fivethirthyeight--2020-07-10--Barcelona Is Struggling. Is Messi Part Of The Problem Or The Solution?

cwick ( Chadwick Matlin , deputy editor ) : English soccer is … sorta boring right now ?
Liverpool has clinched a title and is sorta faffing about on the field .
The race for the final Champions League spot ( assuming Manchester City is barred from participating ) is not that suspenseful .
And we already exalted Chelsea ’ s youth movement last time we chatted .
So rather than dwell in England , let ’ s move south to Spain , if only so you can remind me how little I know about Spanish soccer .
But rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 10 ( am I doing this right ? )
, let ’ s focus mostly on the two titans : Real Madrid and Barcelona .
As of now the FiveThirtyEight club soccer forecast gives Madrid an 85 percent chance of winning the league .
Last I checked , I thought Madrid was a mess !
What happened ?
grace ( Grace Robertson , FiveThirtyEight contributor and author of the Grace on Football newsletter ) : And people say the big European leagues are predictable with the same champions every year .
After seasons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finally getting outsmarted by plucky underdogs Real Madrid .
ryan ( Ryan O ’ Hanlon , FiveThirtyEight contributor and author of the No Grass in the Clouds newsletter ) : The two giant Spanish clubs judge themselves against each other .
Barça saw that Madrid were on the verge of self-sabotaging and they decided , “ Hey , we can be better at that , too !
” tchow : Also was Real Madrid really a mess ?
One ( potentially ) disappointing Champions League campaign does not a mess make .
ryan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ season .
That ’ s pretty messy .
grace : The thing is , this is by no means a great Madrid team .
FiveThirtyEight ’ s model estimates them winning the league with 86 points .
Back in the La Liga halcyon days of 2009-10 , Real Madrid finished second with 96 points .
ryan : It seemed like Madrid had decided to rebuild .
They ’ ve added a bunch of Brazilian teenagers , and they signed some top young , established prospects this past summer .
Then coach Zinedine Zidane @ @ @ @ @ @ @ older , slightly worse versions of the players he won all those Champions Leagues with .
grace : Zidane does the Steve Rogers “ no , I don ’ t think I will ” meme every time someone at Real suggests a rebuild .
tchow : I guess signing a Luka Jović but sticking him on the bench doesn ’ t really count as a “ rebuild.
” grace : I would love to read the chapter in Luka Jović ’ s eventual autobiography about Zidane .
cwick : So are you guys @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s failure than Madrid ’ s success ?
tchow : For sure .
In this La Liga title race discussion , the more intriguing angle is definitely what happened to Barcelona and what ’ s going to happen to Barcelona , and Lionel Messi specifically .
Before the lockdown back in March , our model predicted Barça to finish 2 points ahead of Madrid and gave them a 62 percent chance of winning another title .
grace : Both of these clubs are dysfunctional from the board level down , but Barcelona @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Real Madrid don ’ t have Messi .
tchow : I think you could argue that having Messi HAS helped !
Many saw this dysfunction already happening many years back , probably around the time Josep Bartomeu took over as team president , and having Messi has probably delayed what we ’ re seeing now .
ryan : Barça copied Madrid in another way : They saw Zidane playing all of the old dudes , and now they ’ ve committed the majority of their minutes to a bunch of guys over 30 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this up pretty tidily : Barcelona have made three massive signings since Neymar left : Philippe Coutinho , Ousmane Dembélé , and Antoine Griezmann .
Coutinho … is currently playing for Bayern Munich .
Dembélé hasn ’ t been healthy for an entire season since he arrived .
And , well , the Griezmann signing was a terrible idea from the jump .
cwick : Ryan , how quickly you ’ ve moved on from Frenkie de Jong .
grace : I think about how Barça have sold several players to Everton .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ good enough for Barcelona ended up actually merely being good enough for Everton .
And in terms of the big marquee signings , I don ’ t think Barça has signed one in a long time with a greater thought process than “ he ’ s good and marketable , get him.
” Even someone who worked out , like Luis Suárez , didn ’ t come with a clear plan for how to use him .
tchow : The Griezmann signing is the clearest evidence of this , in my opinion .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ who thrived in a counter-attacking defensive side where he was the primary threat , and put him in a team that has possession all the time and he can ’ t operate in his usual spaces because Messi is there .
tchow : And recently , rumors are the Barça board is sticking with their Griezmann experiment .
WHAT ?
?
ryan : Griezmann was already at the tail end of his prime and was coming out of a super physically demanding system .
Plus , he hadn ’ t produced like a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ signing like that should be a sure thing .
This was not that .
grace : Griezmann is 29 right now and they have him contracted until he ’ s 33 .
My guess is , beyond the ego aspect of not wanting to admit failure , no one in a post-COVID market will pay anything close to Griezmann ’ s salary demands .
So they ’ re stuck with him .
ryan : My favorite fact about this iteration of Barça : Messi leads the team in expected assists .
Second ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
grace : The thing that would worry me the most if I were a Barcelona fan is that these are supposed to be the good years they ’ ll be paying for later .
Short-term gain for long-term pain .
But it ’ s already pretty rough right now .
tchow : They don ’ t have the right personnel to make Griezmann work here .
Suárez is not the same type of strike partner as a Diego Costa or an Olivier Giroud .
As long as Messi is there , Griezzman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if he ’ s not playing up top .
So if Barça is signalling that they are sticking with Griezmann , are we finally seeing the end of Messi ’ s time at Camp Nou ?
ryan : Yeah , rather than mortgaging the future to get the best out of Messi ’ s last few years , they ’ re sabotaging their future AND sabotaging Messi ’ s last few years .
Not great !
tchow : Every time Barça is struggling , you hear the “ Messi is leaving ” conversation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bringing it up AGAIN here but come on , we can ’ t not address it , right ?
It is a lot of noise but the older he gets , the more I believe it could happen .
grace : There ’ s always noise but I find it hard to believe Messi will leave , to be honest .
He isn ’ t happy about the way the club is run and I think we ’ d all agree with him on that .
But it always seems to be a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what end , though ?
grace : Well , he wants them to sign good players , which is understandable .
But he simultaneously demands so much money that it hamstrings the club ’ s ability to sign such players .
ryan : But where would he go ?
I really have no idea .
Pep ’ s City seem like an obvious option , but they might not be in Europe .
Can ’ t see him at PSG .
Bayern don ’ t pay the money they ’ d have to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up with Ronaldo at Juventus ?
ryan : If I ’ m the greatest soccer player of all time , I ’ m not spending my twilight getting yelled at by Antonio Conte .
grace : With all due respect to both figures , I do not think Messi and Conte would see eye to eye .
tchow : Wait Ryan , your GOAT Adama Traoré is rumored to go to Inter too ?
grace : Adama Traoré would be great in that Conte wingback role .
ryan : Adama Traoré has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s what happens when you ’ re the best .
Swap deal for Messi ?
He ’ d look good in those sad orange kits .
tchow : Messi has played and won through managerial issues in the past .
Inter would also partner him with compatriot Lautaro Martínez .
I can see the upside here .
ryan : I want to see old Messi and old Ronaldo playing together at Juventus .
cwick : Remarkably , we ’ ve somehow gone from talking about Spanish soccer to talking about Italian soccer .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Messi paired with Mourinho at Tottenham .
tchow : If Bayern don ’ t have the money to pay Messi ’ s wages , Tottenham might have enough to pay for his cleats .
cwick : And Man United is out of the question ?
ryan : They have Mason Greenwood .
No room for Messi .
grace : Manchester United reportedly turned down Cristiano Ronaldo two years ago because he didn ’ t fit their model of wanting to sign younger players .
Don ’ t see them going for Messi .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t see Messi leaving , and with hundreds of millions sunk into bad transfers already , how does Barça right the ship in time for next season ?
grace : Extremely rare of me to say this , but I think they have the right idea the last couple of games playing Messi as a 10 behind Griezmann and Suarez .
Even if Griezmann isn ’ t a great fit , he can still play better than this .
tchow : Haven ’ t they already tried this 4-4-2 already many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can sense Johan Cruyff turning in his grave as I say this , but I think they should probably play more reactive , counter-attacking football for the next two years , keep it more solid and let Messi wreck teams when needs be .
cwick : What do the stats say are Barcelona ’ s most glaring weaknesses right now ?
ryan : The main issue is that they are sooooooo sloooooooooow .
Their average possession length and the speed at which they move the ball up the field are both way higher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Spain .
They have Messi and Suarez so the attack is still pretty good , but for as much of the ball as they have , they don ’ t create that much .
It ’ s probably partially a “ we can ’ t concede if we have the ball ” thing , too .
They have the fourth-best defense in La Liga , per the FiveThirtyEight model , and that ’ s despite their opponents rarely being able to attack .
grace : Solution to being so slow : Bring Adama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seems like they just need a couple dynamic midfielders and the problems are halfway to being solved ?
ryan : They bought a certain dynamic midfielder last summer and then seemingly told him “ Stop being dynamic.
” grace : That ’ s just Barça DNA , Ryan .
Everyone knows Xavi and Iniesta weren ’ t dynamic at all and never offered any incision in their passing .
ryan : I really think the biggest tactical issue is that there ’ s no one to — NFL lingo incoming — take the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has cropped up a bunch in the Champions League .
Opposing defenses don ’ t really have to respect a ball over the top or through the lines , and that leads to a bunch of knock-on effects both offensively and defensively .
grace : Ansu Fati is so young but he really has looked promising there .
cwick : Maybe it ’ s just this Manchester United game I ’ m watching , but wouldn ’ t Bruno Fernandes have been the kind of player we ’ re talking about ?
grace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ play through Bruno .
United can do that because they ’ ve got nothing else .
Barça , well , they ’ ve got the greatest player of all time they ’ re playing through .
ryan : Let ’ s say Barcelona manages to keep Dembélé healthy and figures out a way to re-integrate Coutinho .
Both are unlikely , but not impossible .
And both would significantly raise the ceiling and buy some time in the future , too .
grace : This would never happen but Barcelona needs a Marcus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
ryan : It ’ s kind of funny that they bought Coutinho because Sadio Mané or Mohamed Salah were actually the players they ended up needing .
grace : Yeah , you add Mané to that left flank in 2018 , the front three becomes Messi-Suarez-Mané , and that ’ s a dangerous attack .
Leroy Sane was just on the market and they weren ’ t even interested .
Now that ’ s a guy who could ’ ve fixed some problems here .
tchow : Grace mentioned Ansu Fati earlier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his clearest position for the squad ?
grace : Yeah , I think so .
But it ’ s asking a lot of a kid .
cwick : I feel obligated to say that Barcelona has a 9 percent chance to win the Champions League , and it ’ s not even out of the Round of 16 yet .
So it ’ s not like this whole campaign is a lost cause .
ryan : If Barça win one Champions League over the next couple years , then I guess you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whatever this is — a success .
grace : I think it will look like a success compared to whatever comes afterwards .
tchow : LOL .
Yeah , Chad .
Watch Real Madrid somehow mess this up and Barça actually end up winning this season anyway .
We can throw this whole chat in the trash .
ryan : Barcelona have so much money that they ’ ll never drop too far , but you ’ re right .
There are , like , maybe five players on the current roster who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ team in four years .
grace : If I were Barcelona president , I ’ d have a chart of AC Milan ’ s Elo over the past 20 years and a sign underneath saying “ IT CAN HAPPEN TO US.
” ryan : Listen , they won the most recent Deloitte Money League .
That counts as a trophy , right ?
grace : It counts if you ’ re Lionel Messi ’ s agent and you can take it into contract negotiations pointing out how much money they have to pay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this chat !
Poor Real Madrid , they can win the league but they can barely summon any ink from us .
ryan : Real Madrid have spent the last 65 years telling us that league titles don ’ t matter to them .
We ’ re just following along .

