Today is a good day to revisit my predictions. And, be honest, this has been one of the hardest election seasons to game out in memory. The list of professional pundits and political analysts who now look foolish is very long. I haven’t anticipated every twist and turn and I haven’t gotten everything right, but I’m unaware of anyone who has come closer than me in projecting where this race would go.
I’ll tell you a secret about why my projections were so much better than average. I long ago lost any illusions I once had about the decency of the Republican base. That’s what separates me from someone like Dana Milbank.
He can eat his column now. I’ll supply salt, pepper, and some sriracha sauce.
As I said, this hasn’t been an easy election season for analysts. And it hasn’t rewarded the meek. It takes courage to take on Nate Silver when you think he’s dead wrong.
Marco Rubio’s campaign died last night. How many pundits and analysts fluffed him and told you he was a real threat? What did I say to Nate Silver about Marco Rubio?
I shouldn’t have to dig into the Pentagon-sized closet full of Marco Rubio skeletons to convince you that this charlatan isn’t the modern day Poppy Bush or Bob Dole. Those guys were World War Two veterans with a decent grasp of basic reality, not the kind of fools to deny climate science while representing Atlantis in the U.S. Senate.
When Nate told us not to freak out because Trump had no better than a 20% chance of winning the nomination, I told him he was wrong on two counts. First, Trump’s chances were significantly better than that, and, second, the likely alternatives were equally worthy of a good old-fashioned panic attack.
Before he even formally announced, I was telling you that Jeb was the second coming of Jon Huntsman. I consistently resisted the herd when they predicted that Trump had fatally wounded himself with some gaffe or outrage. I predicted both that Cruz would become the hard core conservative alternative to Trump and that he’d never be more than Trump’s caddie. And I’m basically alone in having predicted that John Kasich would, despite all appearances, eventually emerge as the establishment alternative to Trump.
So, out of eleventy-billion candidates, I identified the final three.
On the Democratic side, I’ve been a wet blanket for Sanders’ supporters. Because I had no wish to insult or demoralize his troops, I’ve largely ignored writing about the horse race aspects of the Democratic contest. I began telling you over two years ago that Hillary Clinton was so popular with Democrats that she would be the nominee. I told you that Sanders couldn’t win unless he won both Iowa and New Hampshire, and that he almost definitely could not win even if he did win those first two elections.
Sanders did better than I expected, but he never came remotely close to making this race competitive. And it’s not because he’s a “socialist” or that he has the wrong message. It’s because rank-and-file Democrats like Clinton — a lot. Self-identified progressives like her. Obviously, people of color like her, as you’ve seen from the primary and caucus results. Moderates like her. Conservative Democrats like her a little less this time around than they did in 2008, but they didn’t flock to Sanders in huge numbers.
This was just basic analysis. It had nothing to do with my personal preferences.
I’ll have more to say about the future of the campaign, but I had to stop here and toot my own horn. We’ve never seen an election season like this before, and people love to mock analysts when they fail–so, I’ve got to take credit when I perform on a high level.
You’ve earned some tooting. How many people predicted Kasich would win the establishment lane? And you’ve certainly been ahead of the curve on Trump.
Didn’t most of us here get those broad outlines correct?
he never came remotely close to making this race competitive
Bullpucky.
Iowa:
’08 – Obama first at 34.9% and HRC third at 30.3%
’12 – HRC first at 49.8% and Bernie second at 49.6%.
NH:
’08 – HRC first at 39.1%
’12 – Bernie first at 60.5%
You’re committing the error of picking out a couple of data points from a large set and maintaining that they’re somehow special.
Everybody picks out data points in their effort to illustrate their point.
But not everyone can take a hobby and turn it into fine art. It’s a rare skill.
.
that entire response is laughable.
The commenters here have certainly been better than Dana Milbank, though, I’ll give you that.
Sanders did very well, but Iowa and NH never had anything to do with his prospects other than they could have killed him in the crib.
’04 — IA and NH were the whole shooting match for the DEM nomination. Of course Kerry was the default establishment choice right before the voting began.
I will always respect Barack Obama for not using race, and doing what he could to tamp down those that did in, his ’08 primary run. He didn’t enter the nomination contest as the choice of AAs, and in fact, other than Oprah, he wasn’t their choice. But he did end up becoming the choice of AA voters rejected/dismissed the endorsements of their leaders. He won the white vote in Iowa and SC. It was a special moment in this country when a plurality of ordinary white and AAs DEM and liberal voters could reach the same conclusion as to which was the best candidate. Didn’t last long and almost everyone seems to have forgotten how ugly it got after that.
