This is what one can start with: an analysis of the Presidential election of 2012.



1. Barack Obama won without a national campaign. The deep-pockets front groups of the GOP (Crossroads, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth, etc.) practically obliged him to have a narrow focus on ten states, defending five that he could not afford to lose (Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) and limiting his efforts to win based on five states that Mitt Romney had to win (Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia). He won nine of those states. He won nine of the ten. That is good for an A-. Otherwise he won the states that few thought that he could lose and won none of the states in which he was expected to lose, and as a rule he lost those by huge margins -- all by at least 8%.

How well he serves as President will determine much about the chances of the nominee of either Party having a chance. 2016 will definitely still be a 4T year even if by criteria of 2009-2012 things are much better. But take note of the usual hazards of a 4T -- financial panics, wars, coups, persecutions, and revolutions even if they take place elsewhere. Such will shape American perceptions of danger.

2. The 2016 election is about as pure an open-seat election as... well, 2008. Maybe 1960. There are just too many potential candidates from which to pick. There will be scandals, gaffes, and health issues that knock people out. The primary process itself and media scrutiny usually reject those least electable.

3. Demographic change will reshape the availability of states as potentially R or D. Because of the fast-growing Hispanic population in Colorado and nothing comparable in Pennsylvania, I expect Colorado to become relatively-more D-friendly and Pennsylvania to be the 'tipping point' state -- the one whose electoral votes are the difference between perhaps 255 and 275 electoral votes, either way.

4. In an open-seat race for the Presidency something closer to Howard Dean's '50-state strategy' is more relevant because one begins with primary contests. Odd situations can arise -- that if some Democrat contests Georgia heavily and wins in the primary, then maybe that candidate leaves behind a well-organized apparatus capable of swinging the state in November if the eventual nominee campaigns there. That is how Barack Obama won the unlikely state of Indiana in 2008. He largely abandoned Indiana in 2012 and lost it by the usual amount that tolerates a bare Democratic victory nationwide.

5. Of all the potential nominees for President, one finds no blacks. (Forget Condaleezza Rice, who has no elective experience). You-know-who won despite being black... and being one of the most effective campaigners in American political history. One cannot expect the Democratic nominee of 2016 to lose by margins like 20% in North Dakota or 26% in West Virginia unless in the league with George McGovern or Walter Mondale. President Obama has an excuse for that this time. The next Democratic nominee has no excuse for such.

6. The Favorite Son effect is real. If I am to make any wild prediction likely to stick, then it will be that Illinois will be much closer in 2016 than in 2012. Oh, really? Sure -- in an even race in the popular vote, the Democratic nominee will likely win it by about 5% instead of by 16% in 2016. Illinois as a swing state? You see it here -- first. Should Rick Snyder develop a solid reputation in Michigan as a Republican governor in a tough state, then he could turn Michigan from Solid D to Barely R. On the other side, consider Kathleen Sebelius, who was an effective (and anomalous) D governor in Kansas. Could she swing Kansas? It went for McCain by only 15%. I'm not predicting her as the Democratic nominee.

7. If the 2012 election shows anything, the Big Lie DOES NOT WORK in American politics. The callow smears against the President failed badly despite the money behind them. Late polling suggests that the attempt to connect Barack Obama with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez backfired badly, perhaps swinging Florida from a bare Romney win to a bare Obama win.

8. Barack Obama won 26 states and DC. It is arguable that the lowest-hanging fruit for a Republican nominee for President are from easiest to toughest:

Florida
Ohio
Virginia
Pennsylvania
Iowa
New Hampshire
Illinois
Colorado
Wisconsin
Minnesota

For a Democrat the lowest-hanging fruit from easiest to toughest are:

North Carolina
Georgia
Missouri
Indiana
Arizona
Alaska
Montana
Texas

Sure, I have allotted fewer states as imaginable D pickups, but one of those is Texas, which counts for as much as Ohio and Pennsylvania together.

• 2016 Congressional prediction: Republicans keep the house
• 2020 Legislative prediction: vicious national battle over Congressional districting gives a final deathblow to the conservative side of the culture wars
• 2020s: calm sets in as solar power costs reach parity with coal and initial revenues are realized in asteroid mining operations
• 1T: Economic status quo remains relatively unchanged, except that dirt-cheap commodities and energy restores purchasing power to workers. Crisis fatigue and practical, mundane tasks replace efforts to build an idealized America in the prophet vision.

