Presidential Predictions and Prognostications

Presidential Predictions and Prognostications

presidential-seal-question

Several months back this writer predicted that, despite all of the mainstream media predictions, prognostications and, for that matter, professional polling to the contrary, Donald Trump would shock the entire world by winning the presidential election, hands down. We made this prediction and, for the record, will stand by this prediction one week before the election will formally take place on November 8th.  We did this (and do this) because Donald Trump’s candidacy is a “movement” candidacy, as opposed to a strictly “partisan” candidacy, which has been the case for Republicans since the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term in 1989. Movement candidacies, such as Roosevelt’s in 1932 and Reagan’s in 1980, tend to be won by decisive margins, as opposed to partisan candidacies such as Kennedy’s in 1960 and George W. Bush’s in 2000, which were won by razor-thin margins, respectively.

The difference?

While partisan candidacies are typically candidacies run by inside partisan heir apparents, i.e. typical Democrat vs. Republican, movement candidacies are candidacies run by relative outsiders, answering a call for substantive and actual changes. While Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton is the ultimate partisan insider, running her campaign as the partisan Democrat she is, Republican Donald Trump is anything and everything but a partisan insider, much to the chagrin of Republican mainstreamers like the Bushes, John Kasich, and Mitt Romney, who remain intransigent that one of their “own” didn’t get the nod, and are having to feast upon the sour grapes of their own vineyard.

Our prediction of a Trump win is just that- a prediction, which is to say that it’s not a prognostication. Whereas a prediction, as the one offered here, is based upon one’s take of what is going on, a prognostication is more of a view into the near future, as if that future is somehow ordained by forces beyond our comprehension.

Only a fool, and a damned fool at that, would prognosticate a win by either candidate in this election of 2016.

What we can do, then, is offer up two post-election scenarios- a Hillary win and a Trump win.

A Hillary Clinton win will be essentially a continuation of the stalemate that exists between the House of Representatives and the White House, where nothing actually gets done and partisan bickering between the Oval office, backed by their partisan allies, and the Congress, lead by the opposing party, will continue to be an exercise in futility and a continuation of the rancor to which all of us have grown quite nauseated. Whereas Barack Obama, for instance, was able to begin his term with a brief “honeymoon,” Hillary Clinton will not have this luxury, thanks to the level of distrust she would carry into her inauguration, based upon the plethora of scandals that are the hallmark of her candidacy. This certainty would be sealed with either Barack Obama’s pardon of her, on the final day of his presidency, or her own de facto pardon of herself on the first day of her own presidency, which has the potential of impeachment proceedings if further FBI revelations of her wrongdoing come to the surface in the next several months.

A Trump win will more likely resemble the first term of a Roosevelt presidency or a Reagan presidency, where much legislative action is proposed and acted upon- especially during the first hundred days of Mr. Trump’s term. This would occur where even the most stubborn “NeverTrump” members of his own party resign themselves to the fact of his presidency and thereby seek to jump aboard the “Trump Train,” at long last. A Republican retention of the Senate majority would ensure that a substantial part of his platform, namely ending ObamaCare, would be in the offing.

The good news for Hillary Clinton is that, either way, she will not likely face legal ramifications for her own dirty deeds, as it is almost certain that Obama’s final act as president will be a full, unconditional pardon- especially if Trump wins. Obama would do so for no other reason than pure spite for an American people, who would have effectively decided that two terms of an Obama administration is quite enough.

The bad news for Hillary Clinton is that, if Trump should win, any new and substantive revelations about criminal activity discovered after the 20th of January 2017, would render Obama’s presidential pardon moot, and thus enable a Justice Department headed by Trump’s Attorney General to bring her and her husband justice, real justice, at long last.

The worse news for Hillary Clinton is that, if Trump should win, it is very likely that such post-inaugural revelations would eventually occur, since more is not known about the Clinton corruption than is known, at this point in time.

The good news for Donald Trump is that, should he lose the election, he can return to a relative life of ease and comfort, once again joining his children to manage their real estate and financial empire and thus returning him to the status quo ante he has enjoyed so much, over the years.

The not-so-comfortable-but-nevertheless-oh-so-gratifying news for Donald Trump is that, if our prediction holds true and he indeed wins the presidency, he will have an opportunity to make the fundamental changes he seeks and, at the same time, stick it to all of the professional politicos, pollsters and press by calling their so-called “expertise” into question, and serve up a career-ending crash of their own making.

Nothing would ice Trump’s inaugural cake sweeter than that…big league.

 

-Drew Nickell, 1 November 2016

© 2016 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

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