Dick Morris, so aptly named, is always wrong. But he has never been more wrong than he was on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox show on Halloween night when he predicted that Mitt Romney would win the presidency in a landslide:
DICK MORRIS: In Florida, the [New York] Times says Obama is going to win by 1. But their sample has 7 points more Democrats than Republicans.
Pollster John McLaughlin and I went through the actual results of the last four elections and on average, the Republicans had 1% more than the Democrats. So that poll is off by a factor of 8. So instead of Obama winning by 1, Romney would win Florida by 7.
In Ohio, Obama is shown winning by 5 in the Times poll. But they had 8 points more Democrats than Republicans and historically, there are only two points more Ds than Rs. So that’s 6 points off. So instead of Romney losing by 5, he wins Ohio by 1.
And in Virginia, they have Obama winning by 2. But they have 8 points more Democrats than Republicans and historically there’s one points more Republican than Democrat. That’s off by a factor of 9, Romney wins Virginia by 7.
No sane person would expect a degenerate ideologue like Morris to admit he’d made an error — even an error as egregious as this one — so no sane people were surprised when Morris came out with this half-assed mea culpa on his website:
DICK MORRIS: I’ve got egg on my face. I predicted a Romney landslide and, instead, we ended up with an Obama squeaker. The key reason for my bum prediction is that I mistakenly believed that the 2008 surge in black, Latino, and young voter turnout would recede in 2012 to ‘normal’ levels. Didn’t happen. (Emphasis added.)
Writing at Comedy Central, Dennis DiClaudio offered this critique:
Oh, well, there’s your problem right there, Dick Morris. You have Backwards Understanding of Things Syndrome. Notice how you think that Romney winning with 325 electoral votes is a “landslide” and Obama winning with 332 electoral votes is a “squeaker”? I’m not moron (which, I’m assuming is what you think the word “expert” means.), but that’s kind of an easy diagnosis.
I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that this syndrome is chronic. There’s really nothing to do but spend the rest of your life working for Fox News.
No one wonders why such a practiced liar is assured employment for life by Fox, the GOP’s official propaganda network, but Dave Weigel at Slate asks a very good question. Why does an otherwise reputable DC-based news outlet like The Hill continues to publish Morris’ consistently wrong blathering about current events.
Bingo! More proof that the republicans are not good at arithmetic.
If you’re not creeped out by Dick Morris you’re not creep outable.