And the nominees are…

Andrew Sullivan has been nominating noteworthy individuals for The Von Hoffman Award, an award given for stunningly wrong political, social and cultural predictions — as determined by readers of The Daily Dish. Here are some of the nominees:

Mark Penn (March 19, 2007) —

“All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050 … I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and values. The right knows Obama is unelectable except against Attila the Hun.”

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Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, March 29, 2008 —

“Barack Obama is on his way to a McGovern candidacy.”

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Sean Wilentz, May 23, 2008 —

“This year’s primary results show no sign that Obama will reverse this trend should he win the nomination. In West Virginia and Kentucky, as well as Ohio and Pennsylvania, blue collar white voters sent him down to defeat by overwhelming margins. A recent Gallup poll report has argued that claims about Obama’s weaknesses among white voters and blue collar voters have been exaggerated - yet its indisputable figures showed Obama running four percentage points below Kerry’s anemic support among whites four years ago… Given that Obama’s vote in the primaries, apart from African-Americans, has generally come from affluent white suburbs and university towns, the Gallup figures presage a Democratic disaster among working-class white voters in November should Obama be the nominee.”

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Michael Graham, January 26, 2008 —

“When he is forced to fight, Sen. Obama’s inexperience shows. His record, slight as it is, is tough to defend. He’s got a glass jaw, and he will fall into the trap of identity politics. In fact, he already has. The “could we beat Obama?” conversation is purely academic. It’s over. The Clintons have defeated him already, because he is leaving South Carolina as “the black candidate.” He won’t win another state. Even worse, in November Hillary will carry 90 percent of the black vote, despite their cynical, race-based campaign against the first viable black presidential candidate.”

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Dick Morris, January 23, 2008 —

“[P]olarizing the contest into whites versus blacks will work just fine for Hillary.”

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Kathryn-Jean Lopez, on Barack Obama, November 4, 2007 —

“I think his 15 minutes as a serious contender for the presidency are about up.”

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Christopher Hitchens, September 24, 2007 —

“Sen. Obama cannot possibly believe, and doesn’t even act as if he believes, that he can be elected president of the United States next year.”

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Steven M. Warshawsky, American Thinker, August 11, 2008 —

“As I wrote  last December, ‘[t]he pundits can talk until they are blue in the face about Obama’s charisma and eloquence and cross-racial appeal.  The fact of the matter is that Obama has no chance of being elected president in 2008.’  I am more convinced of this conclusion than ever.”

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Steve Warshawsky, American Thinker, October 25, 2008 —

“Who are these pro-McCain Democratic voters?  They overwhelmingly tend to be former Hillary supporters.  Perhaps the most well-known of these voters are the ‘PUMAs’ - which stands for Party Unity My Ass.  These are Hillary supporters who are adamantly opposed to Obama.  Let’s not forget that during the Democratic primaries - real elections, not polls - Hillary crushed Obama among white working-class and middle-class voters in such key states as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.  If a meaningful number of these voters end up voting for McCain, as I predict  they will, then Obama’s smooth road to the White House is going to run smack into a brick wall.”

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There are certainly many more people eligible for nomination. I may add a few of my own nominations from the vast selection to choose from after this year’s obtuse punditry during the presidential campaign.