| We've had ten days to decompress from the election. It's time for a little self-promotion and self-criticism.
What did you predict accurately during the past presidential campaign, and what did you get completely wrong?
The ground rules for this thread are as follows:
1. This is about your own forecasting skills. Do not post a comment solely to mock someone else's idiocy.
2. You are not allowed to boast about something you got right without owning up to at least one thing you got wrong.
3. For maximum bragging rights, include a link to a comment or diary containing your accurate prediction. Links are not required, though.
I'll get the ball rolling. Here are some of the more significant things I got wrong during the presidential campaign that just ended.
I thought that since John Edwards had been in the spotlight for years, the Republicans would probably not be able to spring an "October surprise" on us if he were the Democratic nominee. Oops.
In 2006 I thought Hillary's strong poll numbers among Democrats were
inflated by the fact that she has a lot of name recognition. I think once the campaign begins, her numbers will sink like Lieberman's did in 2003.
Then when her poll numbers held up in most states throughout 2007, I thought Hillary's coalition would collapse if she lost a few early primaries. Um, not quite.
I thought Barack Obama would fail to be viable in a lot of Iowa precincts dominated by voters over age 50.
I thought Obama had zero chance of beating John McCain in Florida.
Here are a few things I got right:
I consistently predicted that Hillary would finish no better than third in the Iowa caucuses. For that I was sometimes ridiculed in MyDD comment threads during the summer and fall of 2007.
I knew right away that choosing Sarah Palin was McCain's gift to Democrats on his own birthday, because it undercut his best argument against Obama: lack of experience.
I immediately sensed that letting the Obama campaign take over the GOTV effort in Iowa might lead to a convincing victory for Obama here without maximizing the gains for our down-ticket candidates. In fact, Iowa Democrats did lose a number of statehouse races we should have won last week.
By the way, please consider helping Bleeding Heartland analyze what went wrong and what went right for Democrats in some of the state House and Senate races. |
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