Great discussion. I would be cautious about the argument that Trump is more popular than Republicans in general because he is winning while Republican senate candidates were losing. First, in most of those cases, these are swing states with incumbent Democrat Senators, which is a whole lot harder than Trump had vs. Harris.
Secondly, those Republican senate candidates were massively, massively outspent by the Democrats. Slotkin had 5x the amount of money of Rogers in Michigan. Gallego had 2.5x the money of Lake. Rosen had 2.5x the money of Brown. Ballwin had twice the money of Hovde.
Thirdly, there are some weird events specific to some of the races. Unlike any other midwestern large city, Milwaukee had huge turnout (85%) and had multiple wards with a turnout over 100%. In Nevada, people have been able to submit ballots over the past two days, even after Election Day, which in a state with a major machine, it really gives an advantage to Rosen.
Another gem. lol. “I think the people protecting girls sports are ultimately correct but I think they hate trans people.” Haha ok, idiot. This is fantastic logic/reasoning.
Yeah. If Democrats/media can't bring themselves to say that biological men cannot play women's sports, they are going to struggle.
Its not the most important issue, but it is a completely insane position to hold and will make a lot of people think they are crazy. Especially in some key demographics- politcally unaffiliated young men will think this absolutely bonkers, moderate suburban parents will be seeing enough of it to matter. I've been testing it out to see if my coastal elite peers can say it - they can't yet. It's still "complicated"
Seems like a person could easily hold "you can be a trans person, i don't care as long as you're not bothering anybody" and "but you can't plan hockey with my daughter or be a women's boxing champ" as opinions with very little animosity.
To make an analogy, I don't want untrained or unlicensed or drunk pilots flying airplanes, but not because I hate them.
The point Ross was making is - the people who are the most vocal about not wanting trans women in sports are often just transphobic. You never hear nuanced takes from either side on any trans issue.
I think a lot of normal people have this nuanced view if they can be bothered to think about it. Many, but not all, of the most vocal may be pretty extreme and un-nuanced though.
I agree with this! Unfortunately I'm not sure either party is quite there. Maybe the Dems will get there next cycle, but there's no sign republicans will. Say what you will about the Harris candidacy (not ideal in retrospect), but at least her campaign recognized that she needed to reel a lot of the leftist cultural stuff in.
I mean, you’re just wrong on that factually. If you think sex is 100% clear binary 100% of the time, I don’t know what to tell you. Did gay people invent trans just to piss conservatives off?
A sports league or a restroom is simply separating the biology. Has nothing to do about what turns you on, stupid. I’m a dude and do NOT want a gay man in the woman’s restroom. What is wrong with you.
Im not arguing that trans people should be allowed to compete with cisgender folks in sports leagues - but you would be lying if you said you'd feel comfortable having Buck Angel using the women's restroom especially if your daughters were in there with their mother.
People can do what they want including keeping their kids away from weirdos. It’s all good, I think it’s okay for people to live and express themselves how they want and okay for others to reduce their exposure to said expressions. We do it all the time, usually along class-lines, but there’s no reason why people of diverse sexualities and races can’t also feel free to express and self-select accordingly.
I mean, I personally think it's ideal to judge people based on the content of their character, not by how they choose to express their gender/sexuality. Oh well!
1. Did you make money on Kalshi? You’re gut re: the Twitter data nerds cracking mail and IPEV trends was dead on.
2. Twitter had many impacts on the election and one of the biggest might have been to reflect the real world while half the population was getting fooled by Reddit and TikTok and the MSM.
Did not make money on Kalshi even though I was talking everyone's ear off in private about the early vote. Perhaps I should have bet, but I'm wary about being tilted about election results on the basis of financial incentive.
Yeah and maybe if the democrats and institutions and NYT/MSNBC hadn’t expended so much capital on bullshit and stupid Russia allegations and other spurious investigations and prosecutions people might actually care.
But instead they played dirty pool for years and it came back on them in a big way here where the majority of voters told them basically to STFU.
I would argue the Stop the Steal debacle is the worst thing a sitting president has done. You’re saying because you didn’t like that Trump was investigated for doing other bad stuff earlier in his term Jan 6 doesn’t count?
>I would argue the Stop the Steal debacle is the worst thing a sitting president has done.
Yeah probably. That is just besides the point of what I said.
>You’re saying because you didn’t like that Trump was investigated for doing other bad stuff earlier in his term Jan 6 doesn’t count?
1). It isn't about me.
2). I am saying literally what I said. Did you read it?
Here I will be more explicit since you have reading comprehension issues (or more likely just don't want to interact with what I said and your likely participation/culpability in where we are).
The left/MSM/government bureaucracy spent a huge amount of its goodwill and political capital with the general populace, freaking out about Trump after his election in 2016. Nearly his whole presidency Democrats and the media hounded him, often with lies and bullshit (I agree Trump himself is also a font of lies/bullshit, but that isn't the point).
You had MSNBC and CNN have a nightly quest to get him impeached and/or jailed as a Russian agent, a lot of that premised on obviously tenuous bullshit connections many of them misinformation actively created/spread by the Clinton campaign. They were absolutely giddy at the prospect the sitting President might be a Russian agent they hated him so much, and would grasp at any straw.
This included lots of scary articles in/on NPR/NYT/WP about Russian agents spreading Trump propaganda when it reality it turned out to be 70 year old grandmas in Florida. Interestingly the 70 year old liberal grandmas spreading leftist political lies weren't similar smeared as IDK Chinese? agents. The media persisted in this long after it was clear it was all garbage, and never really did proper mea culpas.
You had similar behavior for the WP and NYT our most prestigious papers. Getting awarded Pulitzers for spreading lies/misinformation. The whole journalistic profession threw its already weakened connection with integrity/trust/balance to join *the resistance* and focused on telling the public the elite "Brooklyn based Ivy leaguer worldview" rather than trying to be reporters and connect with a diverse range of perspectives.
Diversity only in skin color and sex partners, never in thought! That is the left's mantra.
