If we pause for a minute to think about what we expected a year ago, we realize that we don't have the ability to predict the future, a point I make in my latest column for Pajamas Media:

In light of how things turned out, it is an amusing irony that in late 2007 it was Republicans who worried about a long, ugly struggle for their party's nomination. "I fear our intraparty fury will destroy all leaders and send us off to a brokered convention -- and from thence, probably to defeat," Tony Blankley wrote in his column on Dec. 19, 2007. "If the Democrats have their candidate by February and we are campaigning harshly until August, we surely would start in a deep hole."
Instead, Romney surprised Republicans by announcing on Feb. 7 that he was suspending his campaign, effectively ceding the nomination to McCain. And while the Democrats struggled on until June -- with Obama finally defeating Hillary only because of a shift in support among the party's superdelegates -- that long, bruising campaign seemed to enhance, rather than diminish, the Democratic advantage in the general election.

(Cross-posted at The Other McCain.)