December 5, 2016 --

Political Prognosticating Plaudits to ...

…Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn for his March 28, 2016 column, “Yes, Donald Could Beat Hillary.” Well in advance of Wilileaks disclosures, Mr. McGurn indicated that the Democratic Party leadership had orchestrated a Hillary Clinton presidential nomination and also noted that the success of Sen. Bernie Sanders in primaries pointed to dissatisfaction among Democratic voters with Mrs. Clinton.

Poor Prognosticating by Political Pundit.

The headline for George F. Will’s Washington Post column, June 23, 2016, warned: “Don’t donate to The Donald.” Among other things, Will advised Republican donors: “They can save their party by not aiding its nominee.” What Will was advising, of course, was that donors make possible the election of Hillary Clinton as president and the resulting destruction of the GOP.

LPR fears that the George F. Will of today is not the pundit he once was. It is difficult for LPR to imagine, for example, that in years past, Mr. Will would have employed this redundancy in his column, as he did last June 23: “one-year anniversary.” What, after all is an “anniversary” if not the marking of an annual (that is to say, yearly) event. LPR believes that before his transformation, Mr. Will would have referred not to a “one-year anniversary” but to a “first anniversary.” What he wrote, last June,in effect, was “the one-year yearly event” – as devoid of clarity as his punditry on the presidential campaign.