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[TheLaughingStock]

Yep, it's over.

? Things are just getting good.

 

[Spoiled Milk]

Good thing that poll could not be anymore suspect.

Which part: the 1500 respondents, or the 3% error?

 

[Suikoguy]

Wait, which poll are we talking about?

 

[Bam Bam Baklava]

Yep, it's over.

Much lower than the 20+ they were getting when it all started.

 

[Makai]

Hillary fans should relax.

If she can't beat a guy with no endorsements or PAC money, she didn't deserve to be president. Same goes for the Republicans.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Wait, which poll are we talking about?

The FreeBeacon one is the only one.

 

[neurosisxeno]

Which part: the 1500 respondents, or the 3% error?

If I recall they had similar polls in 2008 and 2012 and weren't even close because Nevada is such a toss up.

 

[BanGy.nz]

If we don't get new Nevada polls tomorrow I think some of our Queen Hillary stans will combust.

 

[shinra-bansho]

There aren't going to be any NV polls; it was posted earlier in the thread. Pollsters have told Maddow that NV being so hard to get right they're just not doing it.

 

[Elaugaufein]

If we don't get new Nevada polls tomorrow I think some of our Queen Hillary stans will combust.

You mean combust even more. Everything is a sign that Hillary should be coronated already.

Sanders is doing well: Coronate Hillary
Sanders is doing badly: Coronate Hillary

A Republican looks likely to win their Primary: Coronate Hillary
A different Republic looks likely to win their Primary: Coronate Hillary

Mars is in the 4th Celestial House: Coronate Hillary
My toast fell butter side down: Coronate Hillary

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Yep, it's over.

Dem debate:

"I love Barack Obama more than you do!"
*Unsettling praise of war criminals*
"We agree on 93% of the issues."
"Racism is really bad but we disagree on whether bad rich people matter more than sexists."

Republican debate:

"You say that illegal immigration is an act of love, I say your mother's a whore."
"Eat my ass, Trump."
"God put me on this earth to stop gay marriage in the United States. I'm Marco Rubio and I'm totally not a gay robot."
"Well, Marco, God put me on this earth to kill Muslims. He thought you would do some good too, but all you've ended up doing is working on Chuck Schumer's Gang of Eight bill."
"Back in the 1970s, a liberal Muslim atheist homosexual professor said..."
"And while I'm on the topic of people worse than me, I have to say that Trump will take away the Second Amendment."
"Listen, I love the Second Amendment. How else would I have the opportunity to shoot you in the face? We're going to make America great again, we're going to start shooting Ted Cruz in the face."


I wonder why one has higher ratings, lol.

Cruz runs into antisemitism again as his campaign starts to get fucking weird...

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/conte...l&utm_source=botb&utm_campaign=rightwingwatch

 

[Makai]

Jeb's campaign criticized Rubio for being a hip hop fan and claiming Pitbull is a personal friend despite saying hip hop lyrics are a negative cultural influene.

 

[Elaugaufein]

Dem debate:

"I love Barack Obama more than you do!"
*Unsettling praise of war criminals*
"We agree on 93% of the issues."
"Racism is really bad but we disagree on whether bad rich people matter more than sexists."

Republican debate:

"You say that illegal immigration is an act of love, I say your mother's a whore."
"Eat my ass, Trump."
"God put me on this earth to stop gay marriage in the United States. I'm Marco Rubio and I'm totally not a gay robot."
"Well, Marco, God put me on this earth to kill Muslims. He thought you would do some good too, but all you've ended up doing is working on Chuck Schumer's Gang of Eight bill."
"Back in the 1970s, a liberal Muslim atheist homosexual professor said..."
"And while I'm on the topic of people worse than me, I have to say that Trump will take away the Second Amendment."
"Listen, I love the Second Amendment. How else would I have the opportunity to shoot you in the face? We're going to make America great again, we're going to start shooting Ted Cruz in the face."


I wonder why one has higher ratings, lol.

