Notes ScratchPad: Somone Probably Has the Presidential Race 80% in the Bag...

Plus some very disappointing journamalism from the "Wall Street Journal's" Ben Pershing; & MOAR. A scratchpad...

Plus some very disappointing journamalism from the "Wall Street Journal's" Ben Pershing; & MOAR. A scratchpad...

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Journamalism: Dan Drezner is very smart and very reliable. He writes:

Dan Drezner: What if October is... Boring?: ‘It's been a fat-tailed presidential election so far…. An awful lot of Big Events that transformed the 2024 U.S. presidential election…. There has been an awful lot of speculation about which October surprises could tip the election one way or another. This New York Times story by Shane Goldmacher and Reid Epstein <270towin.com/2024-countdown-clock from 48 hours ago represents the perfect distillation of this genre <270towin.com/2024-countdown-clock> of <270towin.com/2024-countdown-clock> story:

“Vice President Kamala Harris has cast herself as a candidate of the future, but she has been yanked back by the problems of the present… war… strike… hurricane… combined to knock Ms. Harris off a message that has been carefully calibrated…”.

You get the idea…. maybe—just maybe—it’s time… to take a breath…. Look at that FiveThirtyEight chart. Even with all of the shocks of August and September, there wasn’t a lot of movement in either direction… <danieldrezner.substack.com/p/what-if-oc…>

Now do not get me wrong. The election is almost certainly not close. If we knew everything about the state of the electorate right now, we would almost surely judge the probabilities as putting it 80% in the bag. But we do not know everything, and in particular we do not know where the systematic polling error lies, and how large it is.

But Dan is right. From our ignorant perspective, it is very close to a tossup, and will probably stay that way down to close to the wire.

Nate Silver and Eli McKown-Dawson right now have it thus:

Nate Silver & Eli McKown-Dawson: Silver Bulletin 2024 Presidential Election Forecast: ‘1:30 p.m., Friday, October 4. Another day… still very little change…. Harris… has a 56 percent chance of winning the election to Trump’s 44 percent chance… [with] a 21 percent chance Harris wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College… <natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2024-presi…>

That is all the time you need to spend on the polls. Maybe come back and revisit <natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2024-presi…> for five minutes in two weeks, or one week if you have anxiety disorder. Otherwise go do other, productive things.

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Journamalism: No, Ben Pershing of the Wall Street Journal. “What matters” as Hurricane Milton approaches is not “showing command”. What matters is telling people to get out of the way, telling people how to get out of the way, and starting to position resources for the post-storm relief effort.

I man, Jeebus Christ, Ben Pershing. Are you a human being at all?

Ben Pershing: ‘Another hurricane threatening Florida means another wave of hurricane politics is already blowing through the state. Hurricane Helene prompted Donald Trump and some of his supporters to criticize President Biden’s response and, by extension, Vice President Kamala Harris (though most Republican officials in the affected states said they were happy with the Biden administration’s effort). Now Hurricane Milton is approaching, and Florida and GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis might or might not have dodged Harris’s phone call—a DeSantis aide told NBC News that he did, but the governor said Monday <wsjpoliticspolicy.createsend1.com/t/d-l…> that he wasn’t aware she had called. What matters for Biden, Harris and DeSantis—a once and possibly future presidential contender—isn’t who called whom. It is showing command as another potential disaster looms, and being seen as squabbling with the opposing party usually doesn’t help in those situations… <wsjpoliticspolicy.cmail19.com/t/d-e-eud…>

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Economics: Again, as far as inflation is concerned, the US economy attained its soft landing in June 2023—now seventeen months ago. Yes, the reset of the absolute price level produced by the transitory inflation burst from the post-plague recovery and the Muscovite attack on Kievan ‘Rus was painful in its distributional and psychological consequences. But it brought, here in the United States, a full-employment economy with rapid productivity growth that wheeled the sectoral distribution of resources into the appropriate configuration for prosperity. And by November the end of the 2020s inflation episode will be eighteen months in the past:

Colby Smith: US [CPI] inflation [over the past twelve months] fell to 2.4% in September: ‘The sixth consecutive month the annual headline rate has fallen. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, rose to 3.3 per cent in the year to September, compared with the 3.2 per cent increase registered in August…. The decline in inflation from its 2022 peak of 9.1 per cent has so far not triggered a significant weakening of the labour market, surprising many economists… <https://www.ft.com/content/9f122d16-79f0-4122-a17f-59d1c11c94af>