Behind all of the political theater and mass hysteria, 4Ts are really about resources, shortage and surplus, and a rapid growth of technology to compensate for the growing material requirements of a society.

International wildcards:

• Fall of the U.S. Dollar trade: If global markets lose confidence in the dollar - and we can't say what exact policies might cause that until it happens - the purchasing power of the American economy would crash quickly. All of those people who thought devaluation would spawn export jobs will be glad to know that, due to a lack of capital and resources, there will be 100 jobs digging ditches to replace the one guy in a machine that used to do it. Unemployment is no longer a problem, eating is. Food exports skyrocket while Americans are unable to afford the discount aisle at their Walmart grocery section.
• War with Iran, China, Russia, et al: Several different scenarios could lead to wars on a larger scale than Bush's recent adventures. Predictions are hazy, everyone seems to lose.

...Does it bother anyone that the President's median loss was about 19% (average the two Dakotas) and that his median win was just over 12% (average Washington and Oregon)? This country showed extreme division in 2012 -- probably worse than in 2008. He lost states about even worse on the average nationwide for an electoral blowout like Reagan vs. Mondale in 1984 but won with a median margin close to that for Eisenhower in 1952.

I'm not so concerned about the difference of the margins (President Obama won more of them, and except for Tennessee he did not lose those so badly) as I am by their size.

Unless such has valid excuses (it is race, it was the smear campaign of the Right, President Obama won a campaign necessary for winning but not good for building trust) we are still deep in the woods with packs of hungry feral dogs.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

...Does it bother anyone that the President's median loss was about 19% (average the two Dakotas) and that his median win was just over 12% (average Washington and Oregon)? This country showed extreme division in 2012 -- probably worse than in 2008. He lost states about even worse on the average nationwide for an electoral blowout like Reagan vs. Mondale in 1984 but won with a median margin close to that for Eisenhower in 1952.

I'm not so concerned about the difference of the margins (President Obama won more of them, and except for Tennessee he did not lose those so badly) as I am by their size.

Unless such has valid excuses (it is race, it was the smear campaign of the Right, President Obama won a campaign necessary for winning but not good for building trust) we are still deep in the woods with packs of hungry feral dogs.

That is this 4T: a divided country, a cold civil war. Red states and blue states. Obama won his states by just as big a margin, when you consider that one megastate like CA that Obama won by 59-38 is worth 10 of those smaller states Romney won by similar margins. The swing states are still in the middle, about 10 of them, but they swung blue fairly comfortably this time, because Obama was a better candidate than Romney.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

• 2016 Congressional prediction: Republicans keep the house
• 2020 Legislative prediction: vicious national battle over Congressional districting gives a final deathblow to the conservative side of the culture wars
• 2020s: calm sets in as solar power costs reach parity with coal and initial revenues are realized in asteroid mining operations
• 1T: Economic status quo remains relatively unchanged, except that dirt-cheap commodities and energy restores purchasing power to workers. Crisis fatigue and practical, mundane tasks replace efforts to build an idealized America in the prophet vision.

Behind all of the political theater and mass hysteria, 4Ts are really about resources, shortage and surplus, and a rapid growth of technology to compensate for the growing material requirements of a society.

Not a chance. The 4T will only just be revving up in 2020.

4Ts are really about settling conflicts over values, principles, ideals and how to make them work as institutions. Technology grows in all turnings. Materialist explanations do not explain.

Unemployment is no longer a problem, eating is. Food exports skyrocket while Americans are unable to afford the discount aisle at their Walmart grocery section.

The amount of global warming will decide this.

[*]War with Iran, China, Russia, et al: Several different scenarios could lead to wars on a larger scale than Bush's recent adventures. Predictions are hazy, everyone seems to lose.[/LIST]

Our 4T will be domestic. If our country breaks up, others might try to intervene and take advantage. War with Iran is a possibility, but I think Obama will avoid it. If it happens, it will be within the next year, probably next November. Wars with Russia and China will not happen. Only scaremongers say so.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

...Does it bother anyone that the President's median loss was about 19% (average the two Dakotas) and that his median win was just over 12% (average Washington and Oregon)? This country showed extreme division in 2012 -- probably worse than in 2008. He lost states about even worse on the average nationwide for an electoral blowout like Reagan vs. Mondale in 1984 but won with a median margin close to that for Eisenhower in 1952.

