Would you rely on your GPS to get you to your destination on a road trip if you had encountered dead ends half a dozen times previously? Would you heed the investment advise of a professional who had repeatedly forced you to forgo a sizable portion of your retirement?

Obviously not. Why therefore would you believe the deluge of information in the media regarding the upcoming presidential election, especially from people who are making predictions? (The race is well begun; according to a count from FiveThirtyEight, pollsters questioned Americans 95 times between the November midterm elections and the beginning of 2023 who they wanted to be president.)

According to past events, you might want to spend much of the upcoming year hiding out in a cave because you’d probably grasp the status of the 2024 race just as well if you were constantly reading the news. Overstated? Come with me on a trip down memory lane.

Vermont Governor Howard Dean dominated the Democratic presidential primary for much of the second half of 2003. His vehement opposition to the Iraq War garnered him the ardent support of progressives, and his use of the Internet during his campaign helped him outspend his rivals by millions of dollars. Through the early states, a horde of canvassers wearing orange caps was swarming. He had gained the support of both of the candidates for the previous Democratic nomination, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, by the end of the year and was leading the polls. (A CNN presenter asked me live on air at that point if the race was finished. One of the pinnacles of my TV career was my “no.” Sen. John Kerry was fighting for his life at the same time; in fact, some journalists were holding a lottery to determine the day Kerry would withdraw because he was so far behind in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The voters then had a chance to express their opinions.

Sen. John Edwards came in second behind Kerry in the Iowa caucuses. Dean placed third but did not perform well. While attention was focused on his caucus night “scream,” which was grossly misreported, it occurred after Democrats in Iowa overwhelmingly rejected him and after his support in New Hampshire started to decline.

Four years later, “America’s Mayor” and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was leading the Republican presidential field. In both early states and national surveys, he was by far in the lead. Giuliani enthusiastically assured me at one time early in the race that the delegate selection laws in states like New York and New Jersey would guarantee him the majority of those delegates.

The voters then had a chance to express their opinions.

Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire turned up to be unimpressed with a candidate who supported abortion rights, gay rights, and gun control laws. By the time the elections started, Giuliani had left the early states and eventually ended his campaign. Sen. John McCain, who had previously been given up for dead, was able to win the election thanks to the delegate selection rules that he had confidently seen as his way to the nomination.

on the Democratic side, too? The producer of the CBS Evening News asked me to write a report about Hillary Clinton’s invulnerability because she was leading in the polls by such a large margin. When astute Republican strategist Michael Murphy cautioned against such judgement, I was spared from shame. Murphy remarked that this is the year for a change candidate, and she is ineligible to run.

The voters then had a chance to express their opinions.

Murphy had a point. Barack Obama not only proved he was a giant-killer by winning the Iowa caucuses, but he also proved that a Black candidate could take a more-or-less all-white state. Clinton had been about dividing support with Obama when it came to Black Democrats, but that support virtually vanished over night. What was anticipated to be a straightforward victory for Clinton in the middle of 2003 turned into a tough race that lasted through the primary season and that she finally lost.

Are these instances from too long ago to be current? Let’s go all the way back to the previous presidential campaign to demonstrate how even the beginning of the nomination process may produce more noise than signal regarding what voters want.

Joe Biden cut a somewhat pitiful figure from the middle of 2019 until the first primaries in early 2020: he was down in the polls, cash-strapped, and drew sparse audiences. The candidate to beat was Bernie Sanders because of his enormous fundraising capacity and his growing influence as the progressive movement’s champion. Much of the race coverage following his victories in New Hampshire and Nevada raised the following question: Could Sanders win enough delegates by Super Tuesday to be virtually unbeatable?

The first sizable group of Black Democratic voters then voiced their opinions. On February 29 in South Carolina, Biden received approximately 50% of the vote, which was 2.5 times more than Sanders. Most of Biden’s competitors dropped out of the campaign within 96 hours and endorsed him. Biden subsequently dominated the Super Tuesday field, and the nomination race was ended.

These instances are only a small portion of the overall picture; they do not reflect the occasions where a candidate surged to the top of the polls one week before falling behind the pack the following. (At various points throughout these elections, surveys showed that Joe Lieberman, Wesley Clark, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Ben Carson were all in first position.) They exclude those instances in the middle of the primary season when a single occurrence during a debate can invalidate months’ worth of research. (Consider Rick Perry’s failure to recall the name of a Cabinet agency he promised to abolish during a debate in 2011. He would eventually serve as the director of the Energy Department under Donald Trump.)

The purpose of this article is to put that aspect of the process into context and to be extremely humble, not to advocate for a journalistic vow of silence during the lengthy process building up to the real competitions. Yes, Trump appears to be in a vulnerable position, but are we really prepared to nominate Ron DeSantis before he has a chance to shine on the national stage? Despite the fact that Biden is 80 years old and has a declining approval rating since August 2021, no one in his party appears to be really considering challenging his hold on the White House.

By recalling the past’s hyperventilated early coverage of presidential elections, perhaps we won’t be doomed to repeat it, to invert the overly overused George Santayana caution.

Any 2024 stories should start out with the final sentence, “Of course, none of this is likely to matter when the ballots are cast,” as a genuine service to readers and viewers.