Ferocitus
Deity
I thought the unbelievable, Murdoch-style part of that story was that anybody would want a portrait of Tip O'Neill.
But that's history. My prediction stands.
Prediction Thread
- Thread starter hobbsyoyo
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But that's history. My prediction stands.
caketastydelish
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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will win the Super Bowl.
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
So this didn't happen, and so I will now make a prediction in quite the opposite direction:
Trump will not be impeached in the senate, Biden will rescind on only serving one term, and the 2024 election is going to be between Trump and Biden again, even though they'll both be insanely old by then
Biden never made any such pledge, that's just an urban legend.
Urban legend built on common sense.
He'll be what, 82 in 2024? What is he going to try to go until 86? This nation needs to nurture a whole new generation of polifolk. Obama sort of stumbled with that. But Gen X, Gen Y needs to move in to the plate.
caketastydelish
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I agree with you. My only problem is this: incumbents get re-elected the vast majority of the time, and unless the GOP platform changes drastically, I don't want the next president to be a Republican. Idealistically I want a younger democrat to be the president in 2024, but I'm afraid in practical terms we are safer sticking with Biden. That said, obviously I have no control over Bidens decision in 2024, or whatever would be outcome of that election.
GenMarshall
High Elven ISB Capt & Ghost Agent
Given not only what may come with a Biden administration, but also based on historical trends I've seen in my lifetime. There's going to be a red wave in 2022 with the GOP taking both chambers of Congress.
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
I'm doing the ron paul it's happening rave
The thing I keep hearing is that Biden steps down in like 2022, putting Kamala Harris in as President (and if it's before the mid-terms, Dem-controlled Congress can confirm her VP selection readily) and setting her up as the incumbent. I may be reading my own preference into the narrative, but I have always felt like Biden started his 2024 run because he really felt like the best (and maybe only) shot at beating Trump, and wouldn't have run if it was Romney or Jeb! or some other relatively moderate Republican incumbent.
And how does an incumbent president being defeated figure into the historical trend? And how about the Trumpist half of the GOP appearing determined to primary the moderate Republican incumbents that haven't already stepped aside at Trump's own behest, as even having a politically active former president immediately after the election in which he departed DC is something of a historical aberration.
caketastydelish
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My opinion is Trump would have got elected despite all the horrible things he's said/done because lots of my fellow Americans are incredibly stupid. I think what cost him the election was COVID and his (lack of) reaction to it. If that didn't happen, he's still in office imo.
I leaned towards that view as well... but given the failure to concede and all the allegations of voter fraud etc... I went back and looked... and realized that Biden was leading BIGLY in pretty much every poll, long before COVID became a major thing in the US, let alone the botched (non)response to it. So in retrospect I think that's just wishful thinking on the Republicans' part. He was losing regardless. COVID certainly didn't help, but he was going to lose anyway.
Gori the Grey
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I'm in this camp. I think Biden would have won, by pretty much the same margin as he did, had Covid never emerged or had Trump handled it well. The vote for not-Trump in 2020 was set on November 9, 2016.
On that last bit I disagree. I think that if Trump had handled COVID well, he would have fared better in the election. I also think that between 2016 and 2020, Trump leaked support because of all the insanity during his reign. If he had behaved like a "normal" POTUS, he would have gotten the incumbency bump that incumbents usually get.
The electoral college was fairly close, wasn't it? As in, if a few 10's of thousands of split ticket voters in 4 states had gone straight republican he would have won?
I think that not only was COVID crucial, he could have still won without actually doing anything different had he just expressed a little bit of compassion, had pretended to be taking it seriously. If he had actually taken it seriously he could have directed most of the extra spending to his companies AND won a landslide reelection on keeping america safe. It makes me frightened of a competent person taking over the role.
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That is the popular vote. The EC is a whole different story.
The EC wasn't close either. It was 306 to 232 in the EC. That's not close at all.
However, it is true that if all three of the three states that Biden won which were close... (as in the margin of victory was less than 30,000 votes) GA, AZ and WI, had instead gone to Trump, we would have ended up with a 269 to 269 tie, which would have thrown the election into the House and almost certainly resulted in Trump being voted back into office by the House... but then we're back to talking about popular vote, just in the individual states, rather than the nation as a whole.
So the EC wasn't close... the popular vote wasn't close. The three closest states were close, and if Trump had won all three of them, the EC would have been a tie. If he'd lost just one of them, Biden still would have won outright. As it turned out, he lost all three.
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Farm Boy
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Biden has been running for president for ages. He wanted to run again, there was no biting the bullet, lol.
Agreed... Biden really wanted to be POTUS, and he has been working for that brass ring for decades. The only reason he didn't run in 2016 is because of his son's passing. He's not stepping down under any circumstances. He didn't go all this way to just hand over the Presidency to someone else.
I think you underestimate how close it was : a few thousand votes for Trump in some key states and it would have been a tie that would have gone in Trump's favor.
More precisely 11k (AZ) + 12k (GA) +20k (WI) and Trump wins thanks to the weird tie rules. That's tighter than 2016 (around 70k votes needed for Clinton to win).
More precisely 11k (AZ) + 12k (GA) +20k (WI) and Trump wins thanks to the weird tie rules. That's tighter than 2016 (around 70k votes needed for Clinton to win).