So what you're saying is that Sanders should be advocating seizing the means of production and Hillary should be talking about exiling all Straight White Males to Mexico ?

 

[Suikoguy]

The FreeBeacon one is the only one.

That's what I thought. Maddow had a segment on how suspect that poll was.
Paid for by a conservative pac, which only polled the dem side and not the republicans, by a pollster that typically does republican polls.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

So what you're saying is that Sanders should be advocating seizing the means of production and Hillary should be talking about exiling all Straight White Males to Mexico ?

I just don't think ratings=voting outcomes.

That proposed debate would be highly rated, but maybe not so helpful for the party as a whole.

Would be close to the level of what the Republicans are proposing finally so the "Both sides!" crowd would have a point at least.

Jeb's campaign criticized Rubio for being a hip hop fan and claiming Pitbull is a personal friend despite saying hip hop lyrics are a negative cultural influene.

Honestly, this is a pretty accurate shot. Rubio is a culture warrior asshole.

 

[Chichikov]

Jeb's campaign criticized Rubio for being a hip hop fan and claiming Pitbull is a personal friend despite saying hip hop lyrics are a negative cultural influene.

¡Jeb¡'s right, Pitbull's lyrics are a negative cultural influence.

 

[BanGy.nz]

Jeb's campaign criticized Rubio for being a hip hop fan and claiming Pitbull is a personal friend despite saying hip hop lyrics are a negative cultural influene.

Jeb's just pissed The Life of Pablo is Tidal exclusive, he's taking his frustrations out on Hip-Hop culture and Pitbull while getting in a shot at Rubio. #DALE

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Jeb's just pissed The Life of Pablo is Tidal exclusive, he's taking his frustrations out on Hip-Hop culture and Pittbull while getting in a shot at Rubio. #DALE

No, you (and Chich) misunderstand: Rubio is constantly saying that hip-hop and video games and stuff like that are bad for society when he's talking to religious people while saying that he's a cool young person (who listens to hip-hop!) when talking to the mainstream media. Jeb isn't criticizing rap. He's criticizing how Rubio is a shameless loser who has no real personal interests.

 

[BanGy.nz]

No, you (and Chich) misunderstand: Rubio is constantly saying that hip-hop and video games and stuff like that are bad for society when he's talking to religious people while saying that he's a cool young person (who listens to hip-hop!) when talking to the mainstream media. Jeb isn't criticizing rap. He's criticizing how Rubio is a shameless loser who has no real personal interests.

Oh oops, That's actually a decent shot by Jeb.

 

[Chichikov]

No, you (and Chich) misunderstand: Rubio is constantly saying that hip-hop and video games and stuff like that are bad for society when he's talking to religious people while saying that he's a cool young person (who listens to hip-hop!) when talking to the mainstream media. Jeb isn't criticizing rap. He's criticizing how Rubio is a shameless loser who has no real personal interests.

And you misunderstand what I'm saying -
I'm saying Pitbull has no fucking business lifting Sugarhill Gang bars, especially in a song like that.

 

[Suikoguy]

And you misunderstand what I'm saying -
I'm saying Pitbull has no fucking business lifting Sugarhill Gang bars, especially in a song like that.

Well, that was not what I expected, lol.

 

[JesseEwiak]

Jeb's campaign criticized Rubio for being a hip hop fan and claiming Pitbull is a personal friend despite saying hip hop lyrics are a negative cultural influene.

I mean, it it really worse than Paul Ryan being a RATM fan?

 

[Basileus777]

I mean, it it really worse than Paul Ryan being a RATM fan?

Missing the message of the music is a bit different. As far as I'm aware, Ryan isn't telling people that rock music is bad for society.

 

[StopMakingSense]

Jeb's campaign criticized Rubio for being a hip hop fan and claiming Pitbull is a personal friend despite saying hip hop lyrics are a negative cultural influene.

Jeb's gonna lose the Dale vote.