Barcelona Is Struggling. Is Messi Part Of The Problem Or The Solution?
cwick (Chadwick Matlin, deputy editor): English soccer is … sorta boring right now? Liverpool has clinched a title and is sorta faffing about on the field. The race for the final Champions League spot (assuming Manchester City is barred from participating) is not that suspenseful. And we already exalted Chelsea’s youth movement last time we chatted. So rather than dwell in England, let’s move south to Spain, if only so you can remind me how little I know about Spanish soccer.
But rather than talk about Levante’s false 10 (am I doing this right?), let’s focus mostly on the two titans: Real Madrid and Barcelona. As of now the FiveThirtyEight club soccer forecast gives Madrid an 85 percent chance of winning the league. Last I checked, I thought Madrid was a mess! What happened?
grace (Grace Robertson, FiveThirtyEight contributor and author of the Grace on Football newsletter): And people say the big European leagues are predictable with the same champions every year. After seasons of Barcelona domination, they’re finally getting outsmarted by plucky underdogs Real Madrid.
tchow (Tony Chow, video producer): People LOVE underdog stories.
ryan (Ryan O’Hanlon, FiveThirtyEight contributor and author of the No Grass in the Clouds newsletter): The two giant Spanish clubs judge themselves against each other. Barça saw that Madrid were on the verge of self-sabotaging and they decided, “Hey, we can be better at that, too!”
tchow: Also was Real Madrid really a mess? One (potentially) disappointing Champions League campaign does not a mess make.
ryan: They had three coaches in one season. That’s pretty messy.
grace: The thing is, this is by no means a great Madrid team. FiveThirtyEight’s model estimates them winning the league with 86 points. Back in the La Liga halcyon days of 2009-10, Real Madrid finished second with 96 points.
ryan: It seemed like Madrid had decided to rebuild. They’ve added a bunch of Brazilian teenagers, and they signed some top young, established prospects this past summer. Then coach Zinedine Zidane just decided to play all of the older, slightly worse versions of the players he won all those Champions Leagues with.
grace: Zidane does the Steve Rogers “no, I don’t think I will” meme every time someone at Real suggests a rebuild.
tchow: I guess signing a Luka Jović but sticking him on the bench doesn’t really count as a “rebuild.”
grace: I would love to read the chapter in Luka Jović’s eventual autobiography about Zidane.
cwick: So are you guys saying that this is more about Barça’s failure than Madrid’s success?
grace: One hundred percent.
tchow: For sure. In this La Liga title race discussion, the more intriguing angle is definitely what happened to Barcelona and what’s going to happen to Barcelona, and Lionel Messi specifically.
Before the lockdown back in March, our model predicted Barça to finish 2 points ahead of Madrid and gave them a 62 percent chance of winning another title.
grace: Both of these clubs are dysfunctional from the board level down, but Barcelona have Messi! That should help! Real Madrid don’t have Messi.
tchow: I think you could argue that having Messi HAS helped! Many saw this dysfunction already happening many years back, probably around the time Josep Bartomeu took over as team president, and having Messi has probably delayed what we’re seeing now.
ryan: Barça copied Madrid in another way: They saw Zidane playing all of the old dudes, and now they’ve committed the majority of their minutes to a bunch of guys over 30. But I guess you can sum this up pretty tidily: Barcelona have made three massive signings since Neymar left: Philippe Coutinho, Ousmane Dembélé, and Antoine Griezmann. Coutinho … is currently playing for Bayern Munich. Dembélé hasn’t been healthy for an entire season since he arrived. And, well, the Griezmann signing was a terrible idea from the jump.
cwick: Ryan, how quickly you’ve moved on from Frenkie de Jong.
grace: I think about how Barça have sold several players to Everton. These guys they were convinced would be good enough for Barcelona ended up actually merely being good enough for Everton.
And in terms of the big marquee signings, I don’t think Barça has signed one in a long time with a greater thought process than “he’s good and marketable, get him.” Even someone who worked out, like Luis Suárez, didn’t come with a clear plan for how to use him.
tchow: The Griezmann signing is the clearest evidence of this, in my opinion.
grace: Yes. Get a guy who thrived in a counter-attacking defensive side where he was the primary threat, and put him in a team that has possession all the time and he can’t operate in his usual spaces because Messi is there.
tchow: And recently, rumors are the Barça board is sticking with their Griezmann experiment. WHAT??
ryan: Griezmann was already at the tail end of his prime and was coming out of a super physically demanding system. Plus, he hadn’t produced like a superstar in a couple years. A signing like that should be a sure thing. This was not that.
grace: Griezmann is 29 right now and they have him contracted until he’s 33. My guess is, beyond the ego aspect of not wanting to admit failure, no one in a post-COVID market will pay anything close to Griezmann’s salary demands. So they’re stuck with him.
cwick: Buy high, suffer through the lows.
ryan: My favorite fact about this iteration of Barça: Messi leads the team in expected assists. Second? Arturo Vidal, a 33-year-old box-to-box midfielder.
grace: Arturo Vidal is awesome, though.
grace: The thing that would worry me the most if I were a Barcelona fan is that these are supposed to be the good years they’ll be paying for later. Short-term gain for long-term pain. But it’s already pretty rough right now.
tchow: They don’t have the right personnel to make Griezmann work here. Suárez is not the same type of strike partner as a Diego Costa or an Olivier Giroud. As long as Messi is there, Griezzman is gonna be pushed out wide if he’s not playing up top. So if Barça is signalling that they are sticking with Griezmann, are we finally seeing the end of Messi’s time at Camp Nou?
(For the record, Messi’s current contract is until 2021 but per his contract, he could leave on a Bosman transfer after this season. There are also rumors he has already extended.)
ryan: Yeah, rather than mortgaging the future to get the best out of Messi’s last few years, they’re sabotaging their future AND sabotaging Messi’s last few years. Not great!
tchow: Every time Barça is struggling, you hear the “Messi is leaving” conversation start back up and I apologize for bringing it up AGAIN here but come on, we can’t not address it, right? It is a lot of noise but the older he gets, the more I believe it could happen.
grace: There’s always noise but I find it hard to believe Messi will leave, to be honest. He isn’t happy about the way the club is run and I think we’d all agree with him on that. But it always seems to be a negotiating tactic.
