotion.
Shakezula
When people who report the news become the news you should ignore the people and anything they push as news.
PeakVT
Not only are folks like Harris worthless, they are openly contemptuous of people who know things.
You forgot to mention they are a menace to the republic. Probably a threat to the human species as well.
jayjaybear
This is actually a defining characteristic of modern Movement Conservatism: “Suspicion of Expertise” governs everything on the Right now. Don’t trust scientists. Don’t trust economists (other than the ones we like). Don’t trust medical experts.
Anything that impinges their bubble is BAD!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“a lack of curiosity” was always the polite euphemism for stupid when discussing George Walker Bush.
Tone in DC
Being ignorant these days seems like a badge of courage to some people.
“I don’t know JACK SHIT, and I am damn proud of that fact!” That could be their slogan at the next primary or whatever.
muddy
Except for business “expertise”. If you made (stole) money then you are supremely capable and can succeed at all you put your hand to, regardless of topic.
Petorado
Shorter John Harris: “We’ve fought the war on science, and science lost, so Nate Silver should get over his ‘facts’ and let Politico rule the world.”
Ksmiami
Can’t we send them to the liberal re-education camps… I mean the Carmel valley isn’t that oppressive
gene108
@hildebrand:
Dude. Seriously. Chill the fuck out.
These Politico jokers never made it as far as calculus. If they could factor a polynomial I’d be surprised.
Runt
There are some things only a look at the yardsigns in Peggy Noonan’s neighbourhood can tell you.
negative 1
“I don’t like numbers. I don’t get them. People talk about ‘what’s good for the economy’ but I go with my gut. I don’t know if austerity works, but people tell me they have math that proves it doesn’t. What do they know. I’ll print stories about how we need to cut stuff, because it makes since to me.”
You can literally insert that bullsh!t opinion into most policy issues in the media. I’d be angry if I weren’t so sad.
Pluky
@gene108: If they even know what a polynomial is, I’d be amazed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh lord. I wasn’t gonna read the whole interview. I’m still not gonna as I believe you young people say “get out of the boat”? But Charlie Pierce did.
I…. I mean… did he not know this was gonna be published? In a publicly accessible forum? “Yo, Bridge and Tunnel Guy and Flyoverland Lady, nobody thinks your little problems matter when Eric Cantor is winning the morning by talking about Benguyarress.”
Short Bus Bully
Okay, I get the fact that you’re dumb enough to believe this is a legitimate line of reasoning, but to get quoted saying something like that (only thing missing on that quote was the “dur dur dur…” at the end) is a whole new black hole of stupidity.
Shocks even the most jaded snarkers.
BarbCat
Roger Moore
@jayjaybear:
I don’t think there’s really a generic distrust of expertise within the right wing so much as a desire to support the belief system. They’ll support anything that supports their beliefs, no matter where it’s from, and they’ll be happy to talk about the impressive credentials and expertise of anyone who supplies them with support. The larger point is that their current beliefs are largely contradicted by the evidence, so anyone who is both honest and expert is likely to say things they don’t want to hear.
LAC
Charles Pierce puts it best: “Tiger Beat on the Potomac” – useless drivel…
schrodinger's cat
@Pluky: Forget polynomials, McCardle and her friend Sully can’t even calculate a percentage, with a calculator.
Eric U.
you can still wright horse race nonsense if you know the score. Why should we trust anything they write if they admit to this kind of ignorance? They could still write the same kind of articles, even incorporating polls as news. Just have to look at election run-up freakouts here and at GOS for good examples of the genre.
Phil Perspective
@BGinCHI: Drudgico isn’t Pravda. To borrow Charles Pierce’s phrase, it’s Tiger Beat on the Potomac.
John O
Glad you posted about this, John, but sad to see the true vitriol repressed.
Thankfully, your commentariat has filled in the gap.
Science and math, if there is a God, is His/Her/Its language.
SRW1
HARRIS:
I mean what’s the use of us sitting up all night saying Romney may –
VANDEHEIE:
Or may not
HARRIS:
[Softly] …or may not… [louder] win the election, if this Silver fellow comes along the next morning and shows you Romeny ain’t got a prayer?
VANDEHEIE:
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
drkrick
@Capri: Exactly. He admires Silver’s ability to “build a franchise” while his ability to accurately describe what’s going on completely escapes notice.
El Cid
I don’t need yer damn fancy ‘maff’ to aim mah cannons or to ‘measure’ how much of this stuff or that stuff I use or how hot this or that got. I use my sense of these things which can’t be captured by numbers, and I’ll bet the other guys oh shit —- [BOOOOM]
Ken Burd
Why do we know that Harris gives a damn? Because he said he does not give a damn.
Deep thinker, that Harris.
NonyNony
@schrodinger’s cat:
That’s not fair. McCardle’s calculator has gastritis.
negative 1
@Eric U.: The problem is that anyone can do math, and John Harris probably isn’t even that good at it. All of us can become educated on a subject and make good arguments about why a policy is/isn’t beneficial or should/shouldn’t be tried. John Harris, however, is special because he has access you don’t and a magical gut that can feel the truth. If he didn’t, why would he be worth paying (rhetorical question)?