You had the government and Democrats leaning on big tech to increasingly censor unfavorable stories and manipulate the public's information diet. Supposedly in the name of quashing "misinformation" striking whole stories for being covered, and sometimes actively spreading misinformation themselves if it happened to agree with their political feelies. This included almost totally spiking a major story (Biden laptop) in the run up to the 2020 election and having a raft of past and current security state operatives go on TV and give quotes to the NYT etc. saying it was likely a Russian ploy, when it clearly was not. Suddenly the media loved whatever the CIA had to say about internal US politics (because it agreed with them)
And then you had (probably mostly deserved), but basically unprecedented lawfare against a former President during the Biden admin. With various and sometimes silly prosecutions being brought against Trump as political axe grinding. A big break with the mos maiorum around US politics.
Not to mention the media calling him a fascist 8 million times which is a joke and an insult to the actual victims of fascism. The word has almost been totally debased of meaning the left has overused it so much the past 8 years.
And after all that a critical mass of people (half including me half not I am sort of on the fence) are just not interested in anything bad said about Trump period.
It is the classic boy who cried wolf. Or the person asking for another round of chips at the poker table after they already owe you a ton from borrowing other chips 5 times.
Your side has simply run out of attention/trust/credit/capital/fucks given with a critical mass of voters.
Had the left gone lighter on some of this other stuff, and not been chicken little for YEARS at a time, perhaps the public would have reacted in a more robust way to JAN 6th or other things Trump did.
But when the CONSTANT message for 8 years is "OMG Trump is about to ruin the whole country and kill us all", and we are all still here and things are relatively normal. Well people stop listening to the message even if a couple times that warning was correct.
Literally sane political engaged people who are professors, level headed (but quite lefty) people I am friends with in 2016, were convinced he would have us in 5 different wars during his term. Didn't happen, instead it was a fairly bad, but pretty normal Presidency.
After that, another round of "we are all going to die!" isn't going to work, and yet your allies spent the last 6 months shouting it.
You lie too much people aren't going to trust you. And they resent you for it. And Trump is the vessel for that resentment, a little embodiment of the "fuck you" tens of millions of people want to send the DEI loving, car hating, internet censoring assholes on the coasts who think everyone who disagrees with them is a monster.
The issue is folks want to grade Trump on a curve, while at the same time refusing to hold republicans to the same standards you want democrats held to. I refuse to accept that the sitting President is allowed to operate, un-checked and without investigations, in the way Trump operated in the early part of his first term. I'm not going to painstakingly hold your hand through a re-telling of his newly appointed NSA lying to Pence about meeting with Russians, after two prominent members of his campaign had open lines of communication with Russian agents (Manafort went to prison over not registering as a foreign agent, and Rorger Stone had his sentence commuted by DJT), firing his AG for recusing himself from any investigation, firing Jim Comey for not ending the investigation, then misleading news stations about WHY he took those actions. There is no universe in which those actions taking place in that order doesn't warrant a special counsel investigation. So you can miss me with the 'RUSSIAGATE' phobia. Did the media play it up a lot? Yes. Are there a lot of really suspicious ties between Trump and Russia? Also yes! It's an insane double standard, which is really the reason why anyone left of center wanted answers. The Benghazi hearings were ACTUALLY a sham, but did anyone obfuscate or try to interrupt it? No, and Hillary Clinton actually showed up for her subpoena on the House committee's investigation. So it was wildly hypocritical to say that Trump (who campaigned on 'Lock Her Up', by the way) trying to obfuscate and derail an investigation into his actions is not a big deal and a nothing burger.
And if you agree that his early actions in his first term are NOT a nothing burger, are you suggesting that since Democrats and Republicans who on January 7th blamed Trump for what happened on January 6th, aren't allowed to point it out and shout it from the rooftops that this dude attempted to throw out swing state electoral votes? In what world would it make sense to just let that slide without trying to make a big deal about it?
You asked a question, I gave you a very clear answer, and you seem to have ignored it.
>it was wildly hypocritical to say that Trump (who campaigned on 'Lock Her Up', by the way)
And did absolutely nothing in that regard.
>trying to obfuscate and derail an investigation into his actions is not a big deal and a nothing burger.
They were a nothing burger and the Clintons certainly had connections with meetings and contact with all sorts of foreign leaders, some of them our enemies. I think you just don't understand how all this works and are falling for partisan bullshit.
>In what world would it make sense to just let that slide without trying to make a big deal about it?
As I keep telling you it did make sense to make a big deal about JAN 6th. But your side had already burned up too much of its juice to make it stick. Too bad so sad.
You're saying 'Rightly pursuing January 6th indictments is a waste of time because they ran out of capital wasting everyone's time on russiagate'.
I'm saying investigating Trump-Russia ties was legitimate and worthwhile (go back and read the mueller report, Paul Manaforts indictment and Roger Stone's indictment) and so are the January 6th investigations/trials.
You can't pursue two investigations if people mistakenly think one was a waste of time? What's your take on a majority of republicans now thinking Jan 6th riots were led by ANTIFA?
This was a good discussion, as non-partisan as you can expect these days. I hope you bring Ross back again.
I think we don't talk about terrorism for the same reason we stopped talking about the Cold War in 1991: it was a successful policy implementation. Now granted it came with a lot of costs and perhaps you could argue that on net we're worse off, but threats of terrorism on our soil have largely been fended off.
I think the trans and culture war stuff goes away. It was largely an offensive from one side of the political aisle. Given Trump's enthusiasm for tariffs and tax cuts I think the next big political wedge issue for the next decade will be largely fiscal. And especially when it comes to solvency of entitlements. If you're an elder millennial like myself you grew up in the 1990s with your parents telling you not to expect to receive SS benefits. Well Gen X is rapidly approaching retirement age (yikes) so we'll see how things work out for the smallest generation.
Briefly scrolling through Substack home page, there are creators who seem willing to have a real conversation about this election, the contrasting policies, and campaigns run. This podcast was not that (particularly a little over halfway through when the guest's amphetamine salts kicked in and he steamrolled through the host multiple times).
