No, Nate Silver, Heather Cox Richardson Is Nothing Like The Tea Party. What's Wrong With You?
Why did we ever listen to this guy?
Nate Silver was once known for data-driven political analysis. Now, his takes are more like Data’s evil twin Lore from Star Trek: The Next Generation — emotion-based and increasingly unstable. The other day, Silver posted the following at Elon Musk’s incel collective:
“The Democratic equivalent of the Tea Party is basically Heather Cox Richardsonism, a kind of purity politics rooted in belief in the historical righteousness of the progressive project paired with a loose grasp if not an outright disdain for the role played by public opinion.”
To which, I can only say, “Huh?” Over at his newsletter, Silver modestly states that his impassioned gibberish “was a good tweet, but there’s more behind it than can easily be expressed in 280 characters,” and he devotes exponentially more words to painting Richardson as a radical figure. (He’s not the only one: Pirate Wires ran a piece last week with the thriller movie title, “Heather Cox Richardson Stole My Wife,” in which a Trump-supporting man blames Richardson for turning his wife against him and ruining their marriage.)
I suppose I should clarify that this is Heather Cox Richardson. She reminds me of the nice neighbor who notices that a package was left on your porch during a rainstorm and stores it for you. She’s the neighbor who offers your kid fresh-baked cookies. However, she also has political opinions, which apparently is a frightening trait in a woman. (Watch below.)
Silver claims there are three competing “factions” within the current Democratic Party: There’s the populist “Capital-L Left,” which includes Bernie Sanders, New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani, and the “Abundance Libs: technocratic, more willing to find common ground with Republicans, and more sympathetic to market-based solutions.” (Silver gives a shout-out to his bros Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.) Silver calls the third faction “Richardsonism or a term I’ll treat as synonymous with it: #Resistance Libs.” (Ideological preferences aside, “Richardsonism” probably includes a larger and more reliable group of Democratic voters than the “Capital-L Left.”)
It’s not surprising but still disappointing that Silver holds the most open contempt for the third faction, which he specifically notes is “older, with extremely high educational attainment, predominantly female, and very highly politically engaged.” Although Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is clearly part of the “Capital-L Left,” she’s still under 40. Silver seems to think nothing is more dangerous to Democratic politics than perimenopausal women. It’s important to note that the areas where “Abundance Libs” seem willing to “find common ground with Republicans” are usually issues directly impacting women (abortion rights) or ones that they champion (gun safety).
Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter, Letters from an American, has almost 3 million subscribers. She’s influential but still an odd choice to single out as the personification of this third faction within the Democratic Party. It’s also insulting: Consider that Silver doesn’t dismiss the “Capital L-Left” as “Bernie Bros” or “Abundance Libs” as “Klein-ism.”
Anyway, Heather Cox Richardson is nothing like the Tea Party, a self-described “fiscally conservative” political movement that began in 2007 and grew in force after openly Black Barack Obama was elected in 2008. The supposed “#Resistance Libs” take issue with the objective roll back of civil rights and dismantling of the constitutional order under Donald Trump. The Tea Party freaked out over health care reform.
“I’m not saying that they’re exactly alike,” Silver protests. “Suppose I tweeted that ‘The European equivalent of New York pizza slices is basically donor kebabs.’ This is not intended to imply that donor kebabs are a type of pizza or that pizza is a sandwich. Rather, they serve some analogous functions as greasy, tasty, cheap, late-night food, typically ordered at a counter and messily consumed somewhere on or near the premises.”
Silver’s argument contains more straw than Jonathan Bailey at the end of Wicked: For Good. The European equivalent of New York pizza slices would be actual European pizza slices, which is something that exists. It’s known as “pizza al taglio” in Italy and “pizza by the slice” in London, where they speak English. (Watch below.)
Silver goes on: “So when I write about ‘the Democratic equivalent of the Tea Party…’ this analogy implies similarities as well as differences, differences shaped by the contours of the respective demographics of Democrats and Republicans, their relationship with various institutions and their formative political experiences.”
But his analogy is doo-doo. He claims that donor kebabs in Europe serve similar “analogous functions” to New York pizza slices, and somehow that means Heather Cox Richardson is like the Tea Party, which she’s not.
Some historical context, the Tea Party first entered the mainstream through Rep. Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign. Paul is a noted crackpot, whose positions were considered among the GOP “fringe.” Silver claims Richardson practices “purity politics” and possesses a “loose grasp if not an outright disdain for the role played by public opinion.” Once again, that would seem to more aptly describe the “Capital-L Left” than Richardson, whose positions and beliefs are fairly mainstream liberalism — hardly the fringe. It’s not “purity politics” to have principled views, nor is it really savvy politics to “find common ground” with Republicans. I know centrists can find this hard to believe, but Donald Trump is historically unpopular.
White, college-educated women accounted for 17 percent of the 2024 electorate, compared to the highly sought white, non-college-educated men who made up 18 percent. Kamala Harris overwhelmingly won the former demographic. White male college graduates, which Trump narrowly carried, were 16 percent of the electorate — though you’d think they were far more considering how many mainstream Democrats glom onto every word from Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and despite all reason Nate Silver.
