(1/X) I hate doing these, but I feel like I'm being baited to do so. A few days ago Maggie H did an interview where she complained criticism of her reporting, James Fallows answered back (mentioning this account) and Jon Chait and some Reason bro took a shot at Fallows for... (2/X) praising this account. First things first...Jon Chait and some obscure Reason bro lecturing James Fallows about journalism is ludicrous. Fallows is a legend, a five-time National Magazine Award finalist. More on this later...

(1/X) The smartest boys on the internet have taken a break from virology research and campus politics to tell us LOOK RESISTANCE WINE MOM LIBTARDS, THERE IS NO WAY THE NYT CAN HAVE PRO-TRUMP COVERAGE, MOST PEOPLE WHO WORK THERE ARE DEMOCRATS.

This is dumb of course…. (2/X) There are many, many reasons why an organization staffed by people with mostly liberal leanings might produce coverage that favored a Republican candidate, especially if that candidate is Donald Trump….

(1/X) Another thread about narcissistic sociopaths....I've been reading articles about the Trump assassination attempt and they all the same thing: serious mistakes were made (making some kind of resignations appropriate IMHO) and also that Trump put a unique strain on things... (2/X) One thing that you learn very quickly when you work with a narcissistic sociopath is that weird shit happens when they are around. Can you always trace it directly back to them? Not necessarily. Are other people partly at fault too. Yes, but...

(1/X) I wanted to do a quick thing about bothsiding, again motivated by my experience with the narcissistic sociopath I work with. Thing about bothsiding is that it's not even really bothsiding (as @atrios likes to point out). Exhibit A, "weirdness".... (2/X) There are different ways of attacking your opponent as "weird". One is "othering", John Kerry looks French and orders the wrong kind of cheese steak, Al Gore is too wooden, Obama is too exotic (Romney's favorite meat is hot dog, to throw in one R example)....

(1/X) What struck me about last night's debate is the extent to which Trump was able to say "we had the best this, Biden has the worst this" over and over again, falsely without correction. A system that allows this is a narcissist's paradise.... (2/X) I was struck, back in the 2016 GOP debates by how Trump gave grandiose nonsense answers (about his wall, about somehow just "securing the border" by force of will) and how Jeb Bush talked about e-verify and real things that can used to control undocumented immigration...

(1/X) Josh Marshall's been talking about how many ostensibly liberal/nonpartisan media legal analysts are pushing the "Bragg shouldn't have prosecuted Trump" line. This is typical the special treatment narcissistic sociopaths get..... (2/X) Narcissistic sociopaths are a blank slate so you can project you whatever onto them. What many people will choose to believe is whatever is most beneficial for them to believe...

(1/X) I wanted to do one another thread about narcissistic sociopaths because I've been dealing with one a lot lately. I think there probably is some kind of a method for dealing with them but it is complicated because... (2/X) They behave in a way that makes no sense to others, so it is difficult to have a plan for how to deal with them, as there is no way to predict what they will do next.

(1/X) Sorry to keep doing these, but I wanted to do one more thing about how poorly media handles the asymmetry between Trump and Democrats. This is torn directly from my real life experiences watching deans empower an abusive narcissistic sociopath... (2/X) A way to bothsides without technically bothsiding is just to say things like "no wonder Americans are losing faith in politics". It blames no one explicitly, which means that it blames everyone implicitly...

I wanted to do another quick thing about how media has managed to continue doing it even as the Republican Party has become a cult of personality led by a narcissistic sociopath. Again, my observations are based on my university’s empowering of a narcissistic sociopath…(1/X) (2/X) First, as I’ve noted before, it is always possible to bothsides anything because no person or party is perfect and you can always find some bad thing Democrats are doing that somehow equates with what Republicans are doing. But Trump does make that more challenging…

(1/X) Sometimes I hear people wondering if it would be easier to stop Trump if we had the right kind of structures. I deal with someone like Trump (narcissistic sociopath) and the answer is "no".... (2/X) There are already many things in place to stop him. The Senate could have DQ'ed him. Republicans could stop him now if they wanted to. Instead, even "brave" Rs like Romney refuse to endorse Biden...