One, it certainly activated transphobe bigots, particularly with the closing montage of images. I predict it will go down with the Daisy ad, the Willie Horton ad, and the Jess Helms "white hands" ad in lore.
Second, it was those who might be upset about the particular issues mentioned in the ad. As mentioned, those particular issues aren't the globally most important, but the number of people they are important to for non-bigoted reasons is non-zero.
But I think what they really demonstrated is that Harris is someone who will go with the flow of whatever the Current Thing is, and is unwilling to stand up to the extremists on her own side when they go to far. Who knows what crazy thing they will come up with next? And do we have any reason to think Harris would stand in the way?
That's why it wasn't enough for her to just stop saying the crazy things she said in 2019/20. She had to repudiate them, and talk through how she wouldn't get swept up in such a fever again.
Don’t even know it’s that. It’d argue trans is the least important descriptor there, illegal immigrant and prisoners carries more weight. If it was just trans people without those qualifiers it’d just feel cruel to many persuadable voters. Dems say they’re helping people like you even though inflation eats more of your paycheck and housing is increasingly unaffordable, meanwhile they’re doing way more to help people who haven’t played by the rules (illegal immigrants/prisoners). In cities the asylum seekers were given a lot of benefits very quickly while the poor and working class who have lived there for years have never felt like a priority.
Yeah, Stephen A I think made this point before when it comes to sending billions to Ukraine yet they don’t have anything for black people in the states, seeing people come here illegally and get put up in 4 star hotels for free in midtown Manhattan and getting hundreds of dollars a week, some of them assaulted a cop and walked free is going to massively drive people into the arms of trump.
Also a lot of people who defend this stuff do it in the knowledge that they won’t have illegals dropped off in their town, de Santis I think it was who flew a load of illegals to Martha’s Vineyard and the residents literally kicked them out within 2 days shouting that they loved them in Spanish when they were kicking them out sums them up, and that sort of thing isn’t lost on people, esp those who live in areas with a lot of illegals
To be blunt, Trans people are off putting to 99% of the population and quite frankly its annoying that we're catering to people who are very clearly suffering from some sort of mental illness.
That ad is effective because it shows her lauding something so completely ridiculous (sex change for a prisoner) that you start to think about the LGBTification of the left and it repulses the average American. It makes you think of the pride parades with deranged gay men prancing around in ball gags in front of children. It makes you think of the school teacher with pride flags in their classroom.
People may not like it, but that's the ugly truth.
Also, the ‘free sex changes for prisoners/illegals’ was originally a story on CNN, not fox or the right wing news channels which massively helped that story resonate with people.
Was thinking for a while his point about how Obama has lost a lot of his relevance, that clip of him chastising the group of black men for not being all in for Harris was a giant sign she wasn’t going to win - were the republicans getting Reagan to campaign like the dems do with Obama in the 90s or was he allowed to retire (know Obama is a lot younger than Reagan when they both finished their terms)?
Obama's legacy as a candidate is a bit overrated IMO. Its an electoral blowout of John McCain when anyone on the left would have won that election by the a similar margin after Bush.
Then he won in 2012 by a much slimmer margin because Mitt Romney didn't have the guts to really go after him or the media who painted him out to be some raging sexist.
If Trump had run in 2012, him vs Obama on the campaign trail would have been the first real clash of the titans election in God knows how long. I can't imagine how nasty that would have gotten.
There was a clip of his last press conference before he left office being circulated around the time Biden was about to drop out and the degree to which people exaggerated Reagan's decline was kind of astounding. He was slower, sure, but he looked sharper than Biden ever did while in office as president.
Kamala was in a really tough spot because the clear message would-be dem but now trump voters wanted to hear (clean up crime/cities, monitor immigration, stop DEI/Woke nonsense, don't sensor platforms, stop funding wars, printing money/inflation and out of control entitlement states) would have been a direct contradiction to everything her and her part have stood for in recent years.
I guess to her credit as a true politician she tried to stay strong and not throw her party under the bus but for me there was a major lack of accountability that she cared or even knew these things needed fixing. Of course, the MSM calling everyone racist/fascist/women haters and trying to turn this into some binary choice about "democracy" was never going to land.
I think I enjoyed this podcast because there was a lot to chew on from this election and Ethan and Ross talked about it in an informed manner. Like I think it was 80th percentile in terms of being grounded in facts and truth while still looking at things logically. There was a few times where I winced and thought, "eh, that's not true" but I also don't want dudes citing white papers and legislative text either.
Sorry wasn't trying to be condescending, just literally speculating as to why someone would be so enthralled by it. I got about 60% of the way through and turned it off because it was boring and not really bringing much to the table. Much better stuff on the election out there.
Random question, but since you mentioned it, do you have any specific recommendations for other podcasts that have covered the election? I'm interested to hear more discussions on it that aren't just a bunch of whining about the outcome.
If you want to hear a lot of specifics from Republicans, especially on Congressional races, you might try the Ruthless podcast. It is very partisan, but their election episode has the heads of the Republican Senate and House SuperPACs, which are perspectives you can't hear elsewhere with a lot of data.
Hey Ethan, serious question: why is Nate Silver a thing? He’s not interesting. He’s not correct in what he does and he doesn’t even try anymore. “50/50 odds all around you guys!!” And it’s not Monday morning quarterback’ing. Most didn’t respect his nonsense and they smart to ignore him.
He doesn't just predict the nationwide presidency, he also predicts other races and state-by-state results. All in all his track record is pretty good. I doubt you could tell me ahead of time who is going to win the vast majority of governor and congressional races year after year. He's a serious prediction guy in baseball and poker, too.
There are lots of popular and famous people whom I don't find interesting either, but I don't usually just barge into a room like "hey I personally don't get this guy".
I like the people who don’t acknowledge the inherent complications of applying probabilistic thinking to something that has one event every four years. Claiming he “got it right on the nose” is an outrageous claim and you know it.
