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Political Predictions 2016
The hangovers should be wearing off or at least minimized with some comfort food. The 2015 reviews are in and they aren’t good, but that’s okay. God gave us a great big windshield and tiny rearview mirror.
It is time for political predictions and wagering is encouraged.
Every quadrennial election is the most important and/or pivotal in our nation’s history. That trend continues in this new year.
Ricochet is at its best when everyone participates and adds new categories, but we need a starting point. Please offer your predictions of the following and feel free to include a brief (brief: men’s underwear or less than 10,000 words — I am looking at you Ryan M, James Madison, and James of England) narrative supporting your positions.
Republican Primary: Who is the nominee and how do they get there? Bonus points for predicting a running mate.
Democrat Primary: Who is the nominee and how do they get there? Bonus points for predicting a running mate.
General Election: Who wins. Any surprises in the swing states?
Senate: Do Republicans retain a majority? The map is stacked against them this year. If you predict a Republican President does he or she have coattails? Bonus points: if Republicans retain the Senate do they increase their margin or does it dip slightly?
House of Representatives: I’ve not seen any plausible scenarios that this goes back to the Democrats, but feel free to prove that conventional wisdom incorrect. Do Republicans increase their margin?
Published in Politics
Can’t see this assumption of Julian Castro’s ascension. First and foremost he is not a Clinton loyalist. A two-term Hillary presidency is going to have to survive a TIA or two and the VP can’t be the future of the party with any critical constituency of his own getting in the way of Bill taking over from Lurleen repeatedly (Rob Reiner has the script ready to film of this romantic Hill/Bill dramedy). Second, those health concerns are going to put more emphasis on the VP pick’s superficial experience and gravitas. Castro is a young lightweight, and I don’t mean Roberto Duran. He is rhetorically immature like a young small market anchor. No facial discipline, breaking out into silly grins and chuckles when friendly interviewers like Stewart press him in the slightest. His habitual references to his brother are a bit weird too. I think a doubling down (1992 playbook) with another woman (no 1992 double entendre really intended, but hey), maybe Warren, is more likely than Castro. Kaine and Hickenlooper seem like perfect worker bee VP’s.
I agree. If the gynevote gets Felony 4 points up front, two women on the ticket surely gets her another point or two. As everyone knows, two birds on the ticket are worth more than one in the bush — er, somethin’ like that.
Republicans can’t overcome a guaranteed woman presidency with a woman VP nominee anyway. Everyone knows Republican women aren’t real women. Gender traitors.
Easy.
Brad2971
Jamal Rudert:Trump launches an independent campaign. He and Cruz/Fiorina lose to Hillary/Castro. This in spite of the fact that Hillary, for health reasons, can’t make it to one of the debates, and sends Bill instead. The Republicans complain about this, but the media go along. R’s lose two Senate Seats, and a few in the House. They retain their majorities, which don’do them a darn bit of good over the next eight years of HRC rule. My second most likely scenario is that HRC dies of a stroke and Bernie Sanders beats Cruz/Fiorina. You heard it here first.
Again, how can Trump run an independent campaign if sore loser laws of some type in 46 states prevent him from doing so?
*****
This? This is what bothered you about my predictions?
Thank you for bringing this up. You and I may be ridiculed (not new), but I think this scenario is a real threat. A traditional moderate ticket combined with insulting Tea Party/limited government folks and the Trump supporters (not the same people, but may be some overlap) drives down turnout and Republicans are humiliated in November.
FWIW I noticed that also. Trump can’t be placed on the Texas ballot as third party. He missed the deadline.
The rest of it is a typical darn fun read.
When they get to 100 seats, they STILL won’t pass any legislation the Democrats object too
Very good points. I don’t think anyone is accusing Democrats of thinking this strategically. Castro would be an emotional pander by them, nothing more.
Republican Primary: Rubio with a Running Mate I have never heard off.
Democrat Primary: Clinton, and she takes state after state.
General Election: Clinton in what ends up being a landslide in modern terms, like Obama’s last too elections.
Senate: Lose Majority or only barley hang on to it. If the lose, the Democrats will destroy all rights of the minority and rule with an iron fist. If the GOP keeps it, they will be helpless in the face of the Democrats, who will effectively control the Senate.
House of Representatives: The GOP retains control, under Speak Ryan, who continues to “Get things done” by using Democrats to pass legislation that the conservatives in the House would not otherwise vote for.
Happy November!
I have maintained that the RINO wing will not support anyone except Rubio. (Fiorina would be another one but she isn’t going to be a factor. I suppose I better throw Christie’s name in here somewhere. Put simply Rubio is the only one with a chance that the RINO wing will support in a general election.) They will pay lip service to Cruz but not do one damned thing to campaign for him. And they will actually work against Trump. There is no hope because of the complete impasse the GOP Leadershp and the Base find themselves in. I suspect that a lot of the Base will not be enthusiastic about Rubio either over the immigration thing and suspected ties to the GOP Leadership. As much harm Obama has done to the future of the Democrat Party, he has served to be an even bigger destroyer among the DC GOP apparatus. It’s pretty clear that we hate each other now.
Yes that is perfectly true. The elites want us to shut up and get in line just like their counterpart across the sea.
Kingsman: The Secret Service is dead on correct about the corruption of the ruling classes.
And they call me cynical!
Yeah it is pretty uncanny how we are always told to not destroy the good in search of the perfect and yet, with regard to Cruz, those same people have done their best work trying to destroy a very good choice in an attempt to saddle us with a slightly less good choice. In the end it has soured the entire process and it is going to come down to Cruz winning the nom and not getting RINO support or Rubio winning the nom and not getting Base support.
