This forum's consensus is clearly just awful at long-term predictions
Maybe not worse than the conventional pundit
It's not just that we're bad at long-term prognosticating; that's true of almost anyone. I mean, would anybody in the world have said in 2001 that Barack Obama would be George W. Bush's successor?
No, the thing is people on the forum make some bizarre suggestions. I know that you can never say never in politics, but the idea that Condoleeza Rice was going to be on a Republican ticket is fairly unlikely. There isn't going to be a pro-choice moderate Republican on the ticket for a long time, if ever. Blanche Lincoln is a slightly less ridiculous choice for a Democratic running mate, but still unlikely.
What a lot of people don't grasp is that the parties are increasingly ideologically unified, which means that's it's very unlikely that (a) Democrats will nominate someone from the right-wing of their party, and (b) Republicans will nominate someone from the left wing of their party.
Frankly, I think the running mate choices are more ridiculous than the presidential nominees: Allen was seen as credible at the time.
