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December 31, 2019 8:57 AM   Subscribe

The Worst Political Predictions of 2019. 12. House Democrats and Senate Republicans will “secure a number of legislative victories … [and] meet on middle ground” Predicted by: Orrin Hatch
posted by philip-random (15 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
'John Leboutillier, a former Republican congressman from New York, began 2019 with an op-ed in the Hill that audaciously predicted, “The Mueller investigation will unveil evidence of Trump putting himself out to the highest bidder in return for campaign help and financing: Russians, Saudis, Emiratis, Qataris—there will be evidence that millions of foreign dollars illegally flowed into the Trump campaign coffers in 2016.” There was no such evidence, Mueller unveiled no such thing, and there is no factual basis upon which to claim that “millions of foreign dollars illegally flowed into the Trump campaign.”'

No evidence and no factual basis? I feel like that last bit might be... let's say overstating it.

Trump campaign solicits foreign donations, in violation of FEC rules (CSM, July 2016)
Trump campaign solicits illegal foreign donations despite warnings (The Hill, July 2016)
The Trump campaign is still illegally asking foreigners for money (Vanity Fair, August 2016)
Following the Money: Trump and Russia-Linked Transactions From the Campaign to the Presidential Inauguration (Center for American Progress, December 2018)
Trump inauguration took money from shell companies tied to foreigners (The Guardian, March 2019)
Feds open foreign-money investigation into Trump donor Cindy Yang (Miami Herald, May 2019)
Reps of 22 foreign governments have spent money at Trump properties (NBC News, June 2019)
A Major Trump Inaugural Donor Was Just Charged for an Illegal Foreign Influence Campaign (Mother Jones, October 2019)
Two Giuliani Associates Who Helped Him on Ukraine Charged With Campaign-Finance Violations (WSJ, October 2019)
‘A great big money party’: Foreign efforts to influence Trump keep piling up (Politico, October 2019)
Investigators scrutinize Giuliani firm and donations to Trump super PAC as part of broad probe (WaPo, November 2019)
Trump won't rule out violating ban on foreign contributions in 2020 (Center for Responsive Politics, June 2019)
posted by box at 9:50 AM on December 31, 2019 [26 favorites]


It was an alarming, eye-popping prediction from Ricky Jones, a professor at the University of Louisville and a contributor to the Courier Journal: “We will see a move toward forcing African-Americans to secure 19th century Black Codes-type passes that they must carry in public. Any white person would be able to demand the blacks in question produce these IDs to prove they have the right to inhabit certain spaces or engage in pre-approved activities in 2019.” Nothing even hazily resembling the prediction has been entertained.

ID or no, serious challenges to citizenship for PoC loom large.

Republicans in Georgia have worked to purge 310,000 voters and have successfully removed 100k voters, so far. Voter purges have ramped up across the country, disproportionally targeting people of color who live in Voting Rights Act jurisdictions.

Republicans have also ramped up the denial rate of passports for Latinos who were born along the Texas border, making it easier to challenge their citizenship, detail, and expel them — even while being American citizens.

Trump blocked Congressional access to documents around his attempts to cripple the 2020 Census with questions around citizenship, despite his interference with the first Article of the US Constitution.

Trump's people have also tried to redefine and revoke citizenship of children born to US workers and military personnel outside of the country, again targeting non-white people.

So, no IDs in 2019, maybe, but definitely a lot of right-wing retooling of what it means to be a citizen when you're not white.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:26 AM on December 31, 2019 [19 favorites]


For 2020, I sadly predict that trump will win a second term.

He will surely cheat, break the law, lie, bribe, use a crooked and truly rigged system, etc., but at the end of the day, the dems won’t be able to convince the majority of the American voters, that it’s a bad thing.

/ change my mind
posted by growabrain at 10:49 AM on December 31, 2019 [3 favorites]


For 2020, I predict that predictions from notable individuals will be made based on how well they function as clickbait.
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:08 AM on December 31, 2019 [9 favorites]


I'm kinda surprised that, somehow, nobody predicted that Joe Biden would be willing to run alongside a Republican.
posted by heteronym at 11:30 AM on December 31, 2019 [3 favorites]


growabrain: I'm not going to outright agree with your prediction (somewhat superstitious about putting that terrible thought out into the universe) but I do think it's folly for people to assume trump is toast based on his high unfavorable ratings. There's a good chance he will lose the popular vote by an even larger margin this time, but that the outcome will still come down to who takes Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. (It's maddening!)
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:33 AM on December 31, 2019 [4 favorites]


Biden is like a caricature of an out of touch old person at this point. Unfortunately, about 30 percent of Democrats seem to want him as the nominee. The rest need to coalesce around an alternative.
posted by eagles123 at 12:00 PM on December 31, 2019 [1 favorite]


Prediction: I will be dumb enough to start reading the comments at that Politico article and I will be bummed out.

