I'm not really invested in defending Nate Silver or in the results of the presidential election, I just think statistics are cool.
Being a liberal doesn't make you bad at stats. The degree to which 538's models reflect personal value judgments is almost certainly minimized, so dismissing them out of hand because they come from Nate Silver and use cutesy animal drawings doesn't really "own the libs."
"But 2016" they gave Trump more of a chance than anyone else did, and besides they've since updated their models to avoid those specific problems.
And, I'm sorry, even a really really shitty statistical model is going to be a better election predictor than your opinion on what the "mood on the street" is or whatever.
Of course, Trump's voter suppression campaign is a huge wild card in all of this.
Well yeah, it is basically this, but it quantifies it and gives it more statistical legitimacy. Mathematically speaking, if you can work out the probabilities in each state, that immediately leads to the overall probability, but using an actual model lets you put a real number on it. It also lets you take into account things other than polling data in a way that's consistent and reduces the kind of personal bias that plagues punditry.