"Less than a week before the 2024 presidential election... [u]sing the now-disgraced and shuttered 538 as its unimpeachable source..."

"... the [New York] Times scoffed at a number of the latest polls that showed Trump leading. A 'torrent of polls began arriving just a few weeks ago, one after the other, most showing a victory for Donald J. Trump,' wrote the Times. These polls 'stood out amid the hundreds of others indicating a dead heat in the presidential election.'... [T]he Times accused those pollsters — 37 in all — of being 'focused on lifting Republican enthusiasm before the election' and 'cementing the idea that the only way Mr. Trump can lose to Vice President Kamala Harris is if the election is rigged.'... 'Unlike its competitors, RealClearPolitics does not filter out low-quality polls' and also 'does not weight its averages.' Which is just another way of saying that, unlike 538 (which got the election wrong and has lost so much money and credibility it just closed in disgrace), RCP does not put its thumb on the scale. It lists the polls and offers the averages, and that’s it...."

From "Far-Left NY Times Owes RealClearPolitics Apology After 538 Shutdown" (Breitbart).

Biden said to have zero chance of winning even as FiveThirtyEight says that a Biden victory is more likely than not.

I'm reading — at NBC News — "'No one involved in the effort thinks he has a path': Biden insiders say the writing is on the wall/The set of Democrats who think he should reconsider his decision to stay in the race has grown to include aides, operatives and officials tasked with guiding his campaign to victory":

Several of President Joe Biden’s closest allies, including three people who are directly involved in efforts to re-elect him, told NBC News they now see his chances of winning as zero — and the likelihood of him taking down fellow Democratic candidates growing.

“He needs to drop out,” one Biden campaign official said. “He will never recover from this.”

Zero!

And then there's this at FiveThirtyEight:

So Biden is more likely to win than Trump. Just slightly, but still. Call it a tie. That's infinitely more than zero. Now, FiveThirtyEight is working with actual polls, but the campaign officials saying zero are picturing the path of events in the next 4 months. They're also affected by their hopes and fears and capable of distorting and lying. They want Joe out. His own campaign officials! Well, they are, technically, Biden's people, hired to help him win, but they are also human beings with career aspirations of their own. I don't trust them. But do I trust FiveThirtyEight? Is FiveThirtyEight corrupt? 

"The minute someone is, like, 'Hey, we're going to take these nerdy white guys and hire them a staff of thirty people,' you’re no longer sympathetic."

Said Nate Silver, quoted in "What Was Nate Silver’s Data Revolution? Silver, a former professional poker player, was in the business of measuring probabilities. Many readers mistook him for an oracle" (The New Yorker).

The article is by Jay Caspian King, who writes:

"For all of his early promise, Nate Silver ended up swallowing, and even pushing what might be the single concept most destructive to the republic right now: bothsidesism."

"Silver long overstayed his usefulness, so if he does go? Good riddance."

Says the first commenter in a discussion at Metafilter, "The end of the road for FiveThirtyEight?" 

Second commenter:

The end of the road for FiveThirtyEight? 

With any luck! Because: Fuck that guy, and Christ, what an asshole and all that.

And someone else: 

won't disagree with anyone who says some variation of "fuck Nate Silver," but having journalistic outfits of even marginal merit get hollowed out and obliterated on a weekly basis by an increasingly thinner gamut of omnivorous corporations has been extremely grim the past few years 

"Nate Silver Out at ABC News... ABC News is expected to retain the FiveThirtyEight brand, with plans to streamline the data-driven site."

 Hollywood Reporter reports.

Silver founded FiveThirtyEight in 2008, eventually bringing it to The New York Times. Silver would go on to sell the site to Disney’s ESPN; it later was moved to the ABC News division. His departure will be the first time that Silver has not been involved in the site since it launched 15 years ago....

A lot of people getting fired these days.... 

"Interestingly, as the number of surveys of races at the state or district level has fallen, the number of national polls that ask about the generic ballot... has more than doubled...."

"For one thing, politics today are more nationalized than in the past, so pollsters may be incentivized to conduct national surveys.... [S]tate-level polls may require more difficult choices to properly interpret results.... Polling has become more expensive and more challenging, as the response rate to more traditional polling methods, like live telephone calls, is sometimes below 1 percent. Moreover, recent polling misses in 2016 and 2020 — note that 2018 polls were comparatively better — may have also made major news organizations more hesitant to put themselves out there by releasing surveys of important statewide races.... [C]ompared with past cycles, polls in 2022 are more likely to be sponsored or associated with partisan sources.... All of this is a challenge for what we do at FiveThirtyEight, and we hope that pollsters and news organizations figure out how to offer the public greater polling information in the future."

