Commentators are rarely held accountable for their assessments. They should be. So each year I look back to determine which of my columns hit the mark and where I fell short.

If there was a prediction I reasserted most often, it was that President Obama was likely to be reelected. At the end of November 2011, when Nate Silver suggested Obama “was toast” in a front-page New York Times Magazine piece, I dissented.

Contrary to Silver (whose later assessments proved significantly more accurate), I argued “that dynamics, both structural and strategic, gave the president a betterthan-even chance of reelection. With Americans’ demonstrated reluctance to toss a party out of the White House after just one term,with the most important economic indicator in the reelectable range and with favorable demographic changes, President Obama is actually reasonably positioned to win.” Not only did the conclusion prove accurate, so did the underlying analysis of the structural fundamentals and the strategic options confronting the Obama campaign.

A few months later, in detailing those strategic options, I asserted, “The natural state of an election involving an incumbent, particularly a presidential election, is to be a referendum on that incumbent.