{"id":17362,"date":"2016-10-02T20:07:03","date_gmt":"2016-10-02T20:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17362"},"modified":"2016-10-02T20:07:03","modified_gmt":"2016-10-02T20:07:03","slug":"so-wrong-so-often-on-this-election-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17362","title":{"rendered":"So wrong, so often on this election campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"donald-trump4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Please pardon this bad rip-off of a famous poem, but … How many time have I been wrong about this election cycle? Let me count the ways.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wouldn’t approve, but what the heck. I feel the need to atone for some terrible misfires on this presidential election campaign.<\/p>\n

I take small solace — and it is small, indeed — in the knowledge that I am not alone in failing to shoot straight.<\/p>\n

Donald J. Trump has confounded damn near everyone, first by grabbing the Republican presidential nomination this summer and then by making a race of it against Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.<\/p>\n

I once vowed to never again make a political prediction. I should have kept to my pledge. I should have buttoned up my pie hole\/typing fingers and called it good. Let others stick their necks out.<\/p>\n

But no-o-o-o!<\/em> I had to weigh in. I had to make an ass of myself.<\/p>\n

I never thought Trump would be nominated. I never thought this novice politician with the very big mouth and even larger ego could wrestle the nomination away from the Republican pros.<\/p>\n

Then again, I never thought Hillary would run for the U.S. Senate in 2000 and I thought that Colin Powell would run for the presidency in 1996. Neither of those things happened.<\/p>\n

With that track record, I still managed to stick my neck out on this campaign.<\/p>\n

Once Trump got the nomination, I was dead certain Clinton would win in a landslide. She was destined<\/em> to be president, kind of like the way Ike was destined in 1952 for the top job … after leading Allied troops to victory in World War II.<\/p>\n

I didn’t anticipate Clinton’s flaws being such a drag on her candidacy. Nor did I envision Trump ever being able to get away with some of the hideous things he has said over the past year: John McCain is a war hero only because he “was captured?; the U.S.-born federal judge being a “Mexican”; his mocking of a reporter’s physical ailments; his suggestion that Mexico is sending “rapists, drug dealers, murderers” and other assorted criminals to the United States.<\/p>\n

I never anticipated that his GOP base of support would hold as strong as it has done.<\/p>\n

Moreover, I was so certain that Trump’s flaws were so egregious that I actually blogged that Hillary could win a 50-state sweep this fall.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/2016\/05\/time-to-handicap-the-fall-election\/<\/p>\n

OK, with all of that out of the way, I am going to make another stab at fulfilling an earlier pledge.<\/p>\n

I am — once again — declaring myself to be out of the political predicting game.<\/p>\n

I lack the intuitive powers, perhaps even the intellect to try to guess what voters are going to do.<\/p>\n

If you catch me falling off the wagon again, you are welcome to call the guys in the white coats. I won’t be silent. There will be more commentary to come. Just no predicting.<\/p>\n

I’m just going to wait this\u00a0spectacle\u00a0out … and hope for the best.<\/p>\n\n

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Please pardon this bad rip-off of a famous poem, but … How many time have I been wrong about this election cycle? Let me count the ways. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wouldn’t approve, but what the heck. I feel the need to atone for some terrible misfires on this presidential election campaign. I take small solace … Continue reading So wrong, so often on this election campaign<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[73,1424,2139,2238,5958],"class_list":["post-17362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-2016-campaign","tag-donald-trump","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-ike","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17364,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17362\/revisions\/17364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}