cwick: Negotiating to what end, though?
grace: Well, he wants them to sign good players, which is understandable. But he simultaneously demands so much money that it hamstrings the club’s ability to sign such players.
ryan: But where would he go? I really have no idea. Pep’s City seem like an obvious option, but they might not be in Europe. Can’t see him at PSG. Bayern don’t pay the money they’d have to pay for him, typically. Team up with Ronaldo at Juventus?
tchow: Inter Milan anyone?
grace: Romelu Lukaku shouting “LEO! LEO!”
ryan: If I’m the greatest soccer player of all time, I’m not spending my twilight getting yelled at by Antonio Conte.
grace: With all due respect to both figures, I do not think Messi and Conte would see eye to eye.
tchow: Wait Ryan, your GOAT Adama Traoré is rumored to go to Inter too?
grace: Adama Traoré would be great in that Conte wingback role.
ryan: Adama Traoré has been linked with every club. That’s what happens when you’re the best. Swap deal for Messi? He’d look good in those sad orange kits.
tchow: Messi has played and won through managerial issues in the past. Inter would also partner him with compatriot Lautaro Martínez. I can see the upside here.
ryan: I want to see old Messi and old Ronaldo playing together at Juventus.
cwick: Remarkably, we’ve somehow gone from talking about Spanish soccer to talking about Italian soccer. Somebody ping me when we start imagining Messi paired with Mourinho at Tottenham.
tchow: If Bayern don’t have the money to pay Messi’s wages, Tottenham might have enough to pay for his cleats.
cwick: And Man United is out of the question?
ryan: They have Mason Greenwood. No room for Messi.
tchow: LOL. What an f-ing sentence.
grace: Manchester United reportedly turned down Cristiano Ronaldo two years ago because he didn’t fit their model of wanting to sign younger players. Don’t see them going for Messi.
tchow: All right, if we don’t see Messi leaving, and with hundreds of millions sunk into bad transfers already, how does Barça right the ship in time for next season?
grace: Extremely rare of me to say this, but I think they have the right idea the last couple of games playing Messi as a 10 behind Griezmann and Suarez. Even if Griezmann isn’t a great fit, he can still play better than this.
tchow: Haven’t they already tried this 4-4-2 already many times this season?
grace: I can sense Johan Cruyff turning in his grave as I say this, but I think they should probably play more reactive, counter-attacking football for the next two years, keep it more solid and let Messi wreck teams when needs be.
cwick: What do the stats say are Barcelona’s most glaring weaknesses right now?
ryan: The main issue is that they are sooooooo sloooooooooow. Their average possession length and the speed at which they move the ball up the field are both way higher and lower than any other team in Spain. They have Messi and Suarez so the attack is still pretty good, but for as much of the ball as they have, they don’t create that much. It’s probably partially a “we can’t concede if we have the ball” thing, too. They have the fourth-best defense in La Liga, per the FiveThirtyEight model, and that’s despite their opponents rarely being able to attack.
grace: Solution to being so slow: Bring Adama Home.
cwick: Yeah, this seems like they just need a couple dynamic midfielders and the problems are halfway to being solved?
tchow: All hope lies in Riqui Puig.
ryan: They bought a certain dynamic midfielder last summer and then seemingly told him “Stop being dynamic.”
grace: That’s just Barça DNA, Ryan. Everyone knows Xavi and Iniesta weren’t dynamic at all and never offered any incision in their passing.
ryan: I really think the biggest tactical issue is that there’s no one to — NFL lingo incoming — take the top off the defense. That problem has cropped up a bunch in the Champions League. Opposing defenses don’t really have to respect a ball over the top or through the lines, and that leads to a bunch of knock-on effects both offensively and defensively.
grace: Ansu Fati is so young but he really has looked promising there.
cwick: Maybe it’s just this Manchester United game I’m watching, but wouldn’t Bruno Fernandes have been the kind of player we’re talking about?
grace: I think you really have to play through Bruno. United can do that because they’ve got nothing else. Barça, well, they’ve got the greatest player of all time they’re playing through.
ryan: Let’s say Barcelona manages to keep Dembélé healthy and figures out a way to re-integrate Coutinho. Both are unlikely, but not impossible. And both would significantly raise the ceiling and buy some time in the future, too.
grace: This would never happen but Barcelona needs a Marcus Rashford type more than a Fernandes type.
ryan: It’s kind of funny that they bought Coutinho because Sadio Mané or Mohamed Salah were actually the players they ended up needing.
grace: Yeah, you add Mané to that left flank in 2018, the front three becomes Messi-Suarez-Mané, and that’s a dangerous attack. Leroy Sane was just on the market and they weren’t even interested. Now that’s a guy who could’ve fixed some problems here.
tchow: Grace mentioned Ansu Fati earlier. Wouldn’t left flank be his clearest position for the squad?
grace: Yeah, I think so. But it’s asking a lot of a kid.
cwick: I feel obligated to say that Barcelona has a 9 percent chance to win the Champions League, and it’s not even out of the Round of 16 yet. So it’s not like this whole campaign is a lost cause.
ryan: If Barça win one Champions League over the next couple years, then I guess you’d squint and call all this — whatever this is — a success.
grace: I think it will look like a success compared to whatever comes afterwards.
tchow: LOL. Yeah, Chad. Watch Real Madrid somehow mess this up and Barça actually end up winning this season anyway. We can throw this whole chat in the trash.
ryan: Barcelona have so much money that they’ll never drop too far, but you’re right. There are, like, maybe five players on the current roster who could realistically be core players for this team in four years.
grace: If I were Barcelona president, I’d have a chart of AC Milan’s Elo over the past 20 years and a sign underneath saying “IT CAN HAPPEN TO US.”
ryan: Listen, they won the most recent Deloitte Money League. That counts as a trophy, right?
grace: It counts if you’re Lionel Messi’s agent and you can take it into contract negotiations pointing out how much money they have to pay him.
cwick: Barcelona took over this chat! Poor Real Madrid, they can win the league but they can barely summon any ink from us.
tchow: Underdogs, amirite?
ryan: Real Madrid have spent the last 65 years telling us that league titles don’t matter to them. We’re just following along.
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fivethirthyeight--2020-07-10--Are Supreme Court Justices Influenced By Public Opinion?

