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This is a place to deposit political predictions you'd like to make in public, so that they can be easily found and referenced in the future. Thus, it is not a discussion thread; discussions of predictions should take place in other threads as conversations proceed. Explicit clarification questions and answers are fine, but "Why do you think that?" expositions should occur elsewhere so as not to clutter the repository. Predictions should be narrowly defined; testable with publicly available information at all times; have an explicit date range; and refer to events, people and places explicitly so as to leave no doubt of resolution; and they should be numbered sequentially so that they are easier to find at later dates. Edits must be clearly marked and original text preserved through the use of strike-throughs if the prediction is modified. Please avoid the use of generalities - "The President will change his mind on this topic" is less useful than "The President will change his policy from yes to no on this topic", because the latter prevents a tiny change from being claimed as success. Failed predictions should be marked in bold at the top of the post via an edit, leaving the rest intact.
I'm quite depressed about this. If you'd asked right after the election what the odds are of Trump being the next President in 2024, I'd have said maybe 10%. 15% at most. Now my internal estimate is up to about 40%. With an additional 20-25% chance that it'll be a different Trumpist Republican.
It sucks.
I'm 50/50 on the next election with 100% chance of a Trumpian Republican getting the nom.
There's only Trumpian Republicans left. They were all Trumpian Republicans before, too. They are just upfront about it now.
Sadly, there’s also a good chance Biden could lose outright in a landslide. It’s not all his fault of course but Afghanistan is turning into one of the worst foreign affair bungles in American history. Combine that with runaway inflation and an out of control pandemic and Joe is shaping up to be Carter Resurrected Edition.
1 year into a 4 year term seems a bit early for me to be pessimistic. Hell covid could mutate to kill only fox news viewers and we will all be saved.
Historically, American voters don't give the slightest f*ck about foreign affairs.
Historically, American voters don't give the slightest f*ck about brown peoples' foreign affairs.
Slight adjustment for truthiness.
Historically, American voters don't give the slightest f*ck about foreign affairs.
I don’t know if that’s true. Ford lost in part due to Vietnam and the Iranian hostage crisis helped sink Carter. Maybe I’m being a bit pessimistic but I still think this will haunt Biden’s administration.
Tanglebones wrote:Historically, American voters don't give the slightest f*ck about foreign affairs.
I don’t know if that’s true. Ford lost in part due to Vietnam and the Iranian hostage crisis helped sink Carter. Maybe I’m being a bit pessimistic but I still think this will haunt Biden’s administration.
Ford lost in part due to the domestic politics of Vietnam i.e. the draft. Not because people disagreed with the nuance of a Cold War proxy-war.
Tanglebones wrote:Historically, American voters don't give the slightest f*ck about foreign affairs.
I don’t know if that’s true. Ford lost in part due to Vietnam and the Iranian hostage crisis helped sink Carter. Maybe I’m being a bit pessimistic but I still think this will haunt Biden’s administration.
By August 1968 a majority of Americans felt that it was a mistake to have sent troops to Vietnam. By 1973 60% of all Americans felt that Vietnam had been a mistake. The American public knew that conflict was a pointless waste years before politicians acknowledged it.
Carter was f*cked over by the Iran hostage crisis, but a lot of it had to do with the fact it lasted 444 days (and involved some exceptionally shady ass maneuverings by Reagan).
At most we're on Day 132 of Afghanistan, but only if you count things from the day Biden announced we'd be out of Afghanistan by August 31st. But that'd be crazy since that announcement was barely covered by the media. In reality it been just few weeks and there's a hard end date rapidly approaching.
Multiple polls show that a majority of Americans support leaving Afghanistan as well as a majority of Americans understanding that our withdrawal wouldn't go well regardless if it happened now, in three months, or in another 20 years. There's been no media pundit or politician who's proposed any theoretical instance where America pulling out would go well or wouldn't be quite rapidly noticed by the Afghan government or the Taliban.
On top of that we've managed to airlift out tens of thousands of Afghans and will be extracting tens of thousands more in the coming days. It becomes harder to say Biden abandoned Afghans with those numbers and, at a certain point, his critics have to admit that it's simply not feasible or remotely realistic to judge Biden because he didn't evacuate every Afghan who wanted out. It's much more likely that Biden will get pushback from the right regarding the evacuations with people claiming Afghan refugees are really terrorists who are going to vote Democratic and get free healthcare.
Just like when we pulled out of Iraq there's not going to be a whole lot of media hanging around and continuing to report from Afghanistan, if only because reporters will no longer be safe. Afghanistan will simply fade from media coverage and American minds like the Iraqis, Kurds, Syrians, etc.
