I'm flying from Omaha to Pittsburgh again on New Year's Eve.
The ANC will narrowly retain its majority in the National Assembly, but lose it in Gauteng.
Looks like I made a prediction for May resigning immediately after Brexit leaving everyone else holding the bag, so we still haven't reached that point.
Trump will tweet that he's rage quitting but then won't actually resign.
Cherrypicking correct predictions made last year:
NAFTA will fail, sort of. Majority of trade will be maintained somehow, but everyone will be able to declare victory in some sense at home. Except perhaps Mexico. - soup biscuit (I think USMCA counts, they slapped a coat of paint on NAFTA and left it at that)
I suspect we are headed for a soft brexit which keeps single market membership. - ajay (at least, that still seems the most likely outcome)
(although Walt Someguy's "on the 29th of March, 2019, the contradictions will cause the UK to vanish in a puff of smoke" is still in the running)
Absent Mueller, I think none of these black swans would fly in 2018: War with North Korea; significant new foreign military adventurism by the US; a Trump health scare; Democratic control of the Senate; a serious economic downturn. - politicalfootball
Ones which it's nice didn't come true:
A nuclear exchange with North Korea. In hindsight if this doesn't happen then 2018 will look like a fantastic fucking year no matter what happens. - Barry
Olivia de Havilland and Beverly Cleary die. - apo
Bitcoin still has more collapsing to do, so I'm predicting that.
My new prediction: with less and less staff, Trump will just keep tweeting out increasingly incoherent exhortations rather than changing policies, and the departments will be essentially operating on their own - still acting as ideologues, but not taking his lead except on principles they hold in common, like binding out-groups.
We're about 60% there right now, admittedly.
Colin Kaepernick will return to the NFL. He will play for the Washington Redskins, who will change their name to the Washington Potato Skins. Attendance will continue to decline, despite rising potato-skin sales at stadium concession stands.
A natural disaster of some kind will kill a large number of Rohingyas in Bangladesh.
7 Wow, it looked really close there for a while, didn't it? Fortunately a nuclear war with DPRK looks very unlikely now that Trump has fallen in love with Kim Jong-un.
The craziness will continue to get crazier is all I can say.
Louis C.K. will launch a comedy tour with Tim Allen and Roseanne Barr.
Iran will shoot numerous protesters.
MBS will become king. The embargo against Qatar will still be in place and the war in Yemen will continue.
Is 16 serious? I haven't been following.
The Xinjiang gulag will expand, and begin to be extended to other impure elements. Uighur jihadis will carry out at least one serious attack on a BRI project.
21 They've already started destroying Hui mosques in other areas, the oppression will definitely spread to all Muslims in China.
More invasions of privacy/data breaches from Facebook/Amazon/Google. Nothing will come of it.
Is 16 serious? I haven't been following.
I don't really know enough about the region to accurately judge, but the Ukrainians seemed to be concerned about it. It seems like an Anschluss-type situation should at least be on the radar.
I suspect we are headed for a soft brexit which keeps single market membership. - ajay (at least, that still seems the most likely outcome)
It does? Seems the least likely to me, other than absolutely no deal. May's deal is absolutely not Single Market membership.
I thought Russia wouldn't want to annex Belarus because shithole burden, and they already have all the control and access they could ask for.
25: It's not membership, but it qualifies as soft Brexit, right? Subject to all the rules without having any input into them.
Russians have never shied away from absorbing shitholes or difficult territory, as long as it means more real-estate for the empire.
My predictions from last year are pretty OK.
In December 2018 we will still be relitigating the 2016 Democratic primary.
This has transmogrified into fighting about 2020...
Jared and Donald, Jr., will be indicted on multiple felonies.
Jared is looking pretty good right now, but I'll re-up Donald, Jr., for 2019.
It will be incontrovertible that collusion happened and inconceivable that Trump wasn't involved but he will not be impeached.
