Premature Predictions & Obama Delusion Syndrome
I enjoy making premature predictions that put my credibility at risk.
The RealClearPolitics average of the last few polls taken in Florida has McCain with a slight lead. Because of a recent surge from well-times endorsements, McCain will win Florida by a couple of percent. Even if he does not win Florida, he will still win the Republican nomination. In the major Feb. 5 primary states, like California and New York, McCain holds leads of around 10% over Mitt. I understand that Mitt has a bunch of personal wealth, but it doesn’t matter. McCain is a carnivorous dog who hates to lose and the media is behind him.
On the Democratic side…I’m sorry to all of my liberal intelligentsia friends, but at this point Obama has about a 1 or 2% chance of winning. Hillary is crushing him in the major Feb. 5 states and in nationwide polling. It’s really not even going to be close, but the media’s adoration of Obama has created the delusion for everyone that this is a real fight. It’s not.
In the general election McCain will choose Condi Rice as his running mate to undercut the female appeal of Hillary. If he makes this incredibly tactful and wonderful play, it will preempt any arguments by Hillary that the Democrats are breaking down racial and gender barriers in this election and that the Republicans are too old school white male to ever compel similar social change. However, it would be interesting to see McCain cut a deal with Rudy in the near future that would see Rudy dropping out and sending his votes to McCain with the promise of being VP. Hillary, with her ego fearing being overshadowed by someone more attractive and intelligent, will choose a lame running mate who will have no impact (although, it would be incredibly fun if she chose Bill as her running mate).
McCain will defeat Hillary by about 5%. McCain will be the kind of president that Obama claims he is going to be.
Comment by J. Prescott on 29 January 2008 at 2:26 pm:
The only thing Condi Rice is going to be running to is Stanford, where she is going to return to academia, never to poke her head out again except for the occasional political talk show.
Comment by tet on 29 January 2008 at 3:42 pm:
The polls haven’t been doing well so far, Billy Joe. Why would they suddenly be accurate in their assessments?
We’ll see. I am going to really enjoy watching Rudy drop out of the race. He and Thompson were living proof that you have to actually have some ambition to go out and hit the early states in order to accomplish anything.
Romney has a big advantage over McCain–he has deep, deep pockets. If McCain has a setback in the Super Tuesday states, he may see a drop-off in the money flow like he did during the Iowa period. Romney can take hit after hit and keep pumping money from his own resources to pay a high-powered staff.
Look for Paul to start pulling third-place finishes with a showing of about 10-15% of the Republican votes cast–this won’t be important in the winner-take-all states, but, if he can get Huckabee to throw him his delegates after he drops out, he may be able to exert some influence on the GOP platfrom (which I think is his plan at the moment).
Despite the vituperation in the Democratic campaign so far, I can picture Hillary dramatically asking Obama to be her running-mate and he agreeing in order to “bring all of America together.” That ticket would completely sweep the nation, causing either McCain or Romney to get, at most, a half-dozen states.
Nothing’s really changed much from my September predictions, as a matter of fact.
Mitt vs Hillary/Obama. Hillary wins by a landslide.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 29 January 2008 at 4:59 pm:
uh Tom, at this point hillary and obama disdain each other so much that there isn’t a chance they are gonna select each other as running mates and hillary definitely won’t choose obama because she wouldn’t want his all-star power to overshadow her.
hillary would beat romney, but luckily romney isn’t the Republican nominee.
Comment by Augur on 29 January 2008 at 5:21 pm:
I didnt’ read toms answer b/c i only have a second, but a few notes:
(1) I think Romney will hold Florida due to a superior organization, but I’m not confident in this, I still think it’s a little more likely than not. I wouldn’t be surprised if McCain wins. If McCain wins by more than 5 points, I will be surprised. If he barely wins, I don’t think he’ll get that much of a bump b/c his campaign is going to try to spin that as him being the unstoppable frontrunner, and a narrow win doesn’t really support that
(2) McCain doesn’t have that much cash/ organization in the rest of the states. He’ll have a tough time beating Romney in all those states b/c of a lack of resources
(3) Rudy drops out after the debate Wedn - he might pull some kind of stunt there to help one of the other campaigns - most likely McCain, that event could be enough to significantly spur McCain on
(4) if McCain picks a woman, he will not pick Condi, she’s too polarizing, and he will probably pick a white man, if it’s a woman, very likely it’ll be a white woman
(5) McCain should talk a lot more about how much he made Romney spend and how he’s trying to buy it, particularly if its a narrow win, but instead he’ll be an arrogant shit and try to make it about inevitability + electability. he’ll be too negative and it’ll backfire. Expect the Keating 5 stuff to come back up if he becomes prickly and lies enough in the next week
(6) Obama - Billy, do you think you are that much more spot on than the vegas odds? The vegas odds have Obama around 38% — your 1% shit is absolute nonsense –
I still think Hillary has a better than 50% chance of winning, I’d personally put it at about 54% Hil, 45% obama, 1% edwards. But I am high on Obama, so the vegas odds are probably about right at this point.
