2 ms·

Silver was always center-right neoliberal, he just didn't do a lot of opinion/advocacy stuff, sticking more to the statistics, while doing 538; when he left 538

Silver was always center-right neoliberal, he just didn't do a lot of opinion/advocacy stuff, sticking more to the statistics, while doing 538; when he left 538, he became a lot higher “geneeic politics blogger”-style output, and became more like a slightly-more-to-the-right version of Matt Yglesias. Since Silver took his models with him, and there wasn’t that much time after he left, there wasn't much track record to judge the post-Silver 538, but I think that it remained a first-rate poll aggregator and from all appearances a reasonable poll-based-predictor.

PaulHoule 2y ago
I'm a critic of neoliberalism but I also enjoy reading The Economist which was originally founded to oppose the corn laws and advocate for free trade in 1843, just a few years before Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto. Based on that you'd expect The Economist to be center right but when people try to compare it with other news sources it is usually rated left-of-center [1] which seems odd to me. On the other hand, the one thing the center-left and center-right have in common is "the center cannot hold", look at how centrist parties are eroding in places like Germany where the usual government coalition now is the CDU (center right) and the SPD (center left) which steadily loses ground to the far right because, even though the center might have its facts straight, it is emotionally false for most people. [1] https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Based on that you'd expect The Economist to be center right but when people try to compare it with other news sources it is usually rated left-of-center [1] which seems odd to me. The Economist is almost the archetype of economic center-rightism, but IIRC it tends not to fall even slightly on the right-wing side of social/cultural issues (trans rights excepted, which I’ve seen suggested is largely connected to one particular member of the editorial board), which is pretty unsurprising because right-wing social policy is a state-imposed inefficiency to the pure economic neoliberal. In societies where moderately right stances on social issues are common even on the economic left, when you try to construct a single social/economic left-right axis, I can see this making The Economist seem center-left on that composite axis.

PaulHoule 2y ago

I'm a critic of neoliberalism but I also enjoy reading The Economist which was originally founded to oppose the corn laws and advocate for free trade in 1843, just a few years before Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto. Based on that you'd expect The Economist to be center right but when people try to compare it with other news sources it is usually rated left-of-center [1] which seems odd to me. On the other hand, the one thing the center-left and center-right have in common is "the center cannot hold", look at how centrist parties are eroding in places like Germany where the usual government coalition now is the CDU (center right) and the SPD (center left) which steadily loses ground to the far right because, even though the center might have its facts straight, it is emotionally false for most people. [1] https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist

dragonwriter 2y ago
> Based on that you'd expect The Economist to be center right but when people try to compare it with other news sources it is usually rated left-of-center [1] which seems odd to me. The Economist is almost the archetype of economic center-rightism, but IIRC it tends not to fall even slightly on the right-wing side of social/cultural issues (trans rights excepted, which I’ve seen suggested is largely connected to one particular member of the editorial board), which is pretty unsurprising because right-wing social policy is a state-imposed inefficiency to the pure economic neoliberal. In societies where moderately right stances on social issues are common even on the economic left, when you try to construct a single social/economic left-right axis, I can see this making The Economist seem center-left on that composite axis.