2010: Prediction Thread
So, what’s going to happen this year in politics, sports, government, Delaware, etc. Do get things started, here are my predictions.
Politics
The Dems will lose a handful of seats in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate.
There will actually be Tea Party candidates running for several federal offices.
Delaware
Christine O’Donnell will not be able to raise enough money to run against Castle
Carney will be our next US Congressman
Beau will run
Economy
Unemployment will reach 7% by the end of the year.
The Stock Market will have a significant drop but will close at 12,000 by the end of the year
Sports
England will lose the World Cup in the final match on penalty kicks with Lampard and Gerard both missing the goal
Who ever wins this Sunday’s game between the Eagles and the Cowboys will go on to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl
Tiger Woods will return to golf proving that you can be a two-timing man-whore and still be the best golfer in the world.
Tags: Delaware
Good stuff all,I would add:
Republicans will generate 300 plus “Issues” for the news media
Said media will dutifully print anything ‘Pubbies say
News media in general will continue to look like fools
The Senate will be a joke, and not a good one
Glenn Beck will run out of new and novel insanity driving some of his followers back to Bingo and knitting.
By censoring Donvit’s comments, Delaware Liberal has shown that it will continue the trek to lameness started in 2009.
No, dv’s comments directed towards me are censored.
Like I said…
Whatever.
“two-timing man-whore”
Nemski, have you forgotten how to count? By my count Tiger is at least a 9-timing man-whore.
Bulo’s predictions:
Carney wins. (Always need the low-hanging fruit.)
D’s lose control of the State House of Reps, and it will be on merit, UNLESS they read my upcoming Monday screed & pay attention.
John Atkins self-destructs again. (More low-hanging fermented fruit.)
Biggest 2010 scandal will prove to be the institutional ineptitude that somehow enabled this pediatric pervert to abuse patients ad nauseum. There MUST be an independent investigation, and no one should be spared. Was it the Board of Medical Practice, State Police, Child Protective Services, who failed? A combination? Other agencies and/or individuals? I don’t know, but the system failed its most vulnerable, and we need to find why. And no whitewashing. And, for God’s sake, keep it out of the hands of the legislature. I can already hear Dick Cathcart and Greg Lavelle warming up the House Rethug fax machine…
The News-Journal WILL NOT release its findings on legislative staff travel, something that was promised three months ago. (Prove me wrong, GG.)
No serious news organization will probe the Caesar Rodney Institute, and lazy journalists will treat CRI as an impartial public policy organ. That’s the safest prediction here, b/c there is no such thing as a serious news organization in Delaware any more. CRI’s ‘data’ will continue to be the primary source material (propaganda) for Rethuglicans statewide, and will largely go unchallenged.
At some point, the disaster that is IC Karen Weldin Stewart will inevitably hit the iceburg, and its sinking won’t be pretty. Unless you, like me, enjoy watching disasters from afar.
Tom Wagner will not win reelection as State Auditor.
Beau runs and…and…I don’t know.
Mark H: Have you not been following HuffPo? Tiger’s got both a front nine and a back nine. Uh, figuratively, not (I’m assuming) literally.
We will have a war-crazy liberal in the White House.
We will not have Single- Payer health insurance.
It will matter not whether Mike Castle or the Biden ruling family replaces Ted Kaufmann in the Senate.
The jobs lost at Chrysler and GM assembly plant will not come back.
I lost count 🙂
Delacrat is a little ray of sunshine. (And there’s that “Single-Payer was on the table” argument being put forth as some sort of broken promise)
nemski,
Which seats do you think will turn over?
I think an exciting race for U.S. Senate may bring out the voters. We just have to make sure it’s exciting.
I think the difference between having another member of the party of no in the Senate and a Biden is big. The more Republicans there are, the less likely progressive legislation is of getting through. You think Nelson and Lieberman are jerks? At least they’re willing to let legislation go through. Having more Republicans will make Lieberman and Nelson more important in the Democratic caucus, not less.
Unstable Isotope, I was donning my Sunday morning pundit hat on that one. I have no specifics, only generalities that are not backed up by facts.
Ah… then you have mastered perfect punditry! 😉
More likely is a GOP takeover of the House and the reduction of the Senate majority by half.
and more likely that THAT is john Lennon Coming from the dead and teaming up with Rumsfeld and KimJong Il to open up a pizza joint.
DL will continue to attack the base, call them names and rush to Defend Obama as his leadership style allows the Senate to dictate the agenda of the narrow interests he said he would eradicate from DC.
Wouldn’t a drop of the U/E rate to 7 pct presage a healthier electoral outcome for Democratic candidates?
