Back in 1961, a couple of Babe Ruth’s records were broken within two weeks. The first was Roger Maris hitting # 61 on the last day of the season. The second was Whitey Ford breaking the Babe’s post season scoreless innings streak. It led Whitey Ford to say that it was a bad year for the Babe.
Well, it was a bad year for the experts in 2016, from the Cubs to Mr. Trump winning the presidency.
The experts were not just wrong about the election result. They missed a bunch of other things, as Michael Barone wrote:
The Trump campaign seems to have had a pretty good idea of what its Republican opponents and the Clinton campaign were up to, but the reverse was clearly not true.In post-election interviews Clinton campaign operatives were blaming their defeat on racism, the FBI director, the Russians.
Mature adults would be seeking to understand how they had missed out on how the rules were changing.
In the end, spending a ton of money did not really help. For example, the Clinton side spent a fortune advertising in Spanish. The ads clearly played “the ethnic card” but Hispanic turnout did not increase.
Also, celebrities and TV spots did not change the needle much. It makes you wonder if anyone is even watching commercials anymore or cares what some “Hollywoodie” thinks. My money is on the latter! A bad year for self-absorbed movie stars who think that we really care what they think.
Most of all, it was the polls who really got it wrong. We all woke up on election day hearing that a Clinton Electoral College victory was only a matter of hours away. Why? Because the experts said that demographics had created this “blue wall” that no GOP candidate would ever crash forever.
So it was a bad year for everyone, and I include myself, who wrote on these pages a year ago that Mr. Trump would never be the GOP nominee.
So what happens in 2017? I don’t know, but expect a few unpredictable things, just like 2016.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
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