Yes, Most Predictions Are Wrong. They’re Also Inevitable

Politico has fun recalling the many bad predictions from politicians and television pundits throughout the course of 2020.

It’s worth noting that a few predictions Politico selected aren’t quite as off-base as the others. The impeachment of President Trump did not cost Democrats the House, as Jeanine Pirro predicted, but Democrats lost seats and the impeachment certainly didn’t help Nancy Pelosi’s majority. Trump didn’t no-show the debates with Biden, as Amy Siskind predicted, but he did end up refusing to participate in one debate that the commission wanted to hold virtually. Coronavirus did not go away “with the heat” of summer, but the number of cases declined as people spent more time outdoors.

Back in late December 2019, I offered my usual slate of predictions. A couple of them I came close to nailing:

• Early in the year, Nancy Pelosi relents and sends over the articles of impeachment after Senator Mitch McConnell makes a fig-leaf concession to House Democrats that is entirely symbolic, not substantive. There are growing murmurs that senators in both parties want to get impeachment off their plate as quickly as possible. Both articles of impeachment fall short with 46 votes; all Republicans and Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin vote against removal. By March, the general public has almost entirely forgotten about impeachment.

• Joe Biden wins the Democratic nomination, but he somewhat backs into it because every other candidate makes bigger mistakes or proves less acceptable to some key faction of the Democratic party. Because of Biden’s age, there’s intense interest in his running mate selection. Biden surprises many by selecting Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, concluding she gives him the best shot in the upper Midwest.

• As for the overall political environment, much like Clubber Lang in Rocky III, my prediction is pain. The 2020 presidential election will be even uglier than the one in 2016 — nastier, uglier, more outright criticism of the other side’s voters, more false attacks, more accusations and counter-accusations of foreign influence and social media disinformation.

I predicted the Cincinnati Bengals would select Joe Burrow with the first pick in the 2020 draft, that the Los Angeles Lakers would win the NBA Finals, and that the Dodgers would be in the World Series, but I had the Yankees winning it all.

And a few of my predictions were wildly, laughably, spectacularly off base, particularly, “By historical standards, 2020 is a calm one on the world stage.” Ha! I cannot find the link but am pretty sure that at some point early in the year, I said the coronavirus pandemic could end up being the second-biggest news story of the year, after the presidential election. Missed it by just one spot!

But overall, I’d put my early writing about the pandemic up against anyone else’s. Back on January 30, I wrote:

Right now, things look pretty ominous. . . . Probably the single most frightening aspect is the possibility that either the Chinese government is still guessing at how far the virus has spread, or that they’re not being honest about the risk. Hopefully, this outbreak runs its course with minimal casualties. But many countries may look at this experience and wonder afterwards . . . just how much interaction in trade and travel do we want to have with a secretive, powerful, chronically dishonest authoritarian regime that apparently will regularly face viral outbreaks?

And by February 11, I wrote, “What’s going on with the coronavirus is significantly more important than the political squabble of the day . . . .  Nineteen days ago, this wasn’t yet an international emergency. Now it’s a ‘very grave threat.’ I want to trust the experts. But I can’t help but wonder if they soft-pedal any assessment that could irk the Chinese government.”

The pandemic is a painful reminder that life is unpredictable. Really unpredictable. One month you’re laughing about the Peloton ad, the next month you’re watching some scenario out of a pandemic disaster movie spread to your shores. One month before 9/11, our media intensely covered “the summer of the sharks.”

There’s a certain school of thought that political journalists shouldn’t make public predictions, because most of them will be wrong, and you’ll just end up looking foolish. But human beings are constantly attempting to anticipate what is going to happen next. People want to know whether the markets will go up or down, whether the candidate will win the election, whether the bill will pass, whether countries will be at peace or war. Right now, all kinds of lobbyists, interest groups, and businesses are trying to anticipate what will happen in the early months of the Biden administration — and attempting to best position themselves to influence the outcome. Almost all financial investment represents a form of a prediction. The hiring of a new worker represents a prediction that the person will be a good fit; a company unveiling a new product is a prediction that consumers will love it.

Human beings will always be attempting to get a sense of what tomorrow will bring — and there’s always great risk in mixing up what you want to see happen with what is likely to happen. The day after President Trump was elected in 2016, Paul Krugman declared, “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”

We read about the world to understand it, and hopefully, to have a better sense of what is coming our way. We all walk around with certain assumptions about what the near and far future hold for us. We work, trying to get that big promotion, assuming the company will still be around a year or two from now. We save for retirement, assuming we’ll be around long enough to retire. There are no true crystal balls or oracles, so we make do with research, insight, attempts to discern patterns and spot the next big thing.

We don’t know what 2021 will bring — other than another slew of predictions that will look spectacularly wrongheaded in retrospect.