Nate Silver's War on Hopium
And on Democrats
Did you hear?
Nate Silver was right!
Not a big surprise, though. After all, he was right in 2022, 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012, 2010, 2008, and probably was right about lots of stuff in 2006, 2004, 2002, 2000, 1998, 1996, 1994, 1992, 1990, 1988, 1986, 1984, 1982, 1980, 1978, 1976, and….wait a sec. When was he born again?
Okay, so maybe he was not technically able to be right at some point in there. But he would have been right, had he been experiencing consciousness!
In actuality, he had a couple very good years as a young data analyst coming on the political journalism scene in 2008-2012 with very accurate presidential elections forecasts. Since then, he’s been reeling from…..being imperfect.
If he just accepted that he’s imperfect, and humbly acknowledged that the world is wholly unknowable and we are all just doing our best to make sense of it, that’d be one thing.
But he’s made it his mission to not just self-aggrandize, but to bring down anyone that disagrees—or rather, anyone he disagrees with, particularly on the left. Very few prominent left-leaning figures are safe these days from his attacks and outright derision. It’s as though Democrats making incorrect calls in politics or being hopeful of victory are mortal sins.
I’m probably not qualified to analyze the origins of his ire, but the dude really comes off like a basket case. His goal seems to now be vengeance against anyone that purports to have a system of predicting or understanding the electorate that isn’t his election model.
He openly went after the one guy on the planet that consistently calls presidential elections correctly, historian Allan Lichtman, father of the “Keys to Victory” system. Seriously, read the language in the first several posts in this link. It’s embarrassingly child-like.
He publicly argued with DNC Chair, Jaime Harrison, on Xitter, literally accusing him of spreading misinformation and practically accusing him of deception, suppression, and incompetence.
He attacked Stuart Stevens, longtime Republican political advisor and anti-Trumper, after Stevens noted the potential conflict of interest in Silver’s professional relationship with election betting market platform Polymarket while also being a political election forecaster. (Note: this is definitely a conflict of interest).
He’s viciously attacked Joe Biden as being mentally incompetent and too old, perhaps even siring the movement to remove him from the Democratic presidential nomination. Which might have seemed like a great idea at the time, but didn’t work out so well!
Big dogs
Silver loves to go after the big dogs. If I had to guess, I would say it’s because he’s insecure and desperately wants to be perceived as a big dog himself. But, again, I’m not a psychologist (although I do have a degree in Psychology, so could have some insight here).
Silver likes to be right. And likes to make sure everyone thinks that he’s right. It’s by far the most important thing to him. More important than a fascist takeover of America. As long as he was seen as having allowed for the possibility of a fascist takeover of America, then he’s happy. And to his credit, he definitely did this.
In addition, Silver particularly loves to go after Democrats and left-leaners. If a Democrat somewhere is hopeful and confident in victory, then it’s apparently Silver’s mission to root out this invasive species of thought with derision and browbeating.
There are so many examples of this, it’s hard to reference them appropriately. I would just say, go to his newsletter and read his work and his Xitter page and read his posts. They are very Democrat- and left-centric. Republicans and the right simply don’t have too many flaws I guess.
The rise of “Hopium”
The best example of this is his hatred of “Hopium”, which was a derisive term he coined while…..you guessed it, criticizing Democrats.
In 2022, as the polls suggested a decent Republican midterm performance, and the media promoted the narrative of the huge “Red Wave” that was coming, Democratic political strategist and commentator Simon Rosenberg consistently posted that the actual data did not suggest a Red Wave was going to happen. He stated this case pretty convincingly, using several factors, including dubious pollsters skewing the polling averages in the Republicans’ favor.
Being someone that uses these poll averages in his election model, Silver took offense at someone suggesting that polls were anything other than on the up-and-up, OR that even if they are not on the up-and-up, one should still include them in the averages because…..polls!
So he called Rosenberg’s arguments “Hopium”, suggesting they are not real but a way for Democrats to feel good and hopeful in the election, which would surely turn against them. Silver was all in on the Red Wave theory, even picking out his surfboard for the ride.
The surfboard remained dry.
Silver turned out to be wrong. About the election, about Rosenberg, and about Hopium. And that’s okay. Smart people get things wrong. It’s not a bad idea to reassess and think about why you got it wrong, and make any adjustments if you see the need to. Or maybe just stick stubbornly by your techniques and use them indefinitely. Whatever. You’re a successful pundit, just relax and enjoy it.
But no.
There are more elections to be had; more opportunities to be right and for other people to be wrong; more leftist hope to quash and laugh at while pointing to.
In the 2024 election cycle Rosenberg, along with respected Democratic data guru Tom Bonier, sang a similar tune as in 2022. They were the most prominent “Hopium” dealers during this election, making similar arguments about how the data was showing decent Democrat strength and that Republican strength was somewhat overblown, partly due to dubious Republican pollsters trying to skew the averages
Of course, Trump won the election. And much of the data suggesting that Harris could perform well didn’t pan out. It’s confounding, but it is reality.
But Rosenberg and Bonier weren’t exactly wrong. Yes, every analysis they gave was generally hopeful for Democrats and suggested they would perform well, but they always qualified their analyses with, not a promise of victory, but a hope in a good chance at victory if everyone worked hard and through to the end.
They were Democratic strategists and data analysts that were seeing the data and liking most of what they saw. They said repeatedly they thought it would be close, but that Harris had a good chance to win. For all practical purposes, this is basically what Nate Silver was saying during the election cycle as well.