 

[makingmusic476]

Hillary fans should relax.

If she can't beat a guy with no endorsements or PAC money, she didn't deserve to be president. Same goes for the Republicans.

I haven't seen that gif in years.

Edit: Why are people convinced Trump would beat Sanders?

 

[Holmes]

Y'all Robby Mook is gay?? Hot damn

 

[cartoon_soldier]

LET'S GO HILLARY!

 

[Maledict]

I don't think the defense of "If she can't beat Sanders she shouldn't be president" is that useful. Primaries are completely different to general elections. Jeremy Corbyn won an overwhelming mandate in the Labour leadership election (from the same voting base as Sanders basically), and yet he's going to be slaughtered in a national campaign and any of the other candidates would almost certainly have done better.

Personally, it feels like Nevada will be a narrow Bernie win and then South Carolina will be a decent, but not overwhelming, Clinton win. There's no way she gets the same margin Bernie did in New Hampshire and anyone expecting that is going to be disappointed. How that leaves her going into March is open to question.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

I don't think the defense of "If she can't beat Sanders she shouldn't be president" is that useful. Primaries are completely different to general elections. Jeremy Corbyn won an overwhelming mandate in the Labour leadership election (from the same voting base as Sanders basically), and yet he's going to be slaughtered in a national campaign and any of the other candidates would almost certainly have done better.

Personally, it feels like Nevada will be a narrow Bernie win and then South Carolina will be a decent, but not overwhelming, Clinton win. There's no way she gets the same margin Bernie did in New Hampshire and anyone expecting that is going to be disappointed. How that leaves her going into March is open to question.

Yup, Corbyn is a good comparison to Sanders. A radical who will lead to an even bigger downfall of the Labor party. Sanders will do the same for Dems only the worst part will be he wasn't even a Dem till last year.

 

[disastermouse]

This is why we don't believe you, Hillary!

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/14/bernie-sanders-goes-carbon-neutral-as-hillary-clin/

Sen. Bernard Sanders has outflanked Hillary Clinton on yet another key liberal issue, inking a deal to offset his campaign’s carbon emissions as a show of commitment to combating climate change, The Washington Times has learned.

Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, appears to be breaking her own pledge to go carbon-neutral.

 

[SmokeMaxX]

Personally, it feels like Nevada will be a narrow Bernie win and then South Carolina will be a decent, but not overwhelming, Clinton win. There's no way she gets the same margin Bernie did in New Hampshire and anyone expecting that is going to be disappointed. How that leaves her going into March is open to question.

I don't think she'll have as big of a margin in SC either, but saying no way? Nah, it's definitely possible.

 

[Dominican Power]

Marco Rubio is such an idiot.

 

[Putzweg]

Its really amazing to see how off-beat Vox, Politico and the rest of the new media is. They are trying to push the "This time Trump has really gone over the line - he doomed" again for the 100th time this election season.

Compare with New Yorkers latest podcast. I think it was Dorothy Wickenden (executive editor) who pretty much said "for being paid to do this its quite astonishing how wrong the journalists are time after time this election cycle".

 

[Makai]

I don't think the defense of "If she can't beat Sanders she shouldn't be president" is that useful. Primaries are completely different to general elections. Jeremy Corbyn won an overwhelming mandate in the Labour leadership election (from the same voting base as Sanders basically), and yet he's going to be slaughtered in a national campaign and any of the other candidates would almost certainly have done better.

Personally, it feels like Nevada will be a narrow Bernie win and then South Carolina will be a decent, but not overwhelming, Clinton win. There's no way she gets the same margin Bernie did in New Hampshire and anyone expecting that is going to be disappointed. How that leaves her going into March is open to question.

Sanders has virtually no party support in the form of endorsements or superdelegates. Hillary has outraised him by $100 million dollars and still beats him after discounting PACs. She was Secretary of State. She's the wife of a former president. Must be a pretty flawed candidate if she loses despite all of those advantages.