Either you're misunderstanding something or I am. I've only skimmed his most recent election coverage.
He runs 1000s of simulations off his polling aggregates with noise added on top. His "most likely scenario" was the actual scenario we are seeing in the electoral college.
I guess you can look at the phrase "right on the nose" and say it's not a good description of what I just described, but I think in the context of the OP's "this guy can't predict things well" rant, it makes sense as a rebuttal. Nate wasn't wrong this year. He forecasts probabilistically, and reality landed right in the thickest part of his distribution, which is pretty good results for most prediction.
If you don't like "applying probabilistic thinking to something that has one event every four years" that's OK, but I haven't heard of a better way to do it, and the OP's complaint didn't seem that nuanced or like he even understood the angle you're taking.
Hes kind of the Neil DeGrasse Tyson version of Celebrity Analyst. Silver is smarter than the average hack on TV, but there is nothing exceptional about him. Essentially he correctly predicted like 7 out of 8 tossup states in 2008 and that the candidate that he (and the media) desperately wanted to win. That combined with the media's desperation to attach itself to pop science/math led to his massive popularity.
Elections are hard to predict so stop trying? Or those who try are dumb nonsense people? If you try to understand the methods he’s using and you’ll better understand the product he produces.
This is like getting really mad that Vegas makes one game a pick em. If they did that for every game you would think that they don’t know what they’re doing, but sometimes it’s actually 50/50.
If I accept your premise: yes. If we really can’t do X (polling in this case) should be make a celebrity out of someone trying to do X? No. Which is my point. But other media NAILED this polling election. And they’d never get an invite on HoS.
Atlasintel. Rasmussen. Emerson. Are you saying you weren’t following these? I sure as hell was. So you should ask yourself, why do I put stock in Nate Silver if he sucks in his TINY LITTLE lane.
Yeah they were closer but they weren’t perfect, most still had trump under 50% nationally.
And they aren’t this close every cycle. They’ve missed in years past. Every election you could just look back and pull the 3 closest polls and say “oh why didn’t we just listen to them the whole time” but wait another 2,4,8 years and they will become the new Nate silver.
Honestly, I think even he would admit he was overhyped after the 2008 and 2012 elections.
During that time, what he was offering to left-leaning people in the media was:
1.) Telling them what they wanted to hear -- that Obama was going to win the elections. It was a security blanket for everyone to wake up every morning, refresh 538, and see that Obama was an overwhelming favorite.
2.) Flattered their sensibilities that they were scientific and data-driven as opposed to the Rs who talked about vibes and crowd sizes, and ignored science. This dovetailed with how they saw themselves.
As it was Billy Beane had a book written about him, and a movie starring Brad Pitt made about him. Imagine if the A's were the favorite team of most of the media elite. And a few breaks went differently and they won the World Series (say, the Beane was hired by the Red Sox instead of the A's, and won the World Series a year earlier). He'd be blown up beyond everything.
After 2012, the data didn't support this legend, so people soured on him. But only because he was too high to begin with.
The thing about Silver is that, as a bunch of people have noted, his system of aggregating polls was overall pretty accurate. It's just that other people who aggregate polls with any additional modeling were accurate too (RCP), and a lot of Silver's personal commentary was really off (thinking Texas could go blue, taking the Selzer poll at face value).
He’s a thing but most people ignored him? All he does is use polls and input into his models which have some subjectivity. Then he says what his models are showing. If that’s not something are interested in then so be it. But a lot of people like reading about numbers, stats, and probability.
Anyone else find the “we don’t talk about terrorism” anymore a bit of wishful thinking from Ross? We spend endless time talking about the war in Gaza which was started by a terror attack. Much of the debates about whether Israel is an apartheid state or the only democracy in the Middle East boil down to what a person thinks is an appropriate response to terrorism. It feels like many people who have trans friends just turn their brains off and wish cast when it comes to this issue because the actual logical conclusions would be seen as unacceptable to people that they care about.
I’m sure it’s already been said in the comments but idk about trumps legacy in historical terms. You need some distance to really evaluate these things in historical terms. Don’t undersell Clinton either. His impact was massive from an economic standpoint and is being felt to this day and much of what he did trump stands in opposition to
Great podcast. But Ethan, you still maintain Biden said he would select a Black Woman for Vice President when he said he would select a Woman. He said he would pick a Black female Supreme Court Justice. In both cases, it gives the impression of not going with the best candidate, but rather the best candidate of this subsection which I agree is a real problem.
“I didn’t even like the Alvin Bragg indictment!” Lol who the hell js this guest??!! lol. He must show me ONE piece of media where he said this *before* it was popular. Don’t ever say a clown show can’t be super entertaining. Thank you for this podcast Ethan.
Great discussion. I would be cautious about the argument that Trump is more popular than Republicans in general because he is winning while Republican senate candidates were losing. First, in most of those cases, these are swing states with incumbent Democrat Senators, which is a whole lot harder than Trump had vs. Harris.
Secondly, those Republican senate candidates were massively, massively outspent by the Democrats. Slotkin had 5x the amount of money of Rogers in Michigan. Gallego had 2.5x the money of Lake. Rosen had 2.5x the money of Brown. Ballwin had twice the money of Hovde.
Thirdly, there are some weird events specific to some of the races. Unlike any other midwestern large city, Milwaukee had huge turnout (85%) and had multiple wards with a turnout over 100%. In Nevada, people have been able to submit ballots over the past two days, even after Election Day, which in a state with a major machine, it really gives an advantage to Rosen.
Another gem. lol. “I think the people protecting girls sports are ultimately correct but I think they hate trans people.” Haha ok, idiot. This is fantastic logic/reasoning.
Yeah. If Democrats/media can't bring themselves to say that biological men cannot play women's sports, they are going to struggle.
Its not the most important issue, but it is a completely insane position to hold and will make a lot of people think they are crazy. Especially in some key demographics- politcally unaffiliated young men will think this absolutely bonkers, moderate suburban parents will be seeing enough of it to matter. I've been testing it out to see if my coastal elite peers can say it - they can't yet. It's still "complicated"
His point is there is no nuance on the issue, which is true.
