Now may be the winter of our discontent, but the punditocracy is already beginning to discuss what’s going to happen after Obama loses the election in November. A symposium appearing in Washington Monthly was summarized thusly in a promotional email quoted by Glenn Reynolds. Reading some of these is bound to raise a smile.
The Washington Monthly asked a group of distinguished journalists and scholars to think through the likely ramifications of a GOP victory in November. Here’s what they conclude:
David Weigel reports that the Tea Party will control the agenda regardless of which Republican wins the nomination.
Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann predict that there’s a “better-than-even chance” that the Senate filibuster will be destroyed.
David Roberts shows that the GOP won’t eliminate the EPA, but will permanently cripple it.
Harold Pollack disabuses liberals of the hope that health care reform can survive a Republican presidency.
Dahlia Lithwick writes that one more round of judicial appointments by a Republican president will lead to a generation of anti-government rulings no future Democrat can undo.
Plus: Jonathan Bernstein on why campaign promises matter; Michael Konczal on the end of Dodd-Frank; James Traub on the GOP’s “more enemies, fewer friends” doctrine; and Paul Glastris on why, this time, conservative anti-government aspirations will be fulfilled.
Andy Kessler argues that the gods of economics have turned their faces against mere sloppers, sponges, slimers, and thieves, i.e., persons working in support and service and professional capacities. The number of available openings for them will dwindle and their bargaining power is doomed to decline. The future, and the lion’s share of income, will belong to the creators.
With a heavy regulatory burden, payroll taxes and health-care costs, employing people is very expensive. In January, the Golden Gate Bridge announced that it will have zero toll takers next year: They’ve been replaced by wireless FastTrak payments and license-plate snapshots.
Technology is eating jobs—and not just toll takers.
Tellers, phone operators, stock brokers, stock traders: These jobs are nearly extinct. Since 2007, the New York Stock Exchange has eliminated 1,000 jobs. And when was the last time you spoke to a travel agent? Nearly all of them have been displaced by technology and the Web. Librarians can’t find 36,000 results in 0.14 seconds, as Google can. And a snappily dressed postal worker can’t instantly deliver a 140-character tweet from a plane at 36,000 feet.
So which jobs will be destroyed next? Figure that out and you’ll solve the puzzle of where new jobs will appear.
No longer able to ram unpopular, costly legislation through Congress, Barack Obama will begin to lose interest in the presidency. He’ll miss meetings and even disappear for hours at a time. Eventually, his staff will find him at a nearby church pursuing what he now considers his true calling: becoming a crazed, racist preacher.
[W]e are raising the total [from +44] to +55 net Republican seats. We consider 47 to be in the ballpark still, but more of a floor than a ceiling.
Which results, if correct, would produce a 233 Republican—202 Democrat House of Representatives.
For the Senate:
The Crystal Ball has operated within a very narrow range all year. When others were projecting GOP Senate gains of just +3-4, we were already at +6. Depending on the primary results and other circumstances, we’ve landed between +6 and +9 in the last half-year. We have never gotten to +10, the number needed for Republican takeover of the Senate, and we do not do so in this final forecast either. To us, the number of GOP gains looks to be +8. Ten was always a stretch. ...
In our pre-Labor Day analysis, however, we noted a historical anomaly: Since World War II, the House has changed parties six times, and in every case, the Senate switched, too. In five of the six cases, most prognosticators did not see the Senate turnover coming. (Only in 2006 did some guess correctly, including the Crystal Ball.) So if we have a big surprise on election night, this could be it, despite the pre-election odds against it.
Their predictions also have the GOP gaining 8 or 9 governorships, and at least a dozen additional state legislative chambers.
On Christine Amanpour’s October 3rd broadcast of ABC Television’s This Week, Anjem Choudary, a former British solicitor and Muslim cleric, spokesman for the group Islam4UK, predicted global Islamic rule, including over the United States.
“We do believe as Muslims the East and the West will be governed by the Sharia,” Choudray. “Indeed we believe that one day the flag of Islam will fly over the White House. Indeed, there’s even an oration of the Prophet where he said, ‘The day of judgment will not come until a group of my Ummah conquer the one house.’”
Gore Vidal is now so old and crotchety that he’s becoming amusing again.
In this interview with the London Times, he has unkind things to say about nearly everyone from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, whom he predicts will be deposed by military coup(!). (I almost hope so, Gore, I thought, reading that one.)
Americans in general come in for the roughest treatment. Alas! we are all just a bunch of ignorant, uneducated yahoos, and unlike certain authors, we are generally not rich, famous, and descended from a prominent political family able to take credit apparently both for founding the airline industry and bringing Oklahoma into the Union.
Interestingly, Gore Vidal is lucid enough to recognize that homosexuality is a matter of acts, not of identity. He might have said more of interest on that subject so near to his own heart, but after remarking “Don’t make the error that schoolteacher idiots make by thinking that gay men’s relationships are like heterosexual ones. They’re not.” He refused to elucidate on how he thinks they are different.
I commonly link George Friedman’s penetrating and insightful analysis of foreign policy and military strategy in Stratfor essays, so I was interested to see their author deliver a series of long-term prognostications on this 4:29 video issued last November in association with the release of his new book, The Next 100 Years.
Friedman predicts even greater American world influence due to our naval supremacy and… solar energy from space (!). Less good news is that the Ottoman Empire is coming back. And the really bad news is that Mexico is going to challenge the United States. (I wonder if Mexico becoming a failed state in the near future might not impact the last predicted development.)
I tend to agree with more of Mr. Friedman’s essays than I do with all this. Frankly, in this case, he lost me right after the Influence of Sea Power on History. Besides, who is going to take seriously a guy who makes videos in the library of the Army & Navy Club not wearing a tie?
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William Gray and his associate Phillip J. Klotzbach, the Colorado State University weather forecasters are forecasting a “very active hurricane season” this year, with 17 named storms and a 74% chance that a major hurricane (category three or higher) will hit the U.S. coast.
If that 17 number sounds familiar, that happened to be their initial prediction for the number of named storms last year, too. That didn’t work out so well for them; they cut their forecast twice last summer and were still off the mark, as just nine named storms formed.
USA Today’s “Weather Blog” guys come to Colorado State’s defense, sort of, pointing out that in five of the past seven years, Colorado State’s April hurricane forecasts “have actually been less than what actually happened.” And in four of the past seven years, their predictions were fairly close to the mark, at least when it came to the number of named storms.
But their numbers have been pretty wildly off the mark, too. For example, Colorado State predicted 11 storms in 2005, when a record 26 formed. They predicted nine in 2001, when 15 formed.
It seems obvious that if a “very active hurricane season” is predicted annually, sooner or later that prediction will be proven right.
Ironically, the left blogosphere will be jumping with joy today over this good (bad) news, but the chief predictor, William Gray, is a Global Warming Skeptic.