I'm not so concerned about the difference of the margins (President Obama won more of them, and except for Tennessee he did not lose those so badly) as I am by their size.

Unless such has valid excuses (it is race, it was the smear campaign of the Right, President Obama won a campaign necessary for winning but not good for building trust) we are still deep in the woods with packs of hungry feral dogs.

I find it deeply disturbing. I don't think the US has been this sharply divided since the Civil War. I think it says a lot about the political climate right now that there is a new book out on the infamous beating of Charles Sumner in 1856 called The Caning. The political climate is very similar to the mid 1850s.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The 4T will only just be revving up in 2020.

4Ts are really about settling conflicts over values, principles, ideals and how to make them work as institutions. Technology grows in all turnings. Materialist explanations do not explain.

They are also times in which people are obliged to confront failures that people let slide in earlier times because they thought that they had better things to do -- like getting rich, going on binges, and having fun. Once people start having to protect their assets, the binges become unsustainable. When the economy goes sour the trips to the mall come to an end, people cancel the cable subscription, they have to find local spots or rely upon the kinship network for vacations, and they have to find ways in which to stretch hamburger as meat loaf (arrgh!) instead of having steak.

Playing a board game together as a family, attending an ice cream social, or putting an old VHS tape of Gone With the Wind might not be that bad. Many of us have to find new ways of dealing with boredom on the cheap.

The amount of global warming will decide this.

Not so long ago I predicted that global warming would be the focus of the next Crisis Era (the Crisis of 2100) and that this Crisis would have much of its focus, in America at least, in labor-management relations. After all, climatic conditions could change drastically over decades and not years -- right?

Even without huge melting of ice sheets, climatic change can result in huge changes in much else. Longer growing seasons and not having to shovel snow sounds good in Michigan -- until one realizes that the winter blizzards supply much of the ground moisture for the corn and soybean crops. The longer growing season that began in March instead of late April will do little good for the corn crop if the rainfall becomes less even in its distribution. It won't matter how good the electronics and automobiles are due to improved technology -- you can't eat cars and you can't eat your 50" flat-screen TV. Yes, we had a crop failure in part because of a Year Without a Winter... and adjustment to changes in agricultural belts will not be easy.

Our 4T will be domestic. If our country breaks up, others might try to intervene and take advantage. War with Iran is a possibility, but I think Obama will avoid it. If it happens, it will be within the next year, probably next November. Wars with Russia and China will not happen. Only scaremongers say so.

President Obama is cautious in foreign policy. He's not going to stir up trouble. The neo-con wing of the GOP got smacked down in the Presidential and Senatorial election. The Hard Right still has the House of Corporate Lobbyists... excuse me, House of Representatives... in its thrall and will have veto power over just about any liberal reform for the next few years. As with oligarchs in other times and places ours are no different: they believe that no human suffering is excessive if they can derive a profit from it. Our 4T may be a nasty time in our history until American voters get a real chance to dislodge those entrenched elites. In no way are they somehow 'better' because they are Americans. They still want workers to be serfs in all but name.

I think a Republican will win in 2016. Usually after we've had one party in office for so long, the other party then goes into office. I'm not a fan of Obama myself but I knew he was going to win again.

i wont speculate on who the candidates will be...but one thing is for sure ..2016 will see us once again peering into the abyss of jackbooted right-wing authoritarianism..and this time we might not be so lucky...

A lot depends on what happens in the Republican Party over the next four years. They have an opportunity now to return to reality-based conservative politics. They MUST do that over the course of the 4T in order to position themselves for leadership in the High, but even if they do, there's no guarantee for them about 2016 or even 2020 although the latter is pretty likely. The GOP ran some pretty moderate, reasonable candidates in 1940 and 1944 and lost. (Also 1948 but that's one they probably should have won.)

We have some voices in the GOP calling for an end to stupidity (Jindal used exactly that word), but my guess is that it will take one more clobbering before those voices prevail, especially if they make some gains in 2014.

Anna, I disagree. If the hard right crazies are still in charge of the GOP in 2016, that's a guaranteed loss, most likely a bigger loss than this year, as demographics continue to move.