I don't believe she's losing, just reacting to some of the Hillary fans here.

 

[Maledict]

Neither did Corbyn. In fact for him it was even worse - he didn't have enough MPs backing him to even get on the ballot. Some of the less far-left MPs lent him their votes just to get him on the ballot "To ensure we have a decent conversation" in the election. Of course that backfired tremendously.

In some ways it's a huge shame, because the passion, vigour and idealism that those voting bases bring out is truly remarkable and something that should be encouraged. Young people don't vote enough in politics, anything that encourages them is to be applauded. The problem is (despite what Crab and others keep saying), is that Sanders will fare just like Corbyn in a USA general election - he's going to get destroyed, and that puts so much at risk.

If Clinton does win I hope she finds a way to use Sanders and tap into that new voting base, and maintain some of the energy and enthusiasm.

(Also please for the love of god vote in mid-terms...)

 

[CCS]

When Hillary wins I'm going to come back and laugh at everyone who's diablosing right now. Calm down everyone, no need to panic two states in.

In all seriousness, we've had two states, both of which have gone pretty much with forecast. Looking at the forecasts, Super Tuesday is likely to be a big win for Hillary. There is no need to be alarmed.

 

[SamVimes]

The labour party was doing so well before Corbyn that the only prime minister they managed to get elected recently was a right winger.

 

[Maledict]

The labour party was doing so well before Corbyn that the only prime minister they managed to get elected recently was a right winger.

Wasn't right wing, and won more elections than any other Labour leader, and held office for as long as Thatcher. So yeah, given the catastrophic failure of Labour in the 80s, I'm not entirely sure why gunning for Blair is a valid tactic.

 

[Elaugaufein]

Wasn't right wing, and won more elections than any other Labour leader, and held office for as long as Thatcher. So yeah, given the catastrophic failure of Labour in the 80s, I'm not entirely sure why gunning for Blair is a valid tactic.

Its not about team colors. It doesn't matter if my "side" is in power for 3 ages if they don't act consistently with why they are my side. And the Iraq war thing is one of those black marks that people don't really forget.

Howard was just as bad but frankly he was expected to be.

 

[Maledict]

I marched against Iraq - it was a huge failure, and a massive blow against Blair, and his continued insanity around it rankles even more so. But I can't ignore the good stuff done in the NHS, education, sure start, public sector funding, equal rights and the countless other decent left wing things he did.

Also I'm hesitant to mark IRaq down as a left / right thing, as the left in the USA and the majority of the left in the UK supported it, and some on the right did not. Our countries because so wrapped up in this jingoistic lunacy it transcended politics in some respects.

Taking it back to topic - I think purity tests, and perfect being the enemy of good, are a constant danger in politics for parties of any inclination. Sanders, and Corbyn, are the avatars of that movement but ultimately you have to get people who disagree with you to vote with you, or otherwise you won't ever accomplish anything. Blair was the most transformative Labour leader in the last 40 years, and Obama has delivered on so many, many things and done so much for the USA. Broad coalitions that deliver on some things are far better than ideologically pure groups that deliver on nothing.

 

[Elaugaufein]

I marched against Iraq - it was a huge failure, and a massive blow against Blair, and his continued insanity around it rankles even more so. But I can't ignore the good stuff done in the NHS, education, sure start, public sector funding, equal rights and the countless other decent left wing things he did.

Also I'm hesitant to mark IRaq down as a left / right thing, as the left in the USA and the majority of the left in the UK supported it, and some on the right did not. Our countries because so wrapped up in this jingoistic lunacy it transcended politics in some respects.

Taking it back to topic - I think purity tests, and perfect being the enemy of good, are a constant danger in politics for parties of any inclination. Sanders, and Corbyn, are the avatars of that movement but ultimately you have to get people who disagree with you to vote with you, or otherwise you won't ever accomplish anything. Blair was the most transformative Labour leader in the last 40 years, and Obama has delivered on so many, many things and done so much for the USA. Broad coalitions that deliver on some things are far better than ideologically pure groups that deliver on nothing.

