Beet, outside of Republicans and the Atlas, I don't know anyone who "loathes [Hillary Clinton] with a seething hatred". That's ridiculous hyperbole akin to your sage analysis of the 2012 Presidential election in 2009 when you claimed that Sarah Palin could be elected over Obama or when you predicted imminent economic doom. As usual, you're prone to delusional despair that favors reading crumbs of data gleamed from comment threads rather than scientific analysis. For what it's worth, I agree that Hillary Clinton is an overrated candidate and that she has a number of weaknesses. This does not mean that "her political career is over".
You guys always cite my bad predictions, but I would say my analysis is pretty underrated on the forum. Hear me out.
Firstly, even as late as the first half of 2009, it hadn't sunk in for most people how much trouble the economy was in. So me being more negative than the consensus on the economy back then was leaning in the right direction, even if not all my literal comments were right. When I thought Palin was going to win the GOP nod, she was trading at about 20% on Intrade to do so.
I was wrong about a longshot prediction- hardly surprising. Longshot predictions are expected to be wrong - a person who is only right 50% of the time, but only makes longshot predictions that consensus gives a 20% chance to be true, is still a great predictor, because they are 1.5 times better than the consensus (the same applies for my thinking Ron Paul had a realistic shot at the GOP nod).
Now let's see some of my right predictions since 2008.
(1)
In November 2008, I predicted populism's emergence as a major issue. Also predicted that Obama would not be able to be a vehicle for it (he hasn't). This essay foreshadowed everything from the rise of the Tea Party to OWS to Larry Summers' fall from grace, to the rise of Elizabeth Warren and many progressives' biggest disappointments with Obama.
I wrote this just days after his initial election, when virtually everyone was basking in his glow and hardly anyone was thinking about storm clouds. So it was a far out, longshot prediction. Except for one comment from Sam Spade, it was largely ignored.
Note that the insight for this prediction was gleaned largely from looking at comments in online news stories.
(2) In
this thread when only 22% of people thought the Republicans would gain more than 45 seats in the House in 2010, I said the Democrats would lose between 65 and 70 seats. My loss estimates were a bit high, but they were very close to the ultimate +63 seat pickup by the House GOP that year. Looking back, I was actually too optimistic because I expected the economy to pick up more between late 2009 and late 2010, hence why I said "if the election were held today."
(3)
In early April 2010 I said, "I don't think most people realize how serious the situation is there" (in bold) about the Greek crisis. At the time, Greece was just starting to reach the headlines of financial papers. Given that it is nearly 5 years later and we are still dealing with it (see the election coming up later this month with SYRIZA in the lead) I would say that was fairly clairvoyant. Incidentally,
here is me, in early July 2010 saying that austerity wouldn't work and arguing for ECB monetary easing. Nearly five years later, the ECB has come around to that position.
(4)
Here's a good illustrative example from April 2013 on the value of online comments. At the time, Quinn was leading her nearest opponent by a 2-1 margin in the polls, with or without Weiner in the race. The intensity of the opposition to her on a local newspaper's comments section was strong enough to overcome the poll, however. I was able to predict she would lose the mayoral election. A couple of comments down is a good explanation by me of why I look at online comments.
(5) I first posted about Ebola on
June 16, 2014. At that time, it was only a small, local story, local meaning you would only see if it if you were looking for West African news, or in the corners of the the International section of large news aggregators. For months I raised the profile of this story, until it became headline news in the United States. In early October 2014, when I posted a
domestic U.S. thread about Ebola, I was roundly mocked by many posters. The kindest poster was Ernest, who simply said that he didn't think the thread would be necessary. Just days later, the first U.S. transmission of Ebola was confirmed, and the thread developed into 5+ pages (without me responding), with the last post in December. That was when TIME declared Ebola the
story of the year. I also saw, in late October, when the
exponential phase of Ebola growth was coming to an end, particularly in Liberia. At that stage, very few people were willing to believe that the situation in Liberia was about to improve (they said it was just a matter of reporting breaking down).
All of these five prediction areas were longshot predictions which I was right about. They all involved deviations from conventional wisdom, the majority view, a poll, the opinion of an official, the informal judgement of which stories are important, etc. and
I was right and more mainstream view was wrong.And yet I still have a reputation here of being some sort of unrealistic pessimist, not getting credit for a decent score of correct longshot predictions (and a few wrong longshot predictions, to be sure). But someone making random longshot predictions with no skill would have a far worse record than I, and I think it would be fitting if I received some accolades.