In this week ’ s FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast , FiveThirtyEight senior writer Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux joins Galen Druke to look back @ @ @ @ @ term full of consequential cases .

In this week’s FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, FiveThirtyEight senior writer Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux joins Galen Druke to look back at a U.S. Supreme Court term full of consequential cases.


fivethirthyeight--2020-07-10--How Biden Is Winning An Identity Politics Election So Far

After President Trump won the 2016 election , there was a big debate over the role “ identity politics ” played in his victory .
Some scholars argued that many white voters without a college degree — a group that proved pivotal in that election — jumped from supporting then-President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 largely because they liked Trump ’ s framing of identity issues , such as immigration , more than Hillary Clinton ’ s .
After the election , some ( usually white ) liberal and Democratic-leaning voices said that Democrats needed to abandon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defeats like Clinton ’ s .
Other liberal voices ( often Black ) said that Trump had successfully tapped into the racist views of many white Americans .
Both of those perspectives implied that debating issues of identity and race was bad for Clinton and good for Trump , and in the future it would be good for the GOP and bad for Democrats .
Never mind all that , at least for now .
America is talking about identity and race , and so are both presidential candidates .
And all that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , not Republicans .
Joe Biden led Trump by about 6 percentage points in national polls on May 25 , the day a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd .
Biden leads Trump by an average of nearly 10 points now , after weeks of race and racism dominating the national discussion .
Obviously a lot of factors could explain Trump ’ s decline in the polls , most notably the coronavirus outbreak and the president ’ s failure to come up with any real plan to limit the virus ’ s spread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this question : Why aren ’ t identity politics backfiring on Biden and helping Trump ?
It ’ s hard to say for sure , but here are five theories , ordered roughly from strongest to weakest .
Trump is in the White House now Some political science research suggests that public opinion on major issues tends to move against the sitting president .
So if President John Doe says he hates Granny Smith apples , Americans will begin consuming them by the bushel .
And that pattern has already played out with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of immigrants and Obamacare , likely in reaction to the president ’ s attempts to limit immigration and repeal the health care law .
Current polling — and even polls from earlier in the Trump presidency — has shown Americans expressing more liberal views on racial issues .
Those numbers might suggest real change in racial attitudes among Americans .
( More on that in a bit . )
But what looks right now like increasing racial liberalism may really just be anti-Trump sentiment .
If Americans , particularly Democratic-leaning Americans , perceive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protests and to racial justice causes more broadly , they might become more supportive of such causes , consciously or unconsciously , simply as a reaction to the president ’ s sentiments .
So in terms of identity politics and their role in presidential elections , it may have been that a racialized discourse was electorally bad for Democrats when their party controlled the White House , like in 2016 .
But this kind of discourse is fine and perhaps even electorally beneficial for Democrats with a Republican president in office .
Also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Trump is a flawed candidate who was going to struggle in 2020 no matter what issues were dominating the news at the time .
After all , he was viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of voters on Election Day in 2016 , according to exit polls , and he has remained fairly unpopular throughout his presidency .
In 2019 and earlier this year , Democrats spent a lot of time debating which of their potential presidential candidates was most “ electable.
” But Biden ’ s almost-10-point lead suggests that basically any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would likely be leading Trump right now if he or she were the presumptive Democratic nominee .
2016 was a fluke and identity politics don ’ t always hurt Democrats Part of the focus on identity issues as an electoral liability stems from the current makeup of swing states and the Electoral College .
White voters without degrees have become increasingly Republican-leaning and represent a disproportionate share of the electorate in key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin .
So Democrats need to worry more about appealing to white voters without degrees to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would if presidential elections were decided by a simple national plurality vote .
Thus , a lot of post-2016 coverage started from the assumption that Democrats have an identity and race problem because they must appeal to white voters without degrees and that voting bloc — at least based on the 2016 results — seemed to be put off by Democrats ’ approach to identity issues .
But that framing might be wrong , or at least a bit overstated .
Why ?
First , there ’ s an alternate reading of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t an unusually important factor in motivating the white voters who switched to Trump .
Second , the overall racial dynamics of American politics are not that bad for Democrats and perhaps even favorable to them .
Zoom out beyond 2016 and take the long view : The last seven presidential elections have featured four Democratic victories in both the popular vote and the Electoral College ( 1992 , 1996 , 2008 , 2012 ) ; one instance where the GOP won the popular vote and Electoral College ( 2004 ) ; and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which Republicans lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College ( 2000 , 2016 ) .
That long view doesn ’ t look great for Republicans , and identity and race help explain why .
Democrats have been handily winning the vote among Asian , Black and Hispanic Americans , who combined are growing as a share of the electorate .
( The share of nonwhite U.S. voters was about 26 percent in 2016 , compared to about 13 percent in 1980 . )
Democrats ’ status as the party of minorities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the GOP to consolidate an increasingly high percentage of the country ’ s white voters to win elections .
But it isn ’ t easy or necessarily guaranteed that the Republicans will overwhelmingly win the white vote overall or the white non-college vote specifically — even in an election that ’ s centered on race .
The 2017-2018 period was full of racialized political debate , most notably on immigration policy , but the exit polls suggest Democrats lost white voters without a college degree by 24 percentage points in 2018 , compared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far in 2020 , polls show Biden losing white voters without a degree by a margin closer to 20 points .
Meanwhile , Biden might carry white voters with a college degree by a large margin , in part because those voters have been turned off by Trump ’ s approach to racial issues .
Indeed , white voters with a college degree or postgraduate education have been trending Democratic for years , and the GOP approach to race and ethnicity is likely a factor .
In short , the evidence suggests that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never really appealed to people of color in the first place and , outside of November 2016 , it has also been really off-putting to white voters with degrees and not that appealing to white voters without degrees .
It ’ s harder to use Biden as a wedge On policy issues , including those around identity and race , Biden ’ s positions are clearly to the left of the ones Obama ran on in 2008 and arguably to the left of Clinton ’ s in 2016 .
In explicitly promising to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Black woman as Supreme Court justice , Biden has gone beyond Clinton or Obama in terms of allocating very important government posts based on gender and race .
And Biden ’ s rhetoric on racial issues is similar to Clinton ’ s in 2016 .
After Floyd ’ s death , while Trump largely dismissed the protests , Biden called for “ an era of action to reverse systemic racism.
” But Biden is an older white man .
So his identity likely makes it harder for Trump to run an identity-based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , to some extent , incumbent president Obama .
( The Atlantic ’ s Adam Serwer made this argument explicitly in a recent piece . )
Biden does not visually symbolize a changing America the way President Obama did and the way a President Hillary Clinton would have .
Also , Biden has self-consciously positioned himself as a more moderate Democrat and has distanced himself from more liberal elements of the party , including the causes favored by more liberal Black Americans , like defunding the police .
The electorate has really shifted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Trump ’ s identity politics are less effective in 2020 than they were in 2016 because the events of the last four years have resulted in a real leftward shift on racial issues among Americans .
And that shift is fundamental and real , not just about partisanship or anti-Trump sentiment , as I suggested above .
After all , in interviews with reporters , more liberal-leaning people and even some former Trump voters are suggesting that they understand racial inequality more deeply now than ever before .
Institutions are aligned with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , corporations and other elite institutions are typically wary of being perceived as partisan .
But in the wake of Floyd ’ s death , corporate America seems to have decided , for whatever reason , that support for Black Lives Matter and comprehensive , aggressive efforts to reduce racial inequality are either not that partisan or that they ’ re stances worth taking even if they annoy some Republicans .
So at least right now , it ’ s not really Biden and Democrats versus Trump and Republicans on issues of identity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s Biden , Democrats , Facebook , Merck , JPMorgan Chase , Netflix , Nike , Stanford and lots of other major institutions versus Trump and Republicans .
This dynamic is not totally unique to the spring and summer of 2020 .
Major companies in America are often aligned with liberal cultural values — for example , supporting gay marriage even before the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated any remaining bans on same-sex unions .
But even if corporate America ’ s recent posture on racial issues isn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important .
With a lot of major institutions in America echoing his general message , it ’ s not surprising that Biden ’ s identity politics are resonating more than Trump ’ s .
I ’ m writing this article at a particular moment in time .
Perhaps there will be a backlash to the Floyd protests and public opinion will shift .
Maybe Trump will benefit from that .
If Biden picks a female vice presidential nominee , particularly one who is also a person of color , perhaps Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because he ’ ll then have a foil who is more like Clinton and Obama .
Alternatively , Trump could make up ground in the polls due to unrelated issues and factors .
And even if Biden wins , that won ’ t totally answer the question of whether identity politics is bad or good for Democrats .
LIke I said , perhaps basically any Democratic candidate would beat Trump amid a viral outbreak the president mishandled .
All that said , it appears right now that the identity politics of 2020 are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perhaps they weren ’ t too big a problem for Democrats in the first place .
It ’ s hard to prove any of this , but it ’ s an important discussion to have .
In 2008 , it seemed like Democrats won a presidential contest that was largely about race .
But even though the presidential nominees were white in 2016 and 2020 , those may have been more racialized campaigns .
And if the current polls hold up , Democrats , after losing a very racialized campaign , may show @ @ @ @ @ @

Perry Bacon Jr. (perry.bacon@fivethirtyeight.com)

