E. J. Dionne, Jr. has an epiphany about the upcoming midterms:
When it comes to predicting midterm elections, it’s difficult to distinguish between insightful nonconformity and wishful thinking.
The conventional wisdom, well-rooted in history and data, suggests the Democrats should be toast this fall. But beware, say the dissenters, because 2022 is not a normal year, and it will not play out in a normal way.
The dissenters may be onto something, even if the case for a Republican sweep is strong. [WaPo]
So why has it taken Dionne, a professional pundit, this long to realize that there’s something abnormal going on?
It’s not blindness, or conformity.
It’s his status. He’s a professional.
This places multiple constraints on him, and folks in his class. He gets his income from being a pundit. He has a position of some prestige to maintain. He’s part of the standard power structure.
All of these factors, and more, conspire to keep him in a conservative position – not politically, but simply as a predictor of the future – when it comes to the midterms. Historically, the party holding of the Presidency does perform subpar when the economy sucks. He, and all other professional pundits, know these rules of thumb.
And, as their employers expect them to come out with reasonable predictions, this is what comes out.
Don’t confuse reasonable with accurate.
But how about me? I’m an amateur pundit, by which I mean I’m unpaid, I get my income elsewhere, and therefore the time I would otherwise spend researching the political scene instead goes to my employer. I’m under-informed compared to Dionne. Heck, if there was a term further down the ladder from amateur, I’d be that.
But I’m also unconstrained.
So I’ve been predicting for months and months that the Democrats, if they communicate clearly, and their January 6th investigation comes up with good information – which it has – then the Democrats may be looking through the right side of the telescope, despite their blunders with the management of the transgender issue.
Right now, I think in the Senate the Democrats have a good chance of netting two-four seats. If the bowling ball breaks just right, add two more. In the House, which I do not study, I simply note that the Democrats are thought to have more chances to flip seats than the Republicans, who more or less stood pat in most states where redistricting is necessary. I expect Rep Gaetz (R-FL) to lose big time to his challenger, Rebekah Jones (D). Heck, I expect a spirited contest and possible Democratic victory in traditional Republican stronghold CD1 in Nebraska.
I think the independents are finding their local Republicans to be extremists unworthy of positions in Congress. In a way, the election is more under Democratic than Republican control, and while publicly Republican officials and strategists talk an optimistic game, the mutterings from anonymous Republican sources – or even Senator McConnell (R-KY) – are that the extremists have been recognized for what they are by independents and even moderate Republicans, and won’t be getting the votes they think they’ll get.
And I can say this stuff because I don’t depend on a pundit-payer for my income.
But pity the poor reader, because I also don’t have the hours to devote to reading up on each race and talk to local party officials and all that rot. It’d make me ill, anyways. No, I’m an obsolete software engineer who reads way too much and is pushing his impressions of the upcoming election out onto the blog for digestion by a reader who’s not quite sure if I’m spinach or a bad bacteria.
I guess we’ll find out in a few months.
