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O’BRIEN FOR PUNDIT?
Posted in: Blog by admin on February 4, 2010
If Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien fails in his bid to win the Democratic nomination for Congress over U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski, PA-11, perhaps he could become a political pundit.
Though judging from his first foray into that arena, he might not have any better chance at becoming an analyst than he does at becoming a congressman.
O’Brien told Politico, the online political news site, on Wednesday that Kanjorski had “zero” chance of beating Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta in the fall election.
He made some vague and unsubstantiated references to polling numbers to support his claim. Hey Corey, the first rule of political punditry is “Put up or shut up.”
If O’Brien has a poll to prove his point, he should release it to the media and the public. And I don’t mean only release choice tidbits. Release the whole poll — every question — and include the crosstabs and the sampling method.
He should also include the results of the head-to-head contest in the primary between Kanjorski and O’Brien.
I doubt if Mr. O’Brien wants to talk about his chances against Kanjorski, let alone against Barletta.
In 2008, almost every legitimate newspaper analyst in Washington and Pennsylvania didn’t give Congressman Kanjorski a chance to win reelection. The only voices who did were the people who voted to reelect him.
Before we count Kanjorski out again, let’s at least have the campaign and the elections in May and November.