Re-up for 2019. It's pretty clear that Mueller will have more than enough evidence to indict Trump for a variety of felonies and the real question for 2019 will be what DOJ and Congress choose to do with that information.
My pet theory from ex-prosecutor Twitter is that Mueller will make a formal request to issue an indictment under seal; the AG could deny the request but would then be required to inform Congress of the request and the reason for their denial.
Tap-to-pay will become a thing people actually use.
I've been using it a lot! Am I the only one?
My taxes will go up. Probably a lot.
I haven't confirmed this yet and I'm not looking forward to finding out.
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And we're ringing in the new year in Arrakis by having the only place you can buy booze to take home levying a 100% excise tax on all alcohol products. FML. Wish I had more bourbon on hand. And it looks like I will be switching to cheap vodka.
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25: It's not membership, but it qualifies as soft Brexit, right? Subject to all the rules without having any input into them.
Softest Brexit available given the UK's red lines, maybe, but not subject to all the rules and certainly not getting all the benefits. To take the most obvious example, there's absolutely nothing on financial services in the WA, or really in the political declaration either. The UK becomes a third country like the US, with vague reassurances about making quick equivalence decisions where applicable (which really isn't many areas at the moment).
i don't think mueller will release a public report - the indictments, read together, will be the public report. he'll submit something internal, the house will get ahold of it, then have to figure out how to make it public. (nearly) all i want from 2019 is ivanka in shackles and head-to-toe orange.
i am no big fan of lock-'em-up harris BUT a harris-beto ticket would be fine with me, so long as newsome doesn't get her senate seat. and what's the plan for getting abrams into the house and having her become speaker after pelosi please please please???
the level of dysfunction in uk politics reminds me of CA pre-republican collapse, so i'd like to think there are brighter days ahead, but i don't see the way out over there ...
Sorry Barry! How's your car?
24: Thanks. I think it's more likely Putin will go back to Ukraine for his next poll-bump but hey who knows.
I think it's more likely Putin will go back to Ukraine for his next poll-bump but hey who knows.
He'll do that too, but Belarus is low-hanging fruit.
I think the UK is heading for a no deal Brexit.
33.1 I'll find out soon. Mechanic was still on vacay last I checked but at least it's cleaned out and ready for him to get to work on it.
the house will get ahold of it, then have to figure out how to make it public
Genuinely curious, what do they have to figure out? Why can't they just say "This was designated administratively confidential but it's clearly in the public interest, so here's the PDF, have fun"? (Or alternatively, leak it by usual channels, not worrying who knows they did it.)
Hytale will be the recognized successor to Minecraft that Microsoft has failed to produce.
34: I'm not convinced. Manufacturing a crisis with Ukraine, as they're doing right now in Azov, is basically zero-risk. Belarus is full of imponderables.
Star Wars will underperform.
May won't get her deal through parliament, even though it is the best available. It's still fairly shitty and delivers nether unicorns nor real ponies. Since a majority of the House of Commons does not believe in brexit at all, it will find some way to thwart it.
In ten years' time we will still be relitigating the last two years.
It is almost impossible to call the next election. Corbyn is such a fucking awful candidate that he could even lost against the Tories, who will have a record which in any sane country would guarantee annihilation.
There will be a serious economic downturn.
I would not bet against a war if Trump finds his back is really against the wall with Mueller.
If May doesn't get her deal through, the options are indeed no deal and no brexit. I really don't know which is more likely. Perhaps no deal after Corbyn wins an election on the promise that he can negotiate with the EU?
In ten years' time we will still be relitigating the last two years.
If we're lucky.
It seems really hard to get political legitimacy either way on Brexit when governance options are two parties both of which are deeply split.
Wouldn't Labour be in serious disarray, just in a different way, if a committed Remainer had been elected head? (Even, for sake of argument, someone committed to and expert at finding common ground with Leavers.)
Does everybody have their asparagus ready?
