Until at least 2018 at the least, all that matters is the pure plutocracy under which we live and for whose rapacious, unforgiving, cruel Master Class we must suffer with forced smiles. These people can make you hate your life. Make sure that you hate nothing else.
Lichtman's keys probably matter for 2020. I doubt that we will have a close Presidential election, and the popular vote usually coincides with the electoral vote.
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. Republicans have maxed out their hold on the House. The only way in which they can gain is if the culture changes (right-wing religious revival? Not likely with the Millennial generation, who will be the bulk of the influx of new voters) or with success in culling the vote, as in making voting difficult or impossible for poor people. Likely a D advantage.
2. The definitive sign of a failed Presidency. When a significant faction within one's Party thinks that it can do better th an its own elected Leader, then that Leader is in deep trouble.
3. Republicans obviously win this unless someone defeats the incumbent President in the primaries, which hasn't happened since 1852.
4. Lichtman could have been more precise. If the Democrats have a significant opponent on the Left, then Republicans have an advantage. Hillary Clinton would have won had the Libertarian candidate drawn more votes from Trump. It would be more precise to say that the key is that 'the Party in question does not face a Third Party challenger drawing off a significant part of the usual votes for that Party'. There -- that's my improvement.
5. Ask again in 2020. I doubt that Trump can maintain the Obama bull market; I see him easily forcing policies that make a financial panic likely by the middle of 2020. His dream requires much pain early, and that will shape voting.
6. It will hard to improve upon the Obama record. The Trump economic package requires much widespread pain to work if ever except to reward cronies and the Master Class.
7. Even bad and unpopular policies (let us say eviscerating unions and forcing huge wage cuts, or shifting tax burdens from economic elites to the common man) qualify as a "Yes" for the Republicans. Bad consequences will appear as negatives elsewhere, as in keys 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, and 10.
8. Possible when the government seems to be in contempt of the interests of the clear majority of the People. Lichtman did not consider the Tea Party or Black Lives Matter a high enough level of social disorder. Terrorism or riots -- that is real social unrest.
9. There's plenty of opportunity for major scandal. Conflicts of interest and the Russia connections could implode this Presidency.
10. Somehow I think that something will go very bad very fast for this President. Most of the rest of the world seems to be waiting for the departure of this President.
11. Trump is not Obama, Bill Clinton, the elder Bush, Reagan, or Nixon in ability to make a satisfying deal with another country. As a diplomat he reminds me more of Joachim von Ribbentrop than of George Shultz.
12. Trump does not exude charisma. He won heavily upon his reputation as a shrewd businessman.
13. Wait until 2020 to make this decision.
...As I thought in November 2016, I still expect a catastrophic failure of Donald Trump as President. It's not simply that he has no precedent in the last century or so; it's that his differences from every President since at least McKinley all bode ill. He is a demagogue; he has betrayed many of his supporters. The only people who had cold feet about the relationship between him and power who have moved toward him are a tiny minority of very rich people who are better at funding campaigns than at finding political support. He is vulgar, impulsive, vengeful, and intellectually lazy. He has done nothing to cause me to believe that he will be either a just or competent ruler. One cannot run government as if a for-profit business (which explains the good reason to keep government as separate from economic activity as possible; if you like government and business together, then remember the poor results of the Communist model in which the government owned and operated most productive enterprise. Fascist models from Mussolini's stato corporativo to Peron's confused bosh, let alone the gangsterism of Nazism, offer little cause for hope. Government does welfare, law enforcement, defense, monetary policy, and big infrastructure better or more equitably than does private industry. (Markets have value in allocating resources and responding to consumer demand, so that's not my problem).
Most significantly, Trump is a reactionary. He has a vision of a time when WASPs utterly dominated American life as the ideal, when people worked much longer and harder for much less while the economic elites wallowed in opulent splendor. That's when there were no unions, when pollution was seen as evidence of prosperity instead of a bane, and in which people spoke of 'a solid eighth-grade education'. Much of Big Business would be delighted with a return to the 1920s, when liberalism meant that one believed in the unqualified power of Big Business and that government rightly represents property owners. Not many living people remember those who lived through the 1920s -- but I remember when many people then living did. It would seem that most people not born with silver spoons in their mouths (I knew mostly people of working-class, small-business, and blue-collar origin) preferred the latter part of the Great Depression (the late 1930s) to the allegedly-booming 1920s, the last gap of the Gilded Age.
