Nate Silver vs. John Ziegler, Round 2
By SilentPatriot Saturday Dec 06, 2008 12:00pmLast time we checked in with Nate, he was busy getting cursed at by wingnut radio talk show host and "documentary filmmaker" John Ziegler for daring to question a poll Ziegler commissioned that purportedly "proved" that Obama voters were somehow misinformed, and therefore Obama only got elected because his supporters are dumb. I'm sure Ziegler would disagree with that characterization, but it's pretty clear that's what he's supposedly trying to prove. The transcript Nate posted of their first exchange was rather lively. This second encounter doesn't disappoint.
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Nate Silver sounds like the Anglicized version of a Luche Libra wrestler's name.
"Hi'yo Silver...away....!!"
something historic happened on January 4, 2007. Nancy Pelosi (a Democrat) became the first female Speaker of the House, EVER, when Democrats beat Republicans so overwhelmingly in the November 2006 elections.
if the statistic is accurate that a significant number of Obama voters did not know who controls the Congress.
that means that a significant number of American citizens have no idea that a woman is in control of America's lawmakers for the first time ever.
indeed, Congress has been incredibly lackluster since January 2007. Sure, they made a big promise for 10 big initiatives in the first 10 days, but ... seriously ... what has she done? quietly rubber-stamped most of Bush's torture laws and eavesdropping requests. quietly stepped to the side while the old boys frowned sternly at failed banks before handing them a $700 billion check. quietly asserted that impeachment was "off the table" and quietly kept it off the table.
way to make your mark, lady. way to market yourself poorly and put a big stake of irrelevance into the annals of history.
neither here nor there as far as Mr. Ziegler's incredibly skewed, biased sampling and analytical processes are concerned but I just thought I'd put it out there. I challenge all of you. step outside the confines of your well-educated circle of friends. go ask some random hipster girl at the mall... go ask her "who was just elected president and why is it so historic" and they'll immediately know a black man was voted president for the first time in history. then ask them "who runs Congress and why is it so historic?" and they won't have a clue. thats an epic failure on the part of Nancy Pelosi.
I blame queen nancy for a lot, but not that ignorance. That's the dumbing down of schools and the rise of infotainment in the place of news.
It's not just hipster girls at the mall, it's across the spectrum. Recent polls have shown people can't even name even three or four of the Supreme Court justices, but seem to know who's ahead on American Idle. They don't even know the causes of major wars like World War I and II.
However, the bulk of polls showed Obama supporters were better educated as well as younger. I tended to resent that characterization as a Hillary supporter. But that led to charges of Obama's "elitism."
Ziegler was trying to counter that with a manufactured slant poll with conclusions contrary to the rest, that it's the Obama supporters who are uneducated.
So that set up an interesting conservative dichotomy Obama supporters are elite or undeducated?
Obama overwhelmingly won the "youth" vote (voters 18-45, lol, even though 45 isn't necessarily youth).
so - what I'm saying here is that, in some ways, yes a good chunk of those who voted for Obama *ARE* ignorant. a significant chunk of American Idol fans/voters, were Obama's fans/voters. he had a significantly greater number of myspace and facebook "friends" than McCain did.
what I'm saying further is that Obama recognized our country's social and political illiteracy, and tapped into it.
so what I'm concluding is - well - Pelosi and Reid? they haven't... because they're old school, they're old politics in a country where politics is being changed by folks like Obama, like Dean, like Ron Paul, like Robert Wexler...
so I'm saying, of course nobody trendy who watches American Idol more than CSpan knows who Pelosi or Reid are. because Pelosi and Reid haven't reached out across that aisle... they might claim to reach across the aisle to republicans, but they're not reaching across the aisle to make their presence known to the youth, to the less-politically-motivated.
and for a woman who was the first woman Speaker of the House to fail to do that, at a time when it would have made young girls so proud for such a momentous feminist achievement... well... shame on her. shame on Nancy Pelosi for letting herself become so irrelevant. what she achieved was a really big deal, and she just um... just hid her head and flew below the radar for 2 years hoping Bush and FOX wouldn't say too many negative things about her, instead of triumphantly standing tall and telling trendy hipster girls at the mall "I used my brain and got somewhere big, and so can you, ladies!" - Nancy Pelosi didn't do that.
nobody knows who she is, what she achieved, or what her job is. and thats just as much a failure on her part... as it is on the part of schools and media. shame on mainstream media for not bigging her up like they bigged up Obama... but shame on her for not aggressively marketing herself to the youth the way Obama did.
