Prognosticatin’

"I see an asshat taking the oath of office . . ."

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So what’s gonna happen next November and beyond?

First, let’s talk about what’s NOT gonna happen.

The Democrats are not going to regain control of the House. The math just isn’t there. They might pick up a few seats, but not nearly enough to regain control. They are currently down 50 seats (242-192) which means they would need to pick up 26 seats. Unless things change there just aren’t that many in play.

Secondly, let’s talk about what is almost certain to happen:

The Republicans will take control of the Senate. They only need a net gain of four seats, and the Democrats have to defend 23 seats to the Republican’s 10. Even worse, several of the current Democratic seats were part of the 2006 tidal wave that put the Democrats in power. Those seats normally trend GOP and the Republicans only need to get half of them back.

Now here’s what might happen:

Obama might win reelection.

I’m not saying he will. In fact, he really shouldn’t have a chance. But he does. Let’s assume for a moment he succeeds.

Obama is not going to morph into a progressive hero. He wasn’t one before when the Democrats controlled both the House and Senate, and there is no reason to think he’ll change now. He’ll be a lame duck facing a GOP-controlled Congress. They’ll pass what they want, and the only question is how much of it he’ll veto.

My guess will be not much.

Obamacare will start taking effect. If you think it’s unpopular now, just wait. This will be one area where Obama will use his veto pen – he won’t allow the GOP to repeal his signature achievement. This won’t help the Democrats in 2014 and 2016.

Other than that we’ll basically see four more years of the same old, same old. Even if the economy improves it will be unlikely that the voters will be willing to give the Democrats four more years in the Oval Office in 2016.

Next chance will be 2020, more likely 2024.

Obama could lose.

This is more likely, no matter who the GOP nominee is.

Right now I would have to say that the most likely nominees are Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Gingrich is more likely to win the nomination, but Romney is more likely to beat Obama.

Regardless of which Republican is the nominee, if they win you can expect a full-out effort to repeal Obamacare, “reform” Social Security and Medicare, and a lesser effort to make cuts in government spending.

This is actually the best long-term outcome for the Democrats liberals and progressives.

When Reagan ran for president he promised to cut taxes and spending. Once he took office one of the first things he did was cut taxes. But when he tried to cut spending he ran into a buzz saw.

Every piece of government spending has a constituency. There is only so much “waste, fraud and abuse” that can be cut. The really big-ticket spending programs are taboo.

Military spending? Military retirees? Old people? Children?

If anyone tries to do anything more than tinker with Social Security and Medicare they’ll find out (like Ronnie did) why it’s called “the third rail of American politics.”

Anything the Republicans do to cut spending will anger lots of voters, including a big chunk of their own base. Everybody wants government spending cut, except for their own programs. Remember the Tea Partiers with signs that said “Government hands off my Medicare?”

Here’s the bad news:

Things have to get worse before they’ll get better. Remember when the Republicans controlled Washington. That was only a few years ago. They had Congress and the White House, plus a majority of the Supreme Court.

The voters were so impressed they voted the Democrats back into power in 2006-2008. But the Democrats blew it. Seriously, it was like they were determined to sabotage themselves. They didn’t try to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They didn’t investigate Bush-Cheney lawbreaking. They shoved Hillary aside for an empty-suit puppet of Wall Street.

If the Republicans take full control next year, things will get worse. Actually, they’re gonna get worse either way. But if the Republicans are in charge they’ll get all the blame.

The question is, when the Democrats get another chance, will they choke again?

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The Turd Party

Bring it on. The second Obama term, I mean

When Ron Paul supporters aren’t faking attacks by Democrats, discussing their UFO abductions or whatever else they do, they do what they can to keep him relevant. Paul lost his chance to be the next GOP flavor of the week when he allowed speculation about him running as a third party candidate.

I’m not opposed to third parties. I think we should have multiple parties or even people running with no party identification. The problem is that more candidates mean it takes a smaller plurality for one to win. If we really want multiple candidates, we need a better runoff system in this country. Three way races in a general election just allow losers to win with 40% of the vote.