After President Trump won the 2016 election, there was a big debate over the role “identity politics” played in his victory. Some scholars argued that many white voters without a college degree — a group that proved pivotal in that election — jumped from supporting then-President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 largely because they liked Trump’s framing of identity issues, such as immigration, more than Hillary Clinton’s. After the election, some (usually white) liberal and Democratic-leaning voices said that Democrats needed to abandon “identity politics” or face more defeats like Clinton’s. Other liberal voices (often Black) said that Trump had successfully tapped into the racist views of many white Americans. Both of those perspectives implied that debating issues of identity and race was bad for Clinton and good for Trump, and in the future it would be good for the GOP and bad for Democrats.
Never mind all that, at least for now. America is talking about identity and race, and so are both presidential candidates. And all that racial talk seems to be helping Democrats, not Republicans. Joe Biden led Trump by about 6 percentage points in national polls on May 25, the day a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd. Biden leads Trump by an average of nearly 10 points now, after weeks of race and racism dominating the national discussion.
Obviously a lot of factors could explain Trump’s decline in the polls, most notably the coronavirus outbreak and the president’s failure to come up with any real plan to limit the virus’s spread.
But it’s worth exploring this question: Why aren’t identity politics backfiring on Biden and helping Trump? It’s hard to say for sure, but here are five theories, ordered roughly from strongest to weakest.
Trump is in the White House now
Some political science research suggests that public opinion on major issues tends to move against the sitting president. So if President John Doe says he hates Granny Smith apples, Americans will begin consuming them by the bushel. And that pattern has already played out with Trump, with Americans becoming more supportive of immigrants and Obamacare, likely in reaction to the president’s attempts to limit immigration and repeal the health care law.
Current polling — and even polls from earlier in the Trump presidency — has shown Americans expressing more liberal views on racial issues. Those numbers might suggest real change in racial attitudes among Americans. (More on that in a bit.)
But what looks right now like increasing racial liberalism may really just be anti-Trump sentiment. If Americans, particularly Democratic-leaning Americans, perceive that Trump is opposed to the Floyd protests and to racial justice causes more broadly, they might become more supportive of such causes, consciously or unconsciously, simply as a reaction to the president’s sentiments.
[Related: Our 2020 National Polling Averages]
So in terms of identity politics and their role in presidential elections, it may have been that a racialized discourse was electorally bad for Democrats when their party controlled the White House, like in 2016. But this kind of discourse is fine and perhaps even electorally beneficial for Democrats with a Republican president in office.
Also, the story here could simply be that Trump is a flawed candidate who was going to struggle in 2020 no matter what issues were dominating the news at the time. After all, he was viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of voters on Election Day in 2016, according to exit polls, and he has remained fairly unpopular throughout his presidency. In 2019 and earlier this year, Democrats spent a lot of time debating which of their potential presidential candidates was most “electable.” But Biden’s almost-10-point lead suggests that basically any of the other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would likely be leading Trump right now if he or she were the presumptive Democratic nominee.
2016 was a fluke and identity politics don’t always hurt Democrats
Part of the focus on identity issues as an electoral liability stems from the current makeup of swing states and the Electoral College. White voters without degrees have become increasingly Republican-leaning and represent a disproportionate share of the electorate in key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. So Democrats need to worry more about appealing to white voters without degrees to win an Electoral College majority than they would if presidential elections were decided by a simple national plurality vote. Thus, a lot of post-2016 coverage started from the assumption that Democrats have an identity and race problem because they must appeal to white voters without degrees and that voting bloc — at least based on the 2016 results — seemed to be put off by Democrats’ approach to identity issues.
But that framing might be wrong, or at least a bit overstated. Why? First, there’s an alternate reading of the 2016 results that suggests race wasn’t an unusually important factor in motivating the white voters who switched to Trump. Second, the overall racial dynamics of American politics are not that bad for Democrats and perhaps even favorable to them.
Zoom out beyond 2016 and take the long view: The last seven presidential elections have featured four Democratic victories in both the popular vote and the Electoral College (1992, 1996, 2008, 2012); one instance where the GOP won the popular vote and Electoral College (2004); and two kind of fluky GOP wins in which Republicans lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College (2000, 2016).
[Related: How Popular Is President Donald Trump?]
That long view doesn’t look great for Republicans, and identity and race help explain why. Democrats have been handily winning the vote among Asian, Black and Hispanic Americans, who combined are growing as a share of the electorate. (The share of nonwhite U.S. voters was about 26 percent in 2016, compared to about 13 percent in 1980.) Democrats’ status as the party of minorities helps them in some ways, requiring the GOP to consolidate an increasingly high percentage of the country’s white voters to win elections.
But it isn’t easy or necessarily guaranteed that the Republicans will overwhelmingly win the white vote overall or the white non-college vote specifically — even in an election that’s centered on race. The 2017-2018 period was full of racialized political debate, most notably on immigration policy, but the exit polls suggest Democrats lost white voters without a college degree by 24 percentage points in 2018, compared to 37 points in 2016. So far in 2020, polls show Biden losing white voters without a degree by a margin closer to 20 points.
Meanwhile, Biden might carry white voters with a college degree by a large margin, in part because those voters have been turned off by Trump’s approach to racial issues. Indeed, white voters with a college degree or postgraduate education have been trending Democratic for years, and the GOP approach to race and ethnicity is likely a factor.
In short, the evidence suggests that Trump’s approach on racial issues never really appealed to people of color in the first place and, outside of November 2016, it has also been really off-putting to white voters with degrees and not that appealing to white voters without degrees.
It’s harder to use Biden as a wedge
On policy issues, including those around identity and race, Biden’s positions are clearly to the left of the ones Obama ran on in 2008 and arguably to the left of Clinton’s in 2016. In explicitly promising to pick a woman as vice president and a Black woman as Supreme Court justice, Biden has gone beyond Clinton or Obama in terms of allocating very important government posts based on gender and race. And Biden’s rhetoric on racial issues is similar to Clinton’s in 2016. After Floyd’s death, while Trump largely dismissed the protests, Biden called for “an era of action to reverse systemic racism.”
But Biden is an older white man. So his identity likely makes it harder for Trump to run an identity-based campaign against Biden than against Clinton and, to some extent, incumbent president Obama. (The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer made this argument explicitly in a recent piece.) Biden does not visually symbolize a changing America the way President Obama did and the way a President Hillary Clinton would have.
Also, Biden has self-consciously positioned himself as a more moderate Democrat and has distanced himself from more liberal elements of the party, including the causes favored by more liberal Black Americans, like defunding the police.
The electorate has really shifted on racial issues
It’s possible that Trump’s identity politics are less effective in 2020 than they were in 2016 because the events of the last four years have resulted in a real leftward shift on racial issues among Americans. And that shift is fundamental and real, not just about partisanship or anti-Trump sentiment, as I suggested above. After all, in interviews with reporters, more liberal-leaning people and even some former Trump voters are suggesting that they understand racial inequality more deeply now than ever before.
Institutions are aligned with Biden on these issues
Major U.S. businesses, corporations and other elite institutions are typically wary of being perceived as partisan. But in the wake of Floyd’s death, corporate America seems to have decided, for whatever reason, that support for Black Lives Matter and comprehensive, aggressive efforts to reduce racial inequality are either not that partisan or that they’re stances worth taking even if they annoy some Republicans.
So at least right now, it’s not really Biden and Democrats versus Trump and Republicans on issues of identity and race in America; rather, it’s Biden, Democrats, Facebook, Merck, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix, Nike, Stanford and lots of other major institutions versus Trump and Republicans.
[Related: The Latest Political Polls Collected By FiveThirtyEight]
This dynamic is not totally unique to the spring and summer of 2020. Major companies in America are often aligned with liberal cultural values — for example, supporting gay marriage even before the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated any remaining bans on same-sex unions.
But even if corporate America’s recent posture on racial issues isn’t that surprising, it’s still important. With a lot of major institutions in America echoing his general message, it’s not surprising that Biden’s identity politics are resonating more than Trump’s.
I’m writing this article at a particular moment in time. Perhaps there will be a backlash to the Floyd protests and public opinion will shift. Maybe Trump will benefit from that. If Biden picks a female vice presidential nominee, particularly one who is also a person of color, perhaps Trump’s identity tactics will resonate more with voters because he’ll then have a foil who is more like Clinton and Obama. Alternatively, Trump could make up ground in the polls due to unrelated issues and factors.
And even if Biden wins, that won’t totally answer the question of whether identity politics is bad or good for Democrats. Like I said, perhaps basically any Democratic candidate would beat Trump amid a viral outbreak the president mishandled.
All that said, it appears right now that the identity politics of 2020 are a net plus for Democrats — and perhaps they weren’t too big a problem for Democrats in the first place. It’s hard to prove any of this, but it’s an important discussion to have. In 2008, it seemed like Democrats won a presidential contest that was largely about race. But even though the presidential nominees were white in 2016 and 2020, those may have been more racialized campaigns. And if the current polls hold up, Democrats, after losing a very racialized campaign, may show that they can win one.
‘I’m not sure (enthusiasm) will be enough to save (Trump)’ in 2020: Silver


fivethirthyeight--2020-07-09--Dr. Fauci On How The U.S. Is Doing And The Timeline For A COVID-19 Vaccine

Dr. Anthony Fauci , the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , talks to PODCAST-19 host @ @ @ @ @ , how America ’ s response to COVID-19 compares with other countries ’ , and @ @ @ @ @ .
Don ’ t want to miss an episode of PODCAST-19 , FiveThirtyEight ’ s @ @ @ @ @ know — and what we know we don ’ t know — about COVID-19 ?
@ @ @ @ @ app !
For example , here ’ s where to do it on Apple Podcasts @ @ @

Dr. Fauci On How The U.S. Is Doing And The Timeline For A COVID-19 Vaccine
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, talks to PODCAST-19 host Anna Rothschild about political partisanship, how America’s response to COVID-19 compares with other countries’, and the search for a vaccine.
Don’t want to miss an episode of PODCAST-19, FiveThirtyEight’s weekly look at what we know — and what we know we don’t know — about COVID-19? Subscribe on your favorite podcasting app! For example, here’s where to do it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.


fivethirthyeight--2020-07-13--The Supreme Court’s Big Rulings Were Surprisingly Mainstream This Year

