Nobody Knows Anything
Posted on October 23, 2018
“Nobody knows anything”.That’s an old Hollywood adage about what makes a hit.
It’s also applicable to politics.
Nobody really knows how this election is going to go.
Nobody, unless you are Nate Silver. He says that there is an 86 percent chance that the House flips.
In 2016, he similarly gave Hillary Clinton a 75 percent chance of winning.
He was a good deal less bullish the day before the election, but by that time, the die was cast.
And everybody believed what Nate silver believed. That Hillary was a shoo-in.
I never agreed with the Silver assessment then and I don’t now.
I went around town predicting a Trump triumph. And I was wildly mocked for the effort.
But the truth is, I didn’t really know that Trump was gonna win. I just couldn’t stand the smugness of the media and the prognosticators.
The one thing that history teaches us is that humility is good way to protect downside risk.
Because you never know what is going to happen.
I think Republicans will gain 4 seats in the Senate and lose around 10 seats in the House.
I might be wrong. I was wrong about Ed Gillespie. And about Mitt Romney.
I thought Gillespie would do better than he did in the Virginia race. And I thought Romney had a better shot at beating President Obama.
But I was right about the 2010 elections. I predicted a 60 seat pickup well before anybody else in Washington did.
Here are my reasons.
The economy is strong. Unemployment is down. Wages are up. And the President is keeping the base fired up.
And the Democrats are terrible. They have veered hard to the left. They are pushing a radical agenda at the national level, an agenda that doesn’t give with the concerns of the average midterm voter.
Democrats are relying on groups, younger voters, Hispanics, African Americans, that don’t turn out in big numbers during the midterms.
That’s the history.
Could history change?
Of course it could.
And we will see what happens.
I am not 86 percent sure of anything, especially when it comes to this coming election.
But I have my predictions.
And I am sticking with them, no matter what Nate Silver has to say.