Writ Large

I have no sources for this. There is no corroborating evidence.

This post is based exclusively on a hunch. And I'm going to run with it.

Remember the last two elections in Minnesota? In '98, the polls showed Norm Coleman neck and neck with Skip Humphrey. Both were fairly confident in writing off Jesse Ventura.

The less said, the better.

More germane; in 2002, the Democrats polling showed them even with Tim Pawlenty in the gubernatorial race, and put Mondale ahead of Norm Coleman, before the Paulapalooza.

We know how that turned out.

The point being, the left was convinced that they were going to win; they lost, in many cases losing big. The gap between perception and reality was yawning.

Do Republicans do this? Maybe - but I don't remember anyone on the right seriously predicting a Dole victory in '96, and most serious conservatives were very worried about George HW Bush in '92 as well. I don't recall an election in my congnizant life where Republicans, on a wide scale, consistently mangled the tea leaves to mislead themselves the way so many on the left do today.

The left is latching onto the faintest scraps of news - a dip in the polls here, a bombing in Iraq there - and stitching it into an ornate scenario that ends with a Democrat victory in '04. Not to say that victory couldn't happen - the President is vulnerable - but none of these candidates are going to pull it off with any of the issues or conditions they find in place today. But it's fourteen months away!

Michael Medved says the stage may be set (as of now, anyway) for a set of historically-sweeping reversals for the left. Medved may be optimistic - it's 14 months away for us, too - but his case is a lot more convincing than a couple of polls and some short-term reverses.

We'll be following this for...oh, the next 14 months.

UPDATE: Yes, I do have some sources for this!

And yeah, anything can happen in 14 months, as we discovered in 1991. But the economy is improving (presumably over Paul Krugman's dead body), which is something George41 didn't have in his corner.