mtutiger

This seemed inevitable.... what lender in their right mind would choose to underwrite a half billion dollars for this guy?

Footwear in general has become more casual over the past few years, and that's probably a good thing IMO

Real "tan suit" energy here

It's possible that he's finding his current life more profitable... he built a name and brand for himself that probably sells some Substack subscriptions and will sell some books whenever he finishes this one he's working on. But it does seem like he's he's kinda coasting on his reputation at this point.... and the degree to which he doesn't embrace uncertainty in his analysis (which *is* a change versus 2016) makes him seem more like a pundit than an expert on poll aggregating.

A couple of observations about Silver these days (all double as reasons why I also don't care for his analysis): (1) He is incapable of uttering the phrase "I don't know".... the tweet above that he's responding to (from John Harwood) actually illustrates it pretty well; Harwood himself is very skeptical of Silver's analysis but concedes "I don't know for certain". I could not imagine Silver doing that; Silver thinks he's right about everything and is thin-skinned whenever he's questioned. His dig at "motivated reasoning" is interesting as well, because honestly, I think he's as susceptible as anyone to it. (2) I'm not sure when it happened (was it COVID?), but at some point, I think Silver started moving away from the original genesis of his work after he left the baseball space (ie. election modeling) and more toward other pursuits, whether it be punditry, his poker game, writing his book, etc. And I think as he has moved further away from the election modeling world, I think he's lost some speed on his fastball. I liken it a lot to professionalism, particularly in fields that involve licensure (such as my field, engineering).... part of maintaining a license is a requirement for a certain amount of continuing education credits in order to maintain the license. The reason isn't just to make us watch boring webinars or make venders money, at least ostensibly, it's to keep people sharp and up-to-date on new technologies or methods or research in the field. Which in turn helps us to maintain our skills as an engineer while getting further and further into the career. With Silver, I think a lot of people liken his contrarianism exclusively to bad faith, and maybe that's true to an extent, but it may just be that he's further from this world than he was in 2012 and 2016. And I think it shows in a lot of his analysis.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the front runner...

Trump has a charisma about him that will be hard to replicate.

I used to think this way in 2020, but strategically if I was someone like Pence (who I believe genuinely doesn't want Trump to win) and wanted to change hearts and minds, I would have to take into account the constituency that I appeal to. Pence's constituency are social conservatives, particularly evangelical ones. At this moment, this group is central to Trump's support (like, 80-20 or somewhere in that range). From reading part of Tim Alberta's new book on the evangelical movement, my takeaway is that a move like endorsing Biden would probably backfire with this group and cause them to just tune Pence out. It goes against the grain, but to the extent that any of it matters, withholding the endorsement alone is a more effective bridge in this case.

Yeah, I think may have associated your comment a little too closely with 84's. I agree with what you say above... The other thing to keep in mind is that, while it's probably not realistic for people like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, etc. to endorse Biden because their entire lives are wrapped around this political party, voters who are in the mold or prefer the GOP of Pence/Haley/etc. in the real world don't necessarily have that same calculus. That's why the "permission structure" thing matters... 2020 is a good example.... there was no shortage of conservative pundits (and some politicians) in 2020 who didn't like Trump who would talk about voting third party, but the reality is, looking at a map of the Milwaukee or Phoenix suburbs and how they voted in 2020, it's pretty clear that there were plenty of people like this who *did* vote for Joe Biden.

This framing is pretty smart....

I get what you are saying, but we aren't living in a Sorkin-esque political landscape. I'm kind of over expecting a Joe Biden endorsement from people like Mike Pence - there's real convictions, particularly with someone like Pence given his social conservatism, that prevent him from doing it. And whatever impact him coming out like this and saying he won't endorse has in the parts of the GOP where he has any credibility at this point (I would imagine it's not a big group), I think that impact would be blunted if he outright endorsed Biden.... in fact, I think it'd increase the likelihood that the people who could be influenced by his position would just tune him out if he did. The better way to look at this with Pence and other former members of Trump's administration (which, btw, includes Nikki Haley, at least at this moment) is less about whether they out and out endorse Biden and more about whether their withholding of an endorsement can successfully create a permission structure for GOP voters who don't like Trump and don't want to vote for him to consider an alternative option, whether it be leaving the President box blank, voting third party or actually voting for Biden. I don't know that it will work, but putting myself in their shoes, assuming they truly do not want Trump to win, that's how I would be approaching it.