From "You're Not Imagining It: There Are Fewer Polls This Cycle/And a larger share come from partisan sources" (FiveThirtyEight).

Poor FiveThirtyEight! They can't do their thing without the raw material that is polling. 

"Polls show Mr. Biden leading by five to 13 points, but I grew up around here and am dubious. This place — the land of hoagies and Bradley Cooper and Rocky Balboa worship..."

"... and Tina Fey’s 'Cousin Karen' accent — has transmogrified into Trumplandia. 'He has so much more support than in 2016, because it’s been four years of accomplishments,' said Darinna Thompson, 49, a homemaker who was talking with a group of women outside the Trump Store. They were part of a caravan that had just encircled the Democrats’ rally 'to say bye-bye to Biden' and let his supporters know they were outnumbered.... Pollsters say that suburban women are President Trump’s kryptonite, that they’ve turned on him.... 'I feel like that’s wrong — we’re the majority,' said Jennifer Girard, 41, a single mother working in consumer goods.... My mom says many of her girlfriends will go for Mr. Trump, and she hasn’t been able to match with any man on Bumble who isn’t a Trump voter.... The front yards of the houses flanking my mom’s, the one across the street and three more on the block feature Trump signs. There is one Biden sign on the street. One of my mom’s acquaintances recently held a Trump-themed birthday party for her child. Icing on each cookie read, 'Make ninth birthdays great again.'... Lochel’s bakery in Hatboro has become an overnight Oracle of (Phila) Delphi, selling red 'Trump 2020” and blue 'Biden 2020' sugar cookies. Whichever cookie sells the most will predict how this area, and thus the state, and therefore the election, will turn. Supposedly.... So far, the count stands at 3,367 blue cookies, 18,241 red. 'I do think that Trump supporters are more competitive,' said Dan Rutledge, standing in line outside of the bakery in the spitting rain on Sunday."

From "Can We Trust Pennsylvania’s Polls?/They show Joe Biden clinching crucial counties. So why does it feel so different on the ground here?" by Shawn McCreesh (NYT).

ADDED: At FiveThirtyEight: "Is Joe Biden Toast If He Loses Pennsylvania?" Answer to the question: "No, not quite. It is close to being a must-win for Trump, who has only a 2 percent chance of winning the Electoral College if he loses Pennsylvania. Biden, however, has a bit more margin for error. He’d have a 30 percent chance if he lost Pennsylvania.... The reason losing Pennsylvania wouldn’t necessarily doom Biden is because he could still hold those other Midwestern/Rust Belt states. Pennsylvania is fairly similar to Michigan and Wisconsin, but not that similar."

Elizabeth Warren doesn't know how to make the news.

I assume the media want to cover Elizabeth Warren and to give her a boost and that she's just not giving them anything. Here's what I saw just now when I used Google news to search her name. It's just various sites re-analyzing the polls (which actually don't show her rising anymore!) and a prompt to switch my attention over to Bernie Sanders (who made the news by with the pithy statement, "billionaires should not exist")....

Here's the Real Clear Politics picture of the last 2 weeks in the polls, showing Biden gently rising and Warren sagging after her post-debate rise....

And here's one of the stories from my Google news search that manufacture wan Elizabeth Warren "news" out of the polls: "The Latest Iowa Poll Is Good News For Elizabeth Warren And Tulsi Gabbard" (FiveThirtyEight). Yes, there was one poll that was good news for Warren. It was Iowa only (with her at 22% and Biden at 20).

I'm writing this post because it's hard to notice things that don't happen. But I noticed this — Elizabeth Warren's failure to make news — because I was so impressed by the strength of President Trump's news-making as he tossed off some remarks on his way to a meeting yesterday. Now, of course, it's always easier for a President to make news, but there Trump was just walking by going to a meeting on one subject (religious freedom) and he got out a fantastic quote making his case in the Ukraine story that the Democrats have insisted on forefronting. Nevertheless, the challengers to the President need to make their news. They need to make an impression. How can Warren hope to pick up supporters if there isn't a stream of stories about her?

