If Bias Doesn't Matter Why Would Bill Maher Host Nate Silver on 'Real Time'?

The entire episode's at the clip. Barney Frank is the first featured guest, and the panel includes Chrystia Freeland, Eliot Spitzer and Michael Steele. The New York Times wonder boy is the mid-show guest. He joins the panel at 30:30. Silver tries to come off reasonable and scholarly, being sure to mention that Mitt Romney could still win (even though the 538 model now has Obama with almost a 3-1 chance of winning in the Electoral College), but mostly you're getting the same old "Real Time with Bill Maher" hateful, misogynistic attacks on conservatives, with a little polling data thrown by Silver for that all-important gloss of "mainstream" respectability.

If you don't lose your breakfast watching this, be sure check out Robert Stacy McCain's latest deconstruction of the left's "counterfactual cheerleading," "If Bias Doesn’t Matter …"

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. . . why is Dan Hodges cheering Nate Silver for “singlehandedly dismantling the myth of Mitt-mentum”? That is to say, if the reporting of poll data doesn’t influence voters one way or the other — if there is no bandwagon psychology effect created by such media narratives – then what does it matter whether journalists believe one candidate or another is winning?

Good luck answering that, and good luck to all the liberals who believe that counterfactual cheerleading can prevent Obama’s defeat if, in fact, we’re already on the other side of a “preference cascade.”

When Gallup showed Romney widening his lead to 5 points — and at 51 percent, just 10 days before Election Day — Donald Douglas anticipated that Nate Silver’s head would explode. But the Grand Swami will find a way to rationalize this, and the Graveyard Whistling Choir will cheerfully parrot whatever rationalization Silver provides them.

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PREVIOUSLY:

* "Oh My! Romney Back Up to 51 Percent in Gallup's Daily Tracking — Nate Silver Hardest Hit!"

* "'Grand Swami' Nate Silver Boosts O's Chances to 71.0% in Electoral College!"

* "Obama Crashing in Ohio; or, For the Love of Mercy, Leave Nate Silver Alone!"

* "Nate Silver Calls It: Advantage Obama!"

* "Nate Silver's Flawed Model."

* "Boom! Romney Back Up 52-45 in Gallup's Daily Tracking of Likely Voters."

* "ABC News Touts Nate Silver's Prediction That Obama's Handicapped at 68 Percent Chance to Win!"

* "'It's becoming increasingly obvious that Silver can't be taken seriously...'"

* "Nate Silver Blows Gasket as Gallup Shows Romney Pulling Away in the Presidential Horse Race."

More later...