There are lots of reasons Ocasio-Cortez drives certain Republicans crazy, foremost among them her race and gender. But it's also that she's quintessentially a New Yorker and DC political culture is formal and prudish when NYC mostly isn't those things.
If you don't regard the first sentence of Silver's tweet as beyond the pale, you may be beyond the pale yourself. It is, in the parlance of our times, a prime instance of assuming the worst about an opponent. On top of that, the empirical support for it is non-existent, seeing as how all the empirical evidence points to the primary cause of Republican reaction to AOC being her status as a self-identified democratic socialist who doesn't even know basic facts about American government.
(She claims to have "self-corrected in real time" when she said ca. 11/18/18: "If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress — Uh, rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate, and the House." The only "real-time correction" involved here is replacing one falsehood with another. She actually thinks she self-corrected, though, which only further demonstrates the ignorance involved. With this kind of ignorance, there is no real-time or short-term correcting. What we have here is the Democrat version of the Republican ignoramus Sarah Palin, whom the conceited/arrogant/hubristic/smug/complacent/lazy Democrats take to exemplify the ignorance of Republicans generally. The only issue is whether non-ignoramuses of intellectual integrity from either side of Democrat/Republican divide can acknowledge when someone on their own side is an ignoramus who shouldn't be coddled or have excuses made for him or her.)
So basically Silver is engaged in a form of epistemic gaslighting that desperate Democrats in the Age of Trump seem to think a warranted and necessary corrective to Trump's own 'War on Truth.' They did it in the case of Brett Kavanaugh. Instead of the best explanation that makes sense of the evidence in front of my own eyes - AOC is an ignorant socialist, a Palin-of-the-Left - Silver would have us question whether we have crucial evidence (to the effect that the GOP reaction to AOC is based on anything other than her socialist ignorance) missing from our observed data set.
Which of the following is more plausible:
Republicans act more or less the same toward socialist ignoramus AOC as they act toward socialist ignoramus Bernie Sanders.
Republican reaction to socialist ignoramuses will vary depending on the race and gender of the socialist ignoramus.
If you're a person of common sense, the answer here is easy. If you're a morally deranged Democrat in this day and age - this may be a redundancy with notable(!) exceptions like Dershowitz - then you may have some trouble with this one.
Maybe Silver should stick to his area of expertise - statistical modeling - and not be a dishonest sonofabitch abusing his reputational status and platform when venturing into other areas?
[Note: there is a weasel-word in Silver's tweet that still won't get him off the hook: "certain Republicans" are driven crazy by her race and gender. Which ones? Any ones of consequence? Anyone not already considered beyond the pale by reasonable and honest political observers? No. He's bullshitting, is all. Maybe the explanation here is that Silver is a trolling New Yorker, so his blatant disingenuousness is contextually okay. Perhaps Silver could tell that to the Trump-Deranged crowd that insists that Trump lies basically all the time even though, well, Trump is a trolling New Yorker.]