I search the NYT to see the current stories that have her name, and they aren't stories about anything she said or did: "Sanders Proposes Wealth Tax, Setting Up Clash With Warren," "Democrats Want to Tax the Rich. Here’s How Those Plans Would Work (or Not)," "Bernie Sanders Proposes a Wealth Tax, Taking Aim at Billionaires," "'Way Too Extreme': Some Democrats Warn Against Moving Left," "How Similar Are Your Political Views to Those of Your Parents?/On which specific candidates, issues, policies or political theories do you agree? On which do you disagree?," "Late Night Calls Out Trump for Bringing Up Biden With Ukraine," "Biden Returns to Philadelphia for Big-Dollar Fundraiser," "Where Have We Seen This Before?/President Trump is casting Joe Biden in a familiar role," "Nancy Pelosi’s Failure to Launch/The House speaker’s hesitation on impeachment empowers a lawless president," "Democrats Increase Qualifying Thresholds for November Debate."

I got bored copying NYT headlines — not skipping anything — looking for an article that was actually about Warren. Skipping down a bit, I finally got to one that showed her making news: "Warren and Biden Join U.A.W. Picket Lines as Democrats Use Strike to Court Labor." Excerpt:

The picket line visits of two of the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination — with the third, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, planning to join striking workers in Detroit on Wednesday — illustrated the importance to Democrats of winning the support of rank-and-file union members, including those who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016.

Taking her message of fighting inequality to Michigan for the fourth time since June, Ms. Warren joined a scrum of striking autoworkers, carrying a blue and white “U.A.W. on Strike” sign. As they crisscrossed the entrance to the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant, where Cadillacs and Chevrolets are built, the workers chanted, “We are the union, the mighty, mighty union. U.A.W. stand strong.”

Ms. Warren criticized G.M. for closing plants while making billions of dollars in profits. “G.M. is demonstrating that it has no loyalty to the workers of America or the people of America,” she said. “Their only loyalty is to their own bottom line. And if they can save a nickel by moving a job to Mexico or to Asia or to anywhere else on this planet, they will do it.”

This headline makes me laugh: "Here’s The Best Place To Move If You’re Worried About Climate Change/But would you actually go through with it?"

If you were genuinely worried about climate change — as opposed to fake worried or trying-to-look-like-a-good-person worried — you would go through with it. And I'm saying this as someone who was genuinely worried about global warming in 1984 when I chose to move to Madison, Wisconsin. I believed what I read and that included the idea that the southern United States was going to be unbearable in 10 years. I thought I was getting the jump on the inevitable migration. And now here I am, old and still observing the climate from my remote northern outpost, reading, "Here’s The Best Place To Move If You’re Worried About Climate Change/But would you actually go through with it?" at FiveThirtyEight.

Excerpt:

But it’s one thing to look at these maps and start dreaming of your climate condo in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s another thing entirely to say that the “Yooper” is a place you should move now....

The Yooper is a place?! To call the U.P. "The Yooper" just underscores your aversion to going anywhere near there. (A "Yooper" is a person who lives in the place they call the U.P.)

But despite the occasional trend story about coastal millennials moving to places that seem better positioned to ride out the ravages of climate change, there’s no real evidence that the Upper Peninsula is attracting new residents due to its climate prospects.....

That’s partly because real estate investing works at a different pace than climate change does.... The maps that show the Upper Peninsula winning against other parts of the country are forecasts of the year 2100. “But why does it matter that [the value of the land] will go up in 100 years?” [said a professor of economics]....

When people talk about the best place to move to avoid climate risks, he thinks they’re usually thinking about places that are currently too cold becoming, well, more like California and other parts of the country in which Americans are willing to take economic losses in order to enjoy today....

Live for today. Isn't that why we're having this climate change in the first place? These people who are "worried about climate change" are really basically just worried about today, and worrying about climate change is something that is done to try to look good today. And you'll be looking your best looking good looking worried in someplace that's warm today.

UPDATE: FiveThirtyEight has fixed its "Yooper" gaffe. The passage quoted above is replaced by:

But it’s one thing to look at these maps and start dreaming of your climate condo in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s another thing entirely to say that it is a place you should move now....

They haven't hidden the gaffe, so I give them credit for taking the hit openly:

CORRECTION (Sept. 20, 2019, 11:00 a.m.): A previous version of this article used the word “Yooper” to refer to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That was an incorrect use of the word. The U.P. is the place. The Yoopers are the people.

FiveThirtyEight wonks debate whether Joe Biden is still the front runner.

