Nobody Knows Anything (emphasis mine):
The other night Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell rebuked her for impugning colleague Jeff Sessions. Exercising a little-known rule, the Senate revoked Warren’s floor privileges for 24 hours. Now, says the Times, “Ms. Warren is considered a very early frontrunner for 2020, should she run.”
I’m sorry. I just can’t. We are three weeks into the presidency of Donald J. Trump, the most unusual and unconventional man to inhabit the White House in a century, possibly ever, and the New York Times is already naming the frontrunner to replace him? The same media and consultant class that assumed Hillary Clinton would win the presidency in 2008 and again in 2016 presumes to declare how a Senate kerfuffle in February 2017 will affect Iowa caucus-goers in 2020? Who are these people? Where did they come from? What makes them so obtuse, so beholden to gossip, so given to wish-casting, so certain that their momentary impressions of trivial matters carry cosmic weight? Was it college that inflated their sense of self-worth? Is that what $50k a year buys you—a degree in smug? We may never know.
Let me make a confession. I have no idea who the Democratic nominee will be in 2020. Nor am I completely sure, since we are being honest, who the Republican nominee will be. (Trump, I guess?) McConnell’s decision to cut off Warren may have been a disaster of epic proportions for the GOP. Or it could have been a brilliant strategic move, elevating an unlikable Massachusetts liberal to the top of her party. McConnell himself is probably ambivalent.
I do suspect, however, that if Harry Reid had cut off Ted Cruz’s microphone in 2013 the Nevada Democrat would have been hailed as a hero and genius. Even so: The shoe-on-the-other-foot argument may not count for much any more. Nothing may count for much any more. If the last year and a half has taught us anything, it is that what we think is supposed to happen does not. Brexit was not supposed to happen. Trump was not supposed to happen. The Patriots’ comeback was not supposed to happen. Yet here we are.
And no one seems to be drawing lessons from any of this.
-Matthew Continetti (editor, Free Beacon)
This is why, for as long as GraniteGrok has been open, when someone has asked (sometimes heatedly) who I think I am, my answer has simply been “I’m just an ordinary schlub from Central New Hampsha”. Sure, I read a LOT, talk a LOT, but I have no degree in political science nor a law degree. Just a couple of STEM degrees – never knew that I’d be doing this kind of writing (and liking it, mostly).
I agree with Continetti – one of the things that I see and hear the national pundits do all the time is the “Look how smart am I” bit and make such sweeping and profound pronouncements. And Continetti is right – what’s their batting average?
We try hard to have a sense of humility about what we do here. We do deal in facts but projections are just that – and we end up very disappointed with a lot in people in which we have put our Trust because they promised to do things. And when we thought events didn’t go the way we had hoped. Sure, we take guesses about the future but not in certainties.
(H/T: Instapundit)
