Reflections on being wrong
Three days ago, I confidently predicted that Hillary Clinton would become the next president of the United States by an electoral vote count of 322–216.
Two days ago, with equal conviction, I declared that Democrats would gain at least enough seats to make the Senate a 50/50 split.
In both cases, I spoke with an air of intellectual authority, eloquently spouting off electoral patterns, polling data, and voter turnout information to convince others (and myself) that somehow I knew exactly what the hell I was talking about.
Of course, I didn’t. At all. I was devastatingly, horrifyingly wrong about almost everything. So was almost (but not quite) everyone else — pundits, pollsters, and the general public alike. No matter. That’s beside the point.
The point is: How do I come to terms with my own failing, after being so self-assured just two days ago?
I’m going to bare my soul here for just a moment. I think the main reason I proudly made those doomed predictions yesterday is that I simply wanted to be unequivocally right about something. And honest to God, I thought I would be.
I wanted to be right about something, so that I could feel some semblance of control over a situation where I was, and am, in fact, powerless. Just like everybody else.
I wanted to be right about something, so that other people would shower me with praise for my foresight and wisdom when my bets on the election neatly came to fruition, one after the other.
Except almost none of them did. The wisdom I thought I had wasn’t wisdom at all. The conventional wisdom so many pundits thought they had nailed down to a science was completely wrong.
- There is no “firewall” of blue states on which Democratic presidential candidates can depend for an advantage over their GOP challengers. Not anymore, at any rate.
- The African American and Latino vote that commentators were so convinced would keep the White House in Democratic hands at least for the foreseeable future was not nearly enough.
- The elevated turnout in presidential elections that so many people thought was a built-in advantage for Democrats really didn’t matter.
- The supposedly superior operations and ground game of the Clinton campaign ultimately came to naught.
Isn’t it amazing how easily we can take flimsy assumptions and convert them to gospel, all in the interest of preserving whatever truth we find most comfortable or least scary?
Michael Moore spoke to this when, months ago, he was one of the very few who predicted with near-surgical precision how Donald Trump would win the presidency:
You [Trump opponents] need to stop living in denial and face the truth which you know deep down is very, very real. Trying to soothe yourself with the facts — “77% of the electorate are women, people of color, young adults under 35 and Trump can’t win a majority of any of them!” — or logic — “people aren’t going to vote for a buffoon or against their own best interests!” — is your brain’s way of trying to protect you from trauma.
And here’s Stephen Colbert, reflecting on Tuesday’s results (bolding mine):
How did our politics get so poisonous? I think it’s because we overdosed, especially this year. We drank too much of the poison. You take a little bit of it so you can hate the other side, and it tastes kinda good. And you like how it feels. And there’s a gentle high to the condemnation, right? And you know you’re right, right? You know you’re right.
People need to be right, I think, because being right means feeling a sense of control. I speak from (very recent) experience in making this observation. Whether that control is real or not doesn’t matter. Even the illusion of control can be enough to keep unspeakable anxiety at bay.
Paradoxically, I think that’s why everyone needs to be proved wrong occasionally. It’s a reminder that no one has all the answers and that life can be completely unpredictable — and uncontrollable. It can force us to engage with others, even when we don’t want to, instead of sitting in righteous judgment.
This is a bitter pill to swallow, almost as bitter as the final results themselves. But I was terribly wrong about how this election would turn out. Now, having acknowledged that, I can begin to ask the question of why.