And going back to your original comment the only people who are going to ding Biden about COVID are the morons who are taking livestock medicine or who think it's still all a hoax. A majority of Americans will rightly fault red state governors who are putting their 2024 political aspirations ahead of the health of the constituents and the unvaccinated dumb f*cks who we all know skew heavily white and conservative. Most Americans are already fed up with these asshats and several more weeks/months of them causing record COVID cases/hospitalizations/deaths isn't going to make us look more kindly on them.
It's not so much that I think Afghanistan, COVID or whatever crisis comes next will individually have major effects on Biden's reelection chances. It's that with the massive Republican advantage in the electoral college, their likely election shenanigans, and a huge enthusiasm gap, the cumulative negative effect may not be much, but it will be more than enough to lead to a GOP victory. I fear we'd best get used to a pattern of huge Democratic popular vote victories with electoral college nail biters.
And, I have much less hope for a Harris victory because a small but nonetheless crucial subset of the American population will find her "unlikeable" for some reason they can't clearly articulate, but ultimately comes down to misogyny (see also- Clinton 2016).
Also, she's a cop.
Heres a prediction for you: This winter's covid is going to be worse then last years. Covid is going to tear through the south like General Sherman. The hospitals system will collapse and a lot of the MAGA conspiracy theorist crowd isn't going to be around for 2022, or 24. Time will tell whether its going to be enough to swing the election one way or the other.
There is going to be an anti-vaxxer "March on Washington" where they claim they're being treated exactly the same as black people in 1963, but worse. Someone will do an anti-vaxxer "I Have A Dream" speech. I will move to a cabin in Saskatchewan.
There is going to be an anti-vaxxer "March on Washington" where they claim they're being treated exactly the same as black people in 1963, but worse. Someone will do an anti-vaxxer "I Have A Dream" speech. I will move to a cabin in Saskatchewan.
If that happens, about 95% of that group will come down with COVID, about 3-5% of that group will die from it, and the media will not make that connection until some reporter looking for a story in 2030 digs into some data.
Lots of reporters talk about the Sturgis super spreader event and how many of them got sick. I would be extremely surprised if something like this happened and the media did not cover how many of them got sick or died.
I was under the impression that we have pretty much given up on contact tracing due to the hostility that certain segments of society have demonstrated
I’m not sure we will ever fully know how bad these super spreader events are and therefore we will keep on having them as people want to go back to normal life and are thinking that everything is fine
It's not so much that I think Afghanistan, COVID or whatever crisis comes next will individually have major effects on Biden's reelection chances. It's that with the massive Republican advantage in the electoral college, their likely election shenanigans, and a huge enthusiasm gap, the cumulative negative effect may not be much, but it will be more than enough to lead to a GOP victory. I fear we'd best get used to a pattern of huge Democratic popular vote victories with electoral college nail biters.
And, I have much less hope for a Harris victory because a small but nonetheless crucial subset of the American population will find her "unlikeable" for some reason they can't clearly articulate, but ultimately comes down to misogyny (see also- Clinton 2016).
Don't just think about 2024 though. 2022 is also going to be hugely important. Problem is, Republicans are very, very strongly positioned to retake the House, at a minimum in 2022. They do that, and "Can Biden win in 2024" becomes less of a question about winning a Democratic election and more of a terrifying portent about the future of democracy in the U.S.
Richard Hasen, a law and political science professor at the University of California, Irvine, said in a recent research paper that the United States finds itself in a moment of "democratic peril," facing an unprecedented danger of "election subversion.""The United States faces a serious risk that the 2024 presidential election, and other future US elections, will not be conducted fairly, and that the candidates taking office will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters under previously announced election rules," Hasen wrote.
In his opinion piece, Kagan said the 75-year-old Trump and his Republican allies are laying the groundwork to ensure a 2024 victory "by whatever means necessary."
Trump, who retains an iron grip on the Republican faithful and is all but certain to be the party's presidential nominee if he does decide to run, appears to be setting the stage for the "Big Lie 2.0," said Foley.
The strategy involves restrictions such as voter identification laws passed by the legislatures of some Republican-led states which Democrats claim are intended to suppress the minority vote and Republicans say are designed to protect the integrity of the ballot.
It also includes replacing Republican state election officials such as Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who refused to do Trump's bidding in 2020 and "find" 11,780 votes, with candidates who are diehard supporters.
