{"id":3564,"date":"2008-10-31T06:13:48","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T11:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3564"},"modified":"2011-10-20T10:32:33","modified_gmt":"2011-10-20T15:32:33","slug":"fearless-predictions-take-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3564","title":{"rendered":"Fearless Predictions – Take 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was about three months ago that I took my Smy first whack at my biennial “Fearless Predictions”<\/a>\u00a0for this election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the original, I note my bona fides<\/em> as a prognosticator:\u00a0 I got closer to nailing the 2004 presidential election than anyone I know; I was two days off on Saddam Hussein’s execution; while I had a number of flubs in 2006, I got the ones that mattered – Pawlenty by a hair, Bachmann by eight – in style.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This year?\u00a0 It’s gonna be a tough one – but maybe not that <\/em>bad.\u00a0 Although the conventional wisdom says this is gonna be a rough year for Republicans – I previously predicted the Dems would suffer a moral defeat if they came out with any less than 350 seats in the House – there is evidence that Congressional Dems’ fecklessness on the war, the economy and, well, everything might be costing them<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here in Minnesota, the DFL candidates have run ugly, nasty, amoral races that deserve to be turned out into the street; in a year like this, that’s unlikely.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So without further ado, let’s get down to it.:<\/p>\n

US Senate<\/strong>:\u00a0 Norm Coleman endured a lefty\/media (pardon the redundancy) smear campaign of biblical proportions.\u00a0 In a less-fraught year, I think it would have been an 8-10 point race; Franken doesn’t even have the DFL base behind him.\u00a0 I think Coleman will win by two or three.<\/p>\n

First District<\/strong>: Tim Walz will win going away – but if Obama wins, and governs the way he’s promised, Walz is either going to have to manufacture a genuine centrist facade, or face a serious problem in 2010.\u00a0 The First District just isn’t that crazy.<\/p>\n

Second District<\/strong>:\u00a0 I’ll hold to my July prediction almost verbatim:\u00a0 John Kline will beat Steve Sarvi by at least <\/em>ten points.\u00a0 Maybe more.<\/p>\n

Third District<\/strong>: I think Paulsen’s going to pull this one off, but it’ll be tight.\u00a0 Maybe two points.\u00a0 The DFL has run a snarlingly adolescent campaign in this district; I suspect they realize that talk that the\u00a0Third Distict is \u201cturning blue\u201d\u00a0was overstated.\u00a0 Again,\u00a0if Obama wins and Paulson carries it off, Paulsen will take 2010 by at least 12 points against anyone the DFL throws against him – presuming he resists the urge to RINO out on us.<\/p>\n

Fourth District<\/strong>:\u00a0 Ed Matthews is as solid a candidate as the GOP has thrown into this DFL near-sinecure, ever.\u00a0\u00a0 He’s sharp.\u00a0 He’s articulate.\u00a0 He shredded <\/em>Betty McCollum, perhaps the emptiest suit in our delegation, at their debate.\u00a0 Seriously – if it’d been a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it in two rounds.\u00a0 But it’s the Fourth, where the DFL could nominate a set of wind-up chattering teeth and count on 50% of the votes.\u00a0 So far.\u00a0 I think McCollum is going to carry this one off – but I think there are chinks forming in the DFL’s sense of invincibility in this district.\u00a0 We’ll be talking about that in the future on this blog.\u00a0 I hope Ed Matthews stays in politics; he can be a contender.<\/p>\n

Fifth District<\/strong>:\u00a0 Like Matthews, Barb Davis-White is as credible a candidate as the GOP has fielded in this district in recent memory.\u00a0 A black conservative Christian, Davis-White should <\/em>make some decent headway – and probably could have done better, had the GOP managed to get her funding within two orders of magnitude of that of the incompetent Keith Ellison.\u00a0 I suspect Ellison will win\u00a0– but Barb Davis-White and people like her need to stay at this.\u00a0 If Obama wins the White House, 2010 is going to be another 1994 – and people like Davis-White and Matthews will benefit.<\/p>\n

Sixth District<\/strong>: Michele Bachmann, the biggest lightning rod\u00a0for the left’s mania and delusion anywhere in the Congress, has endured the nastiest assaults of any candidate I can think of.\u00a0 Everything Sarah Palin has faced in the past two months – the sclerotic selective sexism of the feminist movement, the misogyny of the left – Michele Bachmann has been\u00a0dealing with for\u00a0over a decade.\u00a0 The left\u00a0just doesn’t like\u00a0<\/em>uppity women!\u00a0 I think Michele will tip Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenburg –\u00a0former useless head of MNDoT and shameless ghoul<\/a>\u00a0– by four.<\/p>\n

Seventh District<\/strong>: Collin Peterson will win.\u00a0 Fifteen, twenty, thirty points?\u00a0 Let’s not kid ourselves.<\/p>\n

Eighth District<\/strong>:\u00a0 Jim Oberstar will slouch onward, the Robert Byrd<\/strike> Strom Thurmond (or maybe just the Quentin Burdick) of the Northland, borne forth on a wave of entitlement swag and an avalanche of yummy pork.\u00a0 He will be America\u2019s first undead congressman.<\/p>\n

And finally…<\/p>\n

…well, no.\u00a0 I never thought I’d say this a week ago, but the presidential race is, again, too fluid.\u00a0 The momentum in this race has changed more than in a pee-wee hockey game.\u00a0 Maybe this weekend the picture will be clearer.<\/p>\n

And maybe not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was about three months ago that I took my Smy first whack at my biennial “Fearless Predictions”\u00a0for this election.\u00a0 In the original, I note my bona fides as a prognosticator:\u00a0 I got closer to nailing the 2004 presidential election than anyone I know; I was two days off on Saddam Hussein’s execution; while I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,155],"tags":[160,165],"class_list":["post-3564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-mn-congressional","tag-mn-cd1","tag-mn-cd7"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3564"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23863,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3564\/revisions\/23863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}