I agree to some extent (maybe even largely?). Getting this accomplished is important. I think the problem is when you start compromising for its own sake and when the purpose of being in power supersedes other reasons for being in power (the team colors thing). That's why you get these aggressive pushbacks after a while. It's a delicate balancing act that the left has sucked at for longer than I've been alive, you either get get a party that's terrified of ideological passion or the push back that demands absolute ideological purity*.

*The Australian Labor Party has benefited in that our voting system has effectively let the Greens serve as a pressure valve for this but its also not helping them, in that they can barely put forward a coherent vision of what they are for.

 

[neurosisxeno]

When Hillary wins I'm going to come back and laugh at everyone who's diablosing right now. Calm down everyone, no need to panic two states in.

The only people openly hoping for Sanders to do well are those of us that have supported him since day 1. I've spent the last few weeks being told Sanders had no chance in hell and that hasn't really changed much after 2 states. Except now it's less "He can't win shit" and more "He'll never get the nomination and will fail in the General".

 

[CCS]

The only people openly hoping for Sanders to do well are those of us that have supported him since day 1. I've spent the last few weeks being told Sanders had no chance in hell and that hasn't really changed much after 2 states. Except now it's less "He can't win shit" and more "He'll never get the nomination and will fail in the General".

I don't mind Sanders fans supporting their candidate. It's just funny how many Hillary fans are panicking unnecessarily

 

[neurosisxeno]

I don't mind Sanders fans supporting their candidate. It's just funny how many Hillary fans are panicking unnecessarily

I think most of them are doing so sarcastically.

 

[Maledict]

I don't mind Sanders fans supporting their candidate. It's just funny how many Hillary fans are panicking unnecessarily

Heh, for me it's more reliving the ongoing nightmare that is Labour in the UK... ;-). Hopefully this will have a different end!

 

[benjipwns]

Labour should honor Tony Blair solely for fucking over Gordon Brown and their deal so expertly.

I miss "EDDDDDDD MILLLIIIBAND" from the Speaker.

Its really amazing to see how off-beat Vox, Politico and the rest of the new media is. They are trying to push the "This time Trump has really gone over the line - he doomed" again for the 100th time this election season.

Compare with New Yorkers latest podcast. I think it was Dorothy Wickenden (executive editor) who pretty much said "for being paid to do this its quite astonishing how wrong the journalists are time after time this election cycle".

They operate in the same bubble as the old media only intensified.

Vox's core has never had any historical perspective on anything. The main three at Vox all came of age, literally in Matthews' case, in the midst of the Iraq War. Their professional career began in the ascendancy of a progressive/Democratic rise that they got sucked into as part of the whole self-reinforcing Journolist policy.

This is the group that thought "explanatory journalism" that gives "context" was something they were capable of without actually doing anything different or having any credentials even in politics, let alone anything of actual value. This group is part of the same wave that literally assigned a reporter to a "conservative beat" then yanked him in a panic after critical comments about conservatives surfaced even though he was actually qualified to do what they wanted and had shown it at reason for two years despite his personal political views.

But they didn't beat us to "explanatory polling" did they PoliGAF? That one was all ours!

Sanders has virtually no party support in the form of endorsements or superdelegates. Hillary has outraised him by $100 million dollars and still beats him after discounting PACs. She was Secretary of State. She's the wife of a former president. Must be a pretty flawed candidate if she loses despite all of those advantages.

I don't believe she's losing, just reacting to some of the Hillary fans here.

She's not and won't lose, she's getting a combination of backlashes hitting her all at once at the weakspot in the campaign for all frontrunners. Just like Gore almost got hit with. Like Reagan/Bush/Dole got hit with in 1980, 1988 and 1996. Like Romney ran into.