The Gilded Age was fine for building a capitalist reality in societies still in the Agricultural Age. But we are well past that. We cannot get much happier simply by making and selling more stuff. The technological improvements that have kept inflation at bay have succeeded by allowing us to do more with much less. Just think of the difference in weight between a 25"-screen monitor CRT television (which has as little content of furniture as possible in the time) and a flat-screen TV today. Just think, at the extreme, of the tablet or cell phone that can do far more than the early mainframe computers in an object whose constraint of size is that it must be large enough to be viewed and have keys large enough for human fingers. Maybe we can't miniaturize our furniture or appliances, but we generally do better with lesser inputs of material, toil, and even energy.
Before someone tells us that Donald Trump will be as successful as Ronald Reagan -- Reagan may have talked tough, but he could deal rationally and impersonally if such was necessary, much unlike Trump. Donald Trump is competent at dealing only in the stereotyped world of business transactions. Foreign policy is not a business transaction, which explains why Ribbentrop was such a failure as an ambassador to the UK and as a foreign minister. One can get away with a lack of military experience as Commander-in-Chief if one recognizes one's limited expertise and relies upon rational thought and basic decency -- like Obama. Obama may not have seemed the sort to whack terrorists -- but he let the intelligence agencies and military do what they could do.
By 2020 many Americans will have known only one reasonably-good President except from a book or news clips -- and that will be Obama. That is eight years of twenty, and people born after 1995 will not remember Clinton any more than I remember Eisenhower (I was born in 1955) as a President when I was a near-infant. Better than Obama? If one is on the Right side of the political spectrum, then maybe the elder Bush (in which case you would have to be at least 33 by then), if not Reagan (in which case you would have to be nearly 40, at the least to remember him before he started to go senile).
Conservatives needed at the least a "new Reagan" to force a successful and permanent reorientation of American institutions and economic relationships in the latter part of the Crisis of 2020. Donald Trump is no such leader and isn't close. Democrats will need at least a 'new Obama', at least in values and overall competence, to redefine American institutions and economic relationships in the latter part of the Crisis of 2020. Skin tone, age, gender, ethnicity, region, and religion will matter not the least in such a leader.
Lichtman's keys probably matter for 2020. I doubt that we will have a close Presidential election, and the popular vote usually coincides with the electoral vote.
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. Republicans have maxed out their hold on the House. The only way in which they can gain is if the culture changes (right-wing religious revival? Not likely with the Millennial generation, who will be the bulk of the influx of new voters) or with success in culling the vote, as in making voting difficult or impossible for poor people. Likely a D advantage.
2. The definitive sign of a failed Presidency. When a significant faction within one's Party thinks that it can do better th an its own elected Leader, then that Leader is in deep trouble.
3. Republicans obviously win this unless someone defeats the incumbent President in the primaries, which hasn't happened since 1852.
4. Lichtman could have been more precise. If the Democrats have a significant opponent on the Left, then Republicans have an advantage. Hillary Clinton would have won had the Libertarian candidate drawn more votes from Trump. It would be more precise to say that the key is that 'the Party in question does not face a Third Party challenger drawing off a significant part of the usual votes for that Party'. There -- that's my improvement.
5. Ask again in 2020. I doubt that Trump can maintain the Obama bull market; I see him easily forcing policies that make a financial panic likely by the middle of 2020. His dream requires much pain early, and that will shape voting.
6. It will hard to improve upon the Obama record. The Trump economic package requires much widespread pain to work if ever except to reward cronies and the Master Class.
7. Even bad and unpopular policies (let us say eviscerating unions and forcing huge wage cuts, or shifting tax burdens from economic elites to the common man) qualify as a "Yes" for the Republicans. Bad consequences will appear as negatives elsewhere, as in keys 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, and 10.
8. Possible when the government seems to be in contempt of the interests of the clear majority of the People. Lichtman did not consider the Tea Party or Black Lives Matter a high enough level of social disorder. Terrorism or riots -- that is real social unrest.
9. There's plenty of opportunity for major scandal. Conflicts of interest and the Russia connections could implode this Presidency.
10. Somehow I think that something will go very bad very fast for this President. Most of the rest of the world seems to be waiting for the departure of this President.
