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Kristol’s Crystal Ball
Conservative pundit William Kristol enters into the underlying activity of this blog — predicting the outcome of presidential elections — with a piece in Time.
He bravely courts the irresistible rejoinder: that Kristol’s crystal ball has malfunctioned so dramatically, notoriously and, well, predictably on his pet subject, Iraq, that you might think he would give up predicting entirely, if not actually go into humiliated hiding. Failing that, shouldn’t the people who keep publishing him conclude that he’s not so smart after all, and stop it?
But other blogs have enlarged on such points, and we are not here as reinforcements.
Let’s look at the Kristol piece as people interested in the art and science of prediction. Admittedly, this is might unfair, because the column is really just a political act. It’s an effort to rally Republican troops and to deny the Democrats the satisfaction of thinking he’s down. It’s not an effort to be right. It’s politics, not journalism.
But, after all, it is in a journalistic outlet http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1675601,00.html.
Kristol is right when he notes that the polls showing Hillary leading the Republicans shouldn’t be taken very seriously, given how wrong polls have been at this stage of other election cycles.
However, that fact doesn’t point to the Republican victory he is envisioning. At best, it only neutralizes the polls factor. (Actually, for all anybody knows, the polls UNDERestimate Hillary’s strength, reflecting qualms about her among independent voters that will largely dissipate when her party chooses, vouches for and celebrates her, just as doubts about Bill were largely assuaged by the 1992 Democratic convention.)
Kristol is also right in saying the Democratic gains in 2006 don’t necessarily mean the Ds will gain in 2008. But, again, that’s a neutral fact, not one that redounds to the benefit of his party.
And he’s right in saying that the on-paper credentials of the Republican candidates are strong. But, while he has made historical references on the previous two points, he makes none on this one. That is, he doesn’t show that credentials have affected many election outcomes. (They haven’t. If the year is right, just being a major party’s nominee is the only credential a candidate needs, especially if the opposing candidate isn’t the sitting president.)
Moreover, Kristol doesn’t take up the possibility that a lot of people will see Hillary’s credentials as better than those of a candidate who has NOT spent 8 years in the White House.
Kristol searches for comfort in the low poll ratings of the Democratic Congress, but again offers no historical reason to believe that this factor matters. It doesn’t. As is made clear elsewhere in this blog, presidential elections are about the public’s view of the general direction of the country. If voters are mad at everybody, you don’t want to be the party with the presidency.
Kristol’s bottom line is simply that the Republicans can win because they are more conservative:
“At a time of war, in a culturally conservative country with voters suspicious of Big Government liberalism, it would be foolish to underrate the chances of the presidential nominee of the more hawkish, socially conservative and anti-Big Government party.”
This is not to be taken seriously by non-partisans, not in a time when the Ds control Congress and have won the popular plurality in 3 of the last 4 presidential elections (losing only to an incumbent, who got only 51.5 percent).
Even as Kristol asserts the ascendancy of conservatism, many Democrats are arguing that a Democratic era has arrived. They have as little to go on as he does. In truth, the two parties are equally capable of winning the presidency when the short-term circumstances are right. It’s those circumstances that must be looked at, not polls about the presidency OR Congress, not the last election, not candidate credentials.
And certainly not ideology. The voters who are up for grabs in an election are, practically by definition, either centrists or not motivated by ideology. Isn’t that obvious?
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