Sanders wouldn't be a general election disaster depending on the situation. The funny part is that the main reason his chance of losing would be near assured is because Hillary voters will ditch him after demanding party unity for her. Especially if there's a Bloomberg candidacy.

 

[Black Republican]

Georgie Bush in SC today, should be interesting

gotta push big brother's numbers up!

 

[CCS]

I think most of them are doing so sarcastically.

I hope so

Heh, for me it's more reliving the ongoing nightmare that is Labour in the UK... ;-). Hopefully this will have a different end!

I make a policy of never talking about the Labour party any more on the basis that if I ignore it they might get better somehow

 

[cartoon_soldier]

Marco Rubio is such an idiot.

He is not though.

 

[benjipwns]

It’s trite to say it, but the news business is biased toward, well, news. There are plenty of outlets that tell you what happened yesterday, but virtually no organizations that simply tell you what’s going on. Keeping up on the news is easy, but getting a handle on an ongoing situation that you’ve not really been following is hard. In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of outlets like FactCheck.org, which try and police lies that are relevant to the debate. But there’s really no one out there who is trying to give you the background to everything going in the debate. News organizations will write occasional pieces trying to sum up the legislation, but if you miss them, it’s hard to find them again, and they’re not comprehensive anyway. The fact that I still can’t direct people to one really good, really clear, really comprehensive online summary of the [healthcare] bill is an enduring frustration for me, and a real problem given the importance of the legislation and the number of questions there are about it.

What do you mean by "explain the news"?

Our end goal isn’t telling you what just happened, or how we feel about what just happened, it’s making sure you understand what just happened.
The media is excellent at reporting the news and pretty good at adding commentary atop the news. What’s lacking is an organization genuinely dedicated to explaining the news. That is to say, our end goal isn’t telling you what just happened, or how we feel about what just happened, it’s making sure you understand what just happened.

We're going to deliver a lot of contextual information that traditional news stories aren't designed to carry, and we're hiring journalists who really know the topics they cover. There’s no way we’ll be able to help readers understand issues if we haven’t done the work to understand them ourselves.

The coming fight to replace Justice Scalia, explained

The fight over Antonin Scalia's successor is going to be massively more politicized than any nomination fight we've seen in decades. It may even be the most acrimonious and high-stakes nomination fight ever.

For the last quarter century, the Supreme Court has been narrowly divided between five conservatives and four liberals. The close split has produced a long series of decisions in which a five-justice majority adopted conservative interpretations of the law over the objections of the court's four liberals.

On Saturday, the court's most venerable conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia, died, putting the high court's ideological makeup up for grabs for the first time in decades.

A political fight erupted within hours of the news of Scalia's death, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell echoing his fellowing Republicans in all but promising to block whoever President Obama nominates. Democrats are already demanding the Senate approve whoever Obama proposes (even before knowing who the candidate is).

If the Senate doesn't confirm Obama's nominee — and it seems pretty likely that it won't — that will raise the stakes in what was already shaping up to be a monumental presidential race. The next president will not only get to run the country for four years, he or she could define the ideological balance of the Supreme Court and reshape US law for a generation.

This is about to get ugly

Vox's first article. How politics makes us stupid

There’s a simple theory underlying much of American politics. It sits hopefully at the base of almost every speech, every op-ed, every article, and every panel discussion. It courses through the Constitution and is a constant in President Obama’s most stirring addresses. It’s what we might call the More Information Hypothesis: the belief that many of our most bitter political battles are mere misunderstandings. The cause of these misunderstandings? Too little information — be it about climate change, or taxes, or Iraq, or the budget deficit. If only the citizenry were more informed, the thinking goes, then there wouldn’t be all this fighting.

It’s a seductive model. It suggests our fellow countrymen aren’t wrong so much as they’re misguided, or ignorant, or — most appealingly — misled by scoundrels from the other party. It holds that our debates are tractable and that the answers to our toughest problems aren’t very controversial at all. The theory is particularly prevalent in Washington, where partisans devote enormous amounts of energy to persuading each other that there’s really a right answer to the difficult questions in American politics — and that they have it.