1. The UK will leave the EU on 29 March. The fairies will not come to the rescue.
2. Piketty's initiative to create an international anti-wealth gap movement will go nowhere.
3. By Christmas no candidate under 70 will be regarded as serious in the Democratic primaries.
4. The Duchess of Cambridge will get up the duff again. (Joe Coral are offering 3/1 at the moment.)
5. Bill Wyman (ex-Rolling Stones) will pop his clogs. Nobody will notice.
6. Somebody nobody has heard of will say something at the Academy Awards Ceremony which will clog up the news media for a month. During this period anything important that happens during 2019 will take place.
I think 6 covers the rest of my predictions, and I haven't the heart to continue. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Can we all agree that Kamala Harris's pro-carceral-state background, while annoying, is nowhere near disqualifying for a Dem candidate? Like any of them, she will need to be pushed early and often on progressive issues.
Does "up the duff" mean something different in British? If not, how can the bookie know?
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In lighter vein, here is a clip of the Headless Chicken Monster.
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49. Leaks and rumours I suppose. I don't run a bookies, so I have no idea how they arrive at odds that they appear to have pulled out of their arse. Another outfit (Ladbrokes) was quoting 4/1, so I suppose quite a lot of punters' money is backing these guesses.
I predict Elizabeth Warren will not be the nominee. The Cherokee stuff won't have anything to do with it, but that will be the Dean Scream just-so thing that will be in her obituary anyway.
Godzilla will blow everybody's minds. I will be smug.
I'm fine with Warren not being the nominee for various reasons, but her announcement video isn't bad - draws a lot of lines, a lot about fighting corporations, rather than generic "I'll bring everyone together".
To me it looked like a guaranteed loser. But I'm not American.
(Annoying but expectable: big focus on "fighting for the middle class" rather than for everyone; condition "if you work hard" on everything.)
We aren't worthy of Elizabeth Warren as the nominee.
I predict that the entire Android ecosystem will continue to be hot garbage.
Star Wars will underperform.
Assuming you mean Episode 9, I think it will make plenty of money but a dedicated group of X-gaters will devise a variety of reasons why it should have been more and it's all women's fault.
If you mean the variety of spinoffs and streaming series, then yeah, I think pretty soon Disney is going to realize that the Star Wars brand was special partly for being (relatively, certainly in movie theaters) under-exploited. They seem to have already admitted this regarding the standalone movies.
The US version of "Love Island" will be too loathsome even for 2019.
Aw man. I loved Elizabeth Warren so hard in 2016 and I wish she had done this then. I think she'd be a wonderful president. I don't think her DNA testing was a mistake and it makes me feel like I'm living through another one of those episodes where everyone agrees something about mainstream culture that I just don't see at all. Which, fine. That's apparently going to keep happening. And, Harris would likely be just fine too. AND, I preferred Chiang to Newsom for governor and have never understood why Newsom was the frontrunner and now he's picking his administration and people I trust are super impressed and happy. (I don't know enough to have an opinion until he gets to the enviro selections.) So I am learning that candidates that don't impress me can nevertheless have good staffs and I turned out to be unimpressed with Brown despite my high hopes for him going in. Therefore, in conclusion, probably all the decent candidates would make decent presidents and we'll likely have many to choose from and we don't even need to choose for more than another year for the love of god.
Now I'm watching her announcement video. I am happy that she understands who the real enemy is.
58: I also think episode 9 will make plenty of money, but not the kind of money Disney wants/needs. Re the spinoffs I agree. It's been kind of lost in the Marvel thunder what a disaster Solo was. ~$300m loss. On a Star Wars movie.
Would we not settle for Joe Manchin at this point?
I was reading about Warren's proposed bill to limit election malfeasance yesterday, and it was a wonderful fantasy, but as far as I could see any SCOTUS this side of a Trotskyist takeover would strike it down in five minutes on 1st amendment grounds. Is it pure propaganda, or does she really think that that kind of legislation can go anywhere this decade?