Seems like a person could easily hold "you can be a trans person, i don't care as long as you're not bothering anybody" and "but you can't plan hockey with my daughter or be a women's boxing champ" as opinions with very little animosity.
To make an analogy, I don't want untrained or unlicensed or drunk pilots flying airplanes, but not because I hate them.
The point Ross was making is - the people who are the most vocal about not wanting trans women in sports are often just transphobic. You never hear nuanced takes from either side on any trans issue.
I think a lot of normal people have this nuanced view if they can be bothered to think about it. Many, but not all, of the most vocal may be pretty extreme and un-nuanced though.
What are inaccurate opinions shared as facts? That is correct, 1000 points and the board is yours.
Idk what age you learned to share personal opinion as fact, but I highly recommend unlearning.
Perhaps someone who wishes to president should have the skill to *be* one of those people.
I agree with this! Unfortunately I'm not sure either party is quite there. Maybe the Dems will get there next cycle, but there's no sign republicans will. Say what you will about the Harris candidacy (not ideal in retrospect), but at least her campaign recognized that she needed to reel a lot of the leftist cultural stuff in.
You observed the last 100 days as "reeling in lefty culture" as the words fascist, nazi, garbage, and dumb were used to describe American voters.
I envy you.
There’s not nuance. The human body and the corresponding genders might be the most non-nuance topic in all of human history.
I mean, you’re just wrong on that factually. If you think sex is 100% clear binary 100% of the time, I don’t know what to tell you. Did gay people invent trans just to piss conservatives off?
A sports league or a restroom is simply separating the biology. Has nothing to do about what turns you on, stupid. I’m a dude and do NOT want a gay man in the woman’s restroom. What is wrong with you.
Im not arguing that trans people should be allowed to compete with cisgender folks in sports leagues - but you would be lying if you said you'd feel comfortable having Buck Angel using the women's restroom especially if your daughters were in there with their mother.
Doesn’t need to be much nuance. People think Trans folx are creepy and weird and thus want them away from their kids.
To be fair they generally ARE creepy and weird, often self admittedly so.
People can do what they want? Is that not something you agree with?
People can do what they want including keeping their kids away from weirdos. It’s all good, I think it’s okay for people to live and express themselves how they want and okay for others to reduce their exposure to said expressions. We do it all the time, usually along class-lines, but there’s no reason why people of diverse sexualities and races can’t also feel free to express and self-select accordingly.
This is a very good point.
I mean, I personally think it's ideal to judge people based on the content of their character, not by how they choose to express their gender/sexuality. Oh well!
Serious but maybe dumb question. Are you spelling folx with an “X” to be gender inclusive?
Ethan, two questions:
1. Did you make money on Kalshi? You’re gut re: the Twitter data nerds cracking mail and IPEV trends was dead on.
2. Twitter had many impacts on the election and one of the biggest might have been to reflect the real world while half the population was getting fooled by Reddit and TikTok and the MSM.
Did not make money on Kalshi even though I was talking everyone's ear off in private about the early vote. Perhaps I should have bet, but I'm wary about being tilted about election results on the basis of financial incentive.
The Jack Smith Jan. 6th case covered something that is leaps and bounds worse than Watergate and it’s not particularly close.
Yeah and maybe if the democrats and institutions and NYT/MSNBC hadn’t expended so much capital on bullshit and stupid Russia allegations and other spurious investigations and prosecutions people might actually care.
But instead they played dirty pool for years and it came back on them in a big way here where the majority of voters told them basically to STFU.
I would argue the Stop the Steal debacle is the worst thing a sitting president has done. You’re saying because you didn’t like that Trump was investigated for doing other bad stuff earlier in his term Jan 6 doesn’t count?
>I would argue the Stop the Steal debacle is the worst thing a sitting president has done.
Yeah probably. That is just besides the point of what I said.
>You’re saying because you didn’t like that Trump was investigated for doing other bad stuff earlier in his term Jan 6 doesn’t count?
1). It isn't about me.
2). I am saying literally what I said. Did you read it?
Here I will be more explicit since you have reading comprehension issues (or more likely just don't want to interact with what I said and your likely participation/culpability in where we are).
The left/MSM/government bureaucracy spent a huge amount of its goodwill and political capital with the general populace, freaking out about Trump after his election in 2016. Nearly his whole presidency Democrats and the media hounded him, often with lies and bullshit (I agree Trump himself is also a font of lies/bullshit, but that isn't the point).
You had MSNBC and CNN have a nightly quest to get him impeached and/or jailed as a Russian agent, a lot of that premised on obviously tenuous bullshit connections many of them misinformation actively created/spread by the Clinton campaign. They were absolutely giddy at the prospect the sitting President might be a Russian agent they hated him so much, and would grasp at any straw.
This included lots of scary articles in/on NPR/NYT/WP about Russian agents spreading Trump propaganda when it reality it turned out to be 70 year old grandmas in Florida. Interestingly the 70 year old liberal grandmas spreading leftist political lies weren't similar smeared as IDK Chinese? agents. The media persisted in this long after it was clear it was all garbage, and never really did proper mea culpas.
You had similar behavior for the WP and NYT our most prestigious papers. Getting awarded Pulitzers for spreading lies/misinformation. The whole journalistic profession threw its already weakened connection with integrity/trust/balance to join *the resistance* and focused on telling the public the elite "Brooklyn based Ivy leaguer worldview" rather than trying to be reporters and connect with a diverse range of perspectives.
Diversity only in skin color and sex partners, never in thought! That is the left's mantra.