The Supreme Court just wrapped up its first full term with two of Trump ’ s nominees on the bench .
But the court ’ s much-anticipated conservative revolution didn ’ t really happen this year .
To be sure , the last few weeks of the term were full of consequential decisions that hinged on just one vote .
But even though there were some fierce disagreements among the justices , the court ’ s final rulings were actually not very controversial at all — at least from the perspective of most Americans .
According to a recent survey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Harvard and the University of Texas , Austin , which asked Americans about central issues facing the court , the justices ’ rulings were in line with public opinion in 8 out of 10 major cases .
There were just two exceptions .
One was in a case that questioned the constitutionality of the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ; the Supreme Court ruled , contrary to a majority of Americans ’ views , that the director of the CFPB was too insulated from executive branch oversight .
The second @ @ @ @ @ @ @ involving subpoenas seeking President Trump ’ s financial records .
A majority of Americans said that the president should not be able to stop his financial documents from being turned over to Congress , but the Supreme Court stopped short of fully siding with the public .
They didn ’ t entirely rule out Congress ’ s ability to subpoena these documents , but they did suggest there are serious limits on what Congress can demand from the president — suggesting he could block people from turning them over in some instances — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ courts .
Maya Sen , a political science professor at Harvard University who helped develop the survey , said she was a little surprised to see that Americans leaned to the left on so many of the cases .
“ It seemed to set the stage for some potential dissonance between public opinion and how the court ’ s conservative majority might rule , ” she said .
And it certainly wasn ’ t hard to imagine that this term ’ s Supreme Court decisions would cut against the prevailing public view on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But that ’ s not what happened .
So what does it mean that so many of the court ’ s high-profile rulings were also pretty mainstream ?
The justices are notoriously tight-lipped about how their decisions are made ( and they probably aren ’ t using this or any other poll to guide their decisions ) , but several of the experts I talked with saw this term as evidence that the Supreme Court isn ’ t immune to the winds of public opinion — particularly in an election year when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ judges came up more than once .
For one thing , there ’ s evidence that it ’ s pretty rare for the Supreme Court to lurch too far from the mainstream .
Several studies have found that the court ’ s ideological tilt generally matches the public ’ s over time .
Of course , that isn ’ t because the justices are trying to tailor their opinions to match Americans ’ views .
These findings could simply indicate that the court is influenced by the same forces that shape public opinion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possible that the demands of public opinion — and concerns about institutional legitimacy — were weighing particularly heavily on Chief Justice John Roberts this year .
After all , the partisan gap in approval of the Supreme Court has widened significantly in recent years .
And research by Peter K. Enns , a political science professor at Cornell University , suggests that nonideological considerations — like public opinion — have more of an impact on the justice who casts the decisive vote in close cases , which was a position Roberts occupied several @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came up multiple times in interviews is that Roberts may have wanted to bolster the image of the court as nonpartisan this term so it would have more freedom to release unpopular opinions in the future .
“ I think Roberts in particular is probably concerned about tarnishing the court with the reputation of being a wildly political branch that makes decisions the public doesn ’ t like , ” said Tom Clark , a political scientist at Emory University who studies the Supreme Court ’ s relationship with public opinion .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s legitimacy and build up a reservoir of goodwill so they can make unpopular decisions in the future without having it blow up in their face.
” Trump ’ s penchant for publicly asserting that judges are mere political actors may not have helped , either .
“ The fact that Trump is president and he is really explicit about characterizing the courts as political institutions could be a factor for Roberts , ” Enns said .
“ You have to wonder — would he feel more flexibility in his decisions if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politicization of the courts ?
” But another way to look at this term is that the court came very close to releasing some pretty unpopular opinions .
For instance , Roberts joined the liberal justices to cast the deciding vote in two of the most high-profile cases this term , which dealt with abortion rights and Trump ’ s ability to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program .
This was significant because in both of those cases , the other conservative justices made it clear that they would have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And Roberts ’ s rulings in both of those cases were very narrow , which suggests he might be open to other challenges to abortion rights or another attempt by the Trump administration to end DACA .
So this wasn ’ t the year that the court ’ s new conservative majority took a swing to the right .
That doesn ’ t mean it won ’ t happen in the future .
But this term suggests that as long as Roberts is the deciding vote , we could be in for more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t see a slew of opinions that run counter to the country ’ s general mood .

The Supreme Court just wrapped up its first full term with two of Trump’s nominees on the bench. But the court’s much-anticipated conservative revolution didn’t really happen this year. To be sure, the last few weeks of the term were full of consequential decisions that hinged on just one vote. But even though there were some fierce disagreements among the justices, the court’s final rulings were actually not very controversial at all — at least from the perspective of most Americans.
According to a recent survey by a group of researchers at Stanford, Harvard and the University of Texas, Austin, which asked Americans about central issues facing the court, the justices’ rulings were in line with public opinion in 8 out of 10 major cases.
There were just two exceptions. One was in a case that questioned the constitutionality of the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; the Supreme Court ruled, contrary to a majority of Americans’ views, that the director of the CFPB was too insulated from executive branch oversight. The second was in one of the two rulings involving subpoenas seeking President Trump’s financial records. A majority of Americans said that the president should not be able to stop his financial documents from being turned over to Congress, but the Supreme Court stopped short of fully siding with the public. They didn’t entirely rule out Congress’s ability to subpoena these documents, but they did suggest there are serious limits on what Congress can demand from the president — suggesting he could block people from turning them over in some instances — and punted it back to the lower courts.
[Related: Is The Supreme Court Heading For A Conservative Revolution?]
Maya Sen, a political science professor at Harvard University who helped develop the survey, said she was a little surprised to see that Americans leaned to the left on so many of the cases. “It seemed to set the stage for some potential dissonance between public opinion and how the court’s conservative majority might rule,” she said. And it certainly wasn’t hard to imagine that this term’s Supreme Court decisions would cut against the prevailing public view on issues like abortion or gay rights.
But that’s not what happened. So what does it mean that so many of the court’s high-profile rulings were also pretty mainstream? The justices are notoriously tight-lipped about how their decisions are made (and they probably aren’t using this or any other poll to guide their decisions), but several of the experts I talked with saw this term as evidence that the Supreme Court isn’t immune to the winds of public opinion — particularly in an election year when the possibility of court-packing and term limits for judges came up more than once.
FiveThirtyEight Politics: Conservatives didn’t get the SCOTUS they wanted this term
For one thing, there’s evidence that it’s pretty rare for the Supreme Court to lurch too far from the mainstream. Several studies have found that the court’s ideological tilt generally matches the public’s over time. Of course, that isn’t because the justices are trying to tailor their opinions to match Americans’ views. These findings could simply indicate that the court is influenced by the same forces that shape public opinion overall.
But it’s also possible that the demands of public opinion — and concerns about institutional legitimacy — were weighing particularly heavily on Chief Justice John Roberts this year. After all, the partisan gap in approval of the Supreme Court has widened significantly in recent years. And research by Peter K. Enns, a political science professor at Cornell University, suggests that nonideological considerations — like public opinion — have more of an impact on the justice who casts the decisive vote in close cases, which was a position Roberts occupied several times this year.
[Related: Can The Supreme Court Stay Above The Partisan Fray?]
One explanation that came up multiple times in interviews is that Roberts may have wanted to bolster the image of the court as nonpartisan this term so it would have more freedom to release unpopular opinions in the future. “I think Roberts in particular is probably concerned about tarnishing the court with the reputation of being a wildly political branch that makes decisions the public doesn’t like,” said Tom Clark, a political scientist at Emory University who studies the Supreme Court’s relationship with public opinion. “He perhaps wants to preserve the court’s legitimacy and build up a reservoir of goodwill so they can make unpopular decisions in the future without having it blow up in their face.”
Trump’s penchant for publicly asserting that judges are mere political actors may not have helped, either. “The fact that Trump is president and he is really explicit about characterizing the courts as political institutions could be a factor for Roberts,” Enns said. “You have to wonder — would he feel more flexibility in his decisions if there wasn’t so much active politicization of the courts?”
[Related: Who Can Stop The Supreme Court?]
But another way to look at this term is that the court came very close to releasing some pretty unpopular opinions. For instance, Roberts joined the liberal justices to cast the deciding vote in two of the most high-profile cases this term, which dealt with abortion rights and Trump’s ability to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. This was significant because in both of those cases, the other conservative justices made it clear that they would have been happy to go the other way. And Roberts’s rulings in both of those cases were very narrow, which suggests he might be open to other challenges to abortion rights or another attempt by the Trump administration to end DACA.
So this wasn’t the year that the court’s new conservative majority took a swing to the right. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. But this term suggests that as long as Roberts is the deciding vote, we could be in for more terms like this one, where we don’t see a slew of opinions that run counter to the country’s general mood.


fivethirthyeight--2020-07-13--The Dodgers’ Legacy May Depend On This Short Season

