DSAcrats, Bradley Effect, Klippenstein Kronicle skepticism and sheepdogging

I’m doing another version of this on Blogger, but am expanding the third part of the header here, especially, and even adding the fourth part.

It’s clear that the the DSA Roseys are self-inflating expectations (while running away from past social media statements). Barring some new piece by Ken Klippenstein, per his most recent one, it seems many fellow travelers, per an old Deep Purple song, think it’s not about the kill, but the thrill of the chase.

That seemed true enough after Abdul El-Sayed’s much narrower than self-projected win of the Democrat nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan. It seems more true than ever after Francesca Hong’s loss for the Democrat gubernatorial nod in Wisconsin.

And, yes, BlueAnon, leaving off the “-ic” is deliberate, from the left, not the Rethuglican world.

So, why?

Part of it, per CNN, is crappy polling. Mainstream media — and not just print media, but national cable teevee people like, er, CNN — are spending less and less on polls. That means partisan polling rises to the front. Add in the corruption of prediction markets like Kalshi, and partisan polling then feeding back off that to try to create a narrative that may often be almost as fallacious as The Donald claiming he’s winning in Iran, and there you go.

G. Elliott Morris offered a more simplistic explanation (and it is) last week, which didn’t even mention greater media reliance on partisan polling by individual candidates. He also engaged in a bit of head-fakery, or incomplete explanation, vis-a-vis Hong:

In absolute terms, her performance should be impressive; a Democratic Socialist who years ago said Thanksgiving should be canceled and was outspent by a ratio of 15-to-1, according to media tracking firm Cross Screen Media, came within half a point of securing the nomination for governor of America’s 21st most populous state, and a key political battleground.

Nowhere will you find discussion of all the campaign dropouts and turmoil in the race.

As for Ken claiming “The Rebels Already Won,“ er, no they didn’t, and this comes off in hindsight as flat-out performative spin. Especially with your ongoing refusal by silence to admit even a partial political mea culpa on Graham Platner, you come off looking less and less like a political analyst on Democratic party elections and more and more like the Substack version of a talking head.

If that’s what you want to be, fine. Be honest about it, because if you aren’t, I’ll keep hanging that label on you. As I read you more and more, I see less and less in the way of actual political analysis in actual electoral races. (For example, Ken in that piece, and notes after the election so far, has said nothing about Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez both refusing to endorse Hong, and why he thinks they didn’t.)

Ken remains good on things like his Third Way anti-DSA piece. Even there, though, there’s not much explainer as to just how non-radical the Roseys are, and how they REALLY were non-radical on Israel and Gaza until after Oct. 7, 2023, and only then, did Zionist fellow travelers of the old guard evict themselves, discussed by me here.

That said, THAT ultimately gets back to Ken having little to no interest in, and thus little to no knowledge of, third parties of the left. It’s all “rebels with a cause” Democrat inside baseball at bottom line for him, including DSA sheepdoggers, Bernie the Big Sheepdog and more.

Beyond that, as I noted off this Time piece, per the parentheses in the first paragraph, Hong was looking like a Pander Bear even before Wisconsin primary day. That said, my concerns about that Time piece includes Hong not being quoted, whether the author chose not to reach out, or she chose not to respond, while Crowley was. (I’m assuming lack of reach-out; the author never mentions the old journalistic “We contacted Francesca Hong but she chose not to respond.”)

So, Wisconsin didn’t even have a rebel running, not in all aspects.

Speaking of all of the above? Here’s a Substack restacking note I had to that piece about The Third Way ready to label certain Democrats, whether restricted to the DSA or not, as “extremist”:

If only Ken recognized that third parties exist, and as part of his talking-head-ism, encouraged more readers to think about that.

Also, wouldn’t this have been a good chance to ask AOC and Bernie, since he’s using their picture, why they didn’t endorse Hong, and what they think about this new Third Way policy statement, if they know about it?

As is, I think Ken wants the sweet spot of putting talking-headism on top of investigative reporting leaks, but without always getting into actual analysis behind those leaks.

As for Bernie? Maybe it was getting burned over Platner. Maybe it was seeing Al-Sayed underperform. Maybe it was actually hearing about other things on Hong, that related to Platner’s personality, gave him pause.

AOC? I suspect it’s related to her egg-freezing and I can haz been presinet nominee hinting, about which I wrote last week. As with analysis of the pair’s non-endorsement, I await either a serious or snarky take on the AOC announcement, but I don’t hold my breath.

That said, the possibility that Ken doesn’t do one will itself be a tell on just who he thinks a rebel is, or is not.

The Bradley effect? The degree of its effect, and even its existence, have been debated since it was first posulated. And, to the degree it exists, if at all, is it primarily or only about race? This:

While there is widespread belief in a racial component as at least a partial explanation for the polling inaccuracies in the elections in question, it is not universally accepted that this is the primary factor. Peter Brodnitz, a pollster and contributor to the newsletter The Polling Report, worked on the 2006 campaign of black U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr., and contrary to Edelman’s findings in 1988, Brodnitz indicated that he did not find the race of the interviewer to be a factor in voter responses in pre-election polls. Brodnitz suggested that late-deciding voters tend to have moderate-to-conservative political opinions and that this may account in part for last-minute decision-makers breaking largely away from black candidates, who have generally been more liberal than their white opponents in the elections in question

Offers definite food for thought, as it can apply within primary races as well as general elections. Plus, with much wider use of early voting today, election-day voting, especially outside of senior citizens, still continues to break Republican.

So, if Abdul El-Sayed does lose in Michigan, you heard it here first. (The state has a minimum of nine days of early voting.)

On Hong? Per Ken’s interview of her, she won a seven-way primary (presumably for a safe Democrat seat — Wiki confirms with noting it’s the east side of the People’s Republic of Madison) for the Wisconsin Assembly in 2020, with 28 percent. As for her “consistently leading polls”? Well, per the above, WHOSE polls, first? Ken doesn’t say. Second, even if by quality independent pollsters, sure, when other candidates keep dropping out, you might float to the top.

Also per that Wiki page on Hong? Ken doesn’t tell you she was a carpetbagger into that district in 2020, first. Second, it discusses those polls, saying her rise only really took off in July — after the Dem straw poll endorsed Sara Rodriguez, then other candidates dropped out, then she dropped out. There was nothing inevitable about her before that. (This is the stuff that Morris omitted as well, as to why polling might be off that much.)

Third, the bottom portion of her Wiki page confirms what I say above and already said on Shitter: She was turning into a Pander Bear. (Ken didn’t tell you that, either, in his interview story. It’s true that this only started happening after the date of his interview, but Ken didn’t append a note to that piece, do a follow-up or anything else.)

So, folks, as noted above, keep an eye on what Ken says, or not, about AOC’s announcement. Keep an eye on any framing he does on any remaining Democratic primary races that catch his eye.

In other words, be more skeptical about Ken. It’s clear that William Arkin’s editing of him is copy-editing only and nothing related to assignment-type editing. Ken would choose that for himself anyway.

To put it another way, it’s really just first-level copy-editing Arkin is doing — style, grammar, libel oopses, etc. He’s not asking Ken “why did you leave this out?” or “why didn’t you add this?”.

And, the skepticism should not be just about what he covers and how it frames it. Per what I said about halfway through about Klippenstein and the world of third parties? On anything related to political coverage of elections and campaigns?

Until he proves otherwise, Ken Klippenstein himself should be considered a rebel sheepdog with a cause. And that cause is rebel sheepdogs within the left hand of the duopoly.

THAT’s the bottom line.