Any pundit who makes a flat prediction has to know this will happen sometimes.
In the aftermath of the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts in January, Fred Barnes wrote a Weekly Standard piece headlined:
“The Health Care Bill Is Dead.”
If you are so small-minded as to enjoy watching someone act very sure of something about which he turned out to be completely wrong, click through and read the whole piece. Or settle for this taste, which is the conclusion of the piece:
“Oh, yes. The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection. Brown ran to be the 41st vote for filibuster and now he is just that. Democrats have talked up clever strategies to pass the bill in the Senate despite Brown, but they won’t fly. It’s one thing for ObamaCare to be rejected by the American public in poll after poll. But it becomes a matter of considerably greater political magnitude when ObamaCare causes the loss of a Senate race in the blue state of Massachusetts.
Then there’s the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists some version of ObamaCare will be approved and soon. She’s not kidding. She’s simply wrong. At best, she has the minimum 218 votes for passage. After the Massachusetts fiasco, however, there’s sure to be erosion. How many Democrats in Republican-leaning districts want to vote for ObamaCare, post-Massachusetts? Not many.
Pelosi met with House Democrats yesterday to tell them how the negotiations on a compromise health care bill between the House and Senate were going. As she spoke, one Democratic member whispered to another, “It’s like talking about your date on Friday, but the date’s in the emergency room.” ObamaCare went into the emergency room in Massachusetts and didn’t make it out alive.”
(Hat tip to Taegen Goddards Political Wire.)
Fred Barnes is just one more political commentator who people used to take seriously before he sold his soul for a Fox News paycheck.
Not the first time he’s made a definitive statement that turns out to be pretty far off. In April 2003, he said about Iraq “The war was the hard part…and it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but not as hard as winning a war.”
But this is too easy! What would a search for left leaning pundits regarding the surge in Iraq bring up?
Peder–
Try Thomas Friedman (a good Minnesota boy), for a start.
I find it interesting to see how close he was to right, and still may be depending on what happens in the Senate.
Anyone who thinks the health care industry is opposed to this bill must have blinders on after that California insurer pushed it over the top.
Eric,
I always knew your left leg was shorter than your right leg.
Until I see the post about Harry Reid being wrong about Iraq being “lost”, I’m guessing the left leg is cut off above the knee.
It seems pundits can be wrong any number of times, but it doesn’t matter. Once part of the punditocracy, that status is permanent and accuracy is not required.
Regarding come commenters question about Harry Reid, politicians aren’t held to account as often as they should be, but they still get held accountable far more than pundits. Moreover, a politician like Reid is supposed to craft policy and know how the legislative process works, while a pundit is supposed to analyze politics, and being correct about predictions would seem central to the job description. Instead it’s utterly irrelevant.
The problem is with the word “pundit” – it doesn’t come close to describing the reality of people like Barnes. In her book, “Shadow Elite” Janine R Wedel describes these types as “flexians” – people who have multiple roles, many undisclosed, and who move between institutions without really becoming “of” them. They use their most flattering description – in this case “pundit” – to impart a chimera of objectivity and honesty. What really is Barnes? Who pays for his activities? The fact that we really can’t answer these questions points to his being a true flexian and the danger of imparting any credibility to what he says or does.
Schadenfreude is ugly on anyone, but its hard not to smile when seeing the likes of Barnes & Kristol be proven so unequivicably wrong.
Also, Mr Iacono – the bill has passed, it is law. Nothing that happens in the Senate will change that. However, if the repubs disrupt the process, they will be on the hook for failing to undo the ‘cornhusker kickback’ or whatever trite name we’re calling it now.