I would have replied that the Democrats nominally control the House and Republicans effectively control the Senate. Yes, even including the two Independents with the Democrats, the Republicans control the Senate, because every time they have a hissy, the Democrats roll over.
i woulda answered zieg the asshat thusly
how do i explain the answer to that question?
pelossi and reid...the two weakest leaders the house and senate have had in the history of the united states
I could barely hear Silver while Ziegler was quite clear.
Damn, Ziegler is so annoying. Even the tone of his voice says "asshole".
is from whence he speaks.
What this guy in not taking into consideration is that nonwithstanding the fact that Americans are pretty much ignorant about their own country, and anything else except sports, NASCAR, movies, it really doesn't take a genius to observe that the nation is sinking in unemployment, debt, desperation etc, etc.
Don't forget that Obama can't really talk and move a crowd, a fact that really pissed the shit out the Republicans. Bush didn't get the Presidency because he was able to address a crowd. He was already the designated annointed President no matter what the Democrats could have done. It was already a done deal. What a fuck do you really expect if your brother happens to be the Governor of the state. Hellooooooooo!
I meant "Don't forget that Obama can really talk
At this point in time, there are some Americans who don't know that we are embroiled in two wars, they don't know where Iraq or Afghanistan is, and at the end onf the journey, they don't even give a fuck about it. Believe it or not, but that the truht!
The sad fact is that most people outside the United States know more about its history and government than U.S citizens do.
Popular culture has become more important than civic duty and political participation.
That's what prolonged the Iranian hostage situation in 1979. The imams and ayatollahs weren't asked for their appoval to take the embassy hostage. Then Jimmy Carter hit on freezing Iranian assets in American banks. So the Iranian government already wanted to release the American hostages.
However, they knew enough about our elections, and election cycles, not to want to help Jimmy Carter get reelected, since he was the one that helped the Shah escape them. So they waited until after the election, come what may. Once ray gun came into office, they had no immediate complaint against him, and released the hostages in a matter of days. Presumably they would've done the same if Jimmy won reelection, so he'd unfreeze their assets, but this way it helped them save face, and created the myth that ray gun stared them down.
remember logical dissonance from prior bush/repug campaigns?? and the bush voters' disconnect on 9/11, saddam and iraq? listeners to faux news and its ilk exhibited this - so now obama supporters are being posited as being, well, not so rational.
the rightwing is mightily suffering from an inferiority/superiority complex and needs to offset by tit/tat...nothing new. tedious and silly.
I'm sure Nate Silver is a brilliant person but god did he just sound like a whiny bitch on this thing. What a waste of my time. Given, Ziegler is obviously a prick, but Silver couldn't fucking wait until Ziegler finished any goddamn sentence, where he could've coherently and clearly rebutted any ridiculous statement. Instead Silver just keeps making whiny midsentence interruptions while Ziegler, who is mysteriously higher in the mix, rattles on an on. Lesson to liberal commentators: Don't be a bitch. Be cool and layout your argument or response AFTER your opponent has spoken, otherwise you'll look just as foolish as the dipshit you are trying to counter. Oh, and don't fucking whine.
Perhaps the problem was that Nate isn't as used to discussing in such a format, while Ziegler (as a radio talk show host) is very used to it. Anyway, Silver blew a good chance to explain the many problems of Zieglers "poll" and "analysis" of the result. Perhaps next time...
Oh, an btw: Thats my first post on C&L (I've been a silent reader for severals years) :)
That was just painful. It's bad enough listening to the guy call him an idiot and speak loudly over everyone, but his counterpoint wasn't much better. If the point is that he knows about math and understands polls, then why not actually talk about that when he's given the chance? Explain the many reasons this poll does not say what people are saying it's saying due to the way people were samples, how the questions were worded (with a specific example, for instance how the minute somebody says "political career began in the living room of..." you know it's right wing spin--what does that phrase even mean outside of the right wing innuendo?), what kinds of questions were asked, what kinds of questions would need to be asked.
And if the guy says he didn't care and that's just the way the news spun it then say fine, nobody's accusing you of that (just as nobody's accusing you of not showing actual footage) I'm just explaining how the news media is saying something wrong about your poll. You should be thanking me for helping to clear it up, since obviously as the person who made the poll you know that Obama did not get elected on false pretenses. Arrgh! That was annoying1
I agree Shark,not having heard Silver speak before, it appeared to me that he was on the defense the whole time. Also by interrupting instead of waiting,he became background noise as people tuned him out to continue following what Snidley Whiplash had been saying. Once degraded to the "back-ground" folder of our minds we add a sub-title of annoying to that folder, hence "whiny bitch". The difference in sound volume was intentionally done to launch that effect. Aside from that, Snidleys absurd and ridiculous spin on the whole subject only shows him up as the fucking little weasel he is. On the other hand that chick co-host was very cute and pleasing to look at.-CEO,citizens,eyes,open.
kinda like you're being here. Ziegler was the one talking over everybody and interrupting, and he had the obvious advantage of having his levels way higher than Nate, giving him a huge advantage to squack like your typical right-wing blowhard.
