The late Rodney Dangerfield was a great comedian. His bread and butter line was: “I tell you, I get no respect”. It was from that set up that he then proceeded to self-deprecate; much to the audience’s enjoyment. I am going to steal Rodney’s line; but I won’t self-deprecate.
Given that blogging-as journalism goes- is a relatively novel methodology, I guess we cannot take ourselves too seriously at this point in time; despite the significant contributions that bloggers have made to news breaking. Remember the Monica Lewinsky/ President Bill Clinton story: that was broken on the blogs; not in mainstream media. There are countless others. Yet I can’t help but proffer that some of us (if not most) who do this, are serious about what we do: inform the political discourse, on local, regional, national and international levels. Thus there is a responsibility to the readers that we be credible, accurate, authentic and genuine.
This brings me to political predictions. In politics any and everyone has an opinion. No matter how uninformed or biased; no matter how well thought out or analyzed. Someone once said this; “opinions are like assholes: everybody has one”. In politics it seems that near everyone has an opinion.
Whenever you look at the Sunday morning political talk shows on the television networks, you see so-called political experts making all types of calls; but do we keep tabs on them to check their accuracy ratio; nope. We should. They get big bucks for this people. Many of them (if not most) are usually wrong with their predictions.
This brings it right back to me and what I do here on these blogs. I generally write about Brooklyn’s politics; though not exclusively so. In 2006, when the contentious race in the 11th congressional district was waxing hot, I remember making Yvette Clarke the favorite. I even posted odds. I said it was her race to lose after Nick Perry dropped out. Despite later endorsing one of her opponents (for various reasons better than the winning chances), my objective analysis showed her to be the favorite. I got creamed on the blogs by those who just traverse the comment section in an attempt to ridicule bloggers (especially me). Yvette Clarke won handily.
When I said that Charles Barron would give Ed Towns a hard race in the 10th congressional, some commenters suggested that I was on crack. He got 38% 0f the vote in a three-way race; losing to the incumbent by 8 percentage points. Even the congressman himself lost some money to me, betting on that race. It was the second time in 5 years that this happened to him, while making friendly wagers against me on political races.
Last year when Judge Shawndya Simpson was running for surrogate court against Judge Diana Johnson, her husband Jacob Walthour challenged me to a bet on the outcome. Eventually he agreed to a hundred dollar book voucher from any Barnes and Nobles bookstore for the winner. I won the bet by 20 percentage points; but he is yet to contact me and pay out. I still hope than he is a man who honors his bets. I will be disappointed if he isn’t.
When I first said that Queens Councilmember Hiram Monseratte would squeak out a close win over State Senator John Sabini, the folks at the event where I said this: laughed. They said that the race wasn’t even close, and that the incumbent would win handily. Well, the incumbent brought in Hilary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton (amongst a bunch of other political bigwigs) to stomp for him, and also to help raise funds. He survived by a couple hundred votes. I doubt he will survive a re-run, unless many of the dynamics on the ground changes.
When I called the Iowa primary for Barack Obama way back in November, I remember sending Errol Louis a copy of said column by e-mail. To me it was an EASY call (but I won’t divulge why I say this). I cannot find one person in mainstream media, politics, blogging, news magazines, television, newspapers, et al, who made this call; then or later. Yet, Errol Louis today in the N.Y. Daily News newspaper said that no one saw it coming; shame on you Errol. I could only hope that Ben Smith, Azi Payabarah or Liz Benjamin would use their respective blog-sites to do the right thing by me.
Why do I devote a column to this? Well; only because Barack Obama’s win in Iowa, is one of the biggest political stories in the history of this country. And also because I don’t want to be relegated to becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of political bloggers. I went out on a limb with my political credibility and analysis: I deserve the credits.
I have written many articles on Obama and his campaign. I have given unique insights into the Obama phenomenon. All my articles are on the archives of these blog sites; maybe some of you need to revisit them.
Stay tuned-in. Politics is the only game in town. The Knicks suck.