After an ’09 focused almost exclusively on health care, ’10 will see DC battles on other issues, less wonky and more gut-driven: tax [estate tax; ending “carried interest” tax break for hedge funds], climate, net neutrality, making student loans a public program, union organizing rights. These and other issues will remind voters who is on which side.
’09 showed again there is no liberal media. Advocates will have to take the lead.
We’re hearing that climate legislation is probably dead for the year. The conservadems are afraid of taking positions on anything (elect me, I’m afraid to do my job!).
I absolutely agree that an improved economy will help Democrats. I think the question is whether it will improve fast enough to be felt by voters before the election. I think all the numbers are pointing towards job growth beginning soon but I don’t know how fast the job market will improve. I do think it will do something to tamp down anger. We shall see.
Climate Warming will be highlighted and maybe it will take the Blue Dogs from the Southern coasts to lose several thousand acres of land to the seas for them to jump on board.
Conservadems will demand and receive a damaging compromise on Obama’s tax cut expiration promises.
Congress will not interfere with the Marriage Equality law in DC, allowing it to go into effect. Rethugs will try to make this an election issue, but people will say “so what.”
Carney does not even have an opponent yet! Someone has to step up in Jan
Carney does have an announced opponent on the Republican side. Businessman Fred Cullis.
He is also facing a primary opponent, Scott Spencer.
They don’t count! Cullis is like an O’Donnell… Spencer same for the D. The republicans will have a candidate soon, if they don’t ill be dumbfounded.
Copeland won’t be running, you can take that to the bank.
Copeland just doesn’t work against Carney, one of those Delawareisms that will always hold true. The R’s have to have someone in the mix and their reasons for delaying an announcement
Kevin Wade will run as the GOP candidate for US House of Representatives…
The teabagger support of candidates like Bonini, O’Donnell and like will have no real effect…they just want to sit around and bitch and moan…
Castle…(gulp)…will be a US Senator…Beau won’t run.
Carney goes to Congress…cuz he wasn’t good enough to be our governor so it makes sense that we send him to DC…
Beau returns as AG
The State GOP shoots themselves in the foot and blows every opportunity to pick up seats in the Del. House of Reps…and then, the Dems reapportion all the districts their way and the Repubs don’t win for 20+ years.
And now…for the rest of the story….
Wade will not run, the powers that be will make sure to block his attempt at political suicide – and they have his skeletons in the outbox
Asides to Hunt: Wade would have to quit smoking if he’s to run statewide … Carney, like Levin, was sufficiently capable to be governor, but we elected another quite capable guy instead … Too-greedy reapportionment is a losing tactic. The last remapping controlled by a single party was to have led to lengthy GOP domination — which ended in the very next election [1972].
The Progressive Debate now is simple. Will progressives establish a 3rd party, or unelect (republican) Democrats? As doubts in progressive minds are now in sharp focus, the recycled Bushites and Clintonits, trillions for Wall Street and Afganistan, with unemployment, foreclosues, and economic stagnation deepening, complictity in Bush era crimes, by refusing to “look back and proscecute”, while there are new crimes committed with extending rendition process, targeted assasination, torture by proxy, habeus suspension, state secrets, military commissions, warrantless wire tapping, support of the right wing Honduran overthrow of a democratically elected president, secret wars in Pakistan, Somolia, Yemen and the list goes on.
Democrats role in the this 2 party system of corporate rulers has been to co-opt, absorb and weaken, to defeat movements of progressive change. The evidence of this corporate function is in evidence right now.
Progressives spent 2000’s working to put dems back in the White House and Congress. They can’t blame the republicans now. Dems have the power.Its one year later and the mandate for change has been eroded. Dems are supporting corporatist policies across the board using big government in return for big corporate campaign contributions. Dems have alienated the left and drove the center Independents back to the republicans. These corporate democrats no longer look out for the little guy, but for the interests of corporations.
It could have been different. Some progressives are rallying to the defense of Obama defending him no matter what he does. This approach only discredits the left and demoralizes voters who will sit back in 2010 in huge numbers. It will loose the independent center, which will swing back to the republicans out of disgust and protest.
Other progressives say its time for a challenge to conservative dems (republicans in dem clothing). Another school of thought says its time for progressives to build a social movement that will make dems live up to their reform priorities like the labor movement did in the 1930’s.
What is missing is the political independence of progressives. They need to build social movements, not movements to elect and lobby for democrats. Democrats will no longer take the progressives for granted. Progressives through a social movement will be able to speak directly to the people without having their progressive demands mistranslated and watered down by democratic politicans who appeal to the right while they COUNT on their captive progressives on the left.
