Room To Be Wrong

We Need To Encourage, Not Stifle, Boldness

I got the 2020 election cycle very, very wrong.

This is not a plea for leniency or compassion, this is just true. I got the 2020 election cycle very, very, very wrong, because of what I've previously referred to as a cologne bath's worth of narcissism akin to that of the first time a high school student takes a girl he really likes on a fancy date. It was almost impressive how bad my 2020 takes were - how far up my own ass I was for the last 5 months of that cycle, how useless reading my work turned out to be. There were exceptions - never buying Democrats in Kentucky Senate or Missouri or Indiana, and correctly tipping Georgia for Biden - but I'm not going to take credit for one semi-interesting call and avoiding a couple of really easy to spot landmines. It was an outright embarrassment.

And then, I was one of a handful of - and I believe the first - public writers to declare Democrats the favourites in the Georgia runoffs, which they won. Part of why I was right the second time around was because I changed the way I did analysis, although a polling-based analysis approach would have similarly had Democrats ahead - although, would have been mostly wrong, because most of the nonpartisan runoff polls were showing much bigger Democratic leads than the just over 1% win Jon Ossoff managed, but it wasn't the only reason. The other reason I was right in January was because I didn't let the fact of my terrible November predictions change my January ones. I gave myself room to be wrong, and in so doing, gave myself room to actually be right. I wasn't concerned about the fact that had Georgia gone the other way, I'd be irredeemably a joke forever. I didn't hedge, I didn't lie, I didn't cover my ass. I was honest, and that honesty was rewarded by being right.

…

Yesterday, I got some pushback on Twitter twice, or more accurately for two different takes. One was for my North Carolina column, which no shit the right didn't like. Wow, I'm so shocked that people don't like the idea that Democrats could be competitive there, and the fact that the argument I made was mostly just numbers based didn't seem to matter to these people. I avoided most of it because I just mute liberally, so it was mostly just people screaming into the void. The second cause of Twitter angst for me was my declaring Florida Safe R in 2022, a take which understandably pisses people off but I maintain is correct. And yet, it was in reference to the second opinion that people started to drag me for my November 2020 performance, as if my then thinking Biden was going to sweep the Electoral College battlegrounds means that I'm now unfairly low on Democrats in Florida now. I'm properly low on them, because absolutely nothing about the Florida map, math, or trends says anything good, and we haven't won a Governorship in this red-trending state since 1994. Yeah, I wasn't alive then.

You want the condensed version of the take? Sure, let's do this. The state moved 4.5% right relative to the nation between 2016 and 2020, its 2018 relative partisanship was basically bang on 2020, and more importantly, we have no counter to the problems in Dade. We only came close in 2016 in the state because Trump was anathema to much of the Cuban community because of how he treated Marco Rubio in the primary, and now that Rubio is back on board, Trump didn't suffer. In addition, trends with all conservative Hispanics trended against us, and expecting culturally conservative Hispanics to vote for us because of their Hispanic-ness, and not vote GOP because of their cultural conservatism, is a mistake. They aren't beating an incumbent GOP Governor in a right leaning state. It's not happening, and no amount of delusion is going to change that fact.

Now, was I being a dick about it on Twitter? Sure, but that's my brand, that's who I am. I say what I think and think what I say, and that will be eclectic and weird and contradictory in many ways. I get that my general persona is not a fit for everyone, but it's who I am. Rock with me or don't, I don't care. But the sort of lasting impression of the night's events was almost more interesting to me than anything said about either North Carolina or Florida - and that's that we need to allow people room to be wrong.

Boldness is a virtue, a good thing to have in public debates - especially ones where your goal is prediction. It makes everyone sharper to have to make your arguments against a wide degree of contrary views, and just yelling "413" at me anytime I say anything doesn't make you sharp, it makes you an idiot. Now, I don't care, I can take the shots - trust me, I can take anything anyone on Twitter tells me, I don't care. This isn't about how I'm being bullied or cancelled - I'm literally thriving these days. But there is a real problem if there is no path to move forward after being wrong.

One of the comments on my North Carolina piece was that my piece was actually not that bad, except I'm now saying Trump was a good candidate after saying he was trash for months. Yes, that's an accurate statement of fact, but his implication - that I'm covering my ass - was wrong. I was wrong about Trump. Totally. 10000%. He was a much, much, much better candidate than I gave him credit for. I bought optimism for Democrats in Florida before, and now I don't, because of what 2020 showed us. We need to allow people to come back from bad takes - not face no accountability for their past takes, but not have their past errors thrown in their face when they're not guilty of them anymore. Room to be wrong - that freedom to allow people to properly express themselves, to write abrasive or off beat takes, to make cases they know aren't entirely without counter but are intellectually stimulating - is important. And too many - and I've been guilty of this in the past too - are unwilling to judge arguments on their merits anymore, just the past merit of the author. It's a mistake, and one everyone should collectively try and fix. Because if I didn't have that room to be wrong in Georgia, I'd never have ended up being so right.