The Worst Kind of Good News
Troy Senik, Ed. ·
April 18, 2012 at 5:36pm
Writing in The Hill, Dick Morris is bullish in his latest analysis of the 2012 presidential election. "The current polls," he writes, "while seemingly close, portend a strong Republican victory." Later on he goes even further, predicting "a Republican landslide in the offing."
Sorry, but when Dick Morris gets this optimistic, I grab an oar and start paddling the other direction. After all, I still remember how prescient his powers of prediction for the 2008 election cycle were. That's when he wrote this book:
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Dec '11
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
People who try to predict the future always run into the problem that you just...can't. They're sort of like people who try to fly by flapping their arms really hard. Still, I hope Dick is right on this one.
Oct '10
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
I have to say, I'm feeling fairly optimistic about the election and here's why: Obama's popularity in polls is meaningless. People are very likely to answer phone polls favorably toward president Obama because of everything that he still represents. No independents or liberals want to say they don't like him, but I just don't think a large number of those people are motivated to actually cast a vote for him. The novelty has worn off, and so the youth vote will also evaporate to a large extent. I have no numbers to back this theory, it just seems logical to me. The only question is the level of Conservative enthusiasm for our own candidate.
Dec '10
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
I think you mean you grab a bucket. And yes, start bailing, because the value of Dick Morris' predictions is he's always wrong!
Oct '10
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
Yes, it makes me extremely nervous to agree with Morris. I seriously don't understand how he still gets asked to appear on television. He epitomizes Thomas Sowell's axiom that intellectuals pay no price for being wrong.
Jun '10
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
Dick Morris' theories are designed to sell books and appearances by Dick Morris. Any similarity to real life is strictly coincidental.
May '10
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
Okay, we can agree that the Condi prediction showed a profound ignorance of the GOP primary voter . . . but he was very close to being right about Hillary. It's funny how quickly we forget how Obama squeaked through.
Plus there's that little detail that many democrats, in their heart of hearts, are probably kicking themselves right now because they didn't nominate Hillary.
I'm not sure Dick Morris has been proven to be a poor prognosticator of the left side of the aisle.
May '10
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
The Bradley Effect?
Apr '11
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
Dude...broken watch...twice a day...
It could happen.
Mar '11
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
I find Mr Morris a refreshing antidote to the pessimism of Rob et al @ Ricochet.
I agree he (Dick) is in it to make money - shock, horror! But a lot of what he says makes sense - I buy his theory that Mr Romney will do better than the current polls suggest, and the current polls ain't that bad.
That's the least flattering pic of Condi I have seen, btw - not her character, at all - which I guess is why she is not cut out for electoral politics. Mr Morris certainly got that wrong.
Hillary - not so much. We simply ended up with a different Alinsky-ite.
Apr '11
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
This, but this story is so unexceptional as to be plausible even from Dick. He's right that undecideds generally break against the incumbent. He's right that if we're polling ahead of Obama in the final polls, that'd be a good sign. He's right that we've got some good polls right now. Obviously, a lot can change.
People saying we're clearly going to lose at this stage are obviously wrong. So are people saying we're clearly going to win. Better to keep our nose to the grindstone and make what difference we can than to point it upwards and ponder unknowables. Right now, time spent reading Dick Morris is time lost to supporting Scott Walker.
Mar '11
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
As Jonah Goldberg once said, "I don't trust Dick Morris. Period.".
Pretty much sums it up for me as well.
Oct '10
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
So he got that one wrong. Being wrong doesn't stop Rico from indulging Mike Murphy's opinions from time to time. Last time I looked he wasn't batting 1.000, either.
If Morris is an unreliable prognosticator, let's discount his views for more reasons than only missing on Hillary vs. Condi.
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
My view of Dick Morris is that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Oct '11
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
I read the article, and I'll never get that two minutes back, Troy.
It seems likely Morris needed an article for a deadline so he ran the Magic 8-Ball plugin for Excel a few times til it yielded a statistic that supported the point he needed to make.
If this is what he calls forecasting, I'll stick with my dried squirrel bones. (Takes too much time to do the entrails thing, so I save that for the big questions.)
Jul '11
Re: The Worst Kind of Good News
Maybe he just had the timing wrong. How about Hillary vs Condi for 2016? If so I will put my money on Condi.