Excerpts from: http://www.howiehawkins.org.
Personally, I believe we need to start a 3rd party. We have moderate republicans with no home anymore, and millions of disgruntled americans who are disgusted, and disenfranchised. We need to get our message to the poor and middle class, to join and support a viable progressive third party in the future. If Delaware had a real union movement this could happen in two election cycles. But we have a go along, get along bunch of union hacks who fail to inform their own members to make the necessary changes.
In the meantime, we must run candidates with proven track records for supporting progressive ideas. No Biden, Carney, Kaufman or any of the politicans here in Delaware right now. We need candidates “from the people, with records of working for the people”, i.e. someone like John Flagherty! Thats my two cents.
It’s a big country, folks. What counts as “progressive” varies by district.
“The Progressive Debate now is simple. Will progressives establish a 3rd party, or unelect (republican) Democrats?” The Tea-bagz of the left my friends….. we need a good name for them like the “herbal tea bagz” or the “organic whole foods tea bagz”
Btooke: by that comment you are obviously misinformed about what real progressives are all about. Lets put you in the category a democrat protector no matter what.
HAHAH JK, just like a tea bagger. someone offers an opinion different from yours and you call them not a real fill in the blank. Since when is Progressivism about adhering to strick rules?
Man, you are JUST the same as Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck, and Michelle Bachmann…. just different dogma. go steep in a cup of hot water.
No left leaning teabaggers A. Price. See the left knows what the word teabagger is! Its a sexual thingy. Price is another obvious supporter of the big tent democrats now usurped by corporate supporting dems. So whats the diff between a corporte republican and a corporate supporting democrat? None. Both are war parties, both believe in escalation of war.
Interventions R Us. check this out. http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com get some history on the next country we are secretaly attacking with the Sauds. thanks to Joe Leiberman and those corporate dems.
The whole Ralph Nader thing gave us Bush. I’m interested in moving the Democratic party to the left. So I’m trying to work from the inside to change things. Forming a 3rd party is the way to political irrelevancy if you can’t convince a plurality of people to vote for you.
I sort of think that some people are longing for a parliamentary system. In the U.S. system we form our coalitions pre-election instead of post-election. All the parliamentary systems have two coalitions – a governing coalition and an opposition coalition. That is what we have now.
so your tea bags hang to the left? Just like an extremist to demand everyone who doesnt agree with their dogma either change or leave. I ask you…. how are the lefTea BagZ different from the RighTea BagZ in their approach? YOU ARENT REAL REPUBLICANS! YOU ARENT REAL DEMOCRATS! YOU ARE REAL CONSERVATIVES! YO ARENT REAL PROGRESSIVES. i hope the lunatic fringe in both parties gets used ot being ignored. Whatever happened to ONE NATION?
Just because the Right Wing took over for so long doesn’t give us the right to do the smae thing…. THERE is some progressive thought for ya
(hey j,k Im used to this. i got kicked out of a band in high school for not conforming and being “punk” enough.)
UI,
Ralph Nader did not give us Bush.
Ralph Nader did not steal Florida, Bush did.
Ralph Nader did not steal Al Gore’s home state of Tennessee. Gore lost Tennessee because our “free press” kept the CLENIS “scandals” at the forefront of the public mind, instead of Bush’s running 3 oil companies into the ground.
Ralph Nader got 2% of the vote. If Gore had gotten just 1/4 of that, he would have won. I agree that a lot of Gore’s problems were of his own making. However, Nader ran on the platform that Democrats and Republicans are just alike and it doesn’t matter which one is in the White House. That’s just not true at all.
Good luck forming a third party. There are a lot of registered independents but they are not a uniform group. There’s probably lefties, righties and people who don’t pay attention or don’t care. A third party at this point would be tiny. Even if some won some seats, they’d probably caucus with one party or another, diluting their impact a lot.
There was enough truth in Nader’s platform that Democrats = Republicans to convince 2% of the vote.
That was in 2000. 10 years later, after Obomba’s and the Democratically controlled Congress’ continuous sellouts to Wall Street, big pharma, healthy profit insurance co;’s and the war industries, it’s hard to imagine that Nader can’t convince more than 2% today.
.
Most erstwhile Nader voters have grown out of their immaturity.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/what-might-have-been.php
…whereas most Carper voters haven’t.
