Michael Barone  (H/T Pic mofoplitics.com)

On Friday Conservatism Inc’s favorite  “election expert’’, The Almanac of American Politics co-author Michael Barone, got to post on Real Clear Politics Donald Trump and the Outstate Midwest Redraw the Partisan Lines December 02, 2016

This is a competent- even interesting -  review of the election results of the region, concluding

Democrats were taking for granted their above-national-average support from non-college-educated outstate voters in their determination to build a new, "ascendant" majority of blacks, Hispanics, single women and millennials. They figured that [small town] Obama voters were locked into the Democratic Party and didn't need any special attention. Turns out they weren't and they did.

Barone concedes this possibility was anticipated:

Trump saw, or stumbled into taking advantage of, an opening spotted by only a few political analysts — blogger Steve Sailer way back in 2001, RealClearPolitics' Sean Trende in a 2013 article series and FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten in analyzing Republican Joni Ernst's big Senate win in Iowa in 2014.

Notice the anomaly? Trende’s and Enten’s attribution includes their publishers. Sailer (who WAS FIRST) wrote his election articles for VDARE.com (which holds the copyright to them). But Barone cannot bring himself to acknowledge where they appeared.

Ignoring powerful arguments because they come from unfashionable sources can be fatal and it is exactly what has landed the Republican and Democratic Establishments in their current richly deserved mess.

VDARE.com has long followed Michael Barone’s writings with fascinated disgust. In his introduction to Steve Sailer’s 2001 review essay Barone: Backsliding into Bankruptcy Peter Brimelow commented

…neocon doyenne Michael Barone simply ignores contrary argument in his new book. This confirms that political establishment, left and right, is firmly back in Denial Mode on race and immigration, and marks an ignominious personal retreat for Barone since the mid-1990s, when he actually had some valuable things to say.

In 2013 in More Barone Bunkum In Aid Of The Treason Lobby I also quoted Peter Brimelow

Are Barone's columns written by ignorant assistants (more common with MSM Bigfeet than you might think)? Does he just not know the facts? Does he have an emotional block about facing them?

Or has he got the $PLC memo, which I increasingly think exists, that the historic American nation must at all costs be bamboozled and browbeaten until a new people has been elected?

Ask Michael Barone

Barone might also be asked why his manners are so poor.

[Last month I summarized the very recent surfacing of the Sailer Strategy in Trump’s Son-In-Law’s Publication Says Sailer Strategy Worked! I am not sure that Barone has ever acknowledged Sailer’s work before.]