Episode 9 will make a profit and will only be "disappointing" compared to prior all-time record holders in the series.
I just turned in my 2015 Passat at the end of its 3 year lease. The refund from my car insurance just covers the repairs I needed to do to my 2000 Passat to make it usable.
I should have gone skiing yesterday. Spent some time instead reading about Rojava. My 2019 prediction is disaster for Rojava.
63: Do you think it should be unconstitutional, or do you think it's likely to be ruled unconstitutional under the current conservative majority? If the latter, it's pretty useful to spell out reasonable reforms that are being blocked by unelected judges who are being jammed through onto stolen seats.
I predict that someone under the age of 70 will be the 2020 nominee. Also it will not be one of the guys from Texas who everyone in Texas is exasperated with because they should run for office in Texas instead. And it will not be one of the 2018 losing governor candidates. And it will not be someone who has won a mayoral election but not won a statewide election. This leaves Booker, Harris, Gillbrand, Klobuchar, and Mitch Landrieu.
65: I think they'll cut a deal with Assad. Which granted is just a different kind of disaster.
C'mon y'all. We can't predict this shit. Someone will be charismatic and someone else will fuck up and someone will be surprisingly good on Twitter and things like qualifications will set a low minimum threshold but things like charisma will be determinative. We're going to have to watch the reality show like everyone else to find out who wins.
I predict another shit year for the Orioles. But I guess this time its going to be intentional? Rebuilding, yay!
Steve Bullock does seem to be giving it a real try.
If he manages to save Medicaid Expansion this spring, it'll be a tremendous achievement. Odds aren't that good; the Republican legislative leadership thinks that they can throw tens of thousands of people off health insurance and pay no political price. The first battle will be fought on the first day, ie next Monday: adoption of the Rules, specifically whether it requires a supermajority to 'blast' a bill that's stuck in committee onto the floor. It has for the last several sessions at least, but in the 2015 session, the Dems had 6 'silver bullets' they could use over the course of the session. It's how we got Medicaid Expansion, the CSKT Water Compact, the Dark Money Disclosure law, and something else really good that I'm forgetting.
68 last: You left out Sherrod Brown.
My plan is to stay neutral as long as possible.
Kamala Harris's pro-carceral-state background, while annoying, is nowhere near disqualifying for a Dem candidate
I'm deeply skeptical of prosecutors generally, and definitely waaaaaaay too many judges come from the prosecutorial side of the criminal bar. But I think it's a plus for Harris in 2020, because Trump is, at his core, deeply afraid of prosecutors.
I liked this Bouie piece arguing that being non-white may be a critical boost in both primary and general in 2020.
I didn't read it, but I assume it's because Trump has devalued the white-people stock.
I predict that 2019 will be the year Donald Trump's presidency ends, on Stein's Law grounds, but I don't know how it will happen. Is a massive heart attack on the crapper too much to hope for?
So far Gillibrand has been the only one smart enough to advertise her efforts to LEGALIZE IT in my Twitter feed, so I'm still thinking she'll take it.
Except for me brother, I've been having a bad year with white people promising things.
Didn't Gillibrand just say she's not running?
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Not long ago, I commented about my friend Rushan the Uyghur activist, and lurid asked if they had stickers (that might lead people to engage on the subject). I asked, and Rushan said 'good idea, we'll get some made.'
Now I have a stack of them:
Concentration Camps
don't belong in
2019
www.campaignforuyghurs.org
Anyone who wants one should drop me a line; email linked below.
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She said she'd serve out her full term which lasts to 2024, but Obama made the same pledge in 2006 (when his term was up in 2010). So could be real, could be theater.
I thought I told you all weeks ago that it's going to be President Harris. You can stop thinking or worrying about that.
I'm not quite as sure about the NBA champs, but I still give it to the Warriors.
I don't think America is ready for Zonker yet.