EDIT: Oh, and about the House. The thing to remember is that the Republicans won the House this year only because of redistricting. They lost the national House vote. The problem with that is that redistricting is a two-edged sword. If you redistrict a state so that your party has more districts it can win, it also has narrower margins in those districts than the other party does in its own safe seats. As demographics continue to shift, expect a lot of those red seats to turn blue -- they don't have very far to go. So I'm going to predict that, assuming the Democrats win the presidency again in 2016, they'll also take the House, big time.

My suspicion is that

a) The Republican Party will not change. The base of right-wing voters in this country is too large and too intractible, even if they are slowly shrinking in relation to the total electorate. I suspect they will stay the same until they eventually fade out of existence.

b) The presidency may well go GOP in 2016. They have a better crop of candidates so far. Jeb Bush or Paul Ryan would likely win if they run. Since a change of party is likely in 2020, which would last for at least 2 terms, it may be the Republican president who is tossed out of office after one last chance to see how badly they screw things up; including the partial return of the recession. The 2020s are very likely to be progressive, so Republicans will not be in charge.

c) I hope the GOP loses in 2016 anyway, but on the other hand, the Republicans may actually lose seats in congress that year, and probably in 2014 as well. They have more seats up for election in the Senate, and they may lose some of those narrow gerrymandered seats in the House. I suspect a few states may do as CA did and have their seats redistricted by a citizen's commission even before 2020.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

My suspicion is that

a) The Republican Party will not change. The base of right-wing voters in this country is too large and too intractible, even if they are slowly shrinking in relation to the total electorate. I suspect they will stay the same until they eventually fade out of existence...

Here's a personal indication that things may actually be changing:

Originally Posted by Forest Jones, writing in the Roanoke Times

Jonesing on Fox News

I called my dad on Veterans Day to check in. My dad served in the Navy and the Army in both World WarII and the Korean War. He can rarely be seen without a ball cap that celebrates his service and his pride in our military. He said he had enjoyed a parade and even was interviewed by a local news team. It made the 6 o'clock news! Nice. Good to hear his strength to participate in community life is rocking at age 85.

Soon the conversation went to how my guy won the election, followed by a standard stream of Fox News programming sentiments of gloom and doom. After a few exchanges where I questioned these sentiments, he made this remark: "It is getting to the point where you can't be sure the news you're getting is the truth."

I couldn't leave it alone. "Well, Dad, it is because Fox News isn't news, it is a strategic propaganda machine. And if that is all you listen to, reality will eventually show up and make you feel the way you feel today."

I regretted saying it as soon as it left my lips. Why crush a cherished habit that he enjoys? All I really wanted was to check in and let him know how proud I am of his service and of who he has been that has made me who I am.

But who I am is a seeker of truth, and he taught me always to strive to know and speak the truth, so maybe there was an intersection that made it make sense ...

I couldn't go there, and dropped the topic immediately. I asked about what he said to a reporter that made it onto the news. A loving exchange ensued that ignored our differences of opinion or the sources of information that inform those opinions.

I must admit it felt good to hear a chink in the armor of a twisted worldview that he has been programmed into. My dad is smart and accomplished, but since Fox News was invented, we've been having trouble finding common ground. We've not been able to speak on any national policy topic without him echoing the echo chamber of Fox News.

He watches Fox News regularly and refers to it as "getting my Fox fix." Does he recognize the reference to an addiction? Does he realize that Fox news isn't news? Does he realize that Fox news is the most brilliant use of, but misuse of, the culmination of scientific research on the human psyche and how to manipulate it? Does he realize that the intention is to manage the conversation of a mass of humanity for the specific purpose of profit and power?

No, not at all. What he gets is a set of stimulations that make him feel a bunch of passions and a bunch of fear. When looking at the cute blondes, a lusty passion. When hearing the tones of male arrogance, a proud passion of righteousness. When seeing the opposition views distorted and made small or irrelevant, a passion of powerful overcoming and mastery. When hearing about how the liberal media or the Democrats want to take your money or destroy everything you hold dear, a fear of loss and a need to resist.

This strategy of rousing emotional response and triggering pleasure and pain stimulation is designed to addict one to the show and to program in a specific agenda. And it has been working.

But it was not these passions or fears he was in touch with today. Today his intellect and capacity to reason was responding to the reality check that was revealing that he had been misled. He had never listened when I told him that Fox News has an agenda and does not fully examine the sides of topics that run counter to that agenda.