The impending return of baseball has fans everywhere excited , but it has also set off a series of more specific , if still tentative , celebrations .
Yankees fans hope to get their first look at Gerrit Cole , Angels fans at Anthony Rendon and Joe Maddon , everyone else at the sight of the Astros facing opposing pitchers ( if not hearing opposing crowds ) .
Dodgers fans make up maybe the most relieved subset ; they ’ ll likely get to watch Mookie Betts , acquired from the Red Sox in a February trade , suit up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrived with one year left on his contract , and a canceled season might have meant the 2018 American League MVP would never play a game in blue .
That outcome would have been of a piece with an era of L.A. baseball marked by squandered promise .
The Dodgers of recent vintage have employed the most decorated pitcher of his generation ( Clayton Kershaw ) , a still pre-prime MVP ( Cody Bellinger ) and an auto-refreshing cast of high-end complements .
They ’ ve won the National League West for seven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ ve transitioned from a luxe stars-and-scrubs outfit to one of the sport ’ s most accomplished developers of talent .
Had they capped even one of those seasons with a title , they would have stood as the most consistently successful team of the 2010s , and the upcoming 60-game slate might have meant little more than an opportunity to burnish established bona fides .
But as things are , no franchise has more at stake , with the truncated 2020 season representing L.A. ’ s weirdest , best chance at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2015 , the Dodgers weren ’ t baseball ’ s premier team , maxing out at 94 wins in 2014 , but they may have been its flashiest .
In the afterglow of Frank McCourt ’ s long-awaited sale of the franchise in 2012 , L.A. had swung big trades for Hanley Ramírez and Adrián González , retooling the middle of its batting order on the fly .
That offseason , the Dodgers signed Zack Greinke to join Kershaw , pairing Cy Young winners at the top of the rotation .
In June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Puig , whose auspicious debut ended with him running down a warning-track fly ball and , still backpedaling , firing it to first for the game ’ s final two outs .
Pitching powered things ; Kershaw and Greinke combined over those three seasons to produce 44.5 wins above replacement , and González ’ s 12.8 WAR led L.A. ’ s position players over that stretch .
Still , in name recognition and salary — their nearly $ 240 million payroll led baseball in 2013 , and that number ballooned to $ 246 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ next two seasons — the outline of a superteam was there .
But so too were the archetypal superteam ’ s flaws .
In 2013 , the Dodgers lost a National League Championship Series to the Cardinals ( payroll : $ 121 million ) that was close until it wasn ’ t ; in the deciding Game 6 , Kershaw allowed seven earned runs and Puig committed two errors in a 9-0 loss .
In 2014 and 2015 , L.A. lost in the divisional round to the Cardinals ( again $ 121 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , with both deciding games ending 3-2 .
Kershaw ’ s playoff struggles gained narrative traction , never mind that six of his eight outings over the three postseasons were quality starts , but the Dodgers asked more of him than a team with a quarter-billion-dollar budget had any business doing .
During the regular seasons , L.A. ’ s offense had trended closer to league average than its reputation suggested ; in the playoff series it lost , it floundered , putting up only 3.1 runs per game .
In October @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president and set about addressing that point .
Friedman had made his name with the Tampa Bay Rays , and he brought that franchise ’ s talent for patience and opportunism to the club with the sport ’ s deepest pockets .
“ I think large-revenue teams can sometimes fall into a trap of focusing too much on the current , ” Friedman told the Los Angeles Times in 2016 .
“ We feel like our responsibility is to do everything we can to sustain a certain level of success — as you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a seven-year period , a 10-year period.
” High-priced veterans were let go ; Ramírez left after 2014 , and Greinke followed a year later .
The Dodgers ’ new core began to emerge in the form of reclamation projects and whiz-kid prospects .
L.A. had taken a flyer on 29-year-old Mets castoff Justin Turner in 2014 , and , slotting his swing a few ticks higher on the protractor , he ’ s since put up a .302/.381/.506 slash line over his time in L.A. Corey Seager , the team ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was called up in 2015 to play a rangy short and crack doubles to all fields ; Walker Buehler , 2015 ’ s first-round pick , reached the majors in 2017 with a spiteful fastball/curve combo .
What had been a top-heavy team has filled out with players for seemingly every purpose .
Joc Pederson wallops righties .
Chris Taylor provides quality play as a stopgap at whichever position .
Max Muncy , formerly a Quad-A-er with the Oakland A ’ s , has turned into a strike-zone savant , and Bellinger progressed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in two seasons .
Dave Roberts , who replaced Don Mattingly as manager after the team ’ s 2015 NLDS loss to the Mets , has a knack for converting roster depth to on-field flexibility , making liberal use of platoons and defensive shifts .
These more sustainable Dodgers have tightened their grip on the division , tallying 104 , 92 and 106 wins from 2017 to 2019 .
But the postseasons have still disappointed , even if they ’ ve no longer had the feel of glitz vs. grit parables .
2017 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in an insta-iconic seven-game World Series that at the time felt unlucky — somebody had to lose — and that now leaves a more sour taste .
The 2018 Dodgers made it back to the Series but lost to the buzzsaw Red Sox .
In the deciding game of last year ’ s division series against the Nationals , L.A. reverted to unfortunate form .
Kershaw came on in relief in the eighth inning and surrendered a pair of homers that tied the score .
Some curious bullpen decisions and a Howie Kendrick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another in a line of teams with superior odds to fall to the eventual champs .
If anything , the airtightness of the franchise ’ s recent construction seems to have made the letdowns harder to stomach .
“ It ’ s a terrible feeling , ” Kershaw said after the loss to Washington .
“ There ’ s no excuses.
” He ’ s right .
The 2019 Dodgers led the National League in both runs scored and runs allowed , setting an NL record for homers in the process ; they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sunk the team earlier in the decade .
Their streak of consecutive division titles stands as the longest of all time without a championship .
In the most forgiving terms , things are still going according to plan .
L.A. ’ s window of contention is unlikely to close anytime soon , and in a sport whose postseason involves more randomness than any other ’ s , maximizing opportunity remains the best strategy .
“ Winning seven division titles in a row is almost harder than winning the World Series , ” Dodgers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me .
Hershiser , the Series MVP from the team ’ s last championship in 1988 , noted the primacy of luck in the postseason : “ Just keep giving yourself a chance on that smaller roulette wheel.
” Still , baseball has a unique ability to test conviction .
Where the Betts deal looks from one perspective like a team of sizable resources simply seizing opportunity , it also suggests a certain all-in culmination .
Every year , Kershaw is a little more removed from who he once was .
The font @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forever .
Dream lineups succumb to injury ; Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton , the latest Best Duo Ever , have started just 117 games together over two seasons .
The 2020 Dodgers may represent a rare opportunity , the crest of a franchise ’ s talent-rich era .
Even before the Betts trade , as Travis Sawchik wrote for FiveThirtyEight , the Dodgers were projected to win 112 games , 10 more than the next-closest NL team .
A simulated season run by Out of the Park developments has them sitting at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ albeit aided by a 2.60 ERA from David Price , who has said he will sit out the real-life 2020 campaign .
[ Related : 60 Games Aren ’ t Enough To Crown The Best MLB Team .
But Neither Are 162 Games . ]
It ’ s easy to envision the Dodgers tearing through the upcoming short season , particularly with the addition of the designated hitter .
They have the look of champs : Buehler ’ s four-seamer is a soldering iron , Kershaw ’ s slider a magic trick .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ pitch to Bellinger ’ s left-handed uppercut swing or Betts ’ s right-handed slice , let alone deal with both in the same inning .
“ Depth is key , because [ L.A. ] could sustain that key injury where another team without depth can not , ” Hershiser said .
“ I think the DH is to the Dodgers ’ advantage.
” But even without the expanded postseason proposed in earlier iterations of comeback plans , the concentrated schedule figures to sand away some of the other benefits of excellence .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Dodgers , or it might not matter .
As is so often the case in baseball , the explanation will be retrofitted to the events .
If they lift the Commissioner ’ s Trophy in October , even to an empty stadium , there will be a sense of tidy resolution , of processes paying off .
If a short-season interloper takes them down , it will be just one more instance of baseball wriggling free of even the best-laid plans .