The Tea Party was an overtly anti-establishment movement. They didn’t just hang Obama in effigy. They were also extremely critical of the Republican leadership, which they believed was too feckless against Obama. However, analogy master Silver writes that “the Richardson wing of the party is as pro-establishment as it gets. Richardson twice interviewed Biden, and there was no pretense of journalistic distance. ‘Mr. President, it’s such a joy to be here with you in this historic room, on this historic day, with a historic president,’ began her 2022 interview. Nor were there any questions about the war in Ukraine, even though Russia had invaded just a day earlier.’”
That is not the Tea Party — a movement that challenged and removed multiple incumbent Republicans before the 2010 midterm rout. It was a total establishment “shellacking.” Silver says that one of the “best critiques” of Richardson comes from “Capital-L Leftist” Nathan J. Robinson, who wrote in his review of her book, Democracy Awakening:
I think Richardson is not nearly critical enough of the Democratic Party, which appears in her story almost entirely innocent and wholly devoted to the well-being of the American people. My own belief is different: I think until we recognize that failures by the Democratic Party helped to bring us Donald Trump, we cannot shore up the country against the authoritarian threat that Richardson and I are both alarmed by.
Silver endorses this view, but Robinson’s position is more akin to the Tea Party than anything Richardson has promoted. He’s especially critical of Richardson’s unwavering support for Biden after his disastrous debate performance last year. If anything, Richardson is more like the establishment Republicans who believed the party was just fine and Obama was a radical socialist Manchurian Candidate president, who all decent people understood was unfit to govern. Yes, Republican voters were angry, but “normal” candidates like Mitt Romney could still harness that anger the “correct way” against Obama. Romney’s 2012 defeat only hardened the Tea Party elements until what would eventually become MAGA. “Richardsonism” is not the faction denouncing establishment Democrats as feckless and demanding major change to a corrupt system. “Richardsonism” is not even like donor kebabs.
The Tea Party was a disproportionately white male, predominately middle-class movement distinguished by its regressive racial views and fear of the future. Although white, college-educated older women have legitimate reasons to fear the future that have nothing to do with Black people in the White House, their activism is passionate but not mindlessly angry. Yet, Silver apparently thinks there’s reasonable grounds for comparison because he finds both groups annoying. That’s not an analogy, but rather indication of a more serious emotional problem.
Firstly, I have no idea why anybody has listened to anything that man has to say, after 2016, when he had Clinton winning by what, 17 points? He should have been ignored ever since but here we are.
Secondly, his categories are fucking ridiculous, like him. Where exactly does Schumer fall? Or say, Cuellar? Or Klobachar? Like, dude, no.
Thirdly, the Tea Party was astro turfed bullshit funded by rich assholes who wanted to keep their taxes down. They pretty much succeeded. HRC is a journalist with a substack. That's not pizza/kebab. That's army/ant.
This is a response to a reply and not SER's criticism of Nate Silver with which I very much concur.
Heather Cox Richardson is not a journalist, but a professor and a historian. So-called "journalistic objectivity"(which FYI does NOT exist) is not applicable to her meticulously sourced and fact-checked writing on Substack. HCR links current events with historical ones to illuminate both.
As for HCR's appeal to "perimenopausal/menopausal/postmenopausal educated White women" - yes, we can read, and the older women she "speaks to", including her, are of the generation that stormed formerly male elite enclaves in education and business AND BTW PAID A STEEP PRICE IN TERMS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND SEXUAL ASSAULT FOR BEING GENDER PIONEERS IN THESE PRIVILEGED PLACES.
Now Nate Silver dismisses us based on our lack of fertility utility - where he would simply use age, not the relative enlargement or disease stage of their prostate and/or reduction in sperm motility for men. Fuck you for this minimizing "dismissal", Nate.
No, these you-better-fucking-believe-we-are- politically-engaged women, who have seen an aggressive health- and life-threatening reversal of reproductive rights and access to abortion care for our daughters and granddaughters - a reversal which further threatens their educational and professional opportunities WHICH WE FOUGHT FOR - are cast by Great White Man Nate Silver as political extremists like the PAID ASTROTURFED TEA PARTY COLONIAL PLAYACTORS who were tools of the political movement that stripped us of reproductive rights and care? Fuck you for that, too, Nate.
Further, many White women voted for Kamala Harris because she was a good, smart, prepared candidate with a policy plan and a moral core, and the Republican alternative was, APPALLINGLY, a corrupt, resentful, compulsively dishonest, convicted felon and legally adjudicated fraudster/sexual abuser. Maybe we didn't want a credibly accused serial sexual assaulter and RAPIST in the White House AGAIN.
Further, if some Black People do not follow HCR, it is likely because there are also highly educated, perceptive and profound Black thinkers and academics who speak more directly to the concerns and history of Black voters. Many of them are also here on Substack and are well worth following, as well.