(1/X) Gonna give you my one Mitch hot take. He really f**ed up not DQing Trump in the Senate after 1/6. The country would be better off if he had, his party would be better off..... (2/X) His initial reaction was the he wanted to. So why didn't he? Too much pushback from his party, fear of the far right, and then you can always find a reason not to do something...

(1) I see a lot of people saying "political reporters are rooting for Trump." I don't think that's true, but what's going on isn't that different. Here's what I think is going on (based on some people I know in that general area)... (2) First of all, there is a lot of pressure not to have teh liberal bias. So you've got to be at least a little tougher on Ds than Rs. Then there's the "I was just doing my job stuff"...(2/X)

Quick programming note... want to cross-post to Bluesky and Threads. Is there an easy way to automate this? I don't think this account can leave here, because I've been told it does shame some of the practitioners of bad political reporting. I buy that because...(1/X) (2/X) If liberals complain to political reporters in an earnest fashion, they just smirk and say "you mad, bro?" (See Jeff Sharlet's recent piece that ends with him talking to a Times reporter, for example.)

Let us savor..(1/X)

Serious Tweet: One quick thing about the college president fiasco, because this is something I’ve had a lot of experience with. Yes, it was a McCarthyite witch-hunt led by people who have on interest in combatting antisemitism, but the presidents really did do a bad job…(1/X) It’s very telling that they were prepped by price law firms, because they gave very legalistic answers. They should have thought in terms of PR instead and spoke like human beings. This is a huge problem with college administrators in general…(2/X)

Breaking character: A follow-up on narcissistic sociopaths (like Trump) and how they flourish in many contemporary institutions. How do they take people in? I used to think it was gullibility but that's not exactly it...(1/X) (2) Narcissistic sociopaths make half-assed claims that don't stand up to cursory inspection. People know that much of what they are saying isn't true per se (again, think of Trump). But they are good at pushing buttons...(2/X)

Breaking character: I have a lot of experience dealing with a narcissistic sociopath at work. Trump is one as well, so the whole "moving on from Trump" thing is very unlikely to work. GOP is stuck with him til he dies...(1/X) (2) Narcissistic sociopaths have very different motivations from regular people. If Trump had normal motivations he would have just conceded in 2020 and moved on to being a full-time grifter and media personality.

(1) Breaking character: Since there's been a lot of talk about universities being "too woke", I'm going to tell you a story of being on a DEI committee. Spoiler: they aren't woke at all. (2) First DEI committee meeting (for my department), one of the few women in the department says "we have a huge climate problem and that should be our focus". I agree, the other committee members seem to agree and we discuss

Tonight the Model Let Me Down

Nate Silver may be the Mick Jagger of data journalism, but Democrats' unexpectedly strong performance has the numbers guru singing a sad country song this morning.

by Maureen Dowd She probably doesn't know about Dead Flowers and Dear Doctor.

Opinion | I became famous doing data-based analysis of elections. Here’s why I became a conservative pundit.

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1571117642404208641

My group with Nate is this: there’s plenty of other data-based guys who ground almost all of their commentary in something to do with data. Maybe it’s wrong maybe it’s bullshit sometimes. But it’s not pure hot take. Which is what Nate’s doing now

FUNDRAISING: We raised 1.7 million for candidates and state parties in the 2020 cycle at Balloon Juice. I had decided to do no fundraising that might just go to ads this cycle. I've completely changed my mind. One word: Dobbs (1/x) I agree the ads against Collins in 2020 did nothing. But if you took that same money and had all ads trashing her for voting for Kavanaugh and turning the country into Gilead, they would have done a lot.

The media is badly underestimating the potency of the abortion issue...