RUSH: Do you remember the name Nate Silver? You know Nate Silver. He was this wunderkind data analyst. He analyzed polling data apparently better than anybody ever had. He was at the New York Times.
Well, he missed the 2010 midterms, but everybody promptly forget about that. He called the 2008 presidential race, and he called the 2012 presidential race almost exactly. So he became a hero to the Democrats. And during the 2012 campaign there was all kinds of confusion about the polling data. You had Dick Morris out there saying, “Well, you’re gonna have all kinds of Romney turnout that’s not reported in these polls. Romney’s gonna win big, five, six points,” or whatever.
A lot of Democrats were afraid that was gonna happen because there was no happiness left with Obama. But Nate Silver was saying, “Don’t worry! Don’t worry! Obama’s got this in the bag, and handily so,” and readers of the New York Times would post comments, “Ah, thank God for Nate Silver!” Well, Nate Silver has just predicted better than 50-50 Republicans win the Senate, and now they’re turning on him. Now they hate him. Ha-ha.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: They loved Nate Silver. They went to bed feeling confident because of Nate Silver. They didn’t worry a wink about Obama’s reelection because of Nate Silver. Nate Silver was the bible, Nate Silver and his FiveThirtyEight blog at the New York Times. Now, he started out as a sports statistician analyst, and then he got into politics. He didn’t do his own polling data.
He just analyzed everybody else’s polling data, and apparently came up with an algorithm and a formula that made everybody else’s look like first grade. And he became THE guru. Whatever he said, people went to the bank on. He missed the 2010 midterms. He didn’t see the massive Republican landslide in 2010. He got the Republican victory right but not the size of it. But in 2012, nailed it.
And shortly after the 2012 election, Nate Silver announced that he was tired of doing political poll analysis and was taking his FiveThirtyEight blog to ESPN, ’cause he’s a sports guy at heart. So he’s now doing sports-stat analysis and other things for ESPN. But he also has begun, in his spare time, to dabble into the political polling universe once again. He was on This Week this past Sunday on ABC.
Jonathan Karl interviewed him, and he said, “Republicans need six seats. What’s the projection [for the midterms]? How many are they going to pick up?”
SILVER: I’d say exactly six, but it’s probably six +/- five. That means it could be —
KARL: That means they could pick up 11 seats!
SILVER: They could, yeah.
KARL: What you’re basically saying is a 60% chance that Republicans win the Senate?
SILVER: Something like that.
RUSH: Sixty percent chance. It could be as many as 11 seats. Now, remember, the Democrats, the left thinks this guy is infallible. So many really invested their psychological health in what Nate Silver was saying during the questionable, nervous days and months leading up to the 2012 election. Now the Democrats are all saying, 
“Well, you know what? His model really isn’t all that hot.
“Nate Silver’s computer model, it’s not settled science. It’s nothing we can count on, here.” They’re doing everything they can now to disqualify Nate Silver, to say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Democrats like Paul Krugman are out all over the place saying, “Hey, you know what? Computer models like Silver’s, we gotta throw ’em out, because they can be wrong.”
Oh, you mean like the climate change models, Paul? Are you gonna throw those out, too, or are you just gonna throw out the models that show bad news for your side? They never admit the global warming models can be wrong. I mean, the global warming models are “settled science.” Remember the point that I made yesterday — and do not doubt me on this.
Virtually everything that you have heard from climate change/global warming proponents predict and warn you about come strictly from computer models, which are predicting the future 10, 20, 50, 100 years out. The global warming debate is not even about science. It is pure politics. It is not even using empirical data. It’s not using factual data from the past. Some of that’s been doctored.
It’s not using scientific data.
It’s using computer models that activists have created, and plugged in the data they want to get the results they want. And they have portrayed their models to be infallible. Algore, everybody. They’re using computer models. They’re not using science. Meanwhile, the scientists on our side, the so-called “denier” side, have gone full bore into science to try to disprove what these people are doing, and they’re even talking the same language.
What our side needs to do is come up with their own models that show no warming and no this and no that to compete, because models are it. Gotta throw those out. But Nate Silver’s models — which are forecasting the future based on real, hard empirical data — now have to be thrown out. You think Nate Silver would have been allowed to espouse such negative projections if he were still working at the New York Times?
If Nate Silver were working at the New York Times and produced this body of work on the 2012 or 2014 midterms coming up, why, I think the roasting he would get would be horrible. I mean, they’d have kick him out. They’d call him a traitor. Here’s the story in TheHill.com: “Democrats are turning against Nate Silver, the political data guru they touted in 2012.
“Two years ago he was described as soothsayer after repeatedly saying that President Obama would win a second term, accurately predicting the winner of each state in the 2012 contest. Conservatives ripped Silver back then for his ‘flawed model,’ with some claiming Silver was a biased liberal. Democrats loved him then, but now theyÂ’re attacking him.
“The difference, of course, is that the Democrats’ political fortunes have taken a turn for the worse and Silver isnÂ’t optimistic about their chances in November.” Silver, for some reason, cares about the credibility of his work, and he doesn’t want to taint it with what he hopes happens. He’s actually simply reporting the data that his models are producing based on all the polling data that’s out there.
Just like Matt Drudge must be castigated, hated, and despised for opting out of Obamacare and not buying a policy, Nate Silver must now be disenfranchised and thrown to the wolves because he is not furthering the cause. And they don’t care how many lies or distortions are necessary to further the cause because all of liberalism is a lie. All of liberalism is a distortion.
If liberals were honest about what they really intended to do, they would never get elected president. Ever. Nobody. We haven’t lost the country to that degree. “‘We think the Republicans are now slight favorites to win at least six seats and capture the chamber,’ Silver wrote, predicting Republicans could net as many as 11 seats.” (interruption) Charlie Cook, yeah. Nate Silver’s not the only one.
But Nate Silver, he was god.
Nate Silver was the final authority.
Nate Silver was the guy that all these worried, paranoid Democrats relied upon for their sanity. I’m not exaggerating this. It was amusing to read comments posted to the FiveThirtyEight blog in the New York Times from Democrats in San Francisco and all over the country, saying they could sleep at night now without an Ambien because Nate Silver was saying it was gonna be okay.
This is what they tend to do. They invest in a singular, messianic personality — and when that person doesn’t follow what they hope or want, then they are challenged. I mean, it’s a sanity challenge. So they’re very upset and turning on him, and it probably is going to get worse for the poor guy before it gets better.