If you were honest, you’d admit that all you’re saying is the DEM power elite made it impossible for anyone else to be competitive. Only two dared to try because the odds were so incredibly long. All I’m saying is that with zero DEM institutional and big money support Sanders has been highly competitive outside states that have been locked up by the DEM institutional power. More competitive in the first two states and several since then than Obama (who wasn’t without institutional and big money support). Why doesn’t it matter that Sanders received more votes in MA than Obama did in ’08 and only lost by 1.4% when Obama lost by 15%?
If Obama had been denied a debate before Oct ’08 and been patronized and patted on the head by the DEM Party, MSM, and partisan DEM bloggers the way Sanders has been, he wouldn’t have made it out of NH. Funny how the candidate that a high percentage of DEM bloggers viewed as unacceptable in ’08 is now the bestest ever.
you still act like it’s an attack on Sanders or support for Clinton to point out that she’s going to be the nominee.
I would have pointed it out a lot more often except I didn’t really want to be a naysayer and discourage folks who wanted to put up a fight.
I think you can scour my archives for as long as you want and never see me say anything more positive about Hillary Clinton than that she might be able to win a landslide election.
I think I recently intimated that I may very well vote for Sanders. The chances of that are actually quite high at the moment.
No – what is wrong is pretending like you EVER saw the energy on the left Sanders would connect to, and the generational divide that was exposed.
About that you were completely wrong.
Not just the energy on the left, but the degree of general acceptance. I don’t believe for a minute that all Sanders primary voters could be defined as “left” in the current understanding of the term. (Even though there are a lot of lazy minds out there that still make that assumption.)
A big part of the message I was hearing from Booman was, America will never vote for a 74 year old Jewish socialist from Brooklyn.
They will and they did. Booman really did not expect that. And he does acknowledges it — here’s how it translates in Booman language: “Sanders did better than I expected . . . And it’s not because he’s a ‘socialist’ or that he has the wrong message. It’s because rank-and-file Democrats like Clinton — a lot.”
Thanks for that.
And I’m convinced now that they do like Clinton. I have no idea why. But that’s just me. And my wife. And two-thirds of our kids.
The point is, the incredible dynamism and giant-slayer aspect of Sanders’ campaign . . . is irrelevant to the function Booman sees himself carrying out here. He just wanted to call it. The rest is not really relevant.
But actually it is relevant, because the coming election, as important as it is, is by no means the end of what Sanders has started, which is now officially up and running. It’s going to be interesting, because Sanders, Warren, and their ilk have very high and broad approval amidst the political wasteland that is contemporary America.
So I think there’s a kind of inherent conflict between the guy running a blog and most readers, who feel free to express their own passionate convictions . . . why else would they post comments ?
States coming up in the next month favor Bernie. Some people are in denial about how unpopular Hillary Clinton is. She is the establishment candidate and eventually the Democratic party will have to endure what the Republican party is now experiencing. A preview is the Sanders campaign. Silly media likes to call this “the year of the anti-establishment”, but more and more people can’t afford cable and are pulling the plug. I take frequent drives “in the country” and visit various states. While talking to strangers, I learn a lot. Incidentally, you are correct that not all Sanders primary voters are of the left. My girlfriend voted for him and she is a retired steel worker.
I’ve respected that you’ve been officially impartial wrt to the DEM primary. And didn’t think it was appropriate to speculate as to whether you were undecided or leaned one way or the other. However, as we’ve seen for decades from journalists, few maintain a truly impartial focus and tone in their reporting and those of a liberal persuasion overcompensate for their personal position by shortchanging liberals and giving those to their right more coverage and credence than is warranted. It’s not conscious, but it’s takes a lot of consciousness to check one’s work for bias. It was this sort of overcompensation that began the process of NPR not being an objective, balanced, and fair political news information source.
There’s a reason many people (don’t include myself among them) here have concluded that you have favored HRC all along. Don’t know that any of them have claimed to be mind-readers. It all came from the focus, attention, and what you’ve said over these months and a bias in that work in favor of HRC and opposed to Sanders has been consistent and prevalent enough to lead people to assume that they know where you stand. I’ve only, and perhaps in dashed off comments not too well, tried to point out what comes off sounding like double standards and frankly, subtle forms of hippie punching and an arrogance that you know better what politics in the past and historical events were really like than those that actually lived and were conscious during those periods. Nothing as egregious of HRC’s “It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/Aids in the 1980s … (doubly egregious since she is presumed not to have been living under a rock during the ’80s), but it’s still insulting.
