2020 Predictions

[Eric the Green]

(08-07-2020, 02:56 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-07-2020, 06:25 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(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.

There is one assumption that we ordinarily make about Presidential elections: that those elections will be free and fair. Electoral tampering (rigging) by the Party in power would be good for reversing a key turned against the incumbent's party. Note well that this seems to have never have happened before. This would hold true if the incumbent's Party manipulated the results of primaries of the challenger's party to select a sure loser.

Foreign interference in the electoral process on behalf of a challenger would be a key turning strongly against the incumbent. This includes fake news and hacking of electoral databases.

Indeed this would-be key did turn on behalf of the challenger in 2000 and 2016, and could have turned a Key against Gore in Lichtman's prediction for 2000 had he included it. Unfortunately no-one knew beforehand the extent of the cheating and mistakes along these lines that would occur in Florida. We'll see if, as Lichtman himself warns, that this force currently outside the Keys could turn the election in favor of the incumbent this year. So Lichtman points out that we need to vote to save our democracy. A large victory cannot be cheated for or against so easily, as opposed to the elections of 2000 and 2016. These days, the Republicans can't win unless they cheat. Some say that this would-be Key also benefited incumbent George W Bush in 2004.

There was no cheating against Sanders by the Democrats in 2016 that could have altered the result, because Hillary's victory was too large. But many Sanders voters resented what little cheating did happen anyway and stayed home. This is all related to Key 2. In any case, the voters in either Party are responsible for whom they choose as their nominee, and that's why Key 12 is also about the performance of the party in power. It is also affected by whom the opposition chooses, Key 13.

These days, choosing a recent vice-president may give some portion of Key 13 or Key 3 to the party than nominates that candidate. In the past, vice-presidents were not important and didn't achieve recognition from being vice-president. But since at least Mondale in Carter's term, the vice-president has been given more to do, and this is also because of how much burden falls on presidents today. So Biden is getting some incumbency benefits, even though Trump gets Key 3. When we have an un-presidential president, people are looking to the former vice-president that they know to bring a real president back into the Office.