also, I'm sure everyone on the 2012 campaign remains grateful to have been extras in the boy genius' creation story, but it is occasionally noteworthy there were thousands of people on that campaign, hundreds in Chicago alone, and some of them were even responsible for decisions
— Patrick Dillon (@mpdillon) September 8, 2022
Breathless op-eds touting ‘Shorism’ (Ezra Klein‘s is the least embarrassing I can find) didn’t much impress me. As far as I could tell, ‘popularism’ lurked in an Uncanny Valley between the anodyne (talk up the stuff your audience most wants to hear!) and the anti-Democratic (don’t talk about ‘divisive’ things like bodily autonomy or fighting racism / poverty !). But that’s before I was told, at length, how David Shor throws a fantastic party for all the really significant people in New York City:
At 7 p.m. on Saturday, the political consultant David Shor was setting up his fifth-floor apartment in Lower Manhattan for one last blowout party before the start of election season, when he expects to work between 65 and 70 hours a week crunching numbers on behalf of Democratic candidates across the country.
Mr. Shor, who started college at 13, built his reputation among political insiders through his innovative use of data. So it wasn’t a surprise that, as a party host, he was leaving nothing to chance.
A six-person planning committee, appointed by Mr. Shor, worked out the arrangement in Notion, a document-management system favored by tech companies. The invitation for the event, billed as a miniature version of the annual Burning Man festival, included guidance on “dress-code & vibe” through a link to a Pinterest page filled with photos of costumed revelers in the desert.
Although Mr. Shor has been credited with forecasting the behavior of voters with uncanny accuracy, he does not have a foolproof system for a successful party.
“But there are certainly best practices,” he said…
Mr. Shor, 31, is relatively new to the party scene. The son of a rabbi and a doctor, he said he didn’t go out much as a teenager in Miami. It was the same when he was working for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign as a key player on the data team that forecast the 2012 vote with remarkable precision. After Donald J. Trump won the 2016 election, Mr. Shor’s life changed…
His loft has become a destination for an ecumenical social scene drawn from tech, politics, academia, media and New York City’s 4 a.m. dance floors — part salon, part Saturnalia. The popularist, it turns out, is popular.
“He’s cool enough to be among the beautiful people,” said Henry Williams, a Columbia student who does occasional work for Blue Rose Research, the political strategy firm started by Mr. Shor last year. “But he’s also the king of the nerds.”…
Mr. Palomba wasn’t the only guest with ties to a niche online political community. A data scientist known on Twitter as “Xenocrypt” (who asked not to be identified by name) had met Mr. Shor in the comments section of the liberal internet forum Daily Kos.
Other partygoers described similarly obscure or chance meetings with Mr. Shor. Matthew Silver, the D.J. (and a former software sales representative), said he had met Mr. Shor while waiting in line for a techno concert in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Courtney Pozzi, a software designer who designed the Candy Dungeon, said she had met Mr. Shor at a board game night in the West Village. Jelena Luketina, a computer scientist at Oxford University who served as the head of the party planning committee, said she had met Mr. Shor a few weeks earlier at a book party for Will MacAskill, a central figure in effective altruism, a rising philosophical movement…
A numbers nerd and a frantic networker! The NYTimes may just have founds its next-gen Tom Friedman — or maybe the new Malcolm Gladwell?
this is the shelf photograph of a 30-year-old who wants 20-year-olds to think he’s like a cool 50-year-old and vice versa https://t.co/7IC17GNxDY
— counterfax???? (@counterfax) September 8, 2022
War for Ukraine Day 197: Slow News Day, Huh?
HumboldtBlue
Who are these people, and why should I care?
the pollyanna from hell
After a little search, I guess Rome GA is where I want to be. The leasing company won’t let me sign a lease, because my income is below the 3 to 1 income to rental minimum they require. I’ll keep looking, but emergency fall-back is to vote as homeless. Here’s hoping some Georgian jackal will let me receive mail at their house to show a continuing local connection. Help!
Shalimar
@HumboldtBlue: He’s apparently the Democrat who’s going to take credit if we do well in November?
I don’t have any idea either. Never heard of him, and Anne Laurie doesn’t seem impressed.
Tony Jay
I look forward to watching Charles, Oliver and Moira investigate his murder while growing as people.
Stephen
That story does not do him any favours.
the pollyanna from hell
Rome, GA. Beautiful butterflies, like a Marcus Flowers. Ugly cockroaches, the first one a shock of crawling blackness like the shock of walking by the MTG campaign HQ on Broad Street.
