Quick take: Confirmation bias and the Trump endorsement (non) effect

 It is Groundhog primary day.  Need you ask my assessment of Mr. Oz?  Note that I do not grant him the honorific of "Dr."  Frauds and quacks should be stripped of their titles, degrees and positions, yet there is a phenomenon known as "affinity fraud," which is not actually the mutual affinity between frauds.*  Alas, the term is taken, but there should be a similar sounding phrase to describe the mutual affinity between liars, con artists, cheats, and general dingleberries.  Like Mr. Oz and Donald.  Of course Donald endorsed Mehmet.  In social science terminology, this decision was what we call, "over-determined."  Donald endorses based on a variety of factors.

The social science question is whether or not they influence outcomes.  Here is how you arrive at the yes answer.  You look at the times his endorsees win, and throw out all of the observations when his endorsees lose.

In the Ohio Senate primary, I noted that the timing of Vance's rise in the polls did not actually match the timing of Trump's endorsement.  Vance took the lead before Trump endorsed him, but nobody paid any attention to such details because they were so busy rushing to declare Trump's endorsement the deciding factor, and each time I walked a journalist through the process, I pointed the journalist not only to the timing of the polls, but to the observation that the commentariat and the GOP systematically ignore Trump's losses as a wannabe kingmaker.

What happens if, for example, Mr. Oz loses?  Watch.  It'll get explained away in order to maintain the storyline that Trump's endorsement is still some kind of magic pixie dust.  And even if Oz loses, that fucking quack will find a way to package and sell the pixie dust to idiots nationwide.

*It is a specific style of con in which the confidence artist appeals to the sentiment that "I am like you" in order to convince the mark to hand over a bunch of money because similarity, or belief in it, gets converted into trust.