Bernie Sanders

About Sam Wang, the PEC, and Nate Silver and 538

Reading Time: 3 minutes Anyone with a serious interest in electoral politics ignores the Princeton Election Consortium and one of its founders, Sam Wang (disclosure: he is the son-in-law of close friends of close friends; the only way I would ever have heard of him, without stumbling on him) and speculates about November at his or her peril. It was because of Sam and […]

Bernie the Cuckoo Woodpecker

William Morris embroidery'Acanthus and Vine' embroidery, designed by William Morris, 1879. Victoria and Albert Museum.

Reading Time: 10 minutes Bernie Sanders, if metaphors must be sought, is an amalagam of two colorful, yet successful, species of birds—neither very good as game for humans, but ingenious at perpetuating their kind. The one, the woodpecker, through dogged unstinting persistence in seeking sustenance bug by bug (or, if you like, vote by vote). And the other, the cuckoo, by the audacious strategy […]