The model was right. President Obama was the favorite in that election. His position was stronger than I thought, even though I had a lot more information than the model did. And one reason I think the model beat me was that I was reading a lot of stories about super PACs and campaign fundraising and my model wasn’t.

This is a panel about whether, and to what degree, money mattered in the 2012 election…. The simple fact is that if you had followed the election simply be reading stories about money in politics, then those stories — which included a lot of very alarming quotes from people in this room — would’ve led you far astray….

I did some reporting on this question back in the waning days of the election. And the smart, savvy, sophisticated take was that the money question was overblown on the presidential level but absolutely decisive in House and Senate races…. And I want to own up to this: That sounded completely right to me…. That didn’t happen either…. It was apportionment, not ads, that kept John Boehner in the Speaker’s chair….

It’s hard to look at the 2012 election, with its record fundraising and the flood of super PACs and all the rest of it, and come away really persuaded that money was a decisive player. And yet the way we talked about money in the run-up to the 2012 election, we really suggested it would be a decisive player…. So I think we have some explaining to do. And I think this panel is a good time to start.