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Revisiting Hillary Prediction
David Broder’s column about Barack Obama’s speech — saying Obama has hit a groove with a speech nobody else can match (www.washingtonpost.com and elsewhere) — is the best reporting OR commentary on the election that I’ve seen. The fact that it’s mainly reportage ought to give the other commentators pause. The others get so caught up in their own cleverness, their originality and their unique analytical skills that they become precious and teensy, and they leave an impact on the mind much like the impact of a Chinese dinner on the stomach. Broder recognizes that the important story isn’t what’s going on inside his head.
But, for better or worse, this blog isn’t about what’s going on at all. It’s about what WILL go on, and it’s about what’s going on inside the heads of certain people as to what will go on.
I mention the Broder column because
I’m beginning to have doubts about a prediction I’ve made here: that Hillary will be nominee. I said the candidate who is most like a president at the beginning of the campaign is the one who wins presidential nominations when there’s a clear distinction as to credentials. This is why vice presidents always win. She has 8 years of White House experience, and people know it. (To compare her to Laura Bush is just ridiculous, and people know that, too.)
Kerry was the most experienced Democrat in ‘04. Dole was the acknowledged national figure in ‘96. The list goes on.
I also said that, while there have always been doubts about Hillary’s political attractiveness, she’s fine on that score. I still believe that. Still believe she’d be fine as the nominee.
Meanwhile, early on I saw nothing super-duper special about Obama. I read both his books and found him no better than fine. Listened to him on the stump. No better than fine.
Nevertheless, in a time when there’s a big thirst for change, he might be the one to benefit.
The point I really want to make here is that the Hillary prediction was all me. It did not derive from predictive scheme that the blog is inspired by. That scheme, Allan Lichtman’s 13 Keys to the Presidency (explicated in the first three posts on this blog, dated Oct. 5) is entirely about general elections.
More to the point, it is based on THIRTTEEN keys, not one. The whole point of the Lichtman scheme is that any one historical tendency (like the best credentialed people winning nominations) is going to be upset occasionally. It’s when you consider such tendencies in combination that you’ve got something.
Actually, I was personally wrong, too, on my beliefs about the Republican side. But that’s another post.
Suffice it to say here that errors here, if any, are all me, not the system. The point of the blog is not that I know everything. The point is the system.
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