Now that Trump has sewn up the Republican nomination, should conservatives run a different candidate, like Mitt Romney, as a third-party candidate? Based on my analysis, yes. In addition to preserving their concept of the party, such a run actually improves the likelihood of a positive outcome (and decreases the likelihood of a disaster) for…
I’ve said that true analysts find bigger truths when they’re wrong. Smart people predicted Donald Trump would never win the Republican nomination. It’s pretty revealing what they learned from their mistakes. Let’s look in particular at the mea culpa pieces by Nate Cohn of the New York Times’ feature “The Upshot” and Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com. First, admit your mistake True analysts…
Ted Cruz is out. Bernie Sanders can’t realistically win. So it’s Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton for the 2016 presidential election. Regardless of what you hear, watch closely, because gender perspectives will drive this election. Conventional campaign policy dictates a pivot toward the center in the general election, in which candidates talk less about policies that energize…
My Boston Globe arrived yesterday with a second, scary front page, dated April 9, 2017, featuring stories from a future Trump presidency. (It’s actually the front of the Sunday op-ed section, an illustration for an op-ed article called “The GOP Must Stop Trump.”) Donald Trump, predictably, responded by calling the paper “stupid.” Having written pretend stories about…
In an unprecedented move in presidential politics, the campaign of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is preparing to file for bankruptcy. Without Bullshit has gotten access to internal campaign documents that reveal a detailed plan to close the campaign, sell off its assets, and put an end to Trump’s involvement in politics. In a not-yet-released interview with MSNBC’s…
Hectored by Chris Mathews of MSNBC, Donald Trump said that after abortion becomes illegal, women who get abortions should be punished. After a huge outcry, a few hours later he took it it back. His problem is that what he said originally makes too much sense to be politically effective. The logical case for punishing pregnant women…
Politicians (and other people) often can’t or won’t answer a question. How they respond says a lot about who they are. If they were honest, they would say “I won’t answer that” and then say why. But instead, they just take the airtime and answer some other question they’d rather talk about. For example, Mediaite recently…
There’s still blood on the ground in Brussels, a city I’ve spent time in with people I’ve befriended. I’d rather not look. But I must. Because this is when we make the worst mistakes. A friend sent me this observation yesterday: The optimal level of terrorist attacks is probably small, but not zero, just like the optimal level…
When I was young, I was certain I would be a mathematician. I still think like one. You should, too — and you don’t have to learn math to do it. A little background: I was an outstanding math student in high school and college, won an NSF Fellowship, and entered the math Ph.D. program at…