Dick Morris is Wrong (Again)

Let’s set aside the various incorrect forecasts of Mr. Morris and others in their outdated, Hillary-centric analysis, which explains why so many pundits have been so incredibly wrong, so incredibly often.

They miss the point, as he does. They are mired in inside-Washington talking points passed from one insider to another, divorced from the reality of America in 2008. They remain trapped in 1980, 1992, 1996. America has long since moved on.

Dick Morris is flat-out wrong in suggesting that California means Hillary will be nominated and he is even more wrong in suggesting that McCain has appeal to disaffected Obama voters. (Too much Fox News there, not exactly the den of Obama voters, disaffected or not.)

The Democratic race is 50-50 and in my view these endlessly shifting forecasts from the endlessly wrong pundit class are, to coin a phrase, pundit poo that nobody pays attention to, except the pundits. Sorry guys, it’s true. Billionaires would be born by anyone going to Vegas and betting against the latest consensus pundit predictions this year.

Of course McCain can beat Hillary or Obama and either Hillary or Obama can beat McCain. Enough spin. Anyone who posits a result with anything resembling certainty should not be taken seriously, and those who have done this, so far in this campaign, have looked ridiculous. (Yet with endless capacity for humiliation, those who have been the most repeatedly wrong continue being repeatedly wrong.)

Here is John McCain’s problem:

To the degree he panders to the far right, he loses political independents, whose views are in large numbers diametrically opposite to those of the far right. To the degree he competes for real support among independents, he must take positions that are anathema to the far right, which depresses the Republican base.

In law school they call this the ipsi dipsi. The fault lines between independents and the far right are unbridgeable, clashing with hostility, irreconcilable, diametrically opposite.

If John McCain tries to straddle these lines, his voice would climb five octaves higher!

The Dick Morris analysis is backward, passé, ancient history, because he applies linear logic that worked in his days of triangulating with Bill Clinton but is fossilized and obsolete in the transforming political realities of 2008.

Obama has the best straight shot because his natural tendencies and policies bridge the Democratic constituencies and independent constituencies, which for 75 percent of independents are 90 percent in agreement.

If Hillary is nominated, while not as natural with independents, she will have major openings as McCain plays to the right, which he will do. If perchance he does not, some of his base stays home, and in the post-Bush era, with Republicans facing intrinsic weakness, there is no margin for error.

Dick Morris may be right for 1980, 1992 or 1996. Wrong century. We are in transforming times, and he remains trapped in a past that died with the enormous revulsion of political independents towards George W. Bush, a line that not even John McCain can straddle successfully.