HGotW: Ross Douthat, or is it Douche-Hat?

The human cystic pustule, Ross Douthat, explains why he thinks (and secretly wants) Trump to win. I would say prepare to be surprised, but nah, this is who this fucker really is. Taint washing Trump

Read to the end for a spicy take on the Cheney’s…

Ross Douthat standing in a burning garbage dumpster that is burning

Clearly, the distaste in his mouth from being assigned the post I reported on earlier, Ross Douthat took to his “subscriber’s newsletter” to get the funk out of his mouth and he writes about how he still thinks that Trump will win, all whilst feigning that he would prefer someone who is not Trump.

First, here’s what I wrote earlier this week:

Yes, that is an AI generated image of Ross and David Brooks sneaking a kiss, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But in an attempt to set the record straight, he followed that up with this “gem”: “Why I Still Think Trump Will Win” (non-gifted link).

Near the top of this is his rationale:

As of this writing Harris leads slightly in one of the popular betting markets, PredictIt, and Trump in another, Polymarket; in other words, for people making real wagers, it’s a tossup. The RealClearPolitics polling average in Pennsylvania, the most likely decisive state, is a tie. The election forecaster Nate Silver’s complex model gives Trump a 60 percent chance of victory — but the forecasting at his former home, FiveThirtyEight, thinks Harris has a 57 percent chance of winning.

Yeah, betting odds are a good bellwether of how the electorate is going. Oh, and anyone who continues to posit that Nate Silver is anything but a hacky twat who manipulates the underlying data to express what he really wishes were true is relying on the “Trust me Bro” approach.

He first complains that Harris’ polling isn’t significantly better than it is. To justify this, he relies on a bunch of hand waving from Silver to justify (and it should be pointed out that Silver has been taken to task by many for his shading the data (link)).

That is, as I understand it, part of why Silver’s projection now gives Trump a meaningful edge. What Silver’s calculations don’t include is an expectation of polling errors like the ones we saw, especially in some state polls, in 2016 and 2020, which led to Trump’s overperforming projections — and my second reason for betting on Trump is that I suspect he’ll slightly overperform again.

Silver explains here why he isn’t forecasting such an error: Because the partisan valence of polling error varies from election to election, because pollsters have had four years to correct the problems that bedeviled them in 2020, and because two Trump elections is way too small a sample to assume that Trump will benefit from any error again.

Seems suss to me, and likely some of that good ol’ fashioned Douthat wish casting.

And yes, it is frustrating and vexing to me that her polling hasn’t been even more enthusiastic, but let’s not kid ourselves, between 28 and 31% of the electorate is so hard core MAGA, the only way they stop pulling the lever for Trump or future Trump mini-me’s is because they have died off.

That means that about 15% of the population that is not hard core MAGA lost causes is still party and tribe over country. That is essentially Trump’s floor. It is also his ceiling.

But amongst the “gettable” independents or NPA’s Harris seems to be having a banner season, as reflected in the consistent shift of the swing states in her favor.

He ends with:

In that environment I was very doubtful that swapping Biden out for Harris, a figure burdened by his unpopular record and her own more liberal profile, would be enough to get the Democrats back to the (extremely narrow) edge they enjoyed in the key Electoral College states in 2020. And I still basically think that it won’t be enough — that notwithstanding Harris’s success in restoring Democratic enthusiasm, and notwithstanding her success so far in floating somewhere above and apart from her progressive record, she’s not a strong enough candidate to overcome the forces that gave Trump a lead in the first place.

So that’s why I’m still inclined to expect a Trump victory — for now, pending further developments or debate stage drama, and with the awareness that this entire era is still designed to make fools of all political prognosticators.

Yes, I will agree that the EC is what makes Republicans even remotely competitive nationally. Ironically (or not) the compromise that was penned to help normalize the slaveholding states’ power relative to the industrializing north continues to haunt us, and until there is such a large Democratic majority that we can realistically have a constitutional amendment to invalidate the EC (something that small and rural states will vehemently oppose with every fiber of their being) this is the system we are stuck with.

But, did you notice what Ross missed mentioning in the pull-quotes above? Any mention of the intensity of the backlash to the Dobbs decision that has energized women and younger men in particular, that has driven record voter registrations in the younger cohort, and has overwhelmingly leaned left.

No, Ross is so anti Kamala because she is taking his favorite subject where he gets to flex his misogynist muscle, inculcated in him by his rad-trad Catholic faith.

No, no mention of that, I wonder why? Is he pretending that the racism and the misogyny don’t matter?

I will add a few choice comments for those (ok, all of you should NOT read this twaddle, or my sacrifice will be in vain) who don’t click the link above:

Yes Michelle!

For this post, Ross Douthat wins the coveted “Human Garbage of the Week” award. And may he contract Monkey Pox and suffer greatly from the lesions.

On the Cheney’s ‘endorsement’ of Harris

A lot is being made of the factoids of Liz Cheney explicitly speaking about her decision to vote for Kamala Harris. The Never Trumpers are practically creaming in their jeans over this, about how YUGE it is, and that it will give permission to the disaffected Republicans who find Trump distasteful to either sit out the election, or to cross over and pull the lever for Harris.

I just can’t get excited. Cheney pulled the lever for Trump in 2016. She saw all the bullshit and fucked up behaviors whilst he was in office, and in 2020, she said, “sure, four more years of Trump and MAGA would be fine”, and pulled the lever for him again.

If January 6th hadn’t happened, she would 100% still pull the lever for him in 2024.

Fuck that. Yes, I am glad that she is being vocal about it, but I have no illusions that she pulls even a single additional vote for Harris/Walz beyond her and her Father’s.

I just can’t get to praising her, or admiring her courage. She is neither, and politically, she, her father, and even GWB are all non-entities.

Stop thinking this will make a difference. It will be interesting to see if this spicy take costs me subscribers…

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