In fact, the broken presidential presidential primary/caucus system could benefit from a defined process where two candidates from all parties are decided at once. Why is it that there has to be one Democrat and one Republican running in every election?

The Tea Party was pragmatic. They used the Republican primaries to give their candidates the chance at an established campaign organization in the general election. Sometimes it worked, sometimes the GOP threw a fit and torpedoed their own party. Mitt Romney supporter Lisa Murkowski even ran as a third party candidate. She was the Democrats’ favorite Republican.

Liberals have all but given up on running anyone to the left of Obama. Some groups are trying to run their own entirely new third party candidate. In the end, this election is a referendum on Barack Obama. A more liberal candidate may draw votes away from Obama, but they will also give Democrats a safety choice, instead of making the hard decision of voting for the Republican who will get him out of office. Almost any other party candidate will take away from the eventual Republican nominee, be they on the right or in the center.

It may not be an exciting choice to vote for a Republican against Obama, but if you don’t like that guy, vote him out in 4 years, too. That’s what Democracy looks like.

No Newt is good Newt

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Two views:

The New Newt

[...]

The episode is a little confounding. Who is this gregarious, upbeat candidate, and what has he done with Newt Gingrich? Whatever’s gotten into him, he is loose and appears to be enjoying himself as he campaigns across South Carolina. “We’re just letting Newt be Newt,” says Adam Waldeck, Gingrich’s South Carolina state director.

The truth is that Gingrich is now the comfortable frontrunner, the self-assured favorite of conservatives who are searching for their champion against Obama, the happy warrior in the fight to (I’m paraphrasing the man) fundamentally reform the federal government on a profound scale, the likes of which the country has never seen in its entire history.

At a townhall in Newberry, Gingrich is gleefully bullish. “If we win South Carolina, I predict I will be the nominee.” It’s not an unreasonable assumption; since 1980, every winner of the state’s Republican primary has gone on to capture the nomination. Two days later, though, in an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper, Gingrich drops the pretense of uncertainty. “I’m going to be the nominee,” he tells Tapper. “It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee.”

Just letting Newt be Newt.

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and:

The return of Bad Newt Gingrich

The all-too-familiar character from the 1990s has only peeked out in public a handful of times so far. But already, Newt Gingrich — flush with pride over new polls showing his left-for-dead candidacy now leading the pack — is letting his healthy ego roam free again, littering the campaign trail with grand pronouncements about his celebrity, his significance in political history and his ability to transform America.

[...]

Longtime Gingrich watchers see clear signs that “Good Newt” (disciplined, charming, expansive in personality and intellect) is engaging in an internal battle with “Bad Newt” (off-message, bombastic, self-wounding) as his political fortunes rise.

“Remember, this is the man of the combination of Churchill and de Gaulle to begin with,” conservative columnist George Will told radio host Laura Ingraham. “He’s the embodiment of a nation in deep peril. The stage has to be lit by the fires of crisis and grandeur to suit Newt Gingrich.”

“Gingrich [is] always a fine a line between charming and brilliant on one hand, and eccentric and borderline dangerous on the other,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “He’s been ‘Charming Newt’ for the last several weeks. But the last couple of days have been a reminder of his other side.”

Gingrich “only has two modes — attack and brag,” explained one veteran GOP strategist.

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I’ll tell you everything you need to know about Newton Leroy Gingich:

In 1998 he was Speaker of the House and led the impeachment of Bill Clinton. He didn’t do it because he was outraged at the Big Dawg’s immoral behavior (Newt was then having an affair with his current wife while still married to his second wife) and he knew that Bill Clinton would not be removed from office because the Democrats controlled the Senate. Newt led the impeachment drive because he believed (and convinced his fellow House Republicans) it would help them win the 1998 congressional election.

His scheme backfired:

Republicans lost five seats in the House in the 1998 elections—the worst midterm performance in 64 years for a party that didn’t hold the presidency. Polls showed that Gingrich and the Republican Party’s attempt to remove President Clinton from office was deeply unpopular among voters.