(7) it’ll be interesting how McCains massive robocall buy will go - i tend to think robocalls are ineffective, particularly if you call people more than once. Its tough to find a vendor for an operation that big
(8) Obama - polls dont yet indicate the post SC bump, and full extend of backlash from Bill, and more posturing/position changes from the Hillary Clinton Industrial Complex, or the Kennedy endorsement
(9) If Hillary wins Fla BIG (she’ll definitely win) or if she wins very small, it might be a story, otherwise it wont matter much (see my comment at outside report on florida mattering). Following the win, she will try to make that the story, my guess is Obama has another endorsement he’ll be ready to roll out to again change the story
Comment by tet on 29 January 2008 at 5:37 pm:
Theatre, Billy Joe, theatre. The Democrats are getting triple the press by Hillary and Obama going at each other then they would if they were civil.
What was it that John Edwards said a week or so ago? “Are there two or three people in this debate?”
I think you’ll be amazed at how the public is bamboozled by the two of them hugging and making up when Hillary gets the delegates to insure her win (for the good of America, of course).
“Together, we’ll make a new America! Together, we’ll make up for two hundred years of oppression! Together, we will fix the problems that eight years of George Bush created! Together, you and I will make history!”–Obama’s acceptance speech as the Vice-Presidential nominee, August 28, 2008.
None of you remember this happening before with JFK and LBJ. Whew, there were a pair of guys who didn’t get along. Read The Making of a President, 1960 by Theodore White. The competition between the two of them had so much public rancor that no one was surprised when the rumor arose in November of ‘63 that Lyndon had had him shot while he was in LBJ’s home turf.
Hillary would also beat McCain, Billy Joe. It would just be a different set of Republican voters staying home. The GOP coalition is gone.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by tet on 29 January 2008 at 6:15 pm:
Wow, I’ll be go to hell and freeze-dried. The Prince of Darkness is noticing the Hillary-Obama situation, too.
Read the third paragraph.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by Anonymous on 29 January 2008 at 7:22 pm:
Assuming the numbers hold steady, when does Giuliani drop from the race? Does he stick in it for the 5th, or drop before then and throw his support to McCain?
Comment by tet on 29 January 2008 at 7:44 pm:
Rudy’ll be gone by the end of the week. He has nothing to offer anyone. Best I can tell, Dr. Paul has twice as many delegates to trade as he has right now.
Good effin’ riddance.
Tom
Comment by tet on 29 January 2008 at 7:50 pm:
Hillary’s officially won the popular vote in Florida. My guess now is that the DNC will play their cards close to their chest and if Hillary turns out to need the extra delegates to win the nomination, they’ll decide that “it was wrong to disenfranchise the voters of Florida over something this petty” and restore them all to Clinton.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by Roy on 29 January 2008 at 8:00 pm:
While I agree that Giuliani himself doesn’t offer anything in the way of delegates, I’m inclined to think that the less conservative voters who would be voting for Giuliani on the 5th, as few as they might be, would be more likely to toss their votes to McCain than to Romney.
Comment by Augur on 29 January 2008 at 8:48 pm:
Congrats billy, Gimpy Geriatric Gollum won.
Comment by J. Prescott on 29 January 2008 at 11:19 pm:
Ok, to echo Billy Joe, here is what is going to happen.
It has been announced that Giuliani is going to support and CAMPAIGN for McCain. Prior to this, Romney was running THIRD in New York and New Jersey, behind McCain, who was leading, and New Jersey. Giuliani will go home, and there is a distinct possibility he is going to more than double up on Romney in those states. McCain will win by at least 15% in California.
McCain is up 35 votes, with 92 total (with Giuliani’s 1). He needs 1,191. McCain will get the winner take all states Arizona (53), NJ (52), NY (101), Missouri (58)(not closed which will help McCain), Vermont (17), and Virginia (63) (Not closed, same as Missouri), and WV (30). This gives McCain 456 without going to the other states with percentage distribution. Romney, who has 59, will take the winner take all states of Utah (36), Conneticut (30), and Delaware (18). That gives Romney 142 delegates, giving McCain a 314 delegate lead. Huckabee will take ND, with 26 delegates, giving him 66 delegates. Ron Paul has 4.