"Once you have that person in charge you have somebody who has great influence on how the election is conducted, how the votes are counted, who's declared the winner, how the Electoral College votes align," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
- 'Ultimate perversion of democracy' -
While it would spark Democratic outrage, Republican-controlled state legislatures could potentially ignore the popular vote in their states if it goes against Trump and appoint their own electors to the Electoral College, the final arbiter of who wins the presidential race, Sabato said.
Republicans are also well-positioned to win a majority in 2022 in the currently Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, giving them another potential lever of power in 2024.
"As ugly as last January 6 was with bloodshed and insurrection the outcome was never in doubt," Foley said, as then vice president Mike Pence ultimately refused to go along with Trump's demands that he reject the Electoral College slates from several states they lost to Biden.
"But if members of Congress on January 6, 2025 are predisposed to the 'Big Lie' approach, and are willing to repudiate election results just for the sake of pure political power, that would be the ultimate perversion of democracy," Foley said.
And what we have to look forward to when it happens:
Donald Trump’s former White House strategist Steve Bannon on Saturday evoked a dystopian future when he called for “shock troops” to quickly “deconstruct” the state as soon as a Republican takes the Oval Office again.
Bannon spoke at the Capitol Hill Club Wednesday at the invitation of a new organization called the Association of Republican Presidential Appointees, according to NBC. The group was formed as a resource for future GOP officials to tap into to quickly fill federal jobs.Bannon told NBC that he wants to see “pre-trained teams ready to jump into federal agencies” when the next Republican president takes office.
“We’re going to have a sweeping victory in 2022, and that’s just the preamble to a sweeping victory in 2024, and this time we’re going to be ready — and have a MAGA perspective, MAGA policies, not the standard Republican policies,” he said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
I may be a pessimist, but right now I don't have much hope that this isn't exactly what's going to happen. Some of the aversion swing voters have to Trump will fade with time like it did with Bush, and being forced off of social media might actually work to his advantage in this regard. Meanwhile, the failings of Biden and Democrats in general will be fresh on everyone's mind. I don't foresee there being enough votes to overcome Republicans' multiple, mostly unfair, advantages. I really fear this is the end of American Democracy, as flawed as it has been. Sure, Republicans dismantling the government will make them very unpopular for 2026 and 2028 but by then it could be too late.
Maybe there’s hope if Biden steps down for 2024 and we get some new blood in? Maybe if Trump implodes the GOP by not running but also sabotaging De Santis or whoever? I dunno. I have zero faith in demographics coming to the rescue anymore.
There is one silver lining.
If the Supreme Court over turns or punts/shadow dockets Roe V Wade, Dem turnout will be strong and women turnout will be strong for Dems. It doesn't even have to get to that. As long as more and more states are essentially banning abortion, the results will be strong for Dems in 2022.
I think Dems are totally missing a golden opportunity with infrastructure. Flat out, Republicans are against jobs. They are against you being able to feed your family. I think that message will resonate with a lot of white anger/victimhood. Do you want Trump or do you want jobs? Do you want Trump or do you want a healthy family? Do you want Trump while having empty shelves where toilet paper and soda should be?
I dunno. I have zero faith in demographics coming to the rescue anymore.
I've always found this faith (not necessarily coming from you, gewy) to be such a weird way of looking at politics, not to mention a fair abdication of duty. But fundamentally, it relies on what I can only think of as a very West Wing fanfic version of politics.
Like, "Republicans are racist, so they won't get any brown/black votes and will lose that way!"
Here's the thing: First off, people care way more about having a roof over their head, money in their bank account and food on the table than whether or not political figures have said something off-color. (FWIW, concerned with the rise of White Supremacy as I am, a loud subset of liberals flatly have not helped with this in recent years via outright hysterics and turning every inter-racial interaction into a HR meeting less you "microaggress.")
Secondly, Trump did lose in 2020, but he also made inroads with both black and Latino voters. And even Republicans understand, if they can consistently peel 20-25% of the black electorate away from the Democrats, they'll never lose another election (and this isn't bringing up the Latino base, which is emphatically not monolithic, no matter what Trump calls Mexicans.)
Combine that with voter suppression efforts and "Demographics will save us" has always struck me as a total fantasy idea of American politics, operating entirely on treating POC voters as a monolith.
Anyway, if nothing else, I am not convinced at all that Democrats are really seeing the literal existential threat democracy in the U.S. is facing. My best-case reading of the situation is that they're fat and lazy and too many buy into Biden's horeshit idea that Republicans will "come back to their senses." Worst-case is they don't care, and would be perfectly happy continuing to enrich themselves as an utterly toothless "opposition."
I remain quite pessimistic about where the next 2-4 years go.
