Within 24 hours, Mitt Romney went from being a lock for 3 and 0 (Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina) to being 1 and 2. The Iowa vote was recounted and it turned out that his whopping 8 vote lead over Santorum was wrong; Santorum was the victor. And Romney had basically been anointed as the winner in South Carolina, but after a couple of poor debate showings….where he came through strong with embarrassing, stammering answers about his tax returns, and Gingrich outshined him anyway by hammering the media….Romney dropped through the floor. Of course stories about how he has a couple of bank accounts in the Cayman Islands didn’t help. Neither did his awkward, off-the-cuff admission that his effective tax rate has been about 15% for a decade. And him saying he “earned some money from speakers fees, but not much,” where “not much” turned out to be $375k….that didn’t quite help him connect with voters either. What a thing; the guy was cruising, everyone had already penned him in as the inevitable nominee and in the blink of an eye, he went down in flames in South Carolina. And took a retrograde loss in Iowa to boot. So many people have egg on their faces now, don’t they? Boy those analysts and pundits sure are stupid. They’re proven wrong time and time again, and yet they continue to be giddy with the thought of making their next prediction/analyzing the next story. What a load of know-nothings, right?
Um, no. I get a little irritated when I hear people point to stories like the Romney 24-hour turnaround as evidence that people in the media have their heads in the sand. Why in the world would you think that? Before the couple of incidents I mentioned above, Romney was hammering his competition in every poll. So….if someone were to analyze the situation, what do you think they would say? “Romney is about to commit political harakiri and go down in flames”? No, you would expect them to say “He’s way ahead and he’s going to take South Carolina. BUT….he could, of course, always commit a handful of unforced errors and lose. Or Newt could turn his building momentum into a tidal wave.” And that IS what about a million “pundits” said in about a million different ways. (You have to keep talk radio and 24/7 cable news going after all.) It was an easy assessment to make and the media made it. “Romney is a big favorite to win, but he could screw up.” To me it’s no different than the stock market. Everyone KNOWS that it’s impossible to time the market with any degree of certainty. Does that mean that market analysts are entirely useless? Of course not; they provide summaries of current market conditions and they assign percentages to various market scenarios. “The forecast is sunshine with a 10% chance of rain.” That was the forecast in early 2010; many people were calling for a vertical market rise, but the 10% chance of rain hit and the market tanked instead. Same thing here; Romney was a big favorite going in, but….shit happens. That doesn’t mean that journalists don’t know what they’re talking about; it just means that you’re pissed that they’re not predicting with superhuman 100% accuracy. Settle down now.
1/22/2012 – Christ
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January 22nd, 2012 at 10:18 am
I would agree with you here. But market pundits always make sure to hedge their claims. They always talk two-handedly: “One one hand…on the other hand…” or “Market might be up, or it might be down”. Yeah, no shit Sherlock. But again, you are right that these journalists make use of all the information they have at the time to make an informed opinion or guess. And it’s a hell of a lot better guess than any random schmo could make. But in the end that’s all it is…an educated GUESS in fields that have so many unknown random variables. Never take it seriously.
January 22nd, 2012 at 11:16 pm
Yes this is what I’m saying; pundits are like market analysts that hedge. They essentially just tell you what the polls say, but they hedge by saying “Well this person’s campaign could get derailed,” or “This person’s campaign could be resurrected, like McCain’s in ’08.” They do give you some good insights as well, the two main ones probably being a) they can tell you when momentum shifts are occurring (for example with Newt in South Carolina), and b) very key, they tell you which campaigns have the best organization and the best ground games. You need reporters for that info; you would never know it otherwise.