Keith
Sorry, but my plate is full, and I don’t give a damn.
Calouste
@Senyordave:
People who made their career on who they know are always scared of people who made their career on what they know.
Judge Crater
C-Span had an interview by Brian Lamb with some “media” writer at Politico. It was full of the same vapid bullshit. Lamb asked him about Glenn Beck and some of the incendiary, crackpot statements that Beck has made. The media guru answered, in the same pretentious inside-the-beltway tone, that he was impressed by the “franchise” that Beck had created and how it showed something, blah, blah, blah about the internet and diversity of opinion.
For Christ’s sake, if Politico had existed during the Weimar Republic they would have been amazed at the franchise Hitler and Goering and Ernst Rohm were building with Jew-baiting and book burning. Do they not understand that political theater and extreme rhetoric can have real world consequences? That it’s not all just a media circle jerk? Do they?
IowaOldLady
Silver’s success relates to something that came up in the skills deficit thread too: He can write. He’s brilliant with numbers, but he’s equally brilliant at explaining what the numbers mean so interested people can make sense.
MattF
Politico is all about monetizing political gossip. It’s their business plan and it appears to work in the sense that the website appears to be a going concern with a positive balance sheet. I don’t resent it, but I also don’t care– they don’t get any hits from me and never will.
Runt
@SRW1: Congratulations! You just won the internet. The prize is 42.
David Koch
but they love Dick Morris
Jebediah
@IowaOldLady:
Right – Silver adds actual value to public discourse. Politico adds none.
burnspbesq
I get the teaser email from TNR every morning, so I read that at breakfast. You may be surprised to learn that I managed to keep all of my food from playing an encore.
David Koch
Nate responses in an email to TPM:
Heliopause
No, Silver basically said for months that his model indicated Romney had a roughly 25-40% chance to win, lowering that to under 10% as we approached election day. The vast majority of what Silver does is describe his model in lay terms and report what it’s saying. Predictions are a small part of what he does, mostly for fun.
Lurking Canadian
As I understand it, Silver first came to prominence in baseball circles, around the once-controversial notion of sabermetrics.
In baseball, I understand why this style of analysis was controversial. Trying to predict which baseball team is going to win which games based on an analysis of the giant pile of statistics that attend baseball sounds like a complicated problem.
By contrast, what Silver does in politics is dead easy. Polls ask people, “who you gonna vote for?”. Silver humbly proposes that we should assume they’re tellin the truth and heads explode all over Washington.
cokane
I think it’s very telling that they praise Silver for being able to make money — not for his accurate, well-researched, and predictive stories.
cokane
@Lurking Canadian: Silver and other sabr guys have been proven right. Silver made money off his baseball analytics, so someone thought it was good.
David Koch
what kills them is they weren’t able to peddle their bull shit that election was too close to call and alternatively that Mittens was winning by landslide.
Shrillhouse
Silver in smart and very articulate. But, more importantly, he possesses two qualities that are glaringly absent among the wankers at Drudgico: humility and self-awareness. To me, that is what makes his insight and analysis invaluable.
Fax Paladin
@SRW1: You’ll have a national pundit’s strike on your hands!
Matt McIrvin
Silver most likely hedged his guesses too much, building in more uncertainty than his poll data even warranted. For the past few cycles, Sam Wang has done as well as or better than Silver and generally expresses more confidence in his results.
The most amazing site in 2012 was Drew Linzer’s Votamatic. He nailed the final outcome months before either Silver or Wang were willing to commit, with what seemed like a completely insanely tight margin of error, and seemed completely out to lunch during the period after the first debate, but he turned out to be right anyway. I suspect he may have just gotten lucky, but you never know.
Anyway, what all these people are doing with varying degrees of sophistication is just aggregating polls and taking them seriously. And yet pundits refuse to believe that this can work.
It’s happening in Massachusetts as we speak. All the credible polls say that Markey is ahead of Gomez by anywhere from 7 to 12 points, but if you look at the news, you’ll find all these right-wing sites saying that it’s a tossup or that Gomez is the favorite to win.
Politico touts the closest polls as “trailing by only single digits” and quotes David Paleologos, a guy who insisted last October that there was no point in polling Florida and Virginia any more because they were sure Romney wins, about how Gomez is closing strong. These guys never learn.
majii
They can continue to bash Nate Silver all they want, but they cannot deny that he has a proven track record of being right on the money when it comes to determining the winner in presidential elections. Wang and Linzer are also awesome pollsters. Just as the Politico “journalists” paid no attention to credible pollsters, I paid no attention to their pollsters who were offering their predictions of a win for Romney in 2012.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Like Republicans?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I read the entire article, and my impression was that if the Onion wrote a satirical interview featuring those two, they couldn’t have done a better job of making them sound dim, vapid, shallow, egotistical and greedy. Way to project your image boys – you just got schooled by the New Republic, and you aren’t even clever enough to realize how dumb you sound.
Cervantes
Please do not insult jackasses. They are perfectly honorable animals that humans have put to good use for millennia; and I assure you, no one will ever say the same thing about Politico.
lovable liberal
+1