Bitecofer, StrikePAC, And False Prophets

On A Distraction From Actual Winning

I think the word would have to be surreal.

I'm trying to think of the word I'd use to sum up my interactions with Rachel Bitecofer at this point, and surreal would have to be the one. I've never been a fan of her - from throwing her colleague under a bus because their model didn't realize that if Joe Biden lost Michigan, he'd obviously lose Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (and then claiming it was his model), to her comfort claiming legitimate criticism of her (not very good) track record was sexist, to her claiming that she invented demographic modelling and that my previous place of employment stole their model from her (spoiler; when the model was built, nobody knew who she fucking was), all the way through her deeply crass tweet about Jaime Raskin needing to follow her on Twitter to know January 6th could have been violent. She is, to be kind, an egomaniac, and interactions with her - or engaging with her work - generally leave you with the distinct impression that you're dealing with someone who is not here for good electoral projection but is here to get the good PR - and the cash that can come - that being associated with good electoral projections can bring.

My introduction to Bitecofer was sometime in the middle of 2020, during the pandemic, when she got in one of her regular swinging dick contests with what she refers to as the Four Horsemen of electoral matters, in this case Nate Cohn of the Times. Her claim is she got the 2018 midterms very right, because she said 42 seats would flip to Democrats, and 40 did. Pretty good, right? Well, it would be, except it's a lie. She actually had 45 seats "will flip" to Democrats, 18 tossups, 14 Lean R races, and another 12 Likely R races, and is then, after the fact, claiming that she got close to the pin. This is, obviously, ludicrous, because the GOP went 17-1 in her tossups, and if that's the case, Tossup doesn't mean Tossup, or your model is busted, one of the two. Similarly, her claim that my old home stole her model for their own - a model built based on wanting to further understand the 2018 Ontario Election, when the man who built the model hadn't heard of her - rightly fell apart at any amount of scrutiny. But oh, it gets worse.

Not wanting to get out of the claiming "credit for work that wasn't your own" game, she has twice - yes, somehow fucking twice - claimed credit for Lak's brilliant model of where Democrats over and under performed in 2020, which he built from scratch. To the extent that anyone who didn't help Lak code it could claim any amount of credit, I'm probably at the top of the list - partially because his model was an attempt to quantify what he and I had been talking about for 4 months, and partially because when he freaked out at (notable, but now corrected) errors in the first draft of the model, I calmed him down and told him everything would be okay (which, completely unsurprisingly, it was) - and I deserve absolutely no fucking credit. It is his brilliance, and his alone, that has created a tool which has made me, and hopefully my readers, given how much I've leaned on it for analysis since it was published, so much smarter for having it. And Bitecofer has twice claimed it was validation for her work, how I still don't fucking understand. I don't even know how she got there in the first place, but to do it twice - to go back to the well after she was so thoroughly mocked once before - is fucking insanity, idiocy on stilts.

And now, this is the woman the chair of the DNC is congratulating on the launch of her new SuperPAC, because the universe has decided I need to be punished forever for once liking Jaime Harrison.

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I think the name of Bitecofer's new PAC is StrikePAC, but let's be honest with what this actually is - GriftPAC. Bitecofer isn't as able as she was to sell the grift to her previous source of paychecks, fired as she rightly was from the Niskanen Center, and now she's taking the grift directly to the public with a SuperPAC that purports to be a necessary part of beating the GOP in 2022. If that's correct, God help us, the GOP are winning 45 House seats and 9 Senate seats. Her previously stated goal - a 3M per year budget - wouldn't be enough if her goal was to flip 5 House seats, let alone if she wants to play in Florida, as she has previously suggested she does. What it is big enough to do is provide a lot of ads that look good on Twitter while allowing you to pocket a good chunk of cash - also known at this point as "pulling a Lincoln Project," who she used to advise. This is a grift, and every dollar given to her, and not to places which can actually help win Democratic seats, is better being lit on fire than supporting a grift.

I take no pleasure writing any of this, but if you think Bitecofer is helping us, you're wrong. Bitecofer has one goal at all times - what's best for Rachel Bitecofer. In 2020, she wanted to put out a quant model to try and play with Morris and Silver, and that model fell apart in minutes because it was patently crap, so it became her partner's model, not their joint model anymore. She threw him under the bus with an almost Usain Bolt-ian speed, and I'm supposed to believe she has any notions of intellectual honesty or decency to fall back on? I'm supposed to give a person who will claim any amount of credit for things that have absolutely nothing to do with her the benefit of the doubt? Fuck that, and fuck you if you think I'm too harsh on her.

For whatever else you can say about me and my work, I have done this for free, because I think it's worth it. I don't expect anybody to pay me for this - it's a thing I enjoy doing, so I do it. If I never make a dollar for this, I'll be perfectly fine, because this isn't about promotion or profit, it's about trying to provide people with what enough of you seem to want, which is an insight into my thinking. That enough of you value that to make this worthwhile for me is an honour I never fail to appreciate. I care about good process, I care about doing this right  but even more than that, I care about people who do this for the right reasons, and that is why I am contemptuous of Bitecofer. She is everything I hate in a person known publicly for their intellect (I refuse to call her a public intellectual, out of deference for *actual* public intellectuals), a false prophet, a person more interested in good outcomes for her than intellectual honesty. Anyone who would toss their partner under their bus at the first sign of trouble, someone who will take credit the moment anyone else has any success, is not worthy of the benefit of the doubt, or the public's money. We may beat the GOP in 2022, or lose - but if we win in 2022, StrikePAC will not, in any way, be why, whatever lies she may spin. After all, you can't separate people from their hard earned cash without some good old fashioned grifting.