But the More Information Hypothesis isn’t just wrong. It’s backwards. Cutting-edge research shows that the more information partisans get, the deeper their disagreements become.

Liberals are pointing out that Obama still has 11 months left in his term, and arguing that it would be unprecedented for the Senate to hold up a Supreme Court nomination for that long. Many people on Twitter are pointing to a tweet from an historian stating that the Senate has never taken longer than 125 days to decide on a nominee (more details here), compared to 342 days remaining in Obama's term. But others have pointed out that it took 2 years to replace a Supreme Court justice who left the bench in 1844.

Liberals also point out that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who currently holds the court's swing vote, was confirmed easily by the Senate in 1988, the last full year of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Conservatives however, note that Kennedy's was actually appointed in 1987 — and only after Democrats rejected the more conservative Robert Bork for the seat.

Regardless, conservatives will argue that this time is different. The country and the Supreme Court are more polarized than they've been in decades, and because the Supreme Court is evenly divided, Scalia's replacement will have unprecedented power to reshape the law on everything from abortion to campaign finance. They'll argue that the voters should have the opportunity to decide, via the presidential election, whether the Supreme Court should have a liberal or conservative majority.

And regardless of what you might think about these arguments, the hard reality for Democrats is that the Senate has a 54-46 Republican majority and a Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

We can expect grassroots conservatives to put intense pressure on McConnell and other Republicans not to confirm whoever Obama nominates. Given the stakes, and the success conservatives have had in mounting primary challenges against moderate Republicans who stray from conservative positions, it's going to be a big challenge for Obama to convince McConnell to bring his nominee up for a vote, or to convince at least 4 Republicans to vote for his nominee.

Imagine what would happen to, say, Sean Hannity if he decided tomorrow that climate change was the central threat facing the planet. Initially, his viewers would think he was joking. But soon, they’d begin calling in furiously. Some would organize boycotts of his program. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of professional climate skeptics would begin angrily refuting Hannity’s new crusade. Many of Hannity’s friends in the conservative media world would back away from him, and some would seek advantage by denouncing him. Some of the politicians he respects would be furious at his betrayal of the cause. He would lose friendships, viewers, and money. He could ultimately lose his job. And along the way he would cause himself immense personal pain as he systematically alienated his closest political and professional allies. The world would have to update its understanding of who Sean Hannity is and what he believes, and so too would Sean Hannity. And changing your identity is a psychologically brutal process.

...

Anyone who has ever found themselves in an angry argument with their political or social circle will know how threatening it feels. For a lot of people, being "right" just isn’t worth picking a bitter fight with the people they care about. That’s particularly true in a place like Washington, where social circles and professional lives are often organized around people’s politics, and the boundaries of what those tribes believe are getting sharper.

If Justice Scalia's seat is still open in November, it's going to loom as one of the biggest issues in an election that was already shaping up to be hugely consequential. A president serves for just four years before having to face the voters again. Supreme Court justices serve for life, and because they tend to resign when there's a like-minded president in office, control over a seat by liberals or conservatives could easily last longer than the term of any single justice.

One consequence of this is that Washington has become a machine for making identity-protective cognition easier. Each party has its allied think tanks, its go-to experts, its favored magazines, its friendly blogs, its sympathetic pundits, its determined activists, its ideological moneymen. Both the professionals and the committed volunteers who make up the party machinery are members of social circles, Twitter worlds, Facebook groups, workplaces, and many other ecosystems that would make life very unpleasant for them if they strayed too far from the faith. And so these institutions end up employing a lot of very smart, very sincere people whose formidable intelligence makes certain that they typically stay in line. To do anything else would upend their day-to-day lives.

