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Nate Silver joins me for a wide ranging and candid interview on the inaugural episode of the GD POLITICS podcast. We talk about what it was like behind the scenes at FiveThirtyEight, which was recently shuttered by ABC News, and some regrets Nate had along the way.
We also discuss Elon Musk’s increasingly erratic behavior and the public backlash to his cuts at DOGE. Nate also criticizes Democrats’ decision not to force a government shutdown in the recent funding negotiations, which he says, strategically, would have been a “f***ing layup.”
In addition, we touch on Trump’s declining popularity, the likelihood of negative GDP growth this quarter, and why Nate says those still defending Biden’s decision to seek a second term should have no future in politics.
I was frankly disappointed by the premier episode of the podcast. Having long been an admirer of Nate Silver, I found his incessant verbal tics (all the "like"s and "right"s), his apparent inability to complete a sentence or hold a thought, and his sometimes hysterical tone to be quite an unwelcome surprise, not that I necessarily disagreed with what little I could follow of his rambling. Galen seemed to be somewhat nonplussed and unsure how to handle him as well. I hope future episodes are better moderated and less cringey.
I loved this episode! It was great hearing the Model Talk intro again and hope you and Nate can make podcasting together a regular thing.
Happy to hear you again! Just like old times with Nate. Especially looking forward to the show with Clare and Harry. Is there anyway for subscribers to get an unbleeped feed of the podcast. All the bleeping was really annoying.
Great to see you back! Let it also be known that Trudeau announced his resignation just before the Canadian Liberal surge
yowza- it took me almost 8 months to discover this show. Luckily I heard GD on Raging Moderates, and so started to binge listen, and half way through this one.
FWIW- a reference to the most recent episode. I am a 57 year old straight married man. I had no idea who Robyn is, until I googled her
Long time listener and follower of you and Nate. Your line of questioning around what a democratic tea party might look like and who the “best” politicians were sparked my own question you might be a good person to answer in a future podcast: Given both major parties, and government itself have poor approval ratings, why isn’t there more talk (amongst democrats specifically) about government reform? For example Democrats like(d?) to talk about voting rights and tried to sell hard on the danger of Republican authoritarianism, but they didn’t even try to make any proposals to change government to actually prevent authoritarianism or strengthen democracy. (ie. No one is talking about strengthening the house of representatives, taking power away from the speaker of the house to allow popular legislation to pass even if opposed by the party in power, nationally requiring rank choice voting so that people can vote for non-major parties without throwing their vote away, implementing some or any of the ideas from your old series to “fix” gerrymandering - personally I like the idea of larger districts (where possible) represented by the top 3 vote getters in a ranked choice vote). Is it because when a democratic party is in power they are ultimately run by activists who can’t bring themselves to give up power and/or can’t really internalize the idea of being rejected by the people, or is it deeper and this type of reform just isn’t seen as “kitchen table” enough to win elections?
Enjoyed the episode, glad to hear Model Talk again. Would point out that while we do not know what Trump will do in a more political stance, I think we can agree that he clearly is trying to be the Corporate Executive Dictator that he was pre-politics. With his trips to NASCAR and basically waking up each day and trying to fulfil his daily whims, we can see what Trump wants to do, the bigger issue would be what his subordinates intend to do, which is why we have so much chaos.
Great first episode, I enjoyed hearing Nate and his hot takes again!
Glad to see the Podcast back, I liked hearing back again about Nate, although I felt this episode mas more opinion based than data driven, and I kinda love to hear a lot about the data with opinions being complementary.
Anyways, will stay tuned and glad to see what comes next.
Is there an RSS feed to subscribe to so we can have this in our podcast players?
I think there’s an easier way if you subscribe, but: http://gdpolitics.com/feed
Let it also be known that B. Spears attacked a paparazzo’s car with a green umbrella.