Cue the scorched-earth victory lap
On November 19, Silver released a newsletter post entitled “Hopium Comes at a High Price: Democrats Ignored the Polls at Their Peril”.
In this article the usual suspects were again rounded up: Rosenberg, Bonier, Lichtman, etc. But there were other big dogs out there that he previously missed.
So he brought in, of all people, Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor and author who writes the most popular Substack newsletter, Letters From an American.
Richardson’s big offense, according to Silver, is that she wrote one sentence about the election in which she stated: “The results were a surprise to everyone”.
Silver quotes a lot more than that sentence from Richardson, but singles that out as a ridiculous statement, taking an obvious overgeneralization way too literally.
Here’s his retort:
The results were a “surprise to everyone”? They shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone, actually, provided they were reading Silver Bulletin or other nonpartisan polling analysis, or mainstream outlets like the Times, and certainly not if they were consuming any right-wing media. And it wasn’t just that the polls had been close: Trump had already been elected president before!
As an aside, why would he bring up consumption of right-wing media as a valid way to predict the election while at the same time denigrating left-wing media as totally misguided?
Anyway, he got his big dog attack in on a coveted new big dog.
Just for good measure he name drops the highly respected Tim Snyder as well:
The #Resistance historian set — Richardson and Timothy Snyder and, yes, Allan Lichtman — contributed to the chorus
So there’s big dog #2.
Any other prominent and highly respected non-fascist commentators out there that need a good spanking? Silver’s got the paddle ready for ya!
The curious thing is that you rarely see him ridiculing Republicans or right-leaning commentators. That’s fine in a general sense, but he purports to be non-partisan. While criticizing Biden’s age, mental acuity, and his and Harris’ campaign strategies, you’d think maybe he could have spent some near-equal time criticizing Trump’s as well. I mean, it’s not like Trump is a youthful lad, speaks coherently of the issues of the day, ran a great campaign, or had any kind of detectable strategy to win.
Imagining a problem
In a show of blatant self-importance, Silver’s main thesis is that Dems are “ignoring polls” and losing elections because of this.
Just look at the title and subtitle to the post I’ve been referencing:
“Hopium comes at a high price. Democrats ignored the polls at their peril”.
Silver doesn’t really explain what he means by this. He just goes off on critical tirades against Democrats.
He never offers an example of Democrats ignoring polls and behaving in ways that lose elections as a result.
Quite the contrary, as a regular reader of Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles and Bonier’s work, I can attest that these two definitely did not ignore polls. Yes, they dismissed the legitimacy of some of the outlier Repubican-leaning polls, but these polls were rarely among the accepted mainstream polls that poll gurus rated highly anyway. In hindsight, is the lesson really supposed to be that we should all give greater consideration to the biased right-wing polls?
And the Harris campaign, if anything, was too negative about their polling levels. One of their first and ongoing messages once their campaign got underway was about how Harris was the underdog. They relentlessly sent out emails and texts showing they were uncomfortably polling behind Trump. It actually became a bit demoralizing. A bit of Hopium probably helped keep people’s energy level up among this barrage of negativity.
And at no point did the Harris campaign, Rosenberg or Bonier, or any other anti-fascist “historian set” commentator suggest that Democrats should not try and do everything they could to win. There was no talk of the election being “in the bag”, or suggestions that Democrats take their foot off the pedal.
No, they were being realists while also countering the Republican narrative that Trump was winning and was too powerful to beat. They were basically just trying to shut down Republican propaganda. This is typical in politics and is done by each side every single day.
The real winner
In reality, this is what Silver’s war on Hopium ended up being about. It was his attempt to show how misguided the Dem effort was to fight against right-wing propaganda.
But the right-wing propaganda was doing the same thing that Silver criticized the left for doing. They were also hopeful and looking for things to be positive about. Republicans and MAGA would dismiss any poll that suggested Harris was winning. Trump would only post online about the polls that showed him with a commanding lead.
Why wouldn’t this be worth criticizing as well? A true non-partisan would see this as essentially the same damn thing. Two sides, each fighting for their opposite narrative positions in order to increase the chances of winning a high-stakes election. A true non-partisan would mostly just consider this a wash, dismiss most of it as noise, and move on to actual useful analyses.
But to Silver, the most important thing is that he was right, and Dems were wrong. And that many prominent Dems didn’t think what he thought.
Because they had an election to try and win.
Apparently, the only thing Silver wants to win is the ridicule of very prominent leftist commentators and Harris supporters.
So, really, when you think about it, the real winner in this election was Nate Silver.
Honestly - I don’t follow silver now, or put value on anything he says. Math - data analysis is supposed to be impartial. And he’s anything but. How can anyone trust his numbers when he clearly vocalizes his biases.
For the record , Rosenberg never stated harris would absolutely win. I listened to him , read his stack throughout the campaign . He ALWAYS stated it would be tight - always. And he did give accolades to Harris and her campaign for how well run it was- Rosenberg was not the only person noting that , btw, ppl with experience running campaigns were noting it- bc it was exceptional.
Everyone is HOPEFUL their candidate wins. It would seem that silver strives to have democrats feel so defeated that they throw in the towel and don’t even try… kinda like behavior tim Snyder warns us against. That said, silver seems to be operating as part of the levers of nascent authoritarianism- why believe anything he says?
I was a dedicated reader of 538 for years, starting before the 2008 election (which they nailed). Not just politics but sports, pop culture, etc. After ABC laid everyone off that site went into the shitter, and Silver realized he was free to be his worst self. So I don’t follow either any more. Instead I fill the void with hopeful left-leaning Substack content. I think it’s better.