The problem, of course, is that these people are also affecting, and in some cases controlling, the levers of government. And this, Kahan says, is where identity-protective cognition gets dangerous. What’s sensible for individuals can be deadly for groups. "Although it is effectively costless for any individual to form a perception of climate-change risk that is wrong but culturally congenial, it is very harmful to collective welfare for individuals in aggregate to form beliefs this way," Kahan writes. The ice caps don’t care if it’s rational for us to worry about our friendships. If the world keeps warming, they’re going to melt regardless of how good our individual reasons for doing nothing are.

So an open seat would mean that the 2016 election wouldn't just determine whether the Supreme Court has a liberal or conservative majority in 2017, it could determine the ideological composition of the Supreme Court for decades to come.

Electing Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would allow them to replace not only Scalia but possibly liberal Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg too, giving the court a liberal majority well into the 2030s. Conversely, President Ted Cruz could not only replace Scalia but also replace conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy with a more conservative jurist, strengthening the court's conservative majority for a long time to come.

At one point in our interview Kahan does stare over the abyss, if only for a moment. He recalls a dissent written by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in a case about overcrowding in California prisons. Scalia dismissed the evidentiary findings of a lower court as motivated by policy preferences. "I find it really demoralizing, but I think some people just view empirical evidence as a kind of device," Kahan says.

But Scalia’s comments were perfectly predictable given everything Kahan had found. Scalia is a highly ideological, tremendously intelligent individual with a very strong attachment to conservative politics. He’s the kind of identity-protector who has publicly said he stopped subscribing to the Washington Post because he "just couldn’t handle it anymore," and so he now cocoons himself in the more congenial pages of the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal. Isn’t it the case, I asked Kahan, that everything he’s found would predict that Scalia would convince himself of whatever he needed to think to get to the answers he wanted?

The question seemed to rattle Kahan a bit. "The conditions that make a person subject to that way of looking at the evidence," he said slowly, "are things that should be viewed as really terrifying, threatening influences in American life. That’s what threatens the possibility of having democratic politics enlightened by evidence."

The threat is real. Washington is a bitter war between two well-funded, sharply-defined tribes that have their own machines for generating evidence and their own enforcers of orthodoxy. It’s a perfect storm for making smart people very stupid.

The silver lining is that politics doesn’t just take place in Washington. The point of politics is policy. And most people don’t experience policy as a political argument. They experience it as a tax bill, or a health insurance card, or a deployment. And, ultimately, there’s no spin effective enough to persuade Americans to ignore a cratering economy, or skyrocketing health-care costs, or a failing war. A political movement that fools itself into crafting national policy based on bad evidence is a political movement that will, sooner or later, face a reckoning at the polls.

At least, that’s the hope. But that’s not true on issues, like climate change, where action is needed quickly to prevent a disaster that will happen slowly. There, the reckoning will be for future generations to face. And it’s not true when American politics becomes so warped by gerrymandering, big money, and congressional dysfunction that voters can’t figure out who to blame for the state of the country. If American politics is going to improve, it will be better structures, not better arguments, that win the day.

“We are just at the beginning of how journalism should be done on the web,” Mr. Klein said. “We really wanted to build something from the ground up that helps people understand the news better. We are not just trying to scale Wonkblog, we want to improve the technology of news, and Vox has a vision of how to solve some of that.”

“It is not as simple as journalists going to a digital site and doubling their salary,” said Jim Bankoff, chief executive of Vox. “Many of these people, including Ezra, have a vision of creating something remarkable. There is a better way of doing things and we like to think that we are using technology in service of creativity, journalism and storytelling.”

Mr. Klein, who is making the move with other colleagues at The Post, including Melissa Bell and Dylan Matthews, as well as Matthew Yglesias of Slate, said he was less interested in burnishing a personal brand than building a site that will go beyond politics and policy and serve as a prism on the rest of the news. “That’s the theory, but that’s all it is until we actually do something,” Mr. Klein said.

As Politico’s Dylan Byers noted on Twitter: “The Feb. theory on Vox as a new, smarter version of Wikipedia seems to have panned out.”