Three separate Bernie Sanders supporters wrote me yesterday, apparently having figured out that his path to the White House involves convincing the guy who works on Groo the Wanderer that Hillary doesn't have a lock on it. Not that I've said she does — though Nate Silver, who actually counts votes as opposed to assessing "momentum," seems to think it's just about over. I just don't have a lot of emotion invested in that race. I'll be voting for whichever one gets the nomination and it won't matter because I live in a state that's going to go overwhemingly Democratic with or without my ballot.
I'm also getting e-mails from folks linking me to articles saying Hillary is certain to beat Donald or that Donald is certain to beat Hillary. Most of the latter seem to have been written by pundits who, 48 hours before the polls closed in 2012 were confidently predicting a Romney landslide. It seems that though they got that wrong two days before that election, they've become infallible 253 days ahead of Election Day. And that's without knowing who the running mates will be, who'll win the debates, what additional stances and promises we'll hear from the nominees, what new scandals will emerge, what stupid things each of them will say, etc.
I'm unimpressed by predictions that are unaccompanied by maps or lists that break down each candidate's chances in each state and how many electoral votes each could win. In fact, I think those are the only forecasts that have any value at all. You want to convince me your guy or gal will be sworn in next Inauguration Day? Break out the electoral map and tell me which states he or she will win…and don't kid yourself or me. The G.O.P. nominee ain't gonna lose Texas or Utah and the Democratic candidate has New York and California for sure.
But you can't do that now with any real data. There simply hasn't been enough polling of most of the arguable states and even where there's been some, it's testing the match-up of Clinton and Somebody versus Trump and Somebody in an election that will have many twists 'n' turns in those 253 days. Obviously, the Democrat starts with a big electoral advantage. He or she just has to replicate the 2012 Obama win and not lose more than 126 of the electoral votes he won. The Republican has to win all the states Romney got plus flip around ten additional ones. It can be done but there's insufficient data to prove it at this time.
Until there is, all of it is wishful thinking as far as I'm concerned. Plus, don't you just get the feeling that this is going to be the kind of election where every even-numbered day, one of the candidates is going to say something really, really outrageous and possibly game-changing? And that every odd-numbered day, we're going to hear a possibly-true story of something really, really scandalous and possibly illegal (but not clearly disprovable) that one of them did? Those 253 days are going to feel like 253 years.