The impending return of baseball has fans everywhere excited, but it has also set off a series of more specific, if still tentative, celebrations. Yankees fans hope to get their first look at Gerrit Cole, Angels fans at Anthony Rendon and Joe Maddon, everyone else at the sight of the Astros facing opposing pitchers (if not hearing opposing crowds). Dodgers fans make up maybe the most relieved subset; they’ll likely get to watch Mookie Betts, acquired from the Red Sox in a February trade, suit up for their team after all. Betts arrived with one year left on his contract, and a canceled season might have meant the 2018 American League MVP would never play a game in blue.
That outcome would have been of a piece with an era of L.A. baseball marked by squandered promise. The Dodgers of recent vintage have employed the most decorated pitcher of his generation (Clayton Kershaw), a still pre-prime MVP (Cody Bellinger) and an auto-refreshing cast of high-end complements. They’ve won the National League West for seven straight years, a stretch during which they’ve transitioned from a luxe stars-and-scrubs outfit to one of the sport’s most accomplished developers of talent. Had they capped even one of those seasons with a title, they would have stood as the most consistently successful team of the 2010s, and the upcoming 60-game slate might have meant little more than an opportunity to burnish established bona fides. But as things are, no franchise has more at stake, with the truncated 2020 season representing L.A.’s weirdest, best chance at salvaging an almost-dynasty.
From 2013 to 2015, the Dodgers weren’t baseball’s premier team, maxing out at 94 wins in 2014, but they may have been its flashiest. In the afterglow of Frank McCourt’s long-awaited sale of the franchise in 2012, L.A. had swung big trades for Hanley Ramírez and Adrián González, retooling the middle of its batting order on the fly. That offseason, the Dodgers signed Zack Greinke to join Kershaw, pairing Cy Young winners at the top of the rotation. In June 2013, the team called up Yasiel Puig, whose auspicious debut ended with him running down a warning-track fly ball and, still backpedaling, firing it to first for the game’s final two outs. Pitching powered things; Kershaw and Greinke combined over those three seasons to produce 44.5 wins above replacement, and González’s 12.8 WAR led L.A.’s position players over that stretch. Still, in name recognition and salary — their nearly $240 million payroll led baseball in 2013, and that number ballooned to $246 million and $303 million over the next two seasons — the outline of a superteam was there.
But so too were the archetypal superteam’s flaws. In 2013, the Dodgers lost a National League Championship Series to the Cardinals (payroll: $121 million) that was close until it wasn’t; in the deciding Game 6, Kershaw allowed seven earned runs and Puig committed two errors in a 9-0 loss. In 2014 and 2015, L.A. lost in the divisional round to the Cardinals (again $121 million) and Mets ($116 million), with both deciding games ending 3-2. Kershaw’s playoff struggles gained narrative traction, never mind that six of his eight outings over the three postseasons were quality starts, but the Dodgers asked more of him than a team with a quarter-billion-dollar budget had any business doing. During the regular seasons, L.A.’s offense had trended closer to league average than its reputation suggested; in the playoff series it lost, it floundered, putting up only 3.1 runs per game.
[Related: Do Baseball’s Labor Fights Drive Fans Away?]
In October 2014, Andrew Friedman arrived as team president and set about addressing that point. Friedman had made his name with the Tampa Bay Rays, and he brought that franchise’s talent for patience and opportunism to the club with the sport’s deepest pockets. “I think large-revenue teams can sometimes fall into a trap of focusing too much on the current,” Friedman told the Los Angeles Times in 2016. “We feel like our responsibility is to do everything we can to sustain a certain level of success — as you look at it over a five-year period, a seven-year period, a 10-year period.”
High-priced veterans were let go; Ramírez left after 2014, and Greinke followed a year later. The Dodgers’ new core began to emerge in the form of reclamation projects and whiz-kid prospects. L.A. had taken a flyer on 29-year-old Mets castoff Justin Turner in 2014, and, slotting his swing a few ticks higher on the protractor, he’s since put up a .302/.381/.506 slash line over his time in L.A. Corey Seager, the team’s top draft pick in 2012, was called up in 2015 to play a rangy short and crack doubles to all fields; Walker Buehler, 2015’s first-round pick, reached the majors in 2017 with a spiteful fastball/curve combo. What had been a top-heavy team has filled out with players for seemingly every purpose. Joc Pederson wallops righties. Chris Taylor provides quality play as a stopgap at whichever position. Max Muncy, formerly a Quad-A-er with the Oakland A’s, has turned into a strike-zone savant, and Bellinger progressed from Rookie of the Year to MVP in two seasons. Dave Roberts, who replaced Don Mattingly as manager after the team’s 2015 NLDS loss to the Mets, has a knack for converting roster depth to on-field flexibility, making liberal use of platoons and defensive shifts.
[Related: Lou Whitaker Turned A Damn Good Double Play]
These more sustainable Dodgers have tightened their grip on the division, tallying 104, 92 and 106 wins from 2017 to 2019. But the postseasons have still disappointed, even if they’ve no longer had the feel of glitz vs. grit parables. 2017 ended with a loss to the Astros in an insta-iconic seven-game World Series that at the time felt unlucky — somebody had to lose — and that now leaves a more sour taste. The 2018 Dodgers made it back to the Series but lost to the buzzsaw Red Sox. In the deciding game of last year’s division series against the Nationals, L.A. reverted to unfortunate form. Kershaw came on in relief in the eighth inning and surrendered a pair of homers that tied the score. Some curious bullpen decisions and a Howie Kendrick grand slam later, the Dodgers became another in a line of teams with superior odds to fall to the eventual champs.
If anything, the airtightness of the franchise’s recent construction seems to have made the letdowns harder to stomach. “It’s a terrible feeling,” Kershaw said after the loss to Washington. “There’s no excuses.” He’s right. The 2019 Dodgers led the National League in both runs scored and runs allowed, setting an NL record for homers in the process; they had none of the below-the-surface weaknesses that sunk the team earlier in the decade. Their streak of consecutive division titles stands as the longest of all time without a championship.
[Related: Does A Short-Season MLB Champ Deserve An Asterisk?]
In the most forgiving terms, things are still going according to plan. L.A.’s window of contention is unlikely to close anytime soon, and in a sport whose postseason involves more randomness than any other’s, maximizing opportunity remains the best strategy. “Winning seven division titles in a row is almost harder than winning the World Series,” Dodgers announcer and former ace Orel Hershiser told me. Hershiser, the Series MVP from the team’s last championship in 1988, noted the primacy of luck in the postseason: “Just keep giving yourself a chance on that smaller roulette wheel.”
Still, baseball has a unique ability to test conviction. Where the Betts deal looks from one perspective like a team of sizable resources simply seizing opportunity, it also suggests a certain all-in culmination. Every year, Kershaw is a little more removed from who he once was. The font of elite prospects can’t flow forever. Dream lineups succumb to injury; Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, the latest Best Duo Ever, have started just 117 games together over two seasons. The 2020 Dodgers may represent a rare opportunity, the crest of a franchise’s talent-rich era. Even before the Betts trade, as Travis Sawchik wrote for FiveThirtyEight, the Dodgers were projected to win 112 games, 10 more than the next-closest NL team. A simulated season run by Out of the Park developments has them sitting at an MLB-best 70-23 through July 8, albeit aided by a 2.60 ERA from David Price, who has said he will sit out the real-life 2020 campaign.
[Related: 60 Games Aren’t Enough To Crown The Best MLB Team. But Neither Are 162 Games.]
It’s easy to envision the Dodgers tearing through the upcoming short season, particularly with the addition of the designated hitter. They have the look of champs: Buehler’s four-seamer is a soldering iron, Kershaw’s slider a magic trick. Nobody has yet found a way to pitch to Bellinger’s left-handed uppercut swing or Betts’s right-handed slice, let alone deal with both in the same inning. “Depth is key, because [L.A.] could sustain that key injury where another team without depth cannot,” Hershiser said. “I think the DH is to the Dodgers’ advantage.” But even without the expanded postseason proposed in earlier iterations of comeback plans, the concentrated schedule figures to sand away some of the other benefits of excellence.
That might prove one more unlucky break for the Dodgers, or it might not matter. As is so often the case in baseball, the explanation will be retrofitted to the events. If they lift the Commissioner’s Trophy in October, even to an empty stadium, there will be a sense of tidy resolution, of processes paying off. If a short-season interloper takes them down, it will be just one more instance of baseball wriggling free of even the best-laid plans.
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fivethirthyeight--2020-07-14--Politics Podcast: COVID-19 Deaths Are Rising. What Will The U.S. Do?

After more than two months of decline , the number of Americans dying from COVID-19 is increasing .
In this @ @ @ @ @ podcast , the crew discusses how Americans think the U.S. should respond to the crisis @ @ @ @ @ other politicians are in agreement .
They also interrogate a lesson that some Democrats took @ @ @ @ @ — that the party should focus less on “ identity politics.
” You can listen @ @ @ @ @ the “ play ” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in @ @ @ @ @ or your favorite podcast platform .
If you are new to podcasts , learn how @ @ @ @ @ Politics podcast publishes Mondays and Thursdays .
Help new listeners discover the show by leaving @ @ @ @ @ on iTunes .
Have a comment , question or suggestion for “ good polling vs. @ @ @ @ @ in touch by email , on Twitter or in the comments .

After more than two months of decline, the number of Americans dying from COVID-19 is increasing. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses how Americans think the U.S. should respond to this crisis and whether President Trump and other politicians are in agreement. They also explore a lesson some Democrats took away from the 2016 election — that the party should focus less on identity politics.
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: COVID-19 deaths are rising. What will the U.S. do?
You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.