He has always told me, as he is told by Fox, that Fox is "fair and balanced reporting." But the lies are too many, the ignoring of truth too obvious.
Today, he was more interested in the truth than in resonating with an emotion and getting a fix.

Dad doesn't know why he likes Fox News. He cannot see the strategic manipulation of his senses. I can, and it hurts that it has created separation between us. If my dad, who blindly admits his addiction to Fox News, has hit bottom and is now looking again for truth, perhaps there is hope that more can awaken from this dream world.

Originally Posted by Odin

I find it deeply disturbing. I don't think the US has been this sharply divided since the Civil War. I think it says a lot about the political climate right now that there is a new book out on the infamous beating of Charles Sumner in 1856 called The Caning. The political climate is very similar to the mid 1850s.

And yet there is no spiral of violence. There is no Bleeding Kansas. There is no Harper's Ferry raid. We have lone nuts going violent, but little to no applause for the lone nuts. Neither Faux news or CNBC are portraying lone gunmen as heroes. Are there pro lone nut web sites out there, portraying lone gunmen as heroes? We haven't all that much going on in the way of organized violent fanaticism. I'm assuming some shadow of the rural militias is still out there, but they aren't hitting the headlines as often as they once did.

I don't disagree that there is a sharp divide, but no one organizing boycotts against specific products as protests against an excessive tax policy, nor destroying the goods being taxed, and no one is running an underground railroad, a massive theft of what might or might not have seemed like legitimate private property.

I don't even see the spiral of rhetoric being as strong as prior to previous crises that went internally violent. People might want to review the pre revolutionary propaganda associated with the Sons of Liberty or the anti-slavery tracts of the abolitionists. The Communist and labor movements during the Hoover administration also got quite worked up, but never did scale up a spiral of violence.

Anyway, if one wants to calibrate the present spiral of rhetoric against a spiral that did result in violence, read The Crime Against Kansas, the speech that led to the Sumner caning.

Originally Posted by B Butler

And yet there is no spiral of violence. There is no Bleeding Kansas. There is no Harper's Ferry raid. We have lone nuts going violent, but little to no applause for the lone nuts. Neither Faux news or CNBC are portraying lone gunmen as heroes. Are there pro lone nut web sites out there, portraying lone gunmen as heroes? We haven't all that much going on in the way of organized violent fanaticism. I'm assuming some shadow of the rural militias is still out there, but they aren't hitting the headlines as often as they once did.

I don't disagree that there is a sharp divide, but no one organizing boycotts against specific products as protests against an excessive tax policy, nor destroying the goods being taxed, and no one is running an underground railroad, a massive theft of what might or might not have seemed like legitimate private property.

I don't even see the spiral of rhetoric being as strong as prior to previous crises that went internally violent. People might want to review the pre revolutionary propaganda associated with the Sons of Liberty or the anti-slavery tracts of the abolitionists. The Communist and labor movements during the Hoover administration also got quite worked up, but never did scale up a spiral of violence.

Anyway, if one wants to calibrate the present spiral of rhetoric against a spiral that did result in violence, read The Crime Against Kansas, the speech that led to the Sumner caning.

I think that the talk of Civil War and violence is overdone.
My plan is to minimize talking about 2016 during the next two years. Time for a break.

Originally Posted by B Butler

And yet there is no spiral of violence. There is no Bleeding Kansas. There is no Harper's Ferry raid. We have lone nuts going violent, but little to no applause for the lone nuts. Neither Faux news or CNBC are portraying lone gunmen as heroes. Are there pro lone nut web sites out there, portraying lone gunmen as heroes? We haven't all that much going on in the way of organized violent fanaticism. I'm assuming some shadow of the rural militias is still out there, but they aren't hitting the headlines as often as they once did.

The violent rhetoric suddenly abated on Election Day 2012. The political debate has gone toward budgets (on FoX it is of course one-sided -- how can the President most effectively accede to America's oligarchs and exempt those, the most important people in America, from having to make any sacrifices through tax increases). Budgets are rarely the issues to lead to violence. Lone nuts? Leftovers of old terrorist cults? Few complain when law-enforcement agencies arrest them or when judges convict and sentence them.

I don't disagree that there is a sharp divide, but no one organizing boycotts against specific products as protests against an excessive tax policy, nor destroying the goods being taxed, and no one is running an underground railroad, a massive theft of what might or might not have seemed like legitimate private property.

