Nate Silver's Interview with John Ziegler

Nate Silver has, over the 2008 election cycle, gained a reputation as the most accurate new poll watcher in the USA. Silver had already become well known in major league baseball circles for his invention of a system he calls PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm), the best Sabermetric predictor anyone has yet invented.

His projections on the Alaska elections this fall, at his web site, FiveThirtyEight.com, were the most accurate in the country, better than our local pollsters', or those from DailyKos, for instance. They were also his most inaccurate. I'll post the YouTube of Silver discussing that with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow at the bottom of this essay.

The main subject of this piece, though, is John Ziegler, the wingnut who interviewed Alaska Governor Sarah Palin last Monday, as part of his most recent, quite likely semi-fictional "documentary," Media Malpractice... How Obama Got Elected."

His most recent finished, or nearly finished "documentary" is called "Blocking the Path to 9/11." In the latter semi-fictional "documentary," Ziegler alleges that the Clintons are behind humongous efforts to keep the truth that was implicit in ABC/Disney's "The Path to 9/11" from being more widely distributed publicly.

The guy is, as members of the McCain inner circle referred to the subject of his Monday interview, a "whackjob." Which brings us back to Nate Silver, who is not a whackjob.

Pollster John Zogby was commissioned by Ziegler to do a poll on 2008 presidential race participants and voters' knowledge on the candidates and issues. Not only did Zogby eventually admit he had been sort of had by Ziegler, but Zogby ended up disowning his own poll.

When Ziegler was alerted to Silver's interest in the poll, he agreed to an interview by Silver. Here's the last part of it, from Silver's web site:

NS: How did you represent yourself to John Zogby?
JZ: As private company, Death-of-Free-Speech-dot-inc which is the name of a book that I wrote.

NS: Did Zogby give you sign-off on the press release that he released on his website?
JZ: I'm not sure what you mean by sign-off. The press release I had input into, yes.

NS: Did you have financing for the project or was it paid for out of pocket?
JZ: It is not self-financed.

NS: Who paid for it?
JZ: You think I'm going to tell you that? When you've already shown yourself to be the enemy?

NS: Was it paid for by the RNC?
JZ: [Laughs]. In your world, the question that I would ask you is what question [in the survey] is there any ambiguity as to what the answer is?

NS: Well, that Obama 'launched his career' at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground --
JZ: That happens to be one of the questions that Obama supporters did the best on! They did better on that question than on any other Obama-related answers! And here you’re telling me that it’s not true?

NS: What do you mean by "launched his career"?
JZ: The first campaign as told by the person whose position he took in the State Senate, as told by her admission, his first campaign event was in the home of Bill Ayers and his wife. [Laughs] Unless you live in the Obama kool-aid world! That is astonishing to me that you would not accept that! And by the way, when you're given four responses to that question, what else was the response going to be? Sarah Palin?

NS: Well, her husband was a member of a secessionist party.
JZ: You are such a hack! That's a very good analogy.

NS: Do you think that certain types of voters are less well informed?
JZ: I think anyone that looks rationally at these poll results would have to conclude that Obama voters are incredibly poorly informed about major issues that occurred during the campaign -- my guess is because McCain voters got their information from different types of media than Obama voters did.

NS: What types of media would you consider credible?
JZ: I think you need a variety of sources, but I do not accept the notion that if it's not in the New York Times it's not true and if it is in the New York Times it is. Just because Sean Hannity says something doesn't mean it’s not true.

NS: What is Barack Obama’s religion?
JZ: You'll have to ask him. But I do know that he never claimed to be a Christian until he met Reverend Wright. And I do believe -- and I’ve never held this against him -- that it would have been highly unlikely for him not to have been registered as a Muslim as a child in Indonsesia but who cares. He did change his website based on that reality –- he was far more ambiguous about that issue on Fight The Smears. I’m an agnostic so I couldn't care less what his religion is. I just care that he lied about it.

NS: When do you think Obama was a Muslim?
JZ: I think he was likely -- registered as a Muslim between the ages of 6 and 10 while he was going to school in Indonesia. It would have been highly unusual for him not to be.

NS: But would you personally consider Obama a Muslim?
JZ: No, because he was a child. We're talking about two totally different things. There's what religion you're born into and there's what religion you become because of your own decisions

NS: Would you consider Obama a Christian?
JZ: You'd have to ask him. There was never any evidence that he was a Christian until he decided to join the church of a racist hate-monger for political purposes.

NS: Would you not believe Barack Obama if he told you he was a Christian?
JZ: Does he believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God who died and was raised from the dead later?

NS: Do you think he’s a believer in Jesus Christ?
JZ: I have no way of knowing that. I don't think there's any evidence that he is, either.

NS: Do you have doubts about Barack Obama's birth certificate?
JZ: I couldn’t care less about that. I accept he was born in Hawaii.

NS: Would you consider yourself well-informed
JZ: I’d consider myself extremely well-informed.

NS: Who are the two senators from South Dakota
JZ: Thune and, uh, Johnson.

NS: Very good. South Carolina?
JZ: Go fuck yourself. I'm done with this interview if you're going to ask me stupid questions like that. Obviously I know who Lindsay Graham is.

NS: Well, since you’re running a website calling people misinformed, I’d like to see if -- there are certain things you’ve said that I would consider misinformed.
JZ: Misinformed? You're a piece of work! You are never going to have the guts to post a representative transcript on your website! I thought you actually ran a legitimate website!

NS: Thank you, have a good day.
JZ: Go fuck yourself.

Ziegler is quite smooth. Score one for Silver to get under this rude asshole's skin. Ziegler's claims on interviews about this issue that Silver is clearly liberal or biased toward Democrats in his work is clearly disingenuous. I doubt Silver's work would have been less accurate in 2008, had Republicans been on an upswing that year.

Ziegler, on the other hand, clearly has a far right agenda.

Here are two YouTubes. The first, produced by Ziegler promotes the upcoming "documentary" which will feature Gov. Palin:


Here is a clip of Nate Silver on the Rachel Maddow show, during which the 2008 Alaska election results were discussed:


...and here's a link to a long, long, contentious Breitbart video of a "debate" between Ziegler and Silver.

images - Silver, wingnut, Ziegler