SPEAKING OF BAD PREDICTIONS. Sam's post about Norquist's perpetual predictions of GOP dominance reminds me of a couple of things. First of all, as Matt reminded us during the 2004 campaign, Rove should have been permanently discredited by one of the dumbest blunders in campaign history: investing significant resources in no-hope California during an extremely close electoral campaign. Gore, of course, won CA by 12 points, won the popular vote nationally, and should have won the election, but Rove was bailed out by various factors beyond his control: a ballot badly designed by local Democrats, the luck of having a statistical tie end up with his candidate in a nominal lead, an outrageously hackish Supreme Court, etc. It's hard to see how this is consistent with Rove's reputation for political genius. Which leads me to one of my favorite bad political predictions of all time: Real Clear Politics claiming on November 6, 2000 that "We continue to see a landslide of over 400 electoral votes and a Bush win by 7-10 points," with Washington, Michigan, Oregon and Wisconsin leaning Bush, and Bush slightly ahead in Illinois and California. Just in case you were wondering about the quality of analysis necessary to get you a gig with Time...
--Scott Lemieux