This could have been possible had Republican politicians rigged the 2012 election -- but nobody rigged the election. Except in the House of Representatives, the Tea Party got a drubbing, and it is easy to see how it can become even more discredited. The solution to that discreditation, should it happen, will be the way that least-destructive method possible -- free and fair elections.

I don't even see the spiral of rhetoric being as strong as prior to previous crises that went internally violent. People might want to review the pre revolutionary propaganda associated with the Sons of Liberty or the anti-slavery tracts of the abolitionists. The Communist and labor movements during the Hoover administration also got quite worked up, but never did scale up a spiral of violence.

We may be getting into a calming phase of the Crisis of 2020, when the ugliest rhetoric becomes unpopular, discreditable, and irrelevant. Much of the economic debate is on abstract wealth (basically class privilege) than about tangible wealth -- and however loathsome slavery may have been to abolitionists, slaves were about as material as property ever was. The ugliest rhetoric of this Crisis so far has been heavily exposed because multitudes could find cheap and easy ways of disseminating their bombastic anger. Multitudes also found cheap and easy ways in which to discredit such bombastic anger.

The best way to deal with bad speech is with more and better speech. What works against something so putrid as Holocaust denial (I took on one a fool who promoted it and ripped him for his misrepresentation of facts, his blatant hypocrisy, and misguided attacks on me, and made his life miserable on someone else's blog) can work on any blatant absurdity.

Anyway, if one wants to calibrate the present spiral of rhetoric against a spiral that did result in violence, read The Crime Against Kansas, the speech that led to the Sumner caning.

The extremists of recent years have posed as having the support of parts of the Establishment; in the spiral of violence leading to the Civil War America had two
very different Establishments already contesting the direction of America.

The future of the Republican Party is a return to the past-as a center right party, rather than a Hard Right party.

Regarding gerrymandering and the U.S. House-perhaps Millies will warm to semi-proportional or proportional representation. These electoral systems could potentially blunt attempts at gerrymandering, and dilute the power of money; as well as permitting representation for political minorities.

Here's a dream ticket



(I'm not predicting it would win)

Originally Posted by TimWalker

The future of the Republican Party is a return to the past-as a center right party, rather than a Hard Right party.

Dream on, Tim!

Regarding gerrymandering and the U.S. House-perhaps Millies will warm to semi-proportional or proportional representation. These electoral systems could potentially blunt attempts at gerrymandering, and dilute the power of money; as well as permitting representation for political minorities.

Yessiree! we need it.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Here's a dream ticket
<snip image for brevity>
(I'm not predicting it would win)

Uh, there is no way Hillary would win. My uraninite crystals have told me so.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Here's a personal indication that things may actually be changing:

Did I hear Jonesing?^TM

Like we'll be hearing Foxy Lady as a theme song and Dazed and confused movie breaks on Fox News? Or Hannity and Beck retroing back to bell bottoms?

ETA. If so, then that's going to bring some really bad flashbacks to my parents.

By 4 years from now, I'll actually predict the republican party as largely dead. They may run a candidate, but they just won't have the popular vote by 2016 enough to actually control anything. I don't think this will give rise to a new political party just yet, but it think this year was the beginning of the end for Republicans.

As for candidate, that's tough, because the Democrats don't have anybody worth running. It's bobbing for crap apples all the way around. Really, unless a candidate makes themself apparent between here and now, the Democrats will be playing a strong "Hey, at least we're not the Republicans!" Card.

Maybe someone like Elizabeth Warren, though I doubt a female candidate will fare well in the crisis era. She'd prolly get flushed in the primary. Plus, even if she's nominated, I doubt her in a debate after 6 months of media scruitiny, especially because she wrote the dual income trap, which, despite bandaids in her conclusion, essentially says "women entering the work force didn't do what we thought it would do, even temporarily and we're all stuck." That's bad ammo to hand your opponant as a female candidate.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Uh, there is no way Hillary would win. My uraninite crystals have told me so.

Not sure about that - but I do know that there is no way a Bob Casey-Elizabeth Warren ticket would lose.

Here's an interesting demographic item that hasn't been paid a lot of attention to until recently:

http://www.wbur.org/npr/166753248/ad...y-unaffiliated

Originally Posted by Liz Halloran/NPR

The big demographic story out of the 2012 presidential election may have been President Obama's domination of the Hispanic vote, and rightfully so.

