Nate Silver tries to fill the role of Hari Seldon, mathematical models to tease out likelihoods, predicting the future for all to see, and leaving it up to others to carry out what he engineered.
Of course, we see he is no real Hari Seldon, he got the Rise of Donald Trump wrong. Trump is something different, he is our nations version of the MULE. Except this time, the Mule won and took over a party, it remains to be seen whether the forces of reason and light can stop his domination. But is there a second foundation?
We certainly have no Salvor Hardins on the democratic side, and I think you’d need even more to stop a Trump, so who, what can do it?
… you never encountered the mule? He has special powers that allow him to take over in ways other mortal men cannot. Trump does not have mental powers but… he has something that gives him the sway to defy gravity and win the day.
As for the OP - I’m pretty sure that there’s a mathematical model that would predict how often a human expert sometimes gets mathematical models wrong. Being wrong from time to time is how we know that Nate is not an android.
It’s not a bad analogy. I actually kinda like it, as far as it goes. I don’t think it goes very far, but it’s a fun idea. Plus we get to call Trump a mule.
In essence, the comparison is made because Trump’s success defies logic and, like the Mule’s, is explainable only through the application of mutant powers.
Nate Silver is a smart man, but like me, he totally underestimated the power of the immigration issue. And its easy o understand why. He works in a field, and lives among a class of people, in which illegal immigration is seen as either unimportant or as a positive boon.