You had the government and Democrats leaning on big tech to increasingly censor unfavorable stories and manipulate the public's information diet. Supposedly in the name of quashing "misinformation" striking whole stories for being covered, and sometimes actively spreading misinformation themselves if it happened to agree with their political feelies. This included almost totally spiking a major story (Biden laptop) in the run up to the 2020 election and having a raft of past and current security state operatives go on TV and give quotes to the NYT etc. saying it was likely a Russian ploy, when it clearly was not. Suddenly the media loved whatever the CIA had to say about internal US politics (because it agreed with them)
And then you had (probably mostly deserved), but basically unprecedented lawfare against a former President during the Biden admin. With various and sometimes silly prosecutions being brought against Trump as political axe grinding. A big break with the mos maiorum around US politics.
Not to mention the media calling him a fascist 8 million times which is a joke and an insult to the actual victims of fascism. The word has almost been totally debased of meaning the left has overused it so much the past 8 years.
And after all that a critical mass of people (half including me half not I am sort of on the fence) are just not interested in anything bad said about Trump period.
It is the classic boy who cried wolf. Or the person asking for another round of chips at the poker table after they already owe you a ton from borrowing other chips 5 times.
Your side has simply run out of attention/trust/credit/capital/fucks given with a critical mass of voters.
Had the left gone lighter on some of this other stuff, and not been chicken little for YEARS at a time, perhaps the public would have reacted in a more robust way to JAN 6th or other things Trump did.
But when the CONSTANT message for 8 years is "OMG Trump is about to ruin the whole country and kill us all", and we are all still here and things are relatively normal. Well people stop listening to the message even if a couple times that warning was correct.
Literally sane political engaged people who are professors, level headed (but quite lefty) people I am friends with in 2016, were convinced he would have us in 5 different wars during his term. Didn't happen, instead it was a fairly bad, but pretty normal Presidency.
After that, another round of "we are all going to die!" isn't going to work, and yet your allies spent the last 6 months shouting it.
You lie too much people aren't going to trust you. And they resent you for it. And Trump is the vessel for that resentment, a little embodiment of the "fuck you" tens of millions of people want to send the DEI loving, car hating, internet censoring assholes on the coasts who think everyone who disagrees with them is a monster.
The issue is folks want to grade Trump on a curve, while at the same time refusing to hold republicans to the same standards you want democrats held to. I refuse to accept that the sitting President is allowed to operate, un-checked and without investigations, in the way Trump operated in the early part of his first term. I'm not going to painstakingly hold your hand through a re-telling of his newly appointed NSA lying to Pence about meeting with Russians, after two prominent members of his campaign had open lines of communication with Russian agents (Manafort went to prison over not registering as a foreign agent, and Rorger Stone had his sentence commuted by DJT), firing his AG for recusing himself from any investigation, firing Jim Comey for not ending the investigation, then misleading news stations about WHY he took those actions. There is no universe in which those actions taking place in that order doesn't warrant a special counsel investigation. So you can miss me with the 'RUSSIAGATE' phobia. Did the media play it up a lot? Yes. Are there a lot of really suspicious ties between Trump and Russia? Also yes! It's an insane double standard, which is really the reason why anyone left of center wanted answers. The Benghazi hearings were ACTUALLY a sham, but did anyone obfuscate or try to interrupt it? No, and Hillary Clinton actually showed up for her subpoena on the House committee's investigation. So it was wildly hypocritical to say that Trump (who campaigned on 'Lock Her Up', by the way) trying to obfuscate and derail an investigation into his actions is not a big deal and a nothing burger.
And if you agree that his early actions in his first term are NOT a nothing burger, are you suggesting that since Democrats and Republicans who on January 7th blamed Trump for what happened on January 6th, aren't allowed to point it out and shout it from the rooftops that this dude attempted to throw out swing state electoral votes? In what world would it make sense to just let that slide without trying to make a big deal about it?
You asked a question, I gave you a very clear answer, and you seem to have ignored it.
>it was wildly hypocritical to say that Trump (who campaigned on 'Lock Her Up', by the way)
And did absolutely nothing in that regard.
>trying to obfuscate and derail an investigation into his actions is not a big deal and a nothing burger.
They were a nothing burger and the Clintons certainly had connections with meetings and contact with all sorts of foreign leaders, some of them our enemies. I think you just don't understand how all this works and are falling for partisan bullshit.
>In what world would it make sense to just let that slide without trying to make a big deal about it?
As I keep telling you it did make sense to make a big deal about JAN 6th. But your side had already burned up too much of its juice to make it stick. Too bad so sad.
You're saying 'Rightly pursuing January 6th indictments is a waste of time because they ran out of capital wasting everyone's time on russiagate'.
I'm saying investigating Trump-Russia ties was legitimate and worthwhile (go back and read the mueller report, Paul Manaforts indictment and Roger Stone's indictment) and so are the January 6th investigations/trials.
You can't pursue two investigations if people mistakenly think one was a waste of time? What's your take on a majority of republicans now thinking Jan 6th riots were led by ANTIFA?
???
This was a good discussion, as non-partisan as you can expect these days. I hope you bring Ross back again.
I think we don't talk about terrorism for the same reason we stopped talking about the Cold War in 1991: it was a successful policy implementation. Now granted it came with a lot of costs and perhaps you could argue that on net we're worse off, but threats of terrorism on our soil have largely been fended off.
I think the trans and culture war stuff goes away. It was largely an offensive from one side of the political aisle. Given Trump's enthusiasm for tariffs and tax cuts I think the next big political wedge issue for the next decade will be largely fiscal. And especially when it comes to solvency of entitlements. If you're an elder millennial like myself you grew up in the 1990s with your parents telling you not to expect to receive SS benefits. Well Gen X is rapidly approaching retirement age (yikes) so we'll see how things work out for the smallest generation.
Briefly scrolling through Substack home page, there are creators who seem willing to have a real conversation about this election, the contrasting policies, and campaigns run. This podcast was not that (particularly a little over halfway through when the guest's amphetamine salts kicked in and he steamrolled through the host multiple times).
The Trump "they/them" ad worked on a few levels.
One, it certainly activated transphobe bigots, particularly with the closing montage of images. I predict it will go down with the Daisy ad, the Willie Horton ad, and the Jess Helms "white hands" ad in lore.
