Nate Silver: uncertainty

Transcript context

…President. That’s probably about right. Obviously, in some ways, the climate could be as fertile as ever for some type of third candidate running, but Bloomberg, I don’t know. Number one, I’m not sure he differentiates all that well from Clinton, with whom he has a lot in common policy-wise, and Trump, with which he’s kind of the same character. But the most basic problem is that in an election between Sanders and Trump or Clinton and Trump, everything is quite left of center. Trump, when he was thinking about running as an independent in 1999–2000, had an eccentric platform. It involved single-payer health care, a wealth tax. He was anti-immigration, even then, but pro-choice. He said explicitly, “I’m not bound by any party, really. I’ll probably reconsider my stances if I become the Republican nominee.” To me, the more viable candidate in that case would be a Mitt Romney–Condi Rice ticket or something like that. Let’s move past the esoterica and give the people what they really want to hear. Let’s go back to 1968, in the World Series, the manager of the Detroit Tigers, Mayo Smith, he took Mickey Stanley, pulled him out of center field and put him in at shortstop so that Jim Northrup could play center and the recovering Al Kaline, who was the better hitter, future Hall of Famer, could play in right field. No one had ever done this before. You’re advising at that time. How do you start thinking about that problem? You know what I’m talking about, right? You’re from Michigan, of course you do.…

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