Sorry to go on about this, and no disrespect is intended, but it’s take a lot of optimism and energy to hold onto the rare glass is half full and have others continuously say, “It’s half empty, you idiots.”
He closed within 10 nationally.
That is far more competitive than you ever saw it getting.
You missed the boat on Sanders completely.
This is just sad. As is your statement about Cruz.
I’ve long turned to this blog because Booman’s commentaries are so measured, rather than screechy or panicky, and because he supplies data. (He’s sort of a concise version of Digby in those regards.) In this primary season, he has alternately congratulated and criticized both Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders, while explicitly declining to endorse either one. This is what journalism is supposed to be, rather than the horse-race nonsense or the drone-like data-only writing one sees in mainstream media.
I think this is just great! It reaffirms my sense of what a good blog this is (not that that sense needed any further affirmation).
I wish more people writing and commenting in the public eye were held to this kind of standard. It drives me nuts that so many pundits, columnists etc. get everything so stunningly wrong, over and over, and then consistently get invited back for more.
Congrats Boo, ahead of the curve as usual. I for one was more worried about Rubio, and didn’t really think Kasich would be the last standard-bearer for the republican mainstream. Good job!
The repub. convention is going to be a real carnival and I’m looking forward to your commentary
Well done, Martin.
Now I need some suggestions about what to do in the face of a Trump nomination. Because I have The Fear, and while I dislike admitting that’s my motivation for the general, it is.
I hope Bernie’s still in when things roll around to CA, because he’s got my grudging but respectful support (I don’t like his position on guns at all). I don’t really dislike HRC when compared to someone like Trump or Cruz, of course, but it’s difficult to feel enthused for her.
However I would absolutely vote for her vs. any of the R’s. That’s a fear-based vote I’ll never apologize for.
Thanks for a great blog, Martin. The great fear is really a matter of “It’s the economy” – If we muddle along as we have been (and the great Janet Yellen is doing her bestest to keep it that way) we’ll pull it out at the 60% level. If the economy tanks In October then we’re in for the bull riding contest with no boots.
This seems to be just one of those things that you get or you don’t, like whether you prefer Coke or Pepsi. I don’t really get it, but I’ve accepted that it’s true.
That’s what we’ve been hearing from the media for a year now, and the polls of DEMs do confirm that. However, Democrats are only approximately a third of the electorate and once outside that circle, her likability rating plummets.
I have been struck by a number of primaries (where the data is clear enough to read), where she’s getting fewer votes this time than she did last time. That’s despite the unstated but presumed endorsement by Obama. These are in states that she won in ’08 — NH, MA, TX, and OK. As if they liked her a lot more in ’08 than today. Or maybe they just figured that she’s such a shoo-in this time that it’s not as important for them to vote this time.
You know what I think a lot of it is? If so many bad people have attacked her for so long, and she’s withstood it all, she must be really good.
The way I look at it is, so many bad people have attacked her for so long for the wrong reasons — because if they had attacked her for the right reasons, they’d be attacking themselves.
Unfortunately, reasons are too complicated for a lot of people.
She’s strong, all right. Angela Merkel is strong. Maggie Thatcher was strong too. Doesn’t mean I have to like them.
“He can eat his column now. I’ll supply salt, pepper, and some sriracha sauce.”
Would it be cheating to have his column printed out on rice paper? That is, if rice paper works well in laser printers.
Sanders was precisely 4 delegates in Iowa from winning both.
Had he done we won’t know what might have happened. He then lost Nevada by 5.
You completely misread him: you certainly never saw how large of appeal he would have to the young.
You did your best to ignore him. He showed how to run a national campaign without running to Wall Street.
You have nothing to be proud about regarding Sanders at all. Any idiot could have predicted Clinton would win. Foresight would have foreseen how well he did, the energy he tapped, and the money he raised.
You saw none of that. What you have that you would be proud of is mystifying.
You completely misread Cruz was well – but than it another story.
You’re right about all of that. But he gets to define his mission. He called it, and that’s all that counts.
There’s a certain kind of conflict there.
bEjESUS….DO YA WANT US TO BOW DOWN AND CALL YOU OUR OVERLORD…
sure, that’d be nice.
Trump is still the frontrunner of republicans.