Joe Scarborough: Glasses aren’t only for smart people anymore.

Joe Scarborough is almost always wrong, but that doesn’t prevent him from being smug and loud. The MSNBC puddinghead (and, oh christ, former congressperson!) likes to cherry pick political polls, especially the less helpful national ones, and sell lazy narratives based on one or two surveys. Lately he’s been peddling the idea that the Presidential election will either be a razor-thin victory for Obama or a rout for Romney, though the statistical evidence doesn’t suggest there’s any reason for the latter position. 

Scarborough has lately taken aim at Five Thirty-Eight pollster Nate Silver whose numbers disagree with his dubious plotline. Because Silver is smart and perceived as liberal, he’s attacked by the right as underhanded in some way. A recent Politico article by Dylan Byers had numerous media figures figures assailing Silver as some sort of hack. He’s not. He’s a bright guy working off an objective model, and he was more accurate during the 2008 election than anyone. It doesn’t mean that he will be correct this time–he has Obama as a heavy favorite–but at least his views are based on hard evidence.

In the Politico article, Scarborough, a human whoopee cushion, labeled Silver as a “joke.” He attacked the analyst’s  methodology without offering a better system because he doesn’t have one–he just makes shit up.  But the cable babbler went further, suggesting that Silver was an “ideologue,” a partisan in the tank for Obama, trying to nudge the election in the direction of his candidate. Without having any proof of such behavior, it was a pretty scurrilous attack. 

When Scarborough endlessly derided Team Obama’s Bain ads in the early summer as being tone-deaf and ineffectual, he was wrong. The commercials had the intended impact. But I don’t recall Silver (or anyone, really) accusing the Republican host of being an ideologue for his opinion. Anything could happen in this election, sure, but if Scarborough is right it would have to be by accident. And even then the way he portrayed Silver will never be right.•