I don’t see this as a particularly significant prediction, but the handwaving by people who take Silver’s happier predictions as gospel is rather amusing.
Two differences: Nate Silver is not a Republican, and a 60 percent chance of picking up six seats, a bare majority, is not a “tsunami.” The Republicans as electoral predictors have little or no cred with me. Nate Silver tends to get things right.
Well, going back to the OP’s (a fine fellow, I hear) link:
It isn’t even a prediction, just an analysis of probabilities based on data available at the time, and which he acknowledges could change dramatically. 6 +/- 5? Come on now.
It’s also amusing, and rather disappointing, to see the number of people who consider Silver a rare genius just because he’s applying tools available to anyone who’s taken a college-level statistics class. Nothing he does is magical or complex or even nearly cutting-edge. He just happens to be articulate about it.
Well, of course, the prediction is not a fait accompli. But from someone with Silver’s track record, it’s at LEAST a dire warning. If there are any national Democratic leaders who had even the tiniest shred of complacency about retaining control of the Senate, they should now be running around like their hair was on fire screaming at the top of their lungs, “WE ARE SCREWED IF WE DON’T STEP UP OUR GAME BIG TIME!”
Sure, it’s many months until November. And a Senate Republican candidate or three may stick their foot in their mouths with some outrageously stupid/evil pronouncement that will destroy his or her cred with the voters. Republicans have a history of doing that of late, partly because their bubble has become so complete that their world view is out of step with the rest of us. But counting on your opponent to make major mistakes is not a winning strategy. It’s a loser’s strategy.
Yeah, but he gets things right, and he does not seem to be blinkered by partisanship either way. He goes with the numbers whatever they are. In the world of politics, that’ll do.
It’s not handwaving, it’s just a very ambiguous prediction. 60% is not a guarantee, 6 ±5 is a huge margin of error and the election is still plenty far away. To put it another way, if Silver had given those same odds to the democrats do you think anyone here would take it a guarantee that we were going to win six seats in november? i really really doubt that.
See the article linked in post #5.
Can you point to some?
It should be a wake up call for Democratic fundraisers. A lot can and probably will happen in the next 7 months, but if Democrats don’t take the warning seriously, we’ll have only ourselves to blame.
Last time, Nate included a factor measuring the impact of voter suppression. Did he do that with this as well?
I see no mention of that here.
You’re right, but it’s both surprising and shameful that any of that is so rare. It *should *be a basic expectation.
I’m not sure that this is true. As long as Obama is in the whitehouse, the Republicans can’t get their legislation past his veto. So there isn’t that great an incentive for the Democrats in the senate to Filibuster, since that just makes them look obstructionist. The only way that the Senate is going to filibuster is if there was some moderate right of center legislation that they don’t like but the president doesn’t oppose. But I doubt there is going to be too much of that kind of legislation, so the Republicans won’t need to end the filibuster.
If things changed so that Republicans controlled the presidency, then the filibuster would be gone as soon as they could write a bill banning abortions on embryos older than three weeks.
Yes, I’m very open about my bias. Republicans have shown they cannot be trusted with power, Democrats can, for the most part. The difference, I always say, is that reality supports the Democratic side most of the time.
Unless the Dems achieve a reliable hold on power. Then the unprincipled and ambitious will pretend to care about Democrat values.
Brother you ain’t whistling dixie. I’m getting a couple of emails per day from various fundraising groups (and some calls)…the hook is ALWAYS some variant of ‘Silver says we’re gonna lose! Only you can prove him wrong by sending cash!’
Oy.
The OP’s link stinks. 
I go to the source, and here is what was left off in your cite:
Emphasis added.
No, but no one said “guarantee” did they? And Silver does not make such pronouncements lightly. He’s saying, “Here is what the numbers are saying right now.” Democrats will put their hands over their ears at their peril.
Actually, you can see right on the video where Silver says he thinks the Republicans will win six seats.
I have faith in the Republicans’ recent predilection to step on their own tummy banana between now and November. I can’t imagine a great deal of veterans are pleased with them cutting vets’ benefits, and the more they try to repeal ACA the worse it makes them look.
Let’s see what Nate says in August.