If I was in the MSM, the accuracy of my predictions would not matter. I could say what I wish, however wrong, and remain on the air, get promoted and get fat raises. However, since I’m not, I am, ironically, accountable for what I say.
As an incurable political junkie, my predictions go back to December 2003 when I predicted that Kerry would be the Democratic nominee. He had been trailing Al Sharpton in the polls. Three weeks before the election, I did my electoral map and got 48 states right. I missed Ohio, which went for Bush by two points and I missed Iowa where Bush won by 10,000 votes. There were voting irregularities in Ohio but it’s not clear whether they cost Kerry the state.
In 2006, I saw Hillary beating McCain 52-48 this year.
When Ron Paul announced, I said it could be a political earthquake and that he was the only Republican who can beat Hillary. I also noted that Ron would derive great support from the web.
Although I believe polls are generally accurate, I got caught up in the notion that the polls underrated Ron’s support so I was off by 8-10 points on his Iowa vote–he got 10%.
Meanwhile, when Rudy was leading the national polls by ten points, I issued a Joe Namath-like guarantee that he would not be the nominee.
In September, when McCain was being written off, I said it’s too early to count him out and stated that the nominee would be Paul, Thompson or McCain.
I never got the Romney concept and he hung around longer and got more votes that I had stated.
A fortiori, I was astonished when Huckabee rose up. Forgive me for not having the imagination for seeing the attractiveness of hucksters.
Speaking of which, I guess my biggest error is flatly predicting that Hillary would beat Obama. The success of Huckabee and Obama show my blind spot for hucksters, snake oil salesmen and carnival barkers.
I watched Obama in the debates and weighed them too heavily. He was very mediocre and Hillary was better though Biden won the debates.
In my defense on that point, I can say that the race was in effect a tie with the Obamedia breaking the tie. Hillary arguably won the popular vote and surely would have done so if only primaries were counted and Michigan’s vote had not been sabotaged by the DNC.
So, off the top of my head, leaving to one side the 2006 prediction, those were my main predictions about the 2008 race, summarized below:
Right:
Ron Paul political earthquake
Ron Paul the internet candidate
Rudy losing
McCain resurrecting
Wrong:
Ron Paul’s percentage in Iowa
Huckabee’s success
Romney’s staying power
Obama winning the nomination