"OK … that’s two votes in favor of Biden as the front-runner and one vote against him...."

This is the most interesting statement in the whole thing:

Over time, I think Democratic voters will perceive Warren and Harris as more electable. I also think some Democratic voters will come to understand that they should not say out loud (or tell pollsters) that they view women running for president as unelectable, even if they act on that belief. And the comparisons between Obama and Harris should be viewed with extreme caution. Democrats view Trump as a threat in a way they did not view the potential GOP nominee in 2008 — and they had not just watched a black person lose in 2004. In other words, I think the number of Democrats spooked by Clinton’s defeat in 2016 and are wary of women for that reason may be understated.

That's a very compressed statement, and it struck me at first as full of contradictions. So let me open it up.

There's a prediction that Democratic voters will see Warren and Harris as more electable, then a prediction that they — some of them — will learn to shut up about the view that they're not electable. I guess you can connect those 2 statements with the idea that if people stop fussing about their unelectability, the perception will change. But Democrats need to worry about who actually can beat Trump, not about what they, subjectively, perceive. Still, the FiveThirtyEight discussion is about who's on the pathway to getting the nomination, and perception about who can win the general election affects who wins the nomination. It doesn't matter whether the perception is badly distorted.

How does the second part of the statement, about comparing Harris to Obama, relate to perceptions about electability? I think the point is supposed to be that Democratic voters gave Obama the nomination in 2008, and that might predict what they'll do in 2020. But Democrats are more desperate just to win this time, and they were more open to risk in 2008 (because Trump is so much more awful than any of the Republicans who were vying for the nomination in 2008). Also, in 2008, when Democrats sprang for a nominee who isn't a white male, they'd never had the experience of taking that leap and losing. But now, they're "spooked." They saw a woman lose, and that might make them think a woman candidate is too risky. That's not something they will openly talk about it, but if that's what's going on, Biden's front-runner position should hold.

"The Six Wings Of The Democratic Party."

According to FiveThirtyEight:

The Super Progressives — Very liberal on economic and identity/cultural issues, anti-establishment... Prominent examples: Ocasio-Cortez , Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin.... People in this bloc generally see the Democratic Party as too centrist and too cautious...

The Very Progressives — Very liberal on economic issues, fairly liberal on identity issues, skeptical of the Democratic establishment. Prominent examples: Bill de Blasio, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren.... a little less aggressive and less focused on identity issues and a little more willing to play nice with the Democratic Party establishment....

The Progressive New Guard — Liberal on both economic and identity issues but also somewhat concerned about the “electability” of candidates and the appeal of ideas to the political center; generally rose to prominence after Barack Obama was elected president. Prominent examples: Stacey Abrams, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Jay Inslee, Beto O’Rourke.... But what makes this group distinct from the next bloc of Democrats is a kind of performative wokeness, both on racial and nonracial issues.... The Progressive New Guard wants to appeal to white, working-class swing voters, but it sees another path to Democrats winning in purple states: mobilizing nonwhite voters and white millennials....

The Progressive Old Guard — Solidly center-left on both economic and identity issues, but very concerned about the “electability” of candidates and the appeal of ideas to the political center; generally rose to prominence before Obama was elected president. Prominent examples: Joe Biden, Cuomo, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer.... The old guard is less willing to placate the party’s most progressive wings. The defining phrase of this group might be “how do you pay for that?”...

The Moderates — More conservative and business-friendly than other Democrats on economic policies; somewhat liberal on cultural issues; anti-establishment. Prominent examples: Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Rep. Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia.... Many of them represent competitive (purple) districts and states... [They] have a political incentive to play up their differences with Pelosi and particularly Ocasio-Cortez — to tell their constituents essentially, “I’m a Democrat, but not that kind of Democrat.”

Conservative Democrats —  Skeptical of liberal views on both economic and cultural issues, often supportive of abortion limits, generally from conservative-leaning areas. Prominent examples: Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.... Democrats may need more Democrats in this mold to win any of the three governor races in 2019 (Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi) or to gain seats in state legislatures in the West and the South....

FiveThirtyEight gives the Democrats a 5-in-6 chance of winning the House and a 1-in-3 chance of winning the Senate.

New analysis today — here for the House and here for the Senate.

"3 in 4 Chance Democrats win control (74.6%)/1 in 4 Chance Republicans keep control (25.4%)."

FiveThirtyEight has numbers and graphics to help you visualize the electoral future.