I don't think Gillibrand would have been stumping for the democratic candidate for NH Gov if she had no intention of running. Also, she has $10.5 million in her war chest.
Counterpoint: RBG will live to see 2030.
Nothing like starting the new year with insomnia.
It might just be jet lag. It's only 10 pm regular time.
I'm central-time zone jet lagged. It my head, it feels like only 9 pm.
I am drinking a cheap Boujailles (not the nouveau) and it is my new favorite thing I can get at the grocery store.
Beaujolais vieux, when not enough people bought it before.
It says "Beaujolais-Villages", which explains the construction worker, sailor, and cowboy on the label.
Mountain, Pacific, and points west are still allowed, in theory.
Well, HYN from Mountain Standard Time.
Charley, of course I will take a sticker or five! Those concentration-camp-building motherfuckers!! I'll email your address.
I am going to sleep before midnight with a cold that has done amazing things to my voice, but I'm lying awake learning about the Battle of the Aleutian Islands, since current best intelligence indicates that my deadbeat grandfather spent the war in Alaska. I was a bit skeptical of the "PTSD" theory family members threw around, but this gives it a bit more plausibility. Nothing's certain though. I also learned that a huge fire destroyed a lot of military personnel records.
If the UK disappears in a puff of smoke, the world will finally recognize my genius. Wait, I think I have just recreated the mindset of mad scientists across the generations.
104: Welcome back! Happy new year!
I don't think her DNA testing was a mistake and it makes me feel like I'm living through another one of those episodes where everyone agrees something about mainstream culture that I just don't see at all.
Yeah, that's me, too.
It was a mistake because it opened up an attack from the left regarding cultural appropriation and scientific racism which isn't counterbalanced by any conceivable benefit from rebutting Trump's bullshit with facts. The correct response was, "I'm not going to apologize for believing what my mother and grandmother told me. Donald Trump can eat a bowl of dicks."
108: But her mistake there was being born into the family that she was in, and any resulting cultural appropriation that she and her family undertook. The test itself, and the way she treated the test, didn't play into that narrative at all, except to remind people about her family. And that was going to happen regardless.
She had been -- and was going to continue to be -- accused of lying about her ancestry. She thought the truth mattered. She might not be right about that, but the truth actually does matter sometimes, and it was worth a shot.
Her opponents -- and even some sympathizers -- will be more limited in the charges they make against her. Those charges were already baked into the situation, though, and the most you can say about the test is that it provided an opportunity to bring it up again. There will be plenty of future opportunities, regardless.
I really don't understand why repeating an old, unverified family story is a "lie." Every family has a bit of lore like this and many people grow up believing it without ever bothering to fact check grandma. There's really no shame in that. The thing where she checked an affirmative action box on an employment application is a real conceivable problem but from what I understand that's also bullshit.
I'm with Yawnoc, we need someone who punches back hard (like AOC) and that's not Warren. I like her as a Senator but she's an awful counterpuncher. I think Gillibrand has got this quality.
I agree completely with 108. I'll add that it was a mistake to fail to engage the Cherokee nations in advance of her DNA announcement, and that I don't think this speaks all that well of her political instincts. OK, sure, no Massachusetts voter cares about that. It's still good politics more broadly.
I got into an argument about this on FB yesterday. I think it was a mistake for her to check the box, and I think it's a continuing mistake for her to refuse to apologize for doing so. There's nothing wrong with having believed her family story about distant Native ancestry, but that's not what her employers were asking about on their forms. They were collecting data to determine how well they were doing at hiring racial minorities -- not seeing who felt sentimental about which relatives, or whether anyone believed in a one drop rule of some kind. The Boston Globe piece did a great job showing that EW did not personally benefit from having checked the box. It also quoted internal Harvard documents claiming that they were doing just fine at recruiting minority faculty because, among others, they had hired EW. So, no need to try harder. She can say that she didn't intend her having checked the box for personal reasons to be a barrier to further minority recruiting, and that to the extent it was, she's sorry she did it.