Ziegler conducts himself like the average AM radio hack=middle school mentality, speaking style.
The format is typical yelling bullshit... just the kind morons like you and your ilk relish.
if you polled mccain voters 90% of them would say Obama is muslim. so whats the differance, its insulting that they think that repos are SMARTER then anyone who voted for Obama. its like when leno interviews people on the street, find people who don't know the answers to the questions and then put only those on TV. many obama voters were young first time voters, maybe not as informed as they should have been, but bottom line they are sick of the way the government has been run and are now just getting involved. repugs are more ignorant than any one.
Thats what im talking about. McCain voters do know their marching orders well
Funny thing is me and Obama are about the same age. The younger voters are young enough to be our kids.
Yet that's what passes for youth and a generation shift in Washington.
Me too. Odd feeling that, our generation will be in charge of the country.
...you mean "Obama and I"
...as I recall, saying it would not have ever taken place had he not been away (on vacation, I believe).
On leave from his senses?
That's how I like to spend my vacations.
I don't know if anyone else had this problem, but it's just really hard to get much information at all out of a "debate" like this one. I really wish moderators/interviewers would ask their guests for no insults or metaphors (any sport metaphor automatically loses relevance). And at least give the other person some talking time if the other constantly goads her/him while they are talking.
if format devised to inform. or just, even provide ease of listening. otherwise, it's like overhearing an obnoxious domineering conversation in a coffee shop that you couldn't wait to escape earshot.
Remember - this is Andrew Breitbart's site. Andrew Breitbart, a pal of Matt Drudge, is a rightwing disseminator. He specializes in distorted, selective disinformtation and propaganda.
I haven't watched the clip, but I swear the woman in that still is one of those models from the "Addicted To Love" video. I guess a sultry frown and excess makeup never goes out of style with some people.
The younger a person is the less likely they will know about how many seats are in congress and who controls them. The older people get the more concerned they become. McCain voters were mostly 65 and older who have the time to sit around Reading newspapers, watching political tv and listening to talk radio. Of course more faux listners and mcCain supporters would do well in this poll. Give them a pop quiz and see who is smarter
Journalistic hackery under under the guise of objectivity is what I see in the Brietbart report.
Having a majority in Congress no more gave the Dems "control" then does being behind the wheel of a car as it skids down an icy road.
That said, unfortunately Nate didn't present himself too well while Ziegler got a free pass to do all the name calling he wanted. Meanwhile the moderators pretended that the vitriol was equally two-sided.
ziegler was allowed to present his postion as if it has merit...it does not
the second "poll" showed that out of 13 questions created by zeigler (the ones he felt showed the "media bias") 18 percent of obama voters got 10 out of 13 correct....35 percent of mccain voters got 10 of 13 correct
either both sides are woefully misinformed, or zieglers understanding of what are important issues is incorrect
so what if 98 percent of the respondants knew which candidate had a pregnant teenage daughter...first, it was the mccain campaign that divulged the information and second, come on, we live in a society that loves sex scandals thanks to the repression of the wingnuts who have controlled the social agenda for years.
i do love how ziegler keeps referring to the fact that his vid has had more than 1.7 million views on youtube....big fucking deal....chris crocker crying about brittany spears has had over 50 million views in all of its incarnations
zig doesnt understand youtube either
Monty Python's Flying Circus has now opened up an official site on Youtube, because they caught wind how popular their clips are there. They're guaranteeing better quality videos, interviews with the surviving members, and of course putting DVD's and other forms of the show out.
Amazing it only lasted three years 1969-1972, with maybe an extra year thrown in without John Cleese.
The "ignorance" ziegler speaks of was the phony-baloney "scandals" concerning Obama: Wright, Ayers, African garb, him being a Muslim, equating him to Hitler etc.
Most Americans weren't paying attention to this nonsense.
IF ? One was to (for arguement sake) give a pass on facts of the poll.
I'd rather have idiots misinformed people electing a brilliant compassionate mind and heart than smart voters electing the dumbest inane president as occurred in 200 and 2004.