Second, it was those who might be upset about the particular issues mentioned in the ad. As mentioned, those particular issues aren't the globally most important, but the number of people they are important to for non-bigoted reasons is non-zero.
But I think what they really demonstrated is that Harris is someone who will go with the flow of whatever the Current Thing is, and is unwilling to stand up to the extremists on her own side when they go to far. Who knows what crazy thing they will come up with next? And do we have any reason to think Harris would stand in the way?
That's why it wasn't enough for her to just stop saying the crazy things she said in 2019/20. She had to repudiate them, and talk through how she wouldn't get swept up in such a fever again.
Don’t even know it’s that. It’d argue trans is the least important descriptor there, illegal immigrant and prisoners carries more weight. If it was just trans people without those qualifiers it’d just feel cruel to many persuadable voters. Dems say they’re helping people like you even though inflation eats more of your paycheck and housing is increasingly unaffordable, meanwhile they’re doing way more to help people who haven’t played by the rules (illegal immigrants/prisoners). In cities the asylum seekers were given a lot of benefits very quickly while the poor and working class who have lived there for years have never felt like a priority.
Yeah, Stephen A I think made this point before when it comes to sending billions to Ukraine yet they don’t have anything for black people in the states, seeing people come here illegally and get put up in 4 star hotels for free in midtown Manhattan and getting hundreds of dollars a week, some of them assaulted a cop and walked free is going to massively drive people into the arms of trump.
Also a lot of people who defend this stuff do it in the knowledge that they won’t have illegals dropped off in their town, de Santis I think it was who flew a load of illegals to Martha’s Vineyard and the residents literally kicked them out within 2 days shouting that they loved them in Spanish when they were kicking them out sums them up, and that sort of thing isn’t lost on people, esp those who live in areas with a lot of illegals
To be blunt, Trans people are off putting to 99% of the population and quite frankly its annoying that we're catering to people who are very clearly suffering from some sort of mental illness.
That ad is effective because it shows her lauding something so completely ridiculous (sex change for a prisoner) that you start to think about the LGBTification of the left and it repulses the average American. It makes you think of the pride parades with deranged gay men prancing around in ball gags in front of children. It makes you think of the school teacher with pride flags in their classroom.
People may not like it, but that's the ugly truth.
Also, the ‘free sex changes for prisoners/illegals’ was originally a story on CNN, not fox or the right wing news channels which massively helped that story resonate with people.
Was thinking for a while his point about how Obama has lost a lot of his relevance, that clip of him chastising the group of black men for not being all in for Harris was a giant sign she wasn’t going to win - were the republicans getting Reagan to campaign like the dems do with Obama in the 90s or was he allowed to retire (know Obama is a lot younger than Reagan when they both finished their terms)?
Obama's legacy as a candidate is a bit overrated IMO. Its an electoral blowout of John McCain when anyone on the left would have won that election by the a similar margin after Bush.
Then he won in 2012 by a much slimmer margin because Mitt Romney didn't have the guts to really go after him or the media who painted him out to be some raging sexist.
If Trump had run in 2012, him vs Obama on the campaign trail would have been the first real clash of the titans election in God knows how long. I can't imagine how nasty that would have gotten.
There was a clip of his last press conference before he left office being circulated around the time Biden was about to drop out and the degree to which people exaggerated Reagan's decline was kind of astounding. He was slower, sure, but he looked sharper than Biden ever did while in office as president.
How come we didn't discuss the 15 million Democrat voters that suddenly decided not to vote? Nothing to see there I'm sure!
That made Tuesday night that much sweeter because it basically confirmed what the right has been saying for 4 years about that election.
If I’m not mistaken couldn’t that be explained by the count not being complete yet. The number will be much lower once all results are in?
Kamala was in a really tough spot because the clear message would-be dem but now trump voters wanted to hear (clean up crime/cities, monitor immigration, stop DEI/Woke nonsense, don't sensor platforms, stop funding wars, printing money/inflation and out of control entitlement states) would have been a direct contradiction to everything her and her part have stood for in recent years.
I guess to her credit as a true politician she tried to stay strong and not throw her party under the bus but for me there was a major lack of accountability that she cared or even knew these things needed fixing. Of course, the MSM calling everyone racist/fascist/women haters and trying to turn this into some binary choice about "democracy" was never going to land.
A very important moment in time meets rare truths conveyed with talent. A masterpiece of an episode. Thank you both for all the needed perspective.
Really to be honest it seemed super mid to me. Pretty standard takes that are fairly obvious.
Maybe it’s interesting if you only listen to lefty stuff?
I think I enjoyed this podcast because there was a lot to chew on from this election and Ethan and Ross talked about it in an informed manner. Like I think it was 80th percentile in terms of being grounded in facts and truth while still looking at things logically. There was a few times where I winced and thought, "eh, that's not true" but I also don't want dudes citing white papers and legislative text either.
We can disagree nicely without condescension
Sorry wasn't trying to be condescending, just literally speculating as to why someone would be so enthralled by it. I got about 60% of the way through and turned it off because it was boring and not really bringing much to the table. Much better stuff on the election out there.
Random question, but since you mentioned it, do you have any specific recommendations for other podcasts that have covered the election? I'm interested to hear more discussions on it that aren't just a bunch of whining about the outcome.
If you want to hear a lot of specifics from Republicans, especially on Congressional races, you might try the Ruthless podcast. It is very partisan, but their election episode has the heads of the Republican Senate and House SuperPACs, which are perspectives you can't hear elsewhere with a lot of data.
Hey Ethan, serious question: why is Nate Silver a thing? He’s not interesting. He’s not correct in what he does and he doesn’t even try anymore. “50/50 odds all around you guys!!” And it’s not Monday morning quarterback’ing. Most didn’t respect his nonsense and they smart to ignore him.
He doesn't just predict the nationwide presidency, he also predicts other races and state-by-state results. All in all his track record is pretty good. I doubt you could tell me ahead of time who is going to win the vast majority of governor and congressional races year after year. He's a serious prediction guy in baseball and poker, too.
