Assessing Hogue Election Day Predicitons

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Friends
Toto, Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion bear witness to my 7 October predictions posted on this bog three days ago on Election Day.

It’s a full month later. Four days have passed since the election. Long enough time for all the votes to be counted. Let’s see how I did:

1.) The following is categorically going to happen: Barack Obama will win the electoral collage and thus win the presidency.

ASSESSMENT:
Correct. At the time of this writing, the Missouri vote is still being counted but Obama enjoyed a rapid and complete landslide in the Electoral College with over a hundred more votes than he needed. Obama will win a projected 365 electoral votes to McCain’s 162.

2.) He will win the Electoral College vote early that night. We will know who was elected president of the United States by no later than 11 pm Pacific Time.

ASSESSMENT:
Correct. We knew early who was the winner very early. There would be no long night of waiting, or weeks of disputed recounts. A moment after the polls closed on the West Coast at 8 p.m. all the major news channels unanimously declared Obama the winner by an overwhelming Electoral College landslide.

3.) The future of the popular vote is murkier. Because Obama DID NOT choose Clinton as a running mate, he has made this a close election –¬† one in which there’s an outside chance the McCain/Palin ticket could even win a slim margin in the popular vote that hasn’t been seen since Nixon lost a potentially disputable election against Kennedy in 1960.

ASSESSMENT:
Not quite correct on the popular vote being murkier, but correct on it being close. Obama didn’t win a mandate coming in at 6.5 percent of the popular vote. A true mandate is a minimum of 10 percent or more.

Obama gambled on picking the running mate he wanted as president. Moreover, as he appears to be echoing the karma of John Kennedy, he did not make Kennedy’s compromise. Obama didn’t pick a vice presidential nominee he personally disliked but deemed necessary to pick up votes. Kennedy in 1960 picked Lyndon Johnson to carry the US South. Obama stuck to his statesman principles. He picked someone he felt comfortable with as councilor rather than a necessary political compromise he could marginalize later. Obama threw the dice and once again showed he had the luck.

He was also lucky the Republicans couldn’t summon someone more formidable. A future disputed close election was avoided because of McCain’s strategic mistakes, such as playing the “maverick” after the economic crisis began while Obama continued playing it cool and stable, presenting a calming choice for president. The Change-meister stood in sharp contrast to McCain’s bottom-squirming moments during the presidential debates when wild gestures and sometimes-unhinged expressions made him look cartoonish. Was this a future president or a comedic impersonation of the bugged-and-squinting eyed Bill D. Cat? That’s the Sylvester-on-speed-hair-balls, “gack gack”-ing creation of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed created for the comic strips Bloom County (1980s) Outland and Opus?

If McCain had picked Mitt Romney as his VP running mate he would have had a cool and stable Republican with respectable business credentials as his backup, not a straight and strident shooting, plucky moose plugger, Sarah Palin. The Governor of Alaska choice made for great political theater and even though my friends on the left still can’t figure it out, my friends on the right were galvanized by her red moose meat and Anchorage potato spud Republican values, if not so much by her lack of national political skill sets. She made this election close. However, the timelines that my oracle also presented to me indicate that Mitt Romney would have made the election far closer. I had predicted in early January 2008 that Romney would make the best president of the Republican Primary candidates.

More than that, one has to consider how “real” issues can sway the voting public. For instance, I can’t see Tina Fey in a suit doing a good Mitt Romney impersonation, but I could see the former Governor of Massachusetts being a formidable opponent and a great communicator for the Republican agenda on the economic front. And, since any racial or religious discrimination in presidential election lost you votes (unless it was misogynistic) any taunts of “Mormon” in “magic pants” would not have had the effect on a male VP candidate that Clinton pant suits and Palin-eolithic skirted chic had.

4.) If this election is disputed, the hubris of Obama is responsible. If Clinton had been his running mate it wouldn’t even be close. Read this carefully. If there is one iota of potential remaining that Obama could even LOSE this election, it will come from his bad political choice in running mates. He needed a centrist to win big, not someone like Senator Joe Biden, who is nearly as left leaning as himself.¬† Biden might make a good Vice President (he may even “become” president) but first things first. You have to win the election.

ASSESSMENT:
I had to report on this possible destiny despite its fulfillment being remote. Then again, I thought it was remote that Hillary Clinton’s one vote legacy gaff in October 2002 — siding with those granting war powers to Bush leading to the Iraq Invasion — would cost her the presidency. It did lose her the primary and a chance to run in November. You can see what I said about it back in early 2007 HERE. Therefore, for the sake of prophetic caution I had to explain the remote possibility of Obama losing the election. I foresaw a future and hold to it, that with Clinton as his VP running mate he would have attained a popular mandate of 15 percent or more, even though this future path is closed.

5.) Personally, I confessed to George Noory on Coast to Coast that I thought the election would not be that close in the popular vote. I added that if I’m going to be wrong it could be about the election being close.

