Next Wednesday, the world view of every single political commentator will have been proven right about the 2014 elections.
Here’s a timely reminder from Bill James (via Joe Posnanski) that it’s all BS:
[BS] has tremendous advantages over knowledge. [BS] can be created as needed, on demand, without limit. Anything that happens, you can make up an explanation for why it happened.
“There was a Kansas football game a year ago; some Texas-based football team, much better than Kansas, came to Lawrence and struggled through the first quarter — KU with, like, a 7-3 lead at the end of the first quarter. The rest of the game, KU lost, like, 37-0, or something. The announcer had an immediate explanation for it: The Texas team flew in the day before, they spent the night sleeping in a strange hotel; it takes them a while to get their feet on the ground.
“It’s pure [BS], of course, but he was paid to say that … if it had happened the other way, and KU had lost the first quarter, 24-0, and then ‘won’ the rest of the game 17-14 (thus losing 38-17) … if that had happened, we both know that the announcer would have had an immediate explanation for why THAT had happened. … [BS] is without limit.
Some elections have obvious lessons, but most come down to who felt like turning out or a simple numbers game of how many Ds & Rs are in a given area.
That won’t stop commentators from assigning narratives to every single race. If you watch closely, you’ll notice Democrats who won inevitably did so because they tacked right & distanced themselves from Obama, while Republicans win because they tacked right & fired up their base.
I was one of the many naysayers that gave up on Coakley early, and was really down about her prospects. She impressed me after wrapping up the nomination, disappointed me in the last month, and is impressing me again in the homestretch. It will be a nail biter-but I largely disagree with the prognosticators that it will somehow be a referendum on Obama, Coakley, or the Democratic domination of MA. Like Brown winning-it will be because Baker had a superior campaign and better turnout.
I strongly think we will see some upsets in Kansas and Georgia for those same reasons. People are really fired up about Nunn, and her outreach to the black and growing hispanic community has been essential to that. Carter might eek out a win too. I think Quinn gets back in in IL, Walker, Snyder, Corbett, and Scott will be back in the private sector where their weird fetishes for markets belong. Alaska and Iowa aren’t looking good, SD has come back to earth, and we knew WV and MT were goners. Probably Arkansas and Louisiana too. But NH and NC should hold. It’s really gonna come down to CO, GA, and KS and I would call all of those toss ups right now.