I’m not all that uninformed about Progressivism. But I’m a realist, and I’ve been politically active in a lot of different places. When people vote, they look at a lot of different aspects of a candidate. If the candidate has a great platform, which is completely irrelevant to the office they seek, and cannot work and play well with others, I consider they would be ineffective in representing me. That will affect my choice.
Progressives (and people like Nader) who don’t believe getting elected matters, in an electoral system, have not advanced progressive causes.
ralph nader DID take enough of Al Gore’s resources in OREGON to keep him busy and take his eye off the florida ball. stop defending your pot-head guru.
Progressives (and people like Nader) who don’t believe getting elected matters, in an electoral system, have not advanced progressive causes.
This is quite right — and is true for most 3rd parties. Because you need to be elected and in a position to govern to be able to have long term influence over policy and government.
More and better Democrats wasn’t supposed to happen — couldn’t happen — in one election.
John Manifold @ 1:13 pm:
“Most erstwhile Nader voters have grown out of their immaturity.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/what-might-have-been.php“
So what have you and your party have to show for all your “maturity”.
oh thats right. the entire democratic party exists to appease extremists like delcrat.
Corporatist America: A Progressive’s Lament! Well worth the read!
Even Obama has not been able to stop, or even slow the corporatists, who occupy the power in both parties, more Repubs than Dems. The Health Care Reform battle against the corporatists, being dominated by them, is an example.
If success is to come, it is going to be a long hard slog, during which I will be hoping that internal chaos and violence do not overtake us sooner.
On the state and federal levels, we progressives need to identify the Sherod Browns, the Dennis Kuccinichs, the Anthony Weiners, the Tom Harkins, the Jay Rockefellers, the Pete Schwartzkopfs, the John Kowalkos, the Karen Petersons, the Joan Deavers, the …, then work hard to promote their candidacies.
Nah, Perry, we should just give up the first time we don’t get what we want. 😉
You all underestimate the progressives moderates and independents already aware of the democratic party and their adoption of the corporate agenda. Its a fact that 3rd parties have a hard time getting ballot status in all states, because the two parties work very hard to make sure the status quo remains. This time is different. You have the teabaggers on the ultra right, you have independents who truly swing elections, and you have progressives who are seeing the light and we are only one year into the hope and change candidate. You all keep thinking the dems can win in 2010, after they have delivered billions in bailouts to Wall Street, bankrupted the nation with even more wars. By the time 2012 rolls round and all those republican corporate heads continue making sure no one gets hired, no new jobs created for the masses, the masses will turn on the democrats. Ralph Nader is seeking a Senate seat in Connectict last I heard. Whatever idiocy you want to throw at the man, he has done more for the people of this country unelected, than Obama will do in 8 years elected.
Pennsylvania has already begun its 3rd party registration. It will be known as the Pennsylvania Populist Party. Just sayin!
just kiddin’, they’re Tea Baggers. Tea baggers plain and simple, http://www.americanpopulistparty.org/a2hamend.php
Ralph Nader … has done more for the people of this country
Nader will be in the history books as the splinter who gave us Bush in 2000, and did his best to reelect him in 2004.
Hilarious!
Wow, massive dis to Dana Garrett. The Greens are apparently not good enough for this guy.
I’m all for actually changing the country rather than tilting at windmills, personally, but if I *were* to vote 3rd party (I certainly won’t vote for Carper in 2012), I would start by looking at the Greens.
Anyway, in a nutshell, this is why we fail. Too many progressives jump ship rather than get their hands dirty in the arduous task of reforming the Democratic party. Reform is hard, complaining is easy. Accepting compromises while still keeping the will to fight on is hard, throwing a tantrum and leaving because the people you’re supposed to work with don’t always agree with you is easy.
Yes, you know what I mean.
Wade will be a great candidate. If you want low hanging fruit, Dems lose a min. of 25 house seats nationally and maybe as high as 50. They lose 4 senate seats minimum and as many as 11 (I think it is unlikely to exceed 8), but if they get to 9 Lieberman caucuses with the GOP and Nelson goes independent and does the same to save himself in 2012.
Delaware is tougher. Dems will be on defense, Atkins will have a tough race, so will Scott, Walls, Short, and maybe Schooley. How soon the candidates get building organization and raising money will determine if the GOP will take the house. They should challenge all but the most difficult seats and make the Dems defend 20 of them. Kowalko could be beat. Republicans do not have a free ride. The Oberle seat may well be lost. The Carey seat will need to be defended which will keep all of the Sussex resources from being aimed at Rep. Atkins. If Thornburg retires, the GOP will have to get in gear.
I believe the GOP will regain the state house of reps, but it is not a foregone conclusion. Bonini wins. Wagner wins.