Result: yeop.
posted by Guy Smiley at 12:05 PM on December 31, 2019 [4 favorites]


For 2020, I sadly predict that trump will win a second term.

I'm not interested in changing your mind but I'd phrase it as "Trump has a damn good chance of winning and we need to never take anything for granted again."
posted by octothorpe at 12:44 PM on December 31, 2019 [12 favorites]


I live in AR. I predict that, after Tom Cotton's campaign withhheld damaging information about his likely opponent until after the filing deadline, there will be no Democratic candidate, and Cotton will win his Senate race.

I don't want to make any predictions about the presidential race, but suffice it to say that Trump carried AR 60% to 33% in 2016, and that was running against someone who was Arkansas' First Lady for 12 years. In the last fifty years, the only Democratic presidential candidates to win Arkansas were Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

In the House, AR-1, AR-3, and AR-4 are probably safe for Rick Crawford (doesn't have an announced D challenger), Steve Womack (I like Celeste Williams, but her odds aren't great), and Bruce Westerman (ditto for William Hanson).

AR-2 might be more interesting. I think Joyce Elliott, by far the most liberal of Arkansas' state senators, has a shot at defeating French Hill--in the last election, Hill under-performed compared to the +R numbers (Hill won 52% to 45%, a difference of about 16,000 votes, which is a fair-sized swing compared to his 58%-36%, 65,000-vote margin in 2016), and he was running against a fairly generic and uninspiring white guy (if you're reading this, Clarke Tucker, well, it's time somebody told you).

There's a lot of enthusiasm for Elliott in Little Rock--she's African-American, a former teacher, and has played a big role in advocating for local control of the Little Rock School District (if you're a student of history, you may be aware that this is a big issue here). If she won, she'd be the first woman elected to serve AR-2, and the first POC elected to federal office in Arkansas since Reconstruction.

It's the same kind of dynamic as in a lot of other races--if Elliott can drive turnout in urban areas (in this district, that basically means Little Rock), and win some people over in the suburbs, and if turnout is smaller in the more exurban and rural parts of the district, she could win the thing. I predict she will.

Then again, French Hill was the top recipient of NRA money in the House a few years ago, and in the last election, a Trump-aligned PAC ran illegal racist anti-Democratic radio ads in Little Rock, so ┐(´•_•`)┌
posted by box at 8:32 AM on January 1, 2020


I live in PA. I predict Trump will lose in PA. The anti-Trump passions are high and more organized than 4 years ago. I can’t comment on other states, but

I have a cousin who lives in Florida who I haven't seen or talked to in at least forty years, but she's a Facebook friend, and it turns out, frustratingly conservative in an Christian sort of way. Recently, she barged into a discussion on the topic of Trump and 2020 to say bluntly, "I don't know about the rest of America but he won't be winning here."
posted by philip-random at 9:09 AM on January 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


This is kind of a weird article, since political predictions are made so often and freely with no import and no consequence when they don’t pan out (except this one time, I guess). I’m a political junkie but I don’t read Politico or the Hill, and I guess that’s why I don’t recall hearing any of these predictions. They certainly didn’t bubble out into any news cycles.

Except for #1, which is not a prediction so much as “idiot makes a mistake, and rather than admit it, doubles down laughably.”
posted by ejs at 9:14 AM on January 1, 2020


Trump won't rule out violating ban on foreign contributions in 2020

Why should he rule it out? It's pretty obvious by now that he won't suffer any notable backlash from his supporters, and he's all but immune to prosecution or even the slightest sort of fine (not that any attempt at prosecution or fines are going to be forthcoming. At least none that might have any bearing on Trump's campaign.)
posted by Thorzdad at 10:27 AM on January 1, 2020 [2 favorites]


Trump won't rule out violating ban on foreign contributions in 2020

The Federal Election Commission has only three sitting members out of six positions. Four are required for a quorum to do anything. Trump has left the other three positions open during his entire administration.

This means the FEC cannot conduct meetings, cannot make rulings, cannot conduct audits, cannot conduct investigations, and cannot issue fines or penalties.

Trump can do anything he wants without fear of FEC oversight.
posted by JackFlash at 10:47 AM on January 1, 2020 [6 favorites]


Fresh off his appearance on the worst-predictions-of-2019 list, John Leboutillier is back with a new set of predictions.

More damaging leaks, 51 votes for calling witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial, R senators asking why Trump doesn't want witnesses to testify, and, finally, another whistleblower on an entirely different scandal during the impeachment trial.

He declines to say whether impeachment will lead to removal, but he does go on to predict a Biden/Harris ticket, with the Obamas doing a lot of campaigning on their behalf, leading to a massive popular vote win and the Senate going 50-50.

"Thus, the Thump era will end — and be seen in history as a four-year aberration that began with a fluke election in 2016 that the American voter then systematically corrected in 2018 and 2020."
posted by box at 1:20 PM on January 1, 2020


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