But as we close the book on the election, it bears noting that another less obvious bloc of key swing state voters helped the president win a second term.

They're the "nones" — that's the Pew Research Center's shorthand for the growing number of American voters who don't have a specific religious affiliation. Some are agnostic, some atheist, but more than half define themselves as either "religious" or "spiritual but not religious," Pew found in a recent survey. . . .

But it was the religiously unaffiliated voters, says Iowa-based pollster J Ann Selzer, who gave her one of the election season's big "aha" moments.

Selzer tells us that in her last Iowa poll before Election Day, data she had compiled for the Des Moines Register showed that Obama was losing to GOP nominee Mitt Romney among both Protestant and Catholic voters.

Those voters make up 88 percent of the state's electorate, yet her final numbers still had Obama leading Romney by 5 percentage points. . . .

What Selzer found was that though her polling showed Romney leading among Catholics by 14 points and among Protestants by 6 points, Obama was winning the "nones" by a 52-point margin.

It defied conventional wisdom, she says, but Election Day largely bore out her numbers (though Romney's advantage with Catholics in the states was actually only 5 points) and the dynamic was replicated in a slew of other swing states the president carried.

-- In Ohio, Obama lost the Protestant vote by 3 points and the Catholic vote by 11, but he won the "nones" — 12 percent of the state's electorate — by 47 points.

-- In Virginia, Obama lost Protestants by 9 points and Catholics by 10 points, but won 76 percent of the "nones," who were 10 percent of the electorate.
-- In Florida, Obama lost Protestants by 16 points and Catholics by 5 points, but captured 72 percent of the "nones." They were 15 percent of the electorate.

Similar results were seen in states including Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. . . .

"One of the things that really jumped out at us in our analysis was that this is a group that's quite socially liberal," says Smith, of Pew's Forum on Religion & Public Life.

More than three quarters of them say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, and a similar number support the legalization of same-sex marriage.

The growth in their numbers as part of the electorate is driven in large part by generational change, and generational replacement, Smith says. . . .

He cautions, however, against conflating the "nones" with nonbelievers.

"Those two things are not the same," Smith says. The "nones' are certainly less religious than those who say they belong to a religious group, but many are also believers.

"The absence of a connection to an organized religion is not the same as the absence of a religious belief or practice," he says. . . .

The article cautions that as more people move into the "nones" category the sharp party affiliation could change, but I would think that would happen if and only if the Republicans abandon their social right-wing stances, i.e. give up on opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage, etc. These positions are not a natural or secular possibility but exist only because they are entrenched by loyalty to religious doctrine. If everyone were a "none," those holding anti-gay views would be almost zero, literally, and those opposed to abortion rights would be only slightly more, simply because no accepted religious authority would be compelling people to hold these views.

Supposing the GOP were to abandon the religious right, it's less clear how the "nones" would break down purely on secular and economic issues.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

A lot depends on what happens in the Republican Party over the next four years. They have an opportunity now to return to reality-based conservative politics.....We have some voices in the GOP calling for an end to stupidity (Jindal used exactly that word), but my guess is that it will take one more clobbering before those voices prevail, especially if they make some gains in 2014.

I agree completely.

They MUST do that over the course of the 4T in order to position themselves for leadership in the High, but even if they do, there's no guarantee for them about 2016 or even 2020 although the latter is pretty likely.[ The GOP ran some pretty moderate, reasonable candidates in 1940 and 1944 and lost. (Also 1948 but that's one they probably should have won.)

I believe this is correct as well. Assuming a 4T start in 2008, the 1T will likely end in the latter part of the next decade. This gives the GOP room to loose as many as three presidential elections before the 1T). I don't think it will take that many, but then it did last time.

If the hard right crazies are still in charge of the GOP in 2016, that's a guaranteed loss, most likely a bigger loss than this year, as demographics continue to move.

Assuming we be 4T now, and the political cycle is aligned, then 2008 ought to be a critical elections and Democrats will win in 2016. That the movement conservatives will remain in control of the party (which I think is near-certain) provides a very plausible mechanism by which this can happen.

So I'm going to predict that, assuming the Democrats win the presidency again in 2016, they'll also take the House, big time.

I agree. This too is on the schedule, assuming the aligned cycles model is valid. It is necessary that the party with the presidency have control of Congress in order for the GC president to perform her normal role in a 4T.