Empiricism

One thing that is abundantly apparent as we pick through the detritus of the past two years is that political commentary is pretty useless and that data is incredibly useful. As I relentlessly said throughout the general election season, this never looked like a close election. Anyone who got near me in person had to endure my consistent predictions of "landslide ... no doubt." And the Education Dudette and Education Friends would punish and belittle me for my overconfidence, but at heart, I am an empiricist. The data never had this looking like a close election, and folks had to conjure racist boogiemen to make the case that it was.

Anyway, to put it more plainly, this was the election of the data geek. Frankly, that's part of the reason I like Obama so much; he seems to be cut from the data geek mold as well. David Plouffe might as well be the chairman emeritus of the data geek cabal.

It's also why I love Nate Silver so freaking much. FiveThirtyEight was an amazing addition to the media, and while their final model was a little off, it was pretty darn close to right. Ezra joins the chorus:

Also, Nate Silver was pretty clearly this election's MVP, at least so far as media goes. What I love about his story, incidentally, is he starts as a DailyKos.com diarist, and blows up to become a major media figure. Ten years ago, there would have been no way for him to break into the industry. But because of the open platform and easy publicity provided by community blogs like DailyKos, he could wander right in, identify a market need for good data, and fill it. That's progress.

There is a bigger point to the value of empiricism, though. Part of the real tragedy of the Bush administration has been the systematic suppression of - and misuse of - information. Whether the administration concocted fake information to justify war in Iraq, denied federal funding to stem-cell research, or tacitly endorsed the infiltration of faith into science, the Bush administration symbolized a true "Assault on Reason."

Obama has shown us that technocratic data geeks also can be inspiring leaders, and he has leveraged his inate strategic sense to deliver an unprecedented win. In many ways, his campaign has been a repudiation of the Bush administration's policies AND tactics. And I hope that he will continue this assault on idiocy as he enters the White House. A good start would be to challenge all of these asshole commentators who continue to insist America is a "center-right" nation by saying something like:

"Guess what? I just won 52% of the vote. I received more votes than any other president in American history has received, and a MUCH greater share of the electoral vote than Bush's 'permanent Republican majority' ever managed to scrape from the bottom of the barrell. And, I did this amidst accusations that I'm a closet socialist. I'll be over here on the left, with the majority of America, bitches."

-Education Dude