It's The Stupid, Stupid

On thinking more about why my predictions were too pessimistic for the Dems, and having a read around the usual suspects I've come to some conclusions about where I went wrong.

I'm cribbing here mainly from one of the very scholarly folks on Real Clear Politics, whose name I've lost. Anyhow, this gent and I had much the same predictions, Dems get 222 in the House and 49 in the Senate.

The suggestion is that we took the poll data and moderated it to allow for the structural advantages that the GOP had. Money, redistricting, get out the vote, organisation, and did I mention money? Here's the thing; we assumed that all the GOP candidates in the seats in play would make compentent use of the money etc. that they had access to. Turns out many of them took all that scattered it into the wind (I could use a blunter Australian expression here but this is a family channel, right).

The lesson is that not all candidates are equally effective and that the structural advantages don't avail much (especially in a bad year) if the candidate is just to stupid to use them properly.

And of course candidates in that category are now no longer in office. Which is as it should be. Which is not to say there weren't some OK congress members who did everything right and still got run over by the train.