Before and After

Why did so many pundits think the Wisconsin recall election would be much closer than it was? Here is the Huffington Post’s front page on the eve of the Wisconsin election.

Before ...

It was going to be a cliffhanger. Too close to call. Walker was on a knife edge. How did it all go so wrong? The “After” past the Read More contrasts with the “Before”. In an era where every week produces an “unexpected” fall in the economy; or a “surprise” decline in some index of well being, how many surprises are the left in the bag? And where do those surprises come from, anyway?

The root cause of so many unforseen surprises is probably the self-deception on the part of the Democratic strategists. They controlled the narrative. They could set the talking points. They were masters of spin.

But there was a hidden danger.

They spun the facts so much they began to believe their own spin. This debacle should be a lesson to conservatives as well. The main danger to lying in public is that eventually you lie in private. You begin to believe your own lies. But in the end reality always wins. Nobody ever beat arithmetic.

History often shows that the losers eventually gain more from a defeat in the end. The real danger for conservatives is that the liberals will learn from the Wisconsin debacle while the conservative side waxes overconfident. It won’t necessarily happen that way, but it sometimes does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEwXa197uBU