Opinion: When Political Pundits Go Bad

(Nov. 2) -- If there's one certainty after this election, is that political pundits will be out in full force, offering their expert opinions on what it all means, and boldly predicting the future health and well-being of the two political parties.

Should anyone listen to them? Or would you be better off heading over to the local fortune teller?

Given the track record of some pundits, that's a tough call.

Consider how well the punditocracy did after the last big election in 2008. That one saw President Barack Obama win and Democrats expand their majorities in the House and Senate. And it saw a flurry of expert forecasts about the utterly bleak and hopeless future of the GOP.

Here are some of my favorites:

Off by just 38 years ...

"Today, a Democratic majority is emerging, and it's my hypothesis, one I share with a great many others, that this majority will guarantee the Democrats remain in power for the next 40 years."

-- James Carville, May 2009

"Obama ... and his successors could dominate U.S. national politics for the next 30 or even 40 years."

-- Martin Sieff, UPI, Nov. 7, 2008

They were right, if "permanent" equals two years ...

"We are witnessing the creation of a permanent progressive majority."

-- Robert Borosage, quoted in Politico, Nov. 7, 2008

"The Republican Party is now attached to a political movement -- a media-led movement -- that cannot win elections. ... The GOP may be assigning itself a permanent minority status."

-- Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America, Nov. 10, 2009

News of their death was somewhat exaggerated ...

"The Republicans, arguably, are in something of a death spiral."

-- Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, Jan. 29, 2009

"[Republicans are] starting to look like the Federalists of the early 19th century: an embittered, over-the-top, out-of-touch regional party en route to extinction, doubling down on dogma the electorate has already rejected."

-- Michael Grunwald, Time, May 7, 2009

Did he mean to say "crushed like a sponge"?

"The conservative movement brought about by the Gingrich revolution has been crushed. ... There has been a change in the way we think about society and the economy, and Democrats have a huge advantage."

-- Stan Greenberg, quoted in Politico, Nov. 7, 2008

Someone was drunk alright ...

"Drunk on self-delusion, a staggering GOP whistles past the electoral graveyard, missing the whole point of this election: the center has shifted, and positions that used to be considered 'left wing' ... are now solidly mainstream."

-- Arianna Huffington, Huffingtonpost.com, Nov. 8, 2008

It depends on what the meaning of "considerable" means ...

"In all likelihood, Republicans can look forward to a considerable period on the sidelines."

-- Thomas B. Edsall, Huffingtonpost.com, Dec. 18, 2008

Maybe he forgot to take global warming into account?

"A GOP ice age is on the way."

-- Mike Murphy, Time, June 22, 2009

To be fair, after the 2008 election, things did look very bad for Republicans. But how did these "experts" miss the fact that just a few years earlier, Republicans were busy making the exact same claims about their own "permanent majority" after the 2004 elections? Shouldn't that have clued them in to the dangers of making such grand proclamations?

And it's worth noting that not everyone failed so miserably back in 2008.

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Stuart Rothenberg, for example, wisely cautioned in a Nov. 6, 2008, article on Real Clear Politics that for Obama and the Democrats "with victory comes expectations, and it is those expectations that could easily morph into problems." He went on to note, correctly, that "events could give taxes, fiscal responsibility and national defense issues back to the GOP just the way Republicans handed them to Democrats."

And Michael Barone, writing in U.S. News and World Report on Dec. 2, 2008, in a piece warning against reading too much into the 2008 election, noted how voters "seemed to be willing to switch their votes in response to events" and that "they may be willing to switch again."

Of course, who knows. Maybe the pundits are just as wrong in predicting that this election will be a big win for the Republicans.

However the vote turns out, you'd be well advised to keep all this in mind as they start making their big, brassy pronouncements in the wake of Tuesday's election.