Avila wasn't good at his job and earned his way out of town, but I do think some combination of relatively successful drafts at the end of his tenure and the changes he made in player development deserve recognition. His personal role in the draft aside (as Eddie has said, PBOs aren't that involved), it shouldn't be that controversial to take the full view. I also think a lot about what the national press said about this job right after he was fired.... I recall RJ Anderson from CBS Sports basically said it was a **** job and that this org would struggle to find anyone decent to take it, and I suspect a lot of folks in the baseball world probably agreed. Yet they ended up landing Scott Harris (who wasn't even on most peoples radar and who had been sought after by other orgs), who apparently saw a canvas that he felt he could build off of. Harris deserves a lot of credit as well, he's obviously added additional new personnel (ie. Mark Connor, Rob Metzler) to the org as well.... but it shouldn't be hard to use a little nuance looking at the situation.

I think it's interesting that some of his most ardent opposition among conservatives comes from people who served in his first administration or were associated with his time in office (ie. Ty Cobb).

Kinda comes as a surprise to me, honestly

With black voters, to the extent there's erosion, I doubt it's with older, more socially conservative blacks, I suspect it's more with younger male voters (particularly non-college educated) and breaks more along economic lines than anything else. There's also been the passage of time since the Civil Rights era.... the older voters remember that, younger voters less so.

Part of why it has been in the news is because outlets like the NYT use the one single poll that they fielded (with crosstabs of insubstantial sample size) to write up an article that makes sweeping judgments on the electorate based on said crosstabs. Which then leads to significant media coverage across many outlets which references said poll and crosstabs. The polls inform the media coverage, you can't really divorce the two. Yes, I will concede that.

When we are considering subsamples with "n" values in the 100-200 range (which is where NYT/Siena was with AA voters a couple of weeks ago in their sample), it's fair to say that there's a pretty high MOE versus a n=800 sample. If NYT/Siena goes out and surveys 800 AA voters and comes back with Trump at 20+%, I'd take it a little more seriously.

I'm old enough to remember when Herschel Walker was going to get 20% of the black vote in Georgia (he got around 5%, iirc)

I would add that I still take most of the poll toplines (generally averaging to around a Trump 1-2 pt lead nationally) at face value, but there's been a really consistent trend of crosstabs likely overstating Trump's support among the young / minority groups and overstating Biden's strength with older / white voters. There needs to be a lot more evidence, IMO, that each of these groups is going to experience an epochal shift in a rematch between the same two candidates four years ago. Otherwise I think we have to consider the possibility of sampling errors (as G. Elliott Morris at 538 has suggested)

I would be really hesitant to buy too hard into the crosstabs of black voters that some of these public polls are showing. In addition, there has been at least one oversample of black voters (see below) that contradicts the idea of major slippage with the community as well. I suspect there will be marginal slippage (as there was in 2020), but it's possible, if not likely, that crosstabs in a lot of public polling aren't accurately capturing actual sentiment within the community.

I agree with this. Also, Tim Scott is probably the most anti-choice politician that Trump is considering for the VP slot, so I'll take the under on him being a "moderate" whisperer as well. The guy is *really* conservative...

Trump is going to want someone as obsequious as possible for the role, so as not to upstage him or anything like that. So Scott makes a lot of sense in that regard. The clip above is a good example.... just thirsty as hell.

That's more or less a loss for the Trump legal team in the Georgia case.... I'm a little surprised she didn't get DQ'd

The lack of dignity in this clip is something else....

Always the victim. Always