Even I, you can go and look, was more than ready to support a Rubio nomination, albeit with one huge reservation regarding immigration, but no more. Not after that completely crass display of trying to paint a parliamentary tactic in the light of lies that we saw from the RINOs a few weeks ago.
Brent I have to agree with that sentiment though. We will be told that we can’t get anything done because then we have to ensure that we maintain our super majorities in the next election. And so on and so forth. It will be a never ending parade of excuses while to go on to pass a slightly less Leftist agenda. This is what leads me to believe that they now actually want this stuff. It’s not that they are scared. It’s that the McRyan’s have a slight disdain for the country as founded too.
Yep. They elites hate Cruz. Cue a podcast of people who live in the NewBosWash Bubble whining that they are not the man.
None of them, other than Cruz, seem to have the slightest understanding of the Founding of this nation. None of them talk about it like Reagan did.
LOL!! Yes nothing cracks me up more than to hear people who shall go unnamed that have people like George Will or Charles Krauthammer on speed dial tell me that A) there is no Establishment and B) they aren’t apart of it. Now don’t get me wrong I love these people who shall go unnamed–BTW Peter I love Uncommon Knowledge–but they really do their best at trying to insult one’s intelligence.
Nope, now Bryan you must understand that he only does that to play to the Base. He doesn’t really mean it because he looks like a used car salesman and speaks like a televangelist. But boy that Rubio kid–you know the same one who just had no clue who Chuck Schumer was prior to getting to DC–now he is the paragon of the Founding Spirit.
“I am an outsider!”
Right. And people who shall remain nameless did NOT get their jobs because of who say, Dad was?
Can you point me to his writings on the founding?
All I know is that when you write speeches for a president and contribute to one of the foundations of Conservative journalism for 20 years you are pretty much running in elite circles. Let me put it to you this way, I could not show up to Mr. Will’s Chevy Chase, MD address and expect to be invited in for a cup of coffee.
Yep!
Sorry, Brent, big Thread Hijack. We now return you to your schedule predictions of 2016.
I think this is as good as it gets, sorry:
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/113th-congress/senate-report/40/1
I don’t understand the “have a coffee” or “have a beer” test of elitism, or the dismissal of personal and professional elitism generally. Seems to combine a touchy-feely defensiveness with Jacobin egalitarianism. I never imagined that Clarence Thomas, Jeff Sessions, Antonin Scalia, Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, David Petraeus, or Charles Koch would be open to my dropping in for a chat over coffee. They probably enjoy[ed] a fairly elite conception of themselves, and deservedly.
From what I read, Russell Kirk would invite you in out of the cold, give you his supper and loafers, and make up the spare bed for you.
God bless him.
Does any of it really matter politically?
Rubio wins the nomination by gathering the center-right vote as the other contenders for it drop out. Trump and Cruz serve the sad role of splitting the anti-establishment vote. Rubio selects Rob Portman for his running-mate to gain Ohio.
Hillary is crowned. She selects a Hispanic, Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio.
The Clinton machine chews up Rubio and spits him out. By the end of the campaign the term most closely associated with him on search engines is “pool boy.” Conservative and blue collar whites stay home on election day, as the realization deepens that nothing can stop the fundamental changes which are displacing them from their own country. Hillary is elected as easily in the Electoral College as Obama was.
Democrats control the Senate.
The Republicans hold onto the House, with some losses. Speaker Paul Ryan gives a speech called the “Open Hand to Democrats,” signaling a new era of bi-partisanship.
The GOP publishes an “autopsy” of the 2016 election which brings together the acceptance of social liberalism, the hope for budgetary restraint and the need to reach out to the “New America.”
Comprehensive Immigration Reform is introduced in the House.
Shortly after the election Vice President Julian Castro announces, with his wife at his side, that he is “a Gay American.”
In other news, suicide and drug use among the white working class, specifically middle-aged men, skyrockets. Democrats call for new federal programs to address it.
Ricochet folds.
GOP wins big. Nations debt doubles in five years.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. Typically, people you consider friends, will invite you in if you drop in unannounced. Those who shall go nameless, I have no doubt in my mind could do that if they happen to be in Chevy Chase, MD on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and yet they pound the table in apoplexy at the notion that they are “establishment.”
This is a gloomy forecast, especially the part about Ricochet.
I don’t think it implausible. If the right wing, Tea Party, evangelical limited government types do not enthusiastically embrace the ticket or do not carry that enthusiasm to the ballot I think this is how it plays out.
Republicans and Ltd Gov’t types are both minority factions.
I think that requires the Fed monetizing a good portion of the new debt.
Republican Primary: Rubio wins a tough nomination, and picks Kasich as his running mate. Yeah, Kasich is a grouch, and he is perceived as being part of the “Establishment,” but he brings with him experience that Rubio lacks, and he would improve the odds in Ohio. If the Republican nominee picks up Florida and Ohio, it’s over.
A note about Fiorina, since I see a lot of people picking her. I like Carly, but she really doesn’t bring any women with her that Republicans don’t already have. She doesn’t help in California (or in any other state). And Liberal women hate her.
Democrat Primary: Hillary wins, of course, and she picks Julian Castro as her running mate (especially if Rubio is her opponent). It would be sort of a Bush/Quayle dynamic, minus the personal appeal, the ethics, and the experience.
General Election: Rubio and Kasich win in a squeaker. If anyone else is the nominee, we get Hillary by a mile.
Senate: The Senate is already looking bad for the GOP. Since there are no coattails in this election, I can see a lot of centrist voters splitting their ticket. This means that any effort to repeal Obamacare will be foiled. Why? Because Democrats know how to fight and Republicans don’t.
House of Representatives: The GOP will hold on to the House easily. I have seen no scenario that shows the Democrats winning.