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things i was wrong about, an incomplete and ongoing list as i think of things:
i was wrong about the degree to which trump's advisors would try to push him to develop an actual, coherent legal strategy for stealing the election, instead of hiring the three stooges to write it for the lolz.
i was wrong about republican turnout, which was basically pound-for-pound in all of the places it needed to be in order for them to have a strong showing.
i was wrong about how seriously americans would take the pandemic, and wrong about what we would demand from our government in order to avoid the worst-case predictions. i was very wrong about this one.
i was wrong to think that republicans in the senate would recognize that their single best chance to hold onto the white house and keep a strong lead in the senate was to pass another hefty stimulus, and would act accordingly.
i was wrong about how strong (and shrewd!) biden would be in the general election. i think covid changed this calculus *some*, but it didn't change the entire game.
just in general, i was wrong about how motivational owning the libs has been as an electoral strategy.
i was wrong about how divided the left and the center are, because it's worse than i thought, but i was also wrong about how much that would matter to electoral outcomes, which i think is very little.
i was wrong about the number of republicans who would choose duty over owning the libs. this one's pretty minor, because i never had much faith even the romneys or the murkowskis, but even they have been unconscionable and irredeemable.
i was wrong about the number of state-level republicans who actually *would* do their duty regardless of what the president says, though, too.
i was wrong to think the media didn't learn anything in 2016. they learned plenty. i don't think they did any better this time around, they just learned how to apply new tactics to screw everything up.
in general, i was very, very wrong about my ability to predict future events or responses to them. more than ever, i'm sure of the fact that i don't know shit about shit, and most other people don't, either.
i was wrong about south carolina, because i really thought harrison had a fighting chance, and i was wrong about georgia, which i really, honestly didn't expect would go blue.
i was wrong about how effective trans-baiting would be. trans acceptance is still a very long road to walk, but i think we're in a better place right now than, say, england. i think we've been lucky trump hasn't really latched onto this one very hard.
can't say for certain yet, but i think i'll end up being wrong about student loan forgiveness, and it'll be more popular and less motivating than i am afraid it will be.
i was wrong about the idea that many of trump's close confidents would definitively turn on him, and i was wrong to think that the ones that did would matter.
i was wrong about mitch mcconnell, who has inarguably proven himself to be much worse than even most of his *harshest* critics have predicted.
i was wrong about elizabeth warren, who i didn't entirely think would win the primary, but who i thought (or, perhaps, hoped) would do much better than she did.
i was wrong to think that a full-scale, boots-on-the-ground war was going to be the worst-case scenario for the trump presidency, because i didn't think this country would lose all fucking reason in the face of an epidemic.
i was wrong to believe HBO had a plan for ending game of thrones in any kind of a satisfying or coherent way
i was wrong to think that the culture war was going to slowly lose electoral prominence after the 1990s. if anything, it's going as strong now as it was then.
i was wrong to think that prominent journalists and opinion havers would engage in this kind of an "i was wrong about [opinions]" list. there's no more self-awareness now than there was in 2016.
i was also wrong, roughly twenty years ago, to think that ubiquitous internet and social media would lead to more knowledge and understanding between people. or, in this case, i guess i was wrong about how severe the downsides would be.
i was wrong to think it was going to be really difficult to give up smoking while [waves hands] *all of this* was going on.
i was wrong to think that the "adults" would step in at some point in the last four years. there are no adults.
i was wrong to think that you should be judicious about blocking people who annoy the shit out of you, i do it freely all the time now without any hesitance and i wish i had started earlier.
i was wrong about UBI! i still worry that too many people will decide that we don't need *other* benefits if we go for it, but CARES proved to me that it's even more successful as policy than i would've predicted