There are lots of popular and famous people whom I don't find interesting either, but I don't usually just barge into a room like "hey I personally don't get this guy".
The actual end result of the electoral college was the exact result Silver’s model predicted as most probable to occur.
Yeah it's incredible saying "this guy is wrong" when he got it right on the nose.
It's like tell me you don't understand how probability works without telling me you don't understand.
But I asked him if this coin would be heads or tails and he guessed wrong! He is clearly an idiot.
I like the people who don’t acknowledge the inherent complications of applying probabilistic thinking to something that has one event every four years. Claiming he “got it right on the nose” is an outrageous claim and you know it.
Either you're misunderstanding something or I am. I've only skimmed his most recent election coverage.
He runs 1000s of simulations off his polling aggregates with noise added on top. His "most likely scenario" was the actual scenario we are seeing in the electoral college.
I guess you can look at the phrase "right on the nose" and say it's not a good description of what I just described, but I think in the context of the OP's "this guy can't predict things well" rant, it makes sense as a rebuttal. Nate wasn't wrong this year. He forecasts probabilistically, and reality landed right in the thickest part of his distribution, which is pretty good results for most prediction.
If you don't like "applying probabilistic thinking to something that has one event every four years" that's OK, but I haven't heard of a better way to do it, and the OP's complaint didn't seem that nuanced or like he even understood the angle you're taking.
Hes kind of the Neil DeGrasse Tyson version of Celebrity Analyst. Silver is smarter than the average hack on TV, but there is nothing exceptional about him. Essentially he correctly predicted like 7 out of 8 tossup states in 2008 and that the candidate that he (and the media) desperately wanted to win. That combined with the media's desperation to attach itself to pop science/math led to his massive popularity.
Elections are hard to predict so stop trying? Or those who try are dumb nonsense people? If you try to understand the methods he’s using and you’ll better understand the product he produces.
And by the way. You can’t seriously say Nate Silver proclaiming “it’s 50/50!!!” isn’t annoying and sophomoric.
This is like getting really mad that Vegas makes one game a pick em. If they did that for every game you would think that they don’t know what they’re doing, but sometimes it’s actually 50/50.
I had a whole paragraph comparing this to sports gambling typed up but didn’t want to go one forever. Great comp in my opinion.
I find it to be uninteresting, not annoying or sophomoric, because I take everything everyone says with a grain of salt and he’s just another person.
I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m playfully mocking you for thinking that if we all get rid of him, something would change.
If I accept your premise: yes. If we really can’t do X (polling in this case) should be make a celebrity out of someone trying to do X? No. Which is my point. But other media NAILED this polling election. And they’d never get an invite on HoS.
Henry Olsen nailed this election.
Ok if I accept your premise, who “nailed this polling election”?
Atlasintel. Rasmussen. Emerson. Are you saying you weren’t following these? I sure as hell was. So you should ask yourself, why do I put stock in Nate Silver if he sucks in his TINY LITTLE lane.
Yeah they were closer but they weren’t perfect, most still had trump under 50% nationally.
And they aren’t this close every cycle. They’ve missed in years past. Every election you could just look back and pull the 3 closest polls and say “oh why didn’t we just listen to them the whole time” but wait another 2,4,8 years and they will become the new Nate silver.
Aren’t those actual pollsters? Nate doesn’t poll. He aggregates polls.
Honestly, I think even he would admit he was overhyped after the 2008 and 2012 elections.
During that time, what he was offering to left-leaning people in the media was:
1.) Telling them what they wanted to hear -- that Obama was going to win the elections. It was a security blanket for everyone to wake up every morning, refresh 538, and see that Obama was an overwhelming favorite.
2.) Flattered their sensibilities that they were scientific and data-driven as opposed to the Rs who talked about vibes and crowd sizes, and ignored science. This dovetailed with how they saw themselves.
As it was Billy Beane had a book written about him, and a movie starring Brad Pitt made about him. Imagine if the A's were the favorite team of most of the media elite. And a few breaks went differently and they won the World Series (say, the Beane was hired by the Red Sox instead of the A's, and won the World Series a year earlier). He'd be blown up beyond everything.
After 2012, the data didn't support this legend, so people soured on him. But only because he was too high to begin with.
The thing about Silver is that, as a bunch of people have noted, his system of aggregating polls was overall pretty accurate. It's just that other people who aggregate polls with any additional modeling were accurate too (RCP), and a lot of Silver's personal commentary was really off (thinking Texas could go blue, taking the Selzer poll at face value).
He’s a thing but most people ignored him? All he does is use polls and input into his models which have some subjectivity. Then he says what his models are showing. If that’s not something are interested in then so be it. But a lot of people like reading about numbers, stats, and probability.
Anyone else find the “we don’t talk about terrorism” anymore a bit of wishful thinking from Ross? We spend endless time talking about the war in Gaza which was started by a terror attack. Much of the debates about whether Israel is an apartheid state or the only democracy in the Middle East boil down to what a person thinks is an appropriate response to terrorism. It feels like many people who have trans friends just turn their brains off and wish cast when it comes to this issue because the actual logical conclusions would be seen as unacceptable to people that they care about.
I’m sure it’s already been said in the comments but idk about trumps legacy in historical terms. You need some distance to really evaluate these things in historical terms. Don’t undersell Clinton either. His impact was massive from an economic standpoint and is being felt to this day and much of what he did trump stands in opposition to
Great podcast. But Ethan, you still maintain Biden said he would select a Black Woman for Vice President when he said he would select a Woman. He said he would pick a Black female Supreme Court Justice. In both cases, it gives the impression of not going with the best candidate, but rather the best candidate of this subsection which I agree is a real problem.
“I didn’t even like the Alvin Bragg indictment!” Lol who the hell js this guest??!! lol. He must show me ONE piece of media where he said this *before* it was popular. Don’t ever say a clown show can’t be super entertaining. Thank you for this podcast Ethan.
“Do it again!” Has a whole new meaning this week.