And conservative republicans argue Dems act elitist like?
They had their "strict abusing Daddy" president and they are still inflicted with the Stockholm syndrom.
So where is all that "support our President patriotic character the right belched all over themselves when their guy Bush and Adm was trashing America and others were questioning his actions?
How can you fault anyone for thinking that Congress was in the hands of the Republicans?
Pelosi and Reid behave as lackeys to the White House.
We voted to end the war in Iraq in 2006.
We gave them their positions and handed the democrats the congress.
They proceeded to acquiesce to every thing that Bush demanded and wound up sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq.
On every issue you can mention, they have behaved as handmaidens of the Republicans.
So why should any voter have an impression that the democrats are in control?
...but he apparently hasn't learned that the best approach is to confronting questions is not to try to avoid answering anything that might be uncomfortable or inconvenient. A media person like Ziegler knows how to capitalize on Nate's reluctance and make Nate look either incompetent or disingenuous.
On the question of Nate's use of "push poll," Nate should have simply admitted that he had used it in a loose and probably incorrect way or at least not in the way it is commonly understood. His intent was clear -- he felt Ziegler was asking specific questions in a specific way in order to arrive at a desired conclusion.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if Obama voters, who probably included many more first time voters, were more ignorant than McCain voters. I think it would be fairly easy to design questions that could make McCain voters appear in a poor light. Are McCain voters really stupid enough to believe that Obama is a Marxist/socialist? Or do they simply talk that way because they know it's an extreme position that casts Obama in a poor light (in this country) and they hope it will damage Obama.
The hosts of this program are exactly the kind of people that no one should bother listening to or watching. Ever.
Are American voters ignorant? Duh.
Are American media superficial and irresponsible? Duh.
The problem for Republicans this election was that because of what a terrible, vacuous duo McCain/Palin were, the superficial/irresponsible stuff was easiest to pin on them. Besides the irresponsible/superficial stuff about McCain and Palin were almost always about them, while the irresponsible/superficial stuff about Obama usually required a second party, e.g., Ayers or Wright. So, Palin was an idiot because she couldn't answer simple questions and behaved like a brain dead bimbo. Whereas, Obama was a bad person because somebody (Ayers) that he'd had some contact with was/is a bad person.
I couldn't watch it after a while. It was just too frustrating. Silver seemed way out of his league while Ziegler seemed to be having his way with him. I think part of that was due to the different audio levels that allowed only Ziegler to be heard when they were cross-talking.
Still, Silver maybe needs to understand that his talent is in statistics and blogging and not live debates. He had his ass handed to him on this one.
Never heard of this guy John Ziegler. Nate is giving him more press time than he deserves... if not for Nate... I'd never hear about him
When asked "who controls congress," a thoughtful person would respond that Republicans do, given weak sisters like Pelosi and Reid, plus a president that stacked all the courts and uses signing statements to disregard the legislative branch.
In fact, Republicans still control congress, even after November 4th. Worse, Republican dominance will not end until after January 20th, after which Americans will discover to their dismay that Republicans STILL control key parts of our government, not to mention their total dominance of the media. Mere voting did not get rid of the right wing propagandists that paint the world to please their corporate masters. Fox is still there, CNN is still there, reichwing radio is still there.
Conservatives are still there. And they have a solid majority.
Take two people, a Republican and a Democrat, who are guessing as to the answer of who controls Congress. If both of those people think the country is in a sorry state and that Washington is to blame, it seems entirely possible that a Republican might guess this has to be the democrat's fault and a Democrat might guess this has to be the republicans fault. Therefore, based on the exact same flawed rationale, the Republican would be more likely to get the correct answer. I think this possibility alone could account for a significant amount of the discrepancy between Obama and McCain voters performance on this "control" question.
Nate Silver, who may be worth an interesting conversation in a coffee shop, is a complete FAILURE when debating the problems with John Zielger's survey. In truth, the real problem is statistical. Zielger and other right-wing ideologues have been wrongly interpreting survey data using DESCRIPTIVE statistics, rather than INFERENTIAL statistics. I'm a statistician, so please lend me your ear...
