2020 Predictions

[Eric the Green]

(08-07-2020, 01:20 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-06-2020, 07:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I would not give Trump Key 13 in 2016 because of his huge personal unpopularity, greater than Hillary's all the way through and including the election. I don't think Benghazi was enough of a failure to give Key 10 (foreign policy failure) to Trump. But I would probably give Trump Key 7, since Obamacare was Obama's only legislative achievement, and it was in his first term. A supreme court decision does not belong to the president (LGBT rights). Since I decided to give Key 7 to Trump (a FALSE key), that makes 7 false keys for Hillary. 1-4, 7, 11 and 12. I posted on this earlier.
http://generational-theory.com/forum/thr...l#pid54337
Once Lichtman decided to give Key 4 to Trump because of Gary Johnson, he agreed with me on all the keys for 2016 that I mention here. The article got the Key # wrong though, but the description right.
https://www.american.edu/media/news/0926...iction.cfm

For 2020, I agree with Lichtman on Keys 10 and 11. No great failures in foreign affairs, but no great success either. The Ukraine scandal belongs under Key 9. He was impeached for this, but I would not turn two Keys for it.

I agree with you on Key 7, but Lichtman gave it to Trump.

Perception is everything in politics, but that is transitory. I see Obama's handling of same-sex rights as a parallel to Eisenhower on school desegregation... but people who have seen large numbers of my posts recognize how much I see Obama and Eisenhower similar in temperament. Obama kept silent about it until the USSC decision came down, and he made clear after the fact where he stood. Supreme Court decisions are the law and it is up to us to live with those decisions. The Obergfell ruling will be the major event of Obama's second term by far and it will be remembered long after all the petty squabbles of our time become silly. Having the White House bathed in the rainbow colors of the LGBT rights banner on the night of the decision made clear where Obama stood. LGBT rights will stick, and even Trump was unable to win support by promising to rescind them. Abortion? Still there. "Gun rights"? Still there.  

I see the death of an American diplomat in Libya as a personal tragedy in an act of heroism (he died of smoke inhalation while trying to rescue something from a fire and was not killed by an angry crowd) but the Obama administration got much blame for a lack of omniscience on that. Donald Trump was able to play the "tough guy" hand. Never mind that Trump is far more cruel than tough, as most of us have discovered. This may have been enough to tip the scale to Trump in 2016.

I don't think Lichtman or others have seen the supreme court decision on gay marriage as an achievement by Obama. The supreme court did it.

I don't think the loss of diplomats in an attack on an embassy is a major foreign policy failure. It has happened many times in many places. Republicans made an issue of it, but got nowhere.

Trump won due to many factors, each of which may have been the one to give him those 77,744 votes in 3 states, even besides the electoral college itself.

1. Comey's revelation about further scandal involving Hillary's emails on Weiner's computer sent her poll numbers tanking just 2 weeks before the election, and they never recovered.

2. Voter purges and suppression kept many black and poor people from voting in major cities in the key states that decided the election.

3. Russian fake news and release of wikileaks misled some voters.

4. Hillary herself used poor strategy in not campaigning enough in the decisive Rust Belt states.

5. Trump was a better campaigner than Hillary and had more effective ads.

6. Some people did not vote who might have voted for Hillary, but preferred Bernie Sanders. This involves Lichtman Key #2.

It's possible that the manufactured Benghazi scandal helped to push a few minds against Hillary, and certainly the manufactured email scandal did as well. Hillary's evasiveness about the latter is part of Key 12 (incumbent party candidate charisma) going against her in 2016, as she seemed untrustworthy. But if I remember correctly, the attack itself happened in Obama's first term, and to that extent would have an effect on the 2012 election Keys rather than the 2016 Keys, although hearings continued after 2012. But it's also true that the hearings never exposed any wrong doing; it was merely grandstanding and propaganda. Hillary herself gave a bravado performance at the hearings.