"How could everybody get it so wrong?"

Washington Times OPinion: Once upon a time a man or woman put in the early years on the Springfield Republican or the Log Cabin Democrat or the Bloomington Pantagraph, covering spats between aldermen or obscure state legislators, learning the trade along with something about the nature of humanity and acquiring a little familiarity with the body politic, and finally arriving in the city with knowledge, insight and a little learned humility. He was a hard man to fool.

But we’re all at the mercy now of progress, and columnists, commentators and pundits go straight from graduate school to a column, a microphone with a camera, certified like a CPA as a fully fledged doctor of humbuggery. This leaves them at the mercy of the flimflam artist, with no understanding of why and how an audience laps it up.

David Remnick, the editor of the precious and erudite New Yorker magazine, told his readers last summer that Mr. Trump was such an ignoramus, who knew nothing about politics, that his “whole con might end well before the first snows in Sioux City and Manchester.”

They’re still shoveling snow in New Hampshire — the last of it is expected to melt in time for the Fourth of July parade — and Mr. Remnick is still puzzled about why and how it happened.

Mr. Remnick has a lot of distinguished company, even if most of it has not learned a lot from the experience.

James Fallows, who has spent three decades as national correspondent of Atlantic magazine, was even more confident than Mr. Remnick when he wrote early in the campaign cycle that “Donald Trump will not be the 45th president of the United States. Nor the 46th, nor any other number you might name. The chance of his winning the nomination and election is exactly zero.”

Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post was certain as early as last July that “Donald Trump is not going to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2016.” Nate Silver, who successfully applied higher math to presidential politics four years ago and made a name for himself as the guru who got it right, told his colleagues in November to “stop freaking out” about the Donald’s poll numbers. He wasn’t going anywhere. (read the whole thing)