Have you ever noticed that when legitimiate news organizations present polling data, there is a "margin of error?" That's because virtually all surveys use a "sample" of individuals to represent whole populations. Whenever you take a sample, you can never be absolutely sure that your sample is representative of the whole population. Thus, we have to use INFERENTIAL statistics, which take into account the messiness (i.e., variance) within our sample to try to predict what we would see if we had access to everyone of interest. But what Ziegler says is, "35% of McCain voters got 10 or more questions right, whereas only 18% of Obama voters got 10 or more right." Because of shifting denominators (i.e., Were there 10,000 McCain voters and 9 Obama voters in the sample?), this is garbage statistics. Or consider the other variable--what are the differences at 9 questions? 11 questions? We ultimately need to compare the group means and standard deviations to know if there are "real" differences. Granted, Ziegler's questions are horribly slanted, but the thing people need to understand--ragardless of how bad the questions were--is that the statistical analysis was completely (and inarguably) botched. If you want to make comparison using samples, you HAVE TO, HAVE TO, HAVE TO use INFERENTIAL statistics. Period--end of discussion.
The idea of "push poll" or "propoganda" or "cherry-picking" is a total distraction from the real distortions. And it makes the whole interview painful and tedious to listen to.
There was a book written in the 1950's called "How to Lie with Statistics," and yet my so-called liberal brethren still have no idea how to put these conservative liars in their place. Nate Silver, if you can't put John Ziegler in his place, then you're a worthless, wannabe coffee house punk--so do the Left a favor and shut the f*@k up!
All Silver had to say was this: "At least Obama supporters are smart enough to figure out who's been fucking them for eight years, lied them into a war, and caused the 2nd Republican Great Depression in 80 years, bankrupted the country, decimated their retirement, and gave all of our tax dollars to their cronies!"
That's what I say to wingnuts, and they just STFU! They have no response for this, because they know its true. They are just too stupid to save themselves.
That puts carnival barkers like this idiot on the defensive, and then you begin to dismantle their bullshit talking points with facts.
Democrats have to get jaded about the fact that wingnuts always start any debate by lying. That's WHO they are. Crooks and Liars! They LIE! Don't be surprised or taken back by it. Tell them to their face they are historically and factually wrong (liars). PUT THEM ON THE DEFENSIVE!
The wing-nuts are desperately trying to smear Obama and stupidly call the vast majority of Americans who voted for him just dumb. They are just sore losers as usual. Americans kicked the corrupt Reslugs out of office and they are still crying and wetting their panties because of it. BOO HOO!!!!
This wasn't such a good debate. I think most Americans would agree that Ziegler's "study" was a classic example of push polling, yet Silver did a poor job (I don't know if he did better later-I couldn't listen after about 25:00). Maybe just the format-it would be better on TV or even live-here, this format favored the person who is the most obnoxious, and loud and Ziegler was that person.
The Scott Baker didn't sound neutral on this (maybe he was playing devil's advocate for the sake of discussion but I don't know)and let Ziegler shout down Silver a couple times also.
It's ironic that Ziegler is even promoting his theory of Obama being a dangerous left wing radical, people being misled by the "liberal media", or too dumb in electing Obama, when we have just elected possibly the most conservative Democrat (at least Centrist) since LBJ.
aa few years back ziegler was a prime time talk show host on whas in Louisville.he lost the gig after a lurid on-air description of the private parts of a former girl friend who was also a derby city media personality.john opined that his firing was unfair 'cause he said worse things about the governor of ky,who at the time was embroiled in a sex scandal of his own.vintage ziegler-the eternal college debater-if he can demonstrate the other guy's inconsistency,it allows him to claim that he somehow wins the argument,or at least allows him to claim that he is some kind of ant-hypocracy warrior.works better in formal debates than it does in life generally.
he also spent much of his on-air time baiting the late,legendary louisville african american activist,rev.louis coleman.although,the rev was at least as well-educated as young john,he was not quite as articulate,and did not have his own radio show either.furthermore,as a passionate man working 16 hour days on many issues at once,he was given to making verbal gaffes which our hero was all too ready to blow out of proportion.once,commenting in private,on the dilution of african-american political power upon the creation of the new urban -county government,the rev wearily opined that perhaps the black neighborhood-or "the west end" ought to secede from the rest of jefferson county.ziegler did a week on that,making the demonstrably integrationist preacher out to be some sort of black separatist.arguing that the dead-enders and losers in Coleman'ss ky alliance against racism and political repression were attempting to thwart the jolly louisville oligarchs attempts to provide the good citizens with social -including racial-justice.why? because coleman wanted to run the city-turn it over to race hustlers.racism can only be effectively fought by defeating "reverse racism."after all these years that old chestnut doesn't even work in debates anymore-but it has a central place on talk radio-as a release for the free-floating anger of the bulk of the audience.like ol' bobby zimmerman said long ago-it ain't them to blame,they're jest a dawg on a chain." ziegler knows better,but the gig pays too well.anyway,screw 'em if they can't take a joke.
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