Your Morning Schadenfreude: About Those Pundits Who Predicted a Big Romney Win ...

I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning. It smells like ... victory.

Especially when it's victory over some of the most loathsome reptilian figures lurking on the modern American political scene, notably, the maroons who tried selling the world on the notion of "Romentum" going into yesterday's election.

Guys like Michael Barone, who predicted 315 Electoral College votes for Romney. Or Karl Rove, who predicted 285 victorious votes for the Mittster.

For some reason last night, they remained in deep denial while poring over the results on Fox. And of course, no mention of their own towering incompetence was made. Instead, they spent the segment calling each other "brilliant".

Though you couldn't help notice the sweat on the brow and upper lip of Rove. Bet he's thinking about all those rich clients who paid gazillions of dollars for his American Crossroads Super PAC to take down not just Obama but a bunch of Democrats ... all for naught.

We also look forward to hearing from George Will, who predicted 321 votes for Romney, and from Dick Morris, who predicted a massive Willard landslide (and a Republican Senate to boot).

Roy Edroso has a rundown of all the right-wing pundits predicting a Romney runaway.

My favorite of the pre-election pundits had to be Michael Walsh at NRO, with his charmingly titled thinkpiece, "Crush Them":

Mitt Romney is an imperfect standard bearer, but tomorrow he is the army we have. Elsewhere, I’ve predicted a Romney victory and even a retake of the Senate, despite the breathtaking tactical stupidity of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, both of whom needlessly wandered into the mine field of social issues (where the media is guaranteed 100 percent arrayed against them) and blew their own feet off. But, should Romney win, he can’t simply assume the vote was a mandate for putting America back to work, and then do his corporate-turnaround thing. If he wins, if his victory is beyond the margin of David Axelrod’s ability to cheat, Mitt needs to understand that a considerable portion of his vote was not only anti-Obama but anti-Obamaism, that it was a repudiation of everything the Marxist Left and its bien-pensant fellow travelers in the media stand for. And, most important, that going forward, it’s a call to substantially reduce their influence on the body politic.

Sorry about that, comrade. We look forward to shuffling your paranoid ass off to a Commie re-education camp soon.

This stuff has been floating about for awhile now, actually. A couple of weeks ago, the Instawanker penned a piece for USA Today musing -- with nary a shred of self-awareness -- about the "bubble" within which liberals had supposedly cocooned themselves:

Now, despite being told by the press -- and quite a few Republican pundits -- that Mitt Romney didn't have a chance, since his performance in the presidential debates things seem to be turning around. Reports of early voting and absentee ballots suggest that Republican voters are a lot more energized than we'd been led to believe. The polls are looking good for Romney, and he's picking up all sorts of endorsements all of a sudden.

This has caused some Republican enthusiasts to suggest that what we're seeing is a "preference cascade," and they may be right.

What's a "preference cascade?" In his book, Private Truths, Public Lies, economist Timur Kuran looked at the way "preference falsification" can distort societies, and then collapse suddenly.

The classic example is in a totalitarian society, where everyone has to pretend to love the Great Leader on pain of death. If the authorities manage it right, 99% of the populace can be ready to revolt -- but won't, because each individual thinks he or she is the only one who feels that way.

This works until some event suddenly shocks the system, and people realize that they're not alone. When that happens, things can go south in a hurry. That's a "preference cascade."

The United States isn't a totalitarian society, but media bias has the same sort of effect: By privileging some views and suppressing others, the media give Americans, and itself, a distorted idea of reality. Then, when things crack, it's a big surprise.

That may be what's happening here. Obama was presented as unbeatable, and a lot of people believed it -- until, suddenly, he looked kind of beatable after all. Once that happened, everything was different.

That bit about "a distorted idea of reality", Perfesser? You might want to look into that.

And unquestionably my favorite reaction this morning from this faction is that from noted white nationalist Robert Stacy McCain over at American Spectator:

At the moment, I am convinced America is doomed beyond all hope of redemption, and any talk of the future fills me with dread and horror.

Sweeeeeeeet.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.