Duck! and Gather

Using our 0 … 5 point scale, I’d rate this one a 0. This one is sort of a zero-sum prediction. Either somebody ran an open source campaign and won, or no one did so. The latter seems true today. Still, there does seem to be a small but perceptible buzz about this notion. But I’m not so sure that this buzz about an “open source campaign” matches my idea. A core aspect of my idea concerns money — specially, the absence of it. The idea is that someone will run and win a political campaign, having intentionally raised no money. If you’ve seen any sign of this, please comment. (Please comment in any event.) In the meantime, we’ll just score this prediction as one of the wacky ones.

A year ago this time, I posted the eight predictions on this site. These predictions are for the four year period running from January 2005, to January 2009. Well, after a year, how are these predictions faring? It’s time to grade them. Let’s start with the first: demise of the Democratic Party. If we score the progress of each prediction on a scale from 0 (no evidence at all) to 5 (prediction fulfilled), I’d score this one as a 1 at this point. Today, there’s scant evidence that the Democratic Party will demise. On the contrary, some even say that the results of the elections last week evidence a resurgence of that party, rather than a demise. But given how severely Red and Mr. Bush have been trounced these past few months, one might have expected an equally significant counter-rise by Blue. But I don’t think that’s what we’ve seen. While I think that the nation is truly becoming aversive to Red, I don’t register an analogous passionate attachment to Blue. So that’s why I score this prediction a 1, rather than a 0. In either case, this prediction seems rather weak today. But these are still early days …