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Gingrich resigned the day after the election. Bill Clinton was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate.

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You vet your life

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Imagine if every disgruntled ex-lover, ex-spouse, ex-friend and/or ex-employee in your life had the chance to dish dirt on you – to expose your deepest, darkest secrets. Affairs, flings, drug use, shoplifting, drunk driving, cheating on tests – every closet has a few skeletons. How many skeletons do you have?

I’m talking about stuff you really did – but spun in the least flattering light. Add in made-up lies and anything is possible. They don’t have to prove any of it – it’s up to you to disprove it.

How many people could survive that?

Not everyone has to. If you are approved by the establishment your secrets are safe. The media will help you to cover them up and will attack anyone who tries to expose them. Even when your secrets are revealed the media will dismiss them as irrelevant.

The basic rule is there are no rules. Bill Clinton got hammered for admitting he tried smoking pot but “didn’t inhale.” George Bush and Barack Obama got away with admitting to using cocaine.

The sex lives of Bill Clinton, Sarah Palin and Herman Cain are open season, but Barack Obama’s is off limits. John Edwards’ sex life was off limits until his candidacy was over. Ted Kennedy got kicked out of college for cheating, then later drove his car off a bridge while drunk and left a woman he wasn’t married to behind to drown and it didn’t end his career.

If the media dislikes you they will fixate on every thing you say, pointing to every slip of the tongue, mispronounciation and verbal gaffe as proof you are a moron. If they like you then you can be a moron and they will say your mistakes are proof that you are smarter than everyone else.

Which brings us to this:

Furthermore, Mr. Romney, still unable to reach beyond 25 percent in GOP polls, may have hit his high-water mark. Consider how the selectively quiet mainstream media waged war on the conservative challengers, one by one, just as they began to pose threats to Mr. Romney, yet they have found little time for exposes on Romneycare or Bain Capital or – brace yourself – racism in the Mormon Church. Don’t worry, they will. Meanwhile, conservatives should ask themselves why they’re holding back now.

Even Mr. Romney’s supporters admit this. Washington icon Ann Coulter has curiously joined league with ultraliberal Obamaphiles Bill Maher and Warren Buffett, as well as the one-woman brain trust, Meghan McCain, to support Mr. Romney in the primaries. Miss Coulter claims the mainstream media are “terrified” of a Romney GOP nomination. Destroying her own argument, she predicts there will be an “explosion” of anti-Romney news stories that “have already been written, but they’re not scheduled for release until the day Romney wraps up the nomination.”

Miss Coulter doesn’t explain what motivates the media to shield the Romney campaign during the primaries. The answer is obvious: Mitt Romney is the media’s rope-a-dope re-election strategy for Barack Obama. They hope we’ll bite.

The media will turn on Mr. Romney faster and with greater vengeance than they did Mr. McCain in 2008, and when they do, his poll numbers – unlike those of his GOP rivals who already have faced their firestorms – will crater like Mr. McCain’s did. I would guess they’re already hunting down every family with a grievance against Bain Capital for breathless “How Mitt Romney destroyed our family” news stories. Unfair? Absolutely. Damaging? You decide.

If you still don’t believe the Obama-friendly media are hoping Mitt Romney wins the GOP nomination, Google “Mitt Romney money picture” and ask yourself why the media are – for now – holding back this unseemly photo. It shows the former Massachusetts governor beside his former business partners with cash pouring out of their pockets, lapels, shirt collars and even a few body orifices. Even unapologetic champions of the free market cringe with anticipation of the bonanza that photo provides for Team Obama, which already loves to blame the weak economy on “fat-cat” bankers. This photo will be Exhibit A.

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If I had to pick the single, most important lesson from 2008, it’s that we should beware the media darlings.

I don’t know whether Mitt Romney is being set up as a sacrificial lamb or not. A more likely explanation is a fixed race with two ringers. Obama is a Wall Street puppet. Romney is a Wall Street alumni. Either way, Wall Street wins.

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