What the new editor of Vanity Fair — Radhika Jones — wore to her first meeting with staff.

A navy blue dress that Women's Wear Daily described as "strewn with zippers" and tights "covered with illustrated, cartoon foxes."

WWD retreats into quoting Anna Wintour (who is not only the editor of Vogue editor but also the artistic Director of Condé Nast of which Vanity Fair is a part). Wintour only made a gentle gibe, "I’m not sure if I should include a new pair of tights in her welcome basket."

I'm more interested in interpreting the metaphors. What can you say about a navy blue dress strewn with zippers? It says women have the power now. The zipper's strongest association is with the fly on a man's pants. We might say a man with uncontrolled sexual compulsions has a "zipper problem," as in "Jackie Collins Knew Bill Clinton Had A ‘Zipper Problem’" (HuffPo, 2011)("I remember, before Clinton was president, I was sitting at a dinner in Beverly Hills and one of his aides was there and told me that he was definitely going to be president, except for one problem: the zipper problem.... They knew way before he was elected!").

And then a navy blue dress... I think of Monica Lewinsky.



That dress was strewn with Bill Clinton's genetic material.

Therefore I interpret Radhika Jones's dress as wry political commentary: the end of the political subjugation of women, the end of silencing — zip your lip, not mine — and a new era of female domination.

Now, let's consider the item of clothing that was even more attention-getting and metaphor-pushing than a blue dress strewn with zippers: tights covered in foxes.

What do foxes mean? When the political website FiveThirtyEight chose a fox as its corporate logo, Nate Silver quoted the Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

So there were many zippers on the dress and many foxes on the tights, which is a message of multiplicity already. But each of the many foxes is also a symbol of knowing many things.

There is, of course, the idea of women as "foxes," which was already laughably sexist when Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin played Festrunk Brothers in 1978 (and Garrett Morris had to explain that you can't talk about American women like that):



I'd say the foxes on Radhika Jones's tights represent a reclaiming of an old diminishment, amplified and multiplied, and complicated by zippers. Foxes run around, finding out about everything, uncovering what is hidden, and zippers enclose while suggesting a sudden, perhaps shocking disclosure. That's all very apt as a message about journalism, and it's an exciting way to say that a woman is now in charge.

ADDED: Also consider that the top-rated meaning for "zipper" at Urban Dictionary is: "A death trap for your dick."

And I created a "zippers" tag and went back and applied it to old posts. I was amused by how many times over the years I've talked about the Brian Regan comedy bit about Zipper, the bad dolphin (in contrast to Flipper) — "Zipper's surly. He is uncaring."

Meade, reading this post, said his first association with zipper was the "zipless fuck" (in Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying"). I had to do some additional retroactive tagging, because I'd only searched for "zipper." Searching for "zipless," I found places where I'd talked about Erica Jong's idea, including one in the context Trump's "Access Hollywood" remarks, from October 8, 2016 (the day after the sudden, shocking disclosure of the tape):

[I]f you watch the whole video, you see him winning with another woman, Arianne Zucker, the one who, in Trump's words, is "hot as shit, in the purple." Zucker is the one who inspired him to say "I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

And in fact, you see the female version of that power trip: The woman plays on the man's sexual interest. Grab them by the crotch. Zucker looks entirely pleased with herself, demands to walk in the center and grabs the arms of both men. If that is what is expected and that is the norm in your workplace, how can you be the cold one who keeps her sexuality to herself?

I invite you to contemplate why this got me thinking about Erica Jong's concept of the "zipless fuck":

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one. 

"The Congressional Map Is Historically Biased Against Democrats."

Writes David Wasserman at FiveThirtyEight.

GOP gerrymandering and Democratic voters’ clustering in urban districts has moved the median House seat well to the right of the nation. Part of it is bad timing. Democrats have been cursed by a terrible Senate map in 2018: They must defend 25 of their 48 seats1 while Republicans must defend just eight of their 52.

But there’s a larger, long-term trend at work too.... In the last few decades, Democrats have expanded their advantages in California and New York... But those two states elect only 4 percent of the Senate. Meanwhile, Republicans have made huge advances in small rural states — think Arkansas, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and West Virginia — that wield disproportionate power in the upper chamber compared to their populations....

Today, the pro-GOP biases in both chambers are at historic highs... 