ASSESSMENT:
The final vote in 2008 was definitely not a landslide like Nixon over McGovern in 1972 or Johnson over Goldwater in 1964. Johnson beat Goldwater by a difference of nearly 16 million votes. Nixon beat McGovern by nearly 18 million. Obama will carry an estimated difference against McCain of around 9 million.

The voter turnout in 2008 was only two million more than in 2004. The projected 136.6 to 140 million record voter turnout forecast by some pundits — the largest in 100 years — never happened. The total national voter turnout at the time of this writing will clear only a little more than 225 million votes. No group of voters was decisive, either. The much-ballyhooed Obama youth vote was not a key factor.

6.) Beyond my personal feelings are those mysterious “revelations” of my oracle that after 40 years of successful presidential predicting cannot be discounted. My Oracle says this is going to be a close popular vote. The race over the coming few weeks will tighten. The best Obama can hope for is a popular vote count between 4 and 8 percent. Nothing higher, and certainly even lower than 4 percent is possible.

ASSESSMENT:
Well in the end, that mystery of augury that uses me as a medium was right and my personal feelings about the vision was once again wrong. The popular vote fell within my Oracle’s more modest percentile projections for a good night for Obama (between 4 to 8 percent of the popular vote. He got 6.5 percent, receiving 65,340,608 votes (52.6 percent) to McCain’s 57,358,053 votes (46.1 percent).

7.) Still, he will win the Electoral College, no matter how many calls for state recounts there may be.

ASSESSMENT:
There were thankfully no calls for recounts even though Missouri’s count is still out. (It will go to McCain, I think.) North Carolina took several more days to tally their close elections sending it to Obama side. Add therefore 15 electoral votes giving Obama 364 to McCain’s 163 electoral votes (174 if Missouri passes to him). The electoral landslide was so early and so overwhelming that if there were shenanigans with the ballots none made the election close enough for armies of blue versus red lawyers to come out of their trenches swinging in a half dozen battleground states.

8.) I don’t recall if I said this on Coast to Coast, so I’ll make sure it is recorded here for posterity. There’s a potential return to the days of Florida 2000 in more than one state, only this time around, the burden of defending themselves against cries of voter fraud, bungled ballots and miscounts will be on operatives of the Democratic Party and special left-wing interests more than on the Republicans. The Left will no longer be able to uphold the myth that only the Right steals elections and tampers with voting machines or those computers that record the tallies of such.

ASSESSMENT:
I did get one thing right in number 8. I reviewed my radio predictions in early October and I did say that voter fraud would make more news this time around from the Democratic side. Then came the Acorn scandal. Some Acorn registrars, piece paid by the headhunt to sign up the maximum amount of left-of-center voters, entered thousands of phony names, including Disney characters, and the entire Dallas Cowboys Football team. Acorn forever busted the myth that only Republican ideologues try to steal elections.

9.) In the end, it matters not, for Obama will be elected president on 4 November 2008. Even though he threw away a popular mandate by not picking Clinton as his running mate, Obama will enjoy a mandate in the Congress. I predict the Democratic Party will have two-thirds majorities in BOTH the House and the Senate. That means in the Senate, Democrats could win even a few more seats than 60.

ASSESSMENT:
He got the legislative mandate in the House of Representatives, but I will definitely be wrong about gaining more than 60 votes in the Senate. Right now, it stands at 57: a caucus of 54 Democrats and two Independents. I’m still holding out for a Democratic legislative mandate of 60 seats if the Senate Election recount in Minnesota tips to the comedian-turned-politician, Al Frankin. He’s currently behind incumbent Senator Coleman by a mere 221 votes. Georgia could see the Democrat Jim Martin win against Republican Chambliss in the run-off election expected in mid-December. The felon in Alaska, incumbent Ted Stevens (guilty of corruption), may yet lose his seat once all the absentee ballots are counted.

Prediction number 10 is a prophecy in motion like the future. We will return to it at the end of February 2009 when Obama and the Democratic Party begins (endures?) their first month in office commanding both the Executive and Congressional branches of Government. Here’s the prediction once again:

10.) After Election night the Democratic Party will be standing naked. It will no longer be able to pretend it can’t act because it is clothed in a Republican straight jacket made of the fabric of Senate filibuster or the confining corset of a Republican president’s veto power. The Democratic Party elect will no longer hide their warts, cellulite flab and hypocrisies under a cloak of excuses. The American people will vote them the Executive Branch and both houses to do the people’s business unimpeded. Do not take this as a mandate to take American government out of the frying pan of one ideological extreme into the fire of another –¬† from Right Wing extremism to Left.

The American people will speak on 4 November and their vote will say it really IS time for a change.

What kind?

They expect balance, fairness. They seek a purple American government, not dark blue after eight years of deep red. So listen well, Democratic Party elect. After Election Night, you will stand exposed.

You are on a two-year probation granted by a slim majority of your judges and parole officers, the American voters.

CHANGE!

Or suffer dire political consequences in the mid-term elections that could isolate President Obama and rob him of his destiny.

Look for a bulletin about Prophecy 10 on 20 February 2009.

John Hogue
(08 November 2008)

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