From Political Wire's "Quote of the Day":
"Voters have a very strange way of not listening to the pundits."
-- Former Sen. Gary Hart (D-CO), quoted by the Boston Globe, on the "inevitability" of Sen. Hillary Clinton winning the Democratic presidential nomination.
But that's really not true, is it? In every recent Democratic campaign I can think of, the establishment candidate, the one the pundits predicted early one would win, did. Whatever the early polls and primaries, Kerry beat Dean, Gore beat Bradley, Clinton beat Tsongas (though the absence of Cuomo made tat a weird campaign), Mondale beat Hart, etc. The only insurgent who actually captured the nomination was McGovern. So while it's true that the pundits often get it wrong -- see their pre-primary predictions for Dean -- the voters rarely cross the establishment.
