Judging by history, you may want to hunker down in a cave for much of the coming year — you’d likely understand the state of the 2024 race just as well as if you were consuming non-stop news. Overstated? Let’s take a stroll down memory lane.

All through the second half of 2003, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was the dominant figure in the Democratic presidential primary. His full-throated denunciation of the Iraq War won him the fervent support of progressives; his campaign’s use of the Internet put him millions of dollars ahead of his rivals. An army of canvassers, clad in orange hats, were swarming through the early states. By year’s end, he was dominating the polls and had won the endorsement of both contenders for the prior Democratic nomination, Al Gore and Bill Bradley. (It was at that point that a CNN anchor asked me on air, “Is the race over?” My “no” is one of the high-water marks of my TV career). Meanwhile Sen. John Kerry was struggling to survive; he was so far underwater in Iowa and New Hampshire that some journalists were engaged in a lottery to pick the day Kerry would drop out.

Then the voters actually got to weigh in.

[The GOP has a serious issue with next-in-line-ism, so to speak, so this isn’t quite as true among Republicans. Still, even in that sense, the off-year can fool you. The late John McCain had crashed so hard in 2007 despite his next-in-line status that he had to go to bloggers to get his messaging out in interviews (I was one of the beneficiaries). He still rebounded to beat Romney in early 2008 when the voters actually got to weigh in. Greenfield’s warning is well worth considering.

Also, remember when Romney was the Great Conservative Hope in that cycle? — Ed]