11. Trump is not Obama, Bill Clinton, the elder Bush, Reagan, or Nixon in ability to make a satisfying deal with another country. As a diplomat he reminds me more of Joachim von Ribbentrop than of George Shultz.
12. Trump does not exude charisma. He won heavily upon his reputation as a shrewd businessman.
13. Wait until 2020 to make this decision.
...As I thought in November 2016, I still expect a catastrophic failure of Donald Trump as President. It's not simply that he has no precedent in the last century or so; it's that his differences from every President since at least McKinley all bode ill. He is a demagogue; he has betrayed many of his supporters. The only people who had cold feet about the relationship between him and power who have moved toward him are a tiny minority of very rich people who are better at funding campaigns than at finding political support. He is vulgar, impulsive, vengeful, and intellectually lazy. He has done nothing to cause me to believe that he will be either a just or competent ruler. One cannot run government as if a for-profit business (which explains the good reason to keep government as separate from economic activity as possible; if you like government and business together, then remember the poor results of the Communist model in which the government owned and operated most productive enterprise. Fascist models from Mussolini's stato corporativo to Peron's confused bosh, let alone the gangsterism of Nazism, offer little cause for hope. Government does welfare, law enforcement, defense, monetary policy, and big infrastructure better or more equitably than does private industry. (Markets have value in allocating resources and responding to consumer demand, so that's not my problem).
Most significantly, Trump is a reactionary. He has a vision of a time when WASPs utterly dominated American life as the ideal, when people worked much longer and harder for much less while the economic elites wallowed in opulent splendor. That's when there were no unions, when pollution was seen as evidence of prosperity instead of a bane, and in which people spoke of 'a solid eighth-grade education'. Much of Big Business would be delighted with a return to the 1920s, when liberalism meant that one believed in the unqualified power of Big Business and that government rightly represents property owners. Not many living people remember those who lived through the 1920s -- but I remember when many people then living did. It would seem that most people not born with silver spoons in their mouths (I knew mostly people of working-class, small-business, and blue-collar origin) preferred the latter part of the Great Depression (the late 1930s) to the allegedly-booming 1920s, the last gap of the Gilded Age.
The Gilded Age was fine for building a capitalist reality in societies still in the Agricultural Age. But we are well past that. We cannot get much happier simply by making and selling more stuff. The technological improvements that have kept inflation at bay have succeeded by allowing us to do more with much less. Just think of the difference in weight between a 25"-screen monitor CRT television (which has as little content of furniture as possible in the time) and a flat-screen TV today. Just think, at the extreme, of the tablet or cell phone that can do far more than the early mainframe computers in an object whose constraint of size is that it must be large enough to be viewed and have keys large enough for human fingers. Maybe we can't miniaturize our furniture or appliances, but we generally do better with lesser inputs of material, toil, and even energy.
Before someone tells us that Donald Trump will be as successful as Ronald Reagan -- Reagan may have talked tough, but he could deal rationally and impersonally if such was necessary, much unlike Trump. Donald Trump is competent at dealing only in the stereotyped world of business transactions. Foreign policy is not a business transaction, which explains why Ribbentrop was such a failure as an ambassador to the UK and as a foreign minister. One can get away with a lack of military experience as Commander-in-Chief if one recognizes one's limited expertise and relies upon rational thought and basic decency -- like Obama. Obama may not have seemed the sort to whack terrorists -- but he let the intelligence agencies and military do what they could do.
By 2020 many Americans will have known only one reasonably-good President except from a book or news clips -- and that will be Obama. That is eight years of twenty, and people born after 1995 will not remember Clinton any more than I remember Eisenhower (I was born in 1955) as a President when I was a near-infant. Better than Obama? If one is on the Right side of the political spectrum, then maybe the elder Bush (in which case you would have to be at least 33 by then), if not Reagan (in which case you would have to be nearly 40, at the least to remember him before he started to go senile).
Conservatives needed at the least a "new Reagan" to force a successful and permanent reorientation of American institutions and economic relationships in the latter part of the Crisis of 2020. Donald Trump is no such leader and isn't close. Democrats will need at least a 'new Obama', at least in values and overall competence, to redefine American institutions and economic relationships in the latter part of the Crisis of 2020. Skin tone, age, gender, ethnicity, region, and religion will matter not the least in such a leader.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.