That leaves 838 delegate up on Super Tuesday that are not winner take all. In California McCain will get at least 85 delegates, Romney 52, Huckabee 26, Paul 10. At the end of Super Tuesday, McCain will have 692 delegates, Romney 336, and Huckabee 240, with 989 delegates uncontested.
Huckabee, realizing that it would be extremely unlikely that he will be able to run the table, will drop out. This is the crux of the question. If he throws his support to Romney, its a race again, with Romney only approximately 116 delegates or so behind. However, if Huckabee throws his support to McCain, thats ballgame: McCain has approximately 900 delegates needing to pick up 20% of available delegates in a two man race. Huckabee is supposedly friends with McCain, might feel party loyalty to end race early to move on to attacking the dems, I don’t know.
Regardless, absent some sort of giant Romney end run in the next week, with Giuliani’s endorsement, McCain effectively ends the race by Super Tuesday.
Comment by thetodd on 30 January 2008 at 12:40 am:
For those who care about the prediction markets, McCain was around 60% to win the GOP nomination before Florida and now holds approximately an 86-13% lead over Romney.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 30 January 2008 at 12:45 am:
Conclusion: Billy and Prescott are always right and Tom and Augur are Always wrong.
Tom and Augur, still think Mitt is gonna be the nominee?
Comment by Brian on 30 January 2008 at 7:02 am:
First of all: super classy, Billy.
Second of all, I know you didn’t ask me, but I’ll concede that there’s a very strong likelihood McCain wins the nomination. Thanks to Huckabee siphoning off votes that would go to Romney (probably as part of an effort to be named McCain’s VP), it will be difficult for Romney to crawl back from this defeat even with his substantial advantage in money. It’s still conceivable to me that if Romney takes out a massive ad buy that McCain does not have enough money to counter, and if Romney effectively makes the argument in the southern states that a vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain, and voters find that argument persuasive and Huckabee’s support collapses, then Romney would still have a shot, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem like that’s how things are going to pan out.
Your cockiness about Hillary is totally laughable, and I think even you know that and are just purposefully trying to be irritating, but if not, you really should know that it’s ridiculous. Anybody with even a passing knowledge of political history knows that polls can change dramatically after major campaign events, and Obama has been on the right side of two major campaign events in recent days. We’ve yet to see many polls come out since he won South Carolina and since Kennedy endorsed him, and the only question is not whether he’ll get a bump but how much of one he’ll get. Nobody in the media paid any attention to Hillary’s “victory” in Florida, so she’ll probably not benefit from that at all. And most of the Democratic primary states’ delegates are proportionally allotted, which means Obama doesn’t even need to win a bunch of these states, just get close and then keep going to subsequent primaries. At some point Edwards will drop out and give his delegates to Obama as well.
None of this is me saying that I’m predicting an Obama victory. I’m not. But it’s just totally absurd to make any conclusions one way or the other until at least a few days from now. My gut says Obama will manage to pull out a victory; my brain says there’s no earthly way anybody can confidently predict anything at this point.
I will, however, lay a prediction down now that no matter who the Democratic nominee is, that nominee will defeat McCain in the general election, and more easily than a lot of people seem to think.
Comment by J. Prescott on 30 January 2008 at 8:16 am:
Associated Press is reporting Edwards is dropping out today, which is surprising the hell out of me.
Supposedly he is not going to endorse any one candidate immediately.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8UG8ANG0&show_article=1
Comment by Hanno on 30 January 2008 at 9:17 am:
I imagine that John McCain will win and then suffer from Bob Dole syndrome and be made out to be the geriatric candidate. This will be especially true if he’s running against the youthful and vibrant Obama. I’ve never seen him speak, but I understand he’s not much of a big crowd pleaser and that’s what you need for a general election. If he has a Dole fall, he’s probably done.
Comment by tet on 30 January 2008 at 12:00 pm:
Actually, Billy Joe, Tom’s not always wrong. What have I been saying for the past couple months?
“I have a higher probability of winning the Republican nomination than Rudy Giuliani.”
I will admit, though, that I had a weak moment of listening to BJ too much and thought he had a chance when I did my reply to the “Midnight Ride of Ron Paul.” Hopefully, I corrected that foolishness in time.
TheTodd, your political futures had Giuliani the highest probability of winning the nomination just a couple weeks ago. Just throw those goddamn things in the trash. They’re dominated by real investors who are concentrated on the Coasts and in DC. They have no real grasp of anything outside of their spheres.
