Posted by Eugene Volokh:
"Kerry's Contest To Lose":
A smart-sounding and persuasive political item from [1]Mickey Kaus
(paragraph breaks added):
I've obsessively sniped at ABC's The Note for its declaration on
August 11 that it was "Kerry's contest to lose." This might not
seem fair--maybe it was Kerry's contest to lose and he lost it?
Didn't The Note just guess wrong in a close election?
Answer: No! The whole point of ABC's Note is that its put out by
the smartest, most knowledgeable and nuanced political insiders
around, which it is. And the whole point of it being "Kerry's
contest to lose" was that these experts were telling us that the
underlying dynamic of the campaign favored Kerry because of Bush's
"poisonous job approval, re-elect, and wrong track numbers."
But we now know that this considered judgment of the smartest, most
knowledgeable insiders was wrong--it was Dem wishful-thinking spin.
Kerry in fact did pretty well in the final months of the campaign.
He won the debates. He didn't commit many gaffes. He raised tons of
money and successfully turned out record numbers of Democratic
voters. And he still lost. Why? Because the underlying dynamic of
the campaign didn't actually favor him at all. It favored Bush,
despite the supposedly tell-tale "wrong track numbers." The economy
wasn't that bad, and voters knew it. Terrorism, and support for
Bush on that issue, remained strong. And . . . Bush had a far more
sophisticated campaign organization. . . .
How could brilliant genuine experts like Mark Halperin & Co. get it
wrong? Because at some level they were conned by their peers and
their Dem campaign sources (who were probably conning themselves)
in a way I doubt they could be conned by Republican sources. . . .
Go to [2]Mickey's column for more.
References
1. http://slate.msn.com/id/2111460/
2. http://slate.msn.com/id/2111460/
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