Election 2020

[pbrower2a]

OK. Consider this scenario: Anne Romney, Mitt's wife, does not have MS. Mitt and Anne Romney are able to participate in the grueling struggle to win the Presidency. Mitt Romney decides that the only reason that he lost in 2012 was that he faced a strong incumbent who had made few mistakes as President but would have a strong chance in an open-seat election. Promising to unleash the full power of free enterprise and free markets as a solution to the last economic distress under Obama, he faces Hillary Clinton... and wins because Hillary Clinton made much the same mistakes. Mitt Romney was born in Michigan, but he effectively has three home states: Michigan, New Hampshire, and Utah.



(blue -- Romney; red-Clinton. Pale shades are for states and districts decided by less than 5%, middle shades for states and districts decided by 5-9.99%; dark shades for states decided by

It is much like the reality of 2016. Romney does not win Pennsylvania, but he wins by picking of Michigan and Wisconsin, which are surprises, and New Hampshire. Clinton barely holds onto Colorado, Minnesota, and Virginia.

A scenario like this allows me to "retrodict" a counterfactual 2016 election:

M. Romney 289
H. Clinton 248

Clinton wins the popular vote only because she is able to run up the vote in a few states that she does win (CA and NY, largely), as in 2016.

It is a close election, but as Dubya showed, one can win following a bare win in the Electoral College if one of three things go right:

1. Nothing really goes wrong, or things that eventually go wrong don't implode until the second term
2. The President makes no glaring errors
3. The President is able to address some hazard effectively and decisively.

Romney is able to replace Obamacare with a system of mandatory participation in for-profit medical insurance, exemptions being related to a subsidize3d system for military veterans and their families, disabled people, and for Social Security. Poor? Work! Nothing good comes cheaply, and the system that best fits the plutocratic heritage of America has profits above all else with competition among profiteers (aside from the monopolistic Big Pharma). There are plenty of jobs opening in the new system. It may not be perfect -- but nothing good comes cheap.

Plenty of jobs appear in the insurance industry and for domestic servants (economic inequality intensifies, of course), and people are working more hours -- largely at second jobs just to make things meet. youth are obliged to pay their way, so kids are flocking even more to retail and restaurant jobs and saving retailers such as JC Penney, Sears, Radio Shack, Perkins', and so on -- which thrive because they have smart people working for them cheaply. Nothing, including convenience and economic security, comes cheap.

Romney's foreign policy is more of the same. He has a huge success in foreign policy as Secretary of State Jon Huntsman cuts a deal good for everyone in the general area of the Korean Peninsula. The People's Republic accepts the existence of its old bogey, the remnant of the republic that had largely been overthrown in 1949... as the independent Republic of Taiwan, which renounces all claims to represent any part of mainland China . China (of course there is now only one China even if it does not include Taiwan), South Korea, Taiwan, Russia, and Japan concur on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and on the dismantling of North Korean nukes. North Korea is obliged to return persons kidnapped from Japan to Japan. North Korean missile and germ-warfare programs? To be dismantled. Counterfeit US (and other) currency? Stopped.

COVID-19 appears in China... but Romney is able to get a nationwide lockdown with the cooperation of Democratic pols who know which way the wind is blowing. Romney uses martial rhetoric against a dangerous virus, and Americans do not have the divisions that happen in "Earth 1", with the bumbling and cruel Donald Trump as President. Romney addresses the issue of statues of Confederate statues in southern cities by suggesting alternatives -- like heroes of other American wars. Pershing, MacArthur, Patton, Bradley, Clark, Ridgway, Schwarzkopf... and of the Civil Rights struggle. Political and military figures who waged a war to keep the great-great-great grandparents of current black boys and girls in bondage are no more viable heroes than Frank and Jesse James, Al Capone, John Dillinger, Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, Carlo Gambino, or Meyer Lansky. The Alt-Right finds no semblance of a friend in the White House.

Still the polarization remains in 2020, and some changes happen:




The Democratic nominee goes all out to win Florida and Wisconsin, and succeeds at that, swinging 39 electoral votes toward the Democratic nominee. That should be enough... except that Romney wins over Maine at large, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Only five states flip from 2016. On the whole Romney loses only four electoral votes from 2016 in a similar election. Such becomes an electoral "four-peat", reinforcing the idea that effective Presidents, or at least those who get away with their errors for four years (the infamous inverted-yield curve that portends recessions returns in October, but few voters understand what that means) get re-elected.

This is of course hypothetical. Donald Trump lacks a moral compass, overall competence, or principle.. and that looks set to doom Trump's chances of re-election.