One state does not a victory make, guys. McCain only beat Romney by 5% of the Republican votes cast–that’s not a landslide, just a bit more than a tie. As I said yesterday, Romney has a couple hundred million dollars more than McCain has to campaign with. All that would have to happen is one of John’s apparently psychotic breakdowns on camera and Mitt’s got it in the bag.
I can’t get the SNL cartoon about McCain out of my head–you know the one where he has to speak about Dubya and he’s naked in front of the mirror like the guy at the start of Apocalypse Now. That’s what’s going to ruin his chances–just one John Dean moment, and it’s inevitable with the end of privacy that it will end up all over the internet within seconds.
Still holding fast. Mitt vs. Hillary/Obama, Democrats by a historic landslide.
Last I heard, RP’s considering talking to Huckabee about taking over his delegates if he dropped out to insure that a strong pro-life, anti-illegal immigration voice could broker the convention.
The Hillary forces will hold back on the Michigan and Florida delegates unless she sees that she needs them to win in a brokered convention. Then, she’ll offer Obama the VP in exhange for his delegates voting to seat those two delegations and give her the victory.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by Augur on 30 January 2008 at 2:29 pm:
Tom - if you were so effing brilliant you would have taken the position against the bets on Rudy. Oh wise prophet.
The political markets should not be thrown in the trash, neither should polls. They both are useful tools, just not fool proof. You have a serious intellectual problem that continually manifests itself, that you can’t see utility in that which is somewhat flawed. Then you make ridiculous statements and lose credibility (much like BJM)
Comment by tet on 30 January 2008 at 2:55 pm:
Well, Augur, I do have the bet with you about Hillary and her Veep, Obama. I expect to make a solid hundred on that.
I have been a scientist, so if nothing else, I have been so completely involved with mathematical models that I would rather screw them than supermodels.
As I said earlier, if I had had a model presented to me by a fellow researcher that was as obviously flawed in its predictive capacity as TheTodd’s futures market, I would not have rested until that person was fired.
Let me put it you, plain and simple, Augur:
You cannot create an accurate model of human behavior using logic because human beings do not use logic to make decisions that affect them personally–they use emotions to do so.
That’s why advertising works. That’s why people smoke different brands of cigarettes that differ not in the least from each other even though the product will kill them. That’s how citizens in a democracy choose their leaders and why I am opposed to democracy. And that’s why the predictive models for the elections have become so useless–in an age where involved people are bombarded with hundreds of times as much information as they were in, say, 1992, their emotions swing wildly from moment to moment and cannot be accurately predicted by direct mathematical means. The electorate is emotionally chaotic, which means that it can only be analyzed by non-traditional, more intuitive, methods.
A useful mathematical model has a predictive capacity measured at two percent or less. I see no utility in a model that, time after time, gives me the wrong answer. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good, but the perfect sure as hell should be the enemy of the half-assed.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by Augur on 30 January 2008 at 3:36 pm:
Either way, i don’t think TheTodd was suggesting these predictions are necessarily accurate, for anything more than what they are - an illustration of what people willing to actually bet money think will happen. Perhaps they use logic to predict how people will react emotionally. That’s a worthy consideration, for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that pragmatic companies making contributions want to consider many variables in deciding to whom they should cut a check to.
Comment by section9 on 30 January 2008 at 3:39 pm:
Giuliani got about one, count ‘em, one delegate. The only thing Rudy has to offer to JMC is his name. That’s it.
Huckabee will never be the VP. JMC would have to spend the month of September arguing about Evolution and the Scopes Monkey Trial with representatives of the Media, Democratic 527’s, and other flying monkeys that Hillary’s campaign sent out.
That leaves Condi, who is likely to be your nominee. McCain will need a black counter, and one who Republicans and Independents know can do the job. What Democrats think of her is unimportant, since they’re going to be voting for Hillary. Rice’s job will be to galvanize the base and attack Hillary from a female perspective and from a national security angle. Rice remains popular in the Party-don’t pay attention to the clowns at National Review: you see how well they did during Impeachment.
Finally, Obama is not, repeat not foolish enough to become Hillary’s poodle. He’ll go off to Illinois to become governor and bide his time.
Comment by kofi the powell said he wouldnt and didnt; why would she be any different on 30 January 2008 at 9:40 pm:
Bide his time before being indicted? The Illinois Governor’s office is just a really nice holding cell. He’ll be a senator. Nothing wrong with that.
And as much as I would love Condi to be a VP (or even be running right now), she has repeatedly said she is not interested. Why does anyone think she’d change her mind?