Most Democrats see the existential threat, but Republicans like Sinema and Manchin are going to prevent them from doing anything about it.
Oh, and my prediction: The Republicans tank the bipartisan bill, just so that the build back better doesn't get passed either.
I may be a pessimist, but right now I don't have much hope that this isn't exactly what's going to happen. Some of the aversion swing voters have to Trump will fade with time like it did with Bush, and being forced off of social media might actually work to his advantage in this regard. Meanwhile, the failings of Biden and Democrats in general will be fresh on everyone's mind. I don't foresee there being enough votes to overcome Republicans' multiple, mostly unfair, advantages. I really fear this is the end of American Democracy, as flawed as it has been. Sure, Republicans dismantling the government will make them very unpopular for 2026 and 2028 but by then it could be too late.
This has been on my mind since... well, not sure, probably at least 2018. I dunno.
Anyway, point being, l tend to keep quiet on it but inside I have been watching in horror as the Democrats and the mainstream media do exactly what I expected they would: give a big sigh of relief that Trump is out of office and the Democrats nominally have power, then return to business-as-usual as if the crisis is over and we can move on like nothing ever changed.
Sure, Biden did more than I expected in terms of using executive powers to undo some of Trump's abuses of executive powers. Those first few weeks of his administration, I allowed myself to feel a little optimism that maybe, just maybe, this term might prove different from the BAU Democrats.
But no, the ensuing months have proven my fears to be fully justified. The media has managed to contribute to the problem via continuing their "both sides" style of reporting and their unrelenting glee in stoking partisan rivalry.
At this point, with their relentless assault on voting rights, their renewed gerrymandering efforts, and the inevitable disillusionment of an unclear number of people who voted Democrat in 2020 leading to lower turnout next time, it is all but inevitable that the Republicans will win back the presidency and the Senate between the 2022 and 2024 elections, and then that's it. The US experiment is over. There's a whole slew of possibilities for the particulars of how it all ends and how quickly, but this current administration's term was our last chance to attempt to salvage the US without it collapsing first. I just don't see them taking any path forward at this point that treats our current crisis as the national existential crisis that it is.
If I had any realistic avenue for getting myself and my family out of the US and into a nation with better near-future prospects within the next 2-4 years, I'd take it.
I remain quite pessimistic about where the next 2-4 years go.
Every word of this Maher monologue.
I don't even think I have a lot of U.S. political predictions to make after that. That's it, it's perfect. And by all indications, people won't take this seriously until it's too late.
Yeah, saw that and was dismayed at how closely it runs with my own expectations. 
Prederick wrote:I remain quite pessimistic about where the next 2-4 years go.
Every word of this Maher monologue.
I don't even think I have a lot of U.S. political predictions to make after that. That's it, it's perfect. And by all indications, people won't take this seriously until it's too late.
One analyst on CNN was already saying it won't happen because the Republican party has learned from their mistakes and they wouldn't let it get to that. I think maybe she was on cryostasis for the past few years and just woke up...
At a rally for the Trumpy GQP candidate for VA governor, they brought out a flag that had been carried during the 1/6 attempted coup and said the Pledge of Allegiance at it. If they've learned anything, it's to double down on cultish behavior.
I'm sure this is obvious to people, but it only occurred to me today. If Republicans win the House in 2022, which seems likely, Biden is 100% going to be impeached. No matter what. He doesn't even have to do anything remotely wrong to provide pretense since the prevailing Republican narrative is already that he stole the election, is the worst President ever, and will destroy the country if allowed to continue.
The unholy union of Trump, deplorables in Congress, right wing media, and an angry unhinged base will ensure that any Republican House member with misgivings will just go along with it rather than face the death threats and primary opponents that accompany being deemed a RINO traitor.
2022 is also going to be hugely important. Problem is, Republicans are very, very strongly positioned to retake the House, at a minimum in 2022.
If Republicans win the House in 2022, which seems likely, Biden is 100% going to be impeached. No matter what.
Unfortunately, I don't think this is an "if" anymore. Based on tonight, the Dems are in a really, really bad place. I think 2022's going to be a walk.
Prederick wrote:2022 is also going to be hugely important. Problem is, Republicans are very, very strongly positioned to retake the House, at a minimum in 2022.
gewy wrote:If Republicans win the House in 2022, which seems likely, Biden is 100% going to be impeached. No matter what.
Unfortunately, I don't think this is an "if" anymore. Based on tonight, the Dems are in a really, really bad place. I think 2022's going to be a walk.
Yeah. They’re not going to pass voter rights or any meaningful legislation. Locking that outcome in. Thanks, Bernie Bros.
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