The problem with crystal balls

by Robert Stacy McCain | December 29, 2008 10:41 am

If we pause for a minute to think about what we expected a year ago, we realize that we don’t have the ability to predict the future, a point I make in my latest column for Pajamas Media[1]:

In light of how things turned out, it is an amusing irony that in late 2007 it was Republicans who worried about a long, ugly struggle for their party’s nomination. “I fear our intraparty fury will destroy all leaders and send us off to a brokered convention — and from thence, probably to defeat,” Tony Blankley wrote[2] in his column on Dec. 19, 2007. “If the Democrats have their candidate by February and we are campaigning harshly until August, we surely would start in a deep hole.”
Instead, Romney surprised Republicans by announcing on Feb. 7[3] that he was suspending his campaign, effectively ceding the nomination to McCain. And while the Democrats struggled on until June — with Obama finally defeating Hillary only because of a shift in support among the party’s superdelegates — that long, bruising campaign seemed to enhance, rather than diminish, the Democratic advantage in the general election.

Please read the whole thing[4].

(Cross-posted at The Other McCain[5].)