Dangerman
@the pollyanna from hell: Random Trivia:
Every State in the country has a city called Rome.
Now where is the kitten news?
ETA: Nevermind on the Rome thing; I screwed that one up somehow
sukabi
he throws parties, and dances alone…all other people in the pic the nyt used are looking bored and chatting in their own little groups.
prostratedragon
@Dangerman: But there is a Rome, Illinois that I’m just learning of, near Peoria. And Ohio seems to have multiple Romes.
prostratedragon
@sukabi: Not usually so clear in the wild, though I’ve seen it as a dramatic device. The isolates in those stories aren’t too happy.
Tony Jay
@sukabi:
I know, that’s one sad picture.
“Hey! Whoooooo! What a great party, yeah? I know you’re all having a great time. Can I get a “Hell, Yeah?”… Silence is golden, yeah? I can dig it. Wooooo, right on! This guy gets it, this guy right here. Alright. I LOVE THIS SONG!!!”
I bet he tells everyone Spider-Man is his best friend.
Chief Oshkosh
Just win, baby.
Geminid
@the pollyanna from hell: Can’t help on the mail drop ’cause I’m in Virginia. But I wish you luck! Maybe someone needs a roommate or a roomer. A grocery store or even a laundromat may have a bulletin board with room wanted/roomer wanted ads.
That Congressional district (GA-17?) is very red. No Democrat has come within 25 points of the Republican candidate since its formation in 2011. Marcus Flowers is a good candidate, and even though he has little chance of winning it’s good he’s giving Greene some spirited opposition.
Baud
@Geminid:
Mad props for anyone taking on Greene.
Geminid
@Dangerman: Virginia does not have a Rome. But there is a community in the Shenandoah Valley named Tenth Legion, after the famous legion that fought for Julius Caesar. It’s not too far from Montevideo.
Geminid
@Baud: Flowers is a tall Black Army veteran who looks very good in a big black cowboy hat.
Marmot
I hate that vest.
p.a.
There’s this thing about “magic bullet” politics and the self-promoters who help push the ideas. Beats hard work, I guess. As far as liberal “magic bullets”, I’m a cynic so I can’t help think these people just don’t like the people who are actual Democrats, doing the legwork; women, people of color, unions, LGBQT…
hueyplong
An awkward nerd has gotten over his skis in an ill-advised PR lark that will fizzle out quickly and soon be forgotten. The end.
Geminid
@Baud: There was actually a competitive primary for the Democratic nomination in Georgia’s CD. Unlike most other R+25 districts, the incumbent Congresswoman is so notorious her opponent was bound to get attention and financial support. The New Republic even ran an article on the primary. The writer was critical of Flowers, and seemed to have a “why do we have to keep nominating military veterans?” axe to grind.
I sometimes see this sentiment expressed by liberals. I suspect they live in blue districts and resent the more moderate Democrats that get nominated in purple districts. A lot of these moderate nominees are veterans of the military, or as with Elise Slotkin (MI) and Abigail Spanberger (VA), of the CIA.
Gvg
There are reasons parents stopped thinking it was a good idea to let super smart 13 year olds start college.
Baud
@Geminid:
Is our share of nominees with a military background different from the GOP, or higher than we have previously had?
Dorothy A. Winsor
For a minute, I thought this post was about Daniel Schorr.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@prostratedragon: My sister lives in Rome, NY
satby
Just saw this on Twitter: the future King Charles flipping off TFG.
Edit: yeah, the British use a different gesture, but Charles is cosmopolitan enough, and knew cameras would catch it, to do it with plausible deniability.
Geminid
@Baud: Democrats are definitely nominating higher amounts of vets since 9/11. The House class of 2018 had at least five: Jason Crow (CO), Mikey Sherrill (NJ), Jared Golden (ME), Chrissy Houlihan (PA), Max Rose (NY), plus CIA vets Slotkin and Spanberger. I think Joe Cunningham (SC) was also a vet. These candidates all flipped red seats that year.
Earlier, veteran Seth Moulton won a Massachusets seat based in Salem, and in 2020 veteran Jake Auchingloss took over the younger Kennedy’s seat in southeast Massachusetts. I’ve seen complaints that these two are too moderate for liberal Massachusetts, but the Democrats in their districts seem to like them fine. And they really haven’t differed much with their colleagues in the Progressive Caucus, at least not during the current Congress.