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Economic Development: “If everything is to stay the same, everything must change!” says young Tancred to his elderly, reactionary uncle in the classic Italian novel The Leopard. Yet there are—still—a lot of rich and powerful people who do not understand that in the world since 1870—hell! in the world since 1770—change is inescapable, and what little security for those of high position can be constructed is more in figuring out how to ride the tsunamis rather than pretending they are not coming:
Matthew Yglesias: Gambling on Growth: ‘[For] Sudan… the root cause… is… extractive elites… stealing money rather than making policies that support development…. [But] it’s better to be the governing elite of a rich country than a poor one… strong incentives to govern your country well. So why doesn’t everyone make better choices? Well, it’s risky. For an economy to grow and prosper, things need to change. There’s no guarantee that you, specifically, will come out on top of that growth… <https://www.slowboring.com/p/friday-grab-bag-the-war-on-complexity>

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Really-Existing Socialism: Just in case there is any doubt as to what was at the core of really-existing socialism, as we knew it:

Vladimir Lenin (August 9, 1918): ‘Comrade Fyodorov: It is obvious that a whiteguard insurrection is being prepared in Nizhni. You must strain every effort, appoint three men will) dictatorial powers (yourself, Markin and one other), organise immediately mass terror, shoot and deport the hundreds of prostitutes who are making drunkards of the soldiers, former officers and the like. Not a minute of delay…

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Economic History: The point of view I am swinging around to on this is Patricia Crone’s. She points out that outside of Western Europe the other High Civilizations of the world as of 1400 were successful societies of domination, in which there was nobody with any significant amount of societal power who wanted too-rapid change, By contrast, Western Europe was a mish-mash of different groups and forces seeking to cement their place in the ruling élite of a ramshackle and disorderly social order: kings, military nobles, justiciars, courtiers, bureaucrats, largely-autonomous urban merchants and manufacturers, and theocrats all were making bids to become part of a stable agrarian-society predatory élite, and for many of these groups change was, or was seen as possibly, a ladder:

Angus Bylsma: Laying Foundations: ‘[Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: Volume I:] The Structures of Everyday Life[: The Limits of the Possible], Fernand Braudel, 1981… is brilliant but also deeply infuriating… extraordinary breadth and detail… a pleasure to read…. [But] analysis of why what is described matters is often scare; and, when such analysis does appear, the scale of the claims are rarely matched by the evidence…. Braudel is basically focussed on comparing… France, Italy, and England with China…. Insofar as Braudel has an ‘argument’… it is that these ‘structures of everyday life’ changed more (and more rapidly) in Europe than in China…. Just as Chinese metallurgy was at the cutting edge in 1400 but then stagnated, so did its fashion, food, and drink change little over this period…. Braudel does not offer any theories of why this was the case… <https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/laying-foundations>

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Public Reason: I think this from Seth Masket is wrong. It was not the “party”, not the professional Democratic politicians and staffers, who successfully pressured Biden to step aside. Biden had, after all, successfully resisted such pressures applied sotto voce in 2022, 2023, and the first half of 2024. What did it was the donors. The massive flight downballot of both large and small donors is what done it. And that was an uncoördinated non-party action—just people giving at all levels deciding that they needed to direct their money elsewhere:

Seth Masket: Did the Parties Decide in 2024?: ‘How well does this model of elite coordination describe what we’ve seen from the two parties’ presidential nominations lately? It did a pretty good job describing how Democrats picked, say, Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020, giving their eventual nominee many structural advantages and nudging other candidates out of contention long before anyone started voting in Iowa or New Hampshire. But it falls well short of describing the much more aggressive version of party activity we saw among Democrats this past July. Even U.S. parties at their strongest have rarely had the kind of muscle needed to push an incumbent president out…. Direct pressure from top party elites… the desertion of many Democratic members of Congress, a decline in public approval, and a widespread consensus… that Biden had massively and viscerally bombed at the June debate… convinced the president to step aside… <hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/did-the-…>

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Journamalism: Not only does the New York Times not care about being professional, it does not even care about appearing or pretending to be professional. James Fallows:

James Fallows: Did We Learn Anything from the VP Debate?: ‘Ross Douthat of the New York Times had written his verdict on last night’s VP debate, and had it proofread, edited, and posted on the Times’s web site, by the time the debate reached its midway point. Impressive clairvoyance! By then he apparently had seen enough to declare <nytimes.com/2024/09/25/opinion/vance-wi…> JD Vance the runaway winner, thanks to what the item’s headline called (remember, the debate was still underway) Vance’s “Dominant Debate Performance.”…

Three-line wrap-up: 1) This won't change the results… 2) Vance much more at-home seeming in real time…. 3) But Vance created many more time-bomb clips… denying he supported nationwide abortion ban; refusing to answer election-denial question; no comeback for "where is Mike Pence"; man-splaining over the (female) moderators; saying Trump saved ACA, etc…. <fallows.substack.com/p/election-countdo…>

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Journamalism: The two revelatory things people remember from the vice-presidential debate are Vance’s “the rules were you guys weren’t going to fact check”, and his refusal to either back Trump by saying that Trump had won or back reality by saying that Trump had lost the 2020 election—Vance’s “damnable non-answer”. That the Economist wants to paint a different picture of what actually went down at the vice-presidential debate has to make one wonder who they are working for here. Hint: it’s not their readers who want to be informed:

Economist: The vice-presidential debate was surprisingly cordial: ‘Its high-minded tone worked to J.D. Vance’s advantage: Why did economist.com/united-states/2024/10/01/… have to go and spoil things?… [The] candidates tried to seem… respectful… open to compromise… intent on solving big problems… soothing… even informative… dull in a good way…. But then… Walz… asked… about Donald Trump: “Did he lose the 2020 election?”… “Tim,” Mr Vance replied, “I’m focused on the future.”… Despite the sharp disagreements over matters like abortion, the debate was a reminder of how much overlap exists between the parties’ agendas on matters from industrial policy to child care to housing to a certain indifference to budget deficits. Even on the politically fraught subject of guns in schools, the two candidates found some common ground. “This is a good start to the conversation,” Mr Walz said… <economist.com/united-states/2024/10/02/…>

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Neofascism: It now seems long, long ago that Noah Smith told me that Elon Musk should buy Twitter—either he would destroy it and new and much better things would grow up in the Tweeting space, or he would find for it a profitable business model that would radically improve it as it found valuable things to its user base and so made it more worthwhile. In retrospect, that was a very bad take. Elon Musk appears to have lit $34 billion of his and his investors’ money on fire in order to create a worse misinformation engine, but while the thing is much less salient and has died as a profit-making entity or as an entity providing value to stakeholders, it still exists as a shitposting, misinformation-spreading entity:

Matt Egan: CNN: Elon Musk’s X is worth nearly 80% less than when he bought it, Fidelity estimates: ‘Fidelity discloses what it believes <cnn.com/2024/01/02/tech/fidelity-again-…> is the value of its shares of X, and those estimates serve as a closely watched barometer for the overall health of the company…. Analysts say Fidelity’s plunging price tag for X likely reflects shrinking ad revenue at the company, which no longer publicly releases quarterly financial metrics…. Musk faced a backlash from brands <cnn.com/2023/11/17/tech/lionsgate-suspe…>, some of which halted spending on X, after the billionaire embraced an antisemitic conspiracy theory <cnn.com/2023/11/17/tech/lionsgate-suspe…> favored by White supremacists.

Musk later apologized for what he called his “dumbest” ever social media posting. However, during that apology <cnn.com/2023/11/17/tech/lionsgate-suspe…>, Musk also told fleeing advertisers: “Go f**k yourself”… <cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/elon-musk-t…>

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Neofascism: Every single news outlet should right now be saying this once a week. Hell, they should be saying this once a day. That they are not shows that they are deeply, deeply broken systems and people:

Heather Cox Richardson : October 6, 2024: ‘This morning began with a CNN headline story by fact checker Daniel Dale, titled “Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response.” Dale noted that Republican nominee for president Donald Trump has been one of the chief sources of the disinformation that has badly hampered recovery efforts. 

Trump has claimed that the federal government is ignoring the storm’s victims, especially ones in Republican areas, and that the government is handing out only $750 in aid (in fact, the initial emergency payment for food and groceries is $750, but there are multiple grants available for home rebuilding up to a total of $42,500, the upper limit set by Congress). He has also claimed—falsely—that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is out of money to help because the administration spent all its money on Ukraine and undocumented immigrants.

Trump’s lies are not errors. They are part of a well-documented strategy to overturn democracy by using modern media to create a false political world. Voters begin to base their political decisions on that fake image… <heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/oct…>

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Neofascism: I do think that Brian Buetler has this absolutely nailed as to what the plan is, what the assignment is, and how many people understand it and are enthusiastically onboard. It reminds me of 2002 in some way—the 45th Fighting Keyboarders have a misinformation mission again!:

Brian Buetler: MAGA's Hurricane Helene Lies Are A Trial Run For The Election: ‘The through-line is sowing chaos and hurting people for personal gain: When Donald Trump started telling conspicuous lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene, all of MAGA understood the assignment.

His supporters understood they should spread rumors or fabricate anecdotes consistent with Trump’s claims. They should portray their own confusion as government malice or incompetence. They should claim to have witnessed FEMA abandoning <x.com/jamessurowiecki/status/1842605704…> Republican-heavy regions and illegal immigrants walking away with relief money first hand. They should even use artificial intelligence technology to fabricate images that reinforce these lies.

Elon Musk and Trump’s other ultra-wealthy supporters understood it as their solemn duty to draw as much attention to these lies as possible.

Anyone who sought information about the recovery on social media has been bombarded with them for over a week now; Musk’s Twitter is a particularly prolific font of disinformation, because he spends all day plucking rumor, lies, and innuendo from the stream and retweeting them to is 200 million followers. He takes special care to algorithmically boost this content of his, even to people who aren’t regular Tiwtter users <x.com/jamessurowiecki/status/1842605704…>, and who don’t follow his account…. <offmessage.net/p/maga-hurricane-helene-…>

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