Countdown to a Free America

[pbrower2a]

(04-07-2018, 04:03 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(04-03-2018, 10:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Here are Lichtman's keys and how they seem to apply to 2020.

Red -- favors Republicans
Blue -- favors Democrats
Green -- ambiguous



 

1. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
   
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
   
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
   
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
   
5. Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
   
6. Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
   
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
   
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
   
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
   
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
    
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
    
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
    
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
    

1. Practically nobody now believes that the President's Party can make gains in the House. His Party is in worse shape for protecting the scale of his House majority than was the Democratic Party this time in 2010. Even a one-seat loss among 435 Representatives will make this a negative for Trump.

2. I hear talk, but I have yet to see anything so significant as an 'exploratory committee' by a dissident Republican.

3. Even should President Trump be impeached, then the President will be a Republican, most likely Mike Pence.

4. We have yet to see whether someone from the Constitution, Libertarian, or Reform party can put up a significant challenge to the President.

5. There is plenty of time for an economic meltdown to happen between now and the autumn of 2020. It hasn't happened yet.

6. It will be nearly impossible to match the Obama recovery as growth. There has been little room for improvement except for concerted efforts to raise real wages, something that cheap-labor interests in the GOP will resist.

7. The big tax cuts on behalf of the Master Class are his sole legislative victory, but it is one even if it should prove unpopular.

8. Political demonstrations may still be well-behaved in contrast to those of the 1960s, but they are bigger (feminist, environmentalist, anti-gun, and Black Lives Matter), and they don't make the current President look good.

9. How many scandals do you need? This administration has several scandals on the scale of Teapot Dome.

10. Be naive about the Soviet Union (like Carter) or a dictatorial Russia (like Trump), and you will be burned. This has yet to happen, so I cannot predict it... but I will not be surprised.

11. Nothing yet.

12. He may have seemed charismatic in 2016, but he has lost that.

13. I don't see any Democrat offering charisma yet.

Lichtman predicted that  Trump would win in 2016. I can't speak for Lichtman; historical events will do so in 2020.

6. Advantage red, considering that there was little to no growth during the bulk of Obama years.
8. I think we'd all agree that blue demonstrations of any kind don't ever make Republican Presidents/candidates look good. Will they matter more to voters who aren't all that attached to them than other national issues matter to them. 
10. If you end up under the Soviet Union or a dictator like Putin, it's because you (the blues) burned a bridge with America. Don't worry blue dude, you'll always have a place to escape, migrate to and live out the rest of your pathetic life in whatever remains of California.

6. N0 -- advantage blue. Most of the growth went to America's elites of ownership and management because Republicans had control of Congress. Now the Master Class has complete control of the economy and pliant figures in firm hold of all levels of government. The USA has become about as absolute a plutocracy as a fascist state or one of the kingdoms in which a royal family controls oil resources as the primary source of income.

But it is worth remembering that extreme inequality of income is an unstable condition in a largely-market economy. If the stock market reels, which it already shows signs of doing due top the impending trade war, then this goes from 'slightly blue' to 'deep blue'. Stock markets collapse when there is inadequate money for buying up alleged bargains in a collapsing market. In view of the abysmal savings rate in America, that collapse could happen very soon.

I bought into the market in March 2009 and held onto solid gains until the nursing home made a pauper out of me.

But that's the result of me doing things that were morally right but personally disastrous. What matters is what happens top others:



We already face an ominous drop in the valuation of the stock market. The savings rate in America is atrocious in part because millions are deep in debt for student loans that keep smart people from having to become farm laborers, domestic servants, or convenience-store clerks. When people can't buy the bargains of a collapsing market, then it will be 1929-1932 all over. If you thought the sesquiannum beginning in the autumn of 2007 was bad -- it was only about half as bad, and only because it wasn't a full three years of such severity. Democrats running for President will promise to be 'another Obama', and that will look even better in 2020 than in 2008.

We may be on the brink of a fifth Bad Bear market. I would not predict the Dow-Jones to end up in the low-to-mid teens around Election Day, 2020, but if it did such would by then seem inevitable.

10. As bad as things have gotten for me, all that keeps me from becoming a Communist is the body count. But that is not the point. The empire containing Russia is untrustworthy in its foreign policy. If Putin could re-attach Alaska to Russia as easily as he took 'back' Crimea and a slice of eastern Ukraine, he would. I can imagine President Putin making President Trump an offer that the latter couldn't refuse... maybe the Ukraine, Belarus, three Baltic Republics and Finland in return for guaranteeing his re-election? Heck, maybe our Great and Infallible Leader might throw Finnmark (the section of Norway north of Finland) in in the deal.