Baud
@Geminid:
My impression that MA is only liberal in certain places.
Geminid
@Baud: I think you are right. Some Democrats believe that any safely blue district should be represented by a “progressive,” but often the district’s Democrats don’t see it that way.
marklar
@Tony Jay: Moira? I’d have guessed a Brit would have remembered the name Bloody Mabel!
Han
Why do my thoughts go to Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters?
Second observation, it’s fairly obvious no one at FTFNYT has been to Burning Man
Capri
The fact he’s modeling the party on Burning Man tells you everything you need to know. My daughter lives in Reno, NV, and “Burners” are the city joke.
frosty
My very first thought. Verbatim!!
Tony Jay
@marklar:
What a dumderclump!
Obviously, I’m blaming it on my enormous, inconsolable grief at our nation’s loss, yadda yadda, bleaugh.
Searcher
@Capri: I’m happy Reno can find someone else to make fun of.
kalakal
Known to his friends as “Who?”
Sad stuff, a collection of people who are legends in their own heads and the FTFNYT showing it’s unerring grasp of what’s going on by astutely picking up on yesterdays biggest story ( that all their rivals somehow missed)
becca
Has there been a character on Succession based on him? If not, there will be.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this is kind of an odd post, looks like a lot of people, including Anne Laurie, put an awful lot of time and effort into explaining how much they don’t care about Shor
Actually, I thought popularism was a lot of words and pixels devoted to explaining to the Bernie/twitter left that they weren’t, as they so desperately and passionately believed, the face of the base and the future of the party. This post doesn’t so much surprise me on Balloon Juice, just who posted it
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Tony Jay: you’ve been watching OMITB and Schitt’s Creek?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Doug J is right, these reporters only care about being invited to the right parties.
kalakal
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: That’s a ‘right’ party. Doesn’t look like they’re having much fun.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
RobertB
What hard seltzer tastes like.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Will Stancil is a vociferous detractor of “popularism” and is always on the lookout for Yglesias and his pernicious theory. It’s actually kind of sad how much energy Stancil devotes to fighting intellectual wars about abstract concepts.
At least he isn’t trying to pick on Magdi Semrau anymore. Stancil sure whacked a hornet’s nest when he called Mangy Jay a “dumb shill”!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: right, if you know and care who Will Stincel is (and I do, in a point and giggle kind of way) popularism was a thing in certain corners of twitter for a few weeks a few months ago. How we got from there to “This Year’s Hot Political Philosophy” (that apparently
tellstold Dems not to talk about abortion) because of what is essentially a society page item, if not a gossip column, in the dread New York Times is something of a mystery to me. ETA: the Klein piece AL links to is from October of 2021. This is even more out of date than I thought, but between my own advancing years and years of chaos, time truly has become a flat circle.(I’d bet a substantial portion of my quatloos that Stencil will go full Greenwald, or Jimmy Dore, by the time votes are cast in ’24)
Paul in KY
@HumboldtBlue: Thank you for asking that.
Paul in KY
@Han: Hope no one at FYFNYT ever goes to Burning Man. They would just harsh the vibe.
Tony Jay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Only the former. I’ve also been rereading Hickman’s X-Men run so Moira and Mabel Mora kind of ran together in my sleep deprived brain.
Paul in KY
@Searcher: I thought their crazy sheriff’s dept was the joke.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Stancil will stick with the Democratic party. He really believes in the Liz Warren types. He seems very insecure.
I’ve criticized him some on his twitter timeline, telling him he needs to quit the abstract arguments and look at how purple district Democrats like Marcy Kaptur and Sharice Davids run their messaging. He doesn’t respond but a couple very wierd flying monkeys have attacked me. The kind of friends Stancil does not need.
West of the Rockies
Dead thread English nerd thoughts…
Some critics say Gatsby does not achieve tragic status because Nick shakes hands with Tom Buchanan at novel’s end, thus showing he’s not worthy of Gatsby’s mantle.
I’ve always thought that more importantly, Gatsby’s status as a tragic figure was marred by his obsession with Daisy, who is vain and vile and undeserving of any great glory.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is the objection that he doesn’t embrace the clunky, grad-student-y phrase “bodily autonomy”?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Eh, water finds its own level, my old man used to say
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Stancil aspires to be a peer of Brian Beutler and Cris Hayes. The one monkey I’m thinking about was just wierd and mean, like some anti-Democrat leftie who had attached themselves to Stancil. I could see him having that appeal.