Statistics and charts at the link. I just want to address the language usage: "GOP gerrymandering and Democratic voters’ clustering in urban districts..." Note where agency is ascribed. GOP politicians are doing something (gerrymandering) and Democratic voters are doing something (clustering). But you could just as well say that the district drawing (done by legislatures consisting of politicians in both parties) is bad for the Democratic Party because it presents itself in a way that appeals to voters who are living in urban areas. If you draw district lines according to traditional principles like compactness, you're going to end up with urban districts with a high concentration of people who vote for Democratic Party candidates. It's not that people are "clustering," but that a party has shaped its message and its campaigning to take advantage of the votes that are available from people who live in urban areas.

"Gorsuch’s maiden Martin-Quinn score is 1.344. (Higher positive numbers represent more conservative positions.)"

"The final score of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Gorsuch replaced, was 1.577. Even with his small sample size, Gorsuch is lining up with the court’s conservative bloc and is beginning to resemble the 'Scalia clone' we predicted in January. Gorsuch’s score is also comparable to certain select terms of recent right-leaning justices Sandra Day O’Connor (1.382 in 1986) and William Rehnquist (1.371 in 2003)."

"We" = FiveThirtyEight.

"Did the president dump Comey for mishandling the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email, as Trump and his team have said?"

"Or was Comey’s handling of the investigation simply a pretense to fire an independent-minded director who was investigating ties between Trump’s campaign and the Russians?"

That's how FiveThirtyEight frames the question.

Or would you say questions? I think it's one question if you see it as an either/or, which is what you will do if you think there are only 2 options. The second alternative is framed so strongly — "simply a pretense" — that it seems set up for rejection. I expect the answer to be it probably wasn't simply a pretense.

Now, let's read the article, which is by Perry Bacon Jr., who sees plenty of evidence that Comey indeed mishandled the Clinton email investigation. But if that were the real reason, why didn't the firing occur months ago? Trump had the basis for firing Comey, but he didn't pull the trigger. He just kept it in reserve, so doesn't that mean that he knew he could justify firing Comey and he waited until something else, something about him, not Clinton, made him want to be rid of the man?

The best answer to that is: Comey made a big mistake last week testifying before Congress (when he that Huma Abedin forwarded 1,000s of Hillary emails to Anthony Weiner). Bacon's response to that is hard to find. He switches to talking about how Democrats are criticizing Trump for firing Comey. But, of course, Democrats reflexively criticize Trump. They're calling him "Nixonian." A Republican Senator said he was "troubled" and another said there were "questions."

Bacon speculates that "the American people" might not believe Trump, but that's why I'm reading this article, Mr. Bacon. I thought you were going to answer the question why Trump did what he did, but now it seems you're only talking about whether people will believe Trump's assertion.

"Purple America Has All But Disappeared."

FiveThirtyEight reports.

"Voters Really Did Switch To Trump At The Last Minute."

Writes Dan Hopkins at FiveThirtyEight, based on panel studies.

In all, Trump picked up 4.0 percentage points among people who hadn’t been with him in mid-October, and shed just 1.7 percentage points for a net gain of 2.3 points. Clinton picked up a smaller fraction — 2.3 points — and shed 4.0 points for a net loss of 1.7 points....

As to what moved these Americans in the final weeks of the campaign, the panel has little to say. The timing of James Comey’s letter to Congress — released on Friday, Oct. 28 — makes it one potential explanation....

Still, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that voters might have gravitated to Trump anyhow. Research has long suggested that over the course of a campaign, partisans come home to their party’s candidate. Between mid-October and our post-election wave, Trump picked up almost 4 percentage points from people who had backed Romney four years before, suggesting that Republican identifiers were doing just that. Trump’s media coverage in the final two weeks was markedly more positive than it had been during the prior weeks, and it’s possible that shift in coverage was just the opening some Republicans and Republican-leaning voters needed to get behind Trump.

"Demographics, Not Hacking, Explain The Election Results."

Write Carl Bialik and Rob Arthur at FiveThirtyEight.

We’ve looked into the claim... and statistically, it doesn’t check out....

I'm skipping a lot and jumping to the last paragraph, which is funny and fascinating:

It’s possible nonetheless that the election was hacked, in the sense that anything is possible. (And the best hackers are experts in erasing their tracks.) Maybe hackers knew which control variables we’d look at and manipulated the vote in a way that it would look like it was caused by race, education and population driving different voting preferences....

Yeah, in the future, we need to expect some really sophisticated hacking. I'm glad they brought that up.