I'll vote for her in the general election, whether she says another word about this or not, and very well might in the primary. No one expects EW, or any other Democrat, to win our 3 precious electoral votes in 2020. This is one of those very rare jurisdictions, though, where no Democrat can win without high turnout from Natives.
Shorter and to 110 -- it's bullshit to say she got a leg up, it's not bullshit to say that her employers misused her mistaken designation.
I actually like Warren a lot! I just think the DNA thing was a mistake.
Warren's my clear favorite among the olds, but there's very few matchups I can imagine where I'd vote for an old person over a young person in the primary. I'm just so sick and tired of boomers. This isn't entirely unrelated to the DNA thing, I think a younger person would have a better handle on this kind of issue. Warren's the only one of the older candidates who has a chance at my vote though (depending on what we learn during the campaign and which young candidates turn out to be competitive).
I haven't really given much thought to how I will vote in the primary, but it will take a lot for me to vote for somebody old.
Reminder: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama are the complete set of Democrats who have won elections in the past 50 years. None of them were frontrunners, or even in the top 5, the year before the election. They were 53, 46, and 47 on their election days. They were not from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party (Carter and Clinton were both centrists; Obama was not from any particular ideology or bloc).
I put the most likely nominees as Cory Booker (51 on election day) or Kamala Harris (56 on election day). They are both well-connected with the billionaire Democrats from Wall Street and Hollywood, respectively, who can finance campaigns; they are not especially liberal or otherwise ideological; they are photogenic; and as African-Americans, they may be able to improve African-American turnout in primaries and the general election. Booker will benefit from Obama nostalgia, and from being a tall and athletic former All-American quarterback, in contrast to Trump. On the other hand, he has a longer voting record, has a mixed record as mayor of Newark, dubious connections to Zuckerberg, and isn't married. Harris will benefit from being younger and healthier than Trump also, and from not having been in Washington very long. Plenty on her negatives up above in this thread.
Either can beat Trump.
Since this is the prediction thread: Hillary Clinton will run for president.
And you think you have boomer problems?
Experts predict a neck and neck race between incumbent Muhammadu Buhari and his main challenger, Vice President Atiku Abubakar. Buhari, aged 75 and frail, has been in office since 2015 and would face another four-year term if re-elected. Atiku, 71, is accused of corruption.
"The spike in violence again has meant that while Buhari ran on bringing peace and stability back to Nigeria, he hasn't succeeded," said Sophia Moestrup, deputy director for Central and West Africa at the National Democratic Institute (NDI).
Fear of violence in Nigeria
The Buhari government is barely interested in young people's concerns, she told DW. Two out of three Nigerians are youths, and a lack of education and prospects along with high unemployment can push them right into the arms of terrorist organizations like Boko Haram, she said.
117 I think Al Gore actually won, if, you know, we'repaying attention to the actual votes; this doesn't contradict anything you say.
Somebody with more civic-minded grit than me went and found Warren's announcement speech. It's good. I can see why people are talking about it.
Also, it's not the Hamilton soundtrack.
I would prefer, "Fuck it, why shouldn't we have class war?"
Despite Blade Runner's prediction, we won't get replicants in 2019.
I guess I can stop putting turtles on fence posts then.
54 to 121.
Kamala Harris is married, but she kept her last name!
(The historical record on this seems to be muddy, so if it comes up later, she was not really on board with recreational marijuana legalization - not only failed ot endorse Prop 64 in 2016, but also never came out in favor of legalizing recreational use, even in concept, until after it passed. Again, not a disqualifier.)
I missed the NBC piece two weeks ago suggesting that Mueller's full report could come "as early as mid-February".
129 Not that I have any expertise to judge but I think emptywheel is right that Mueller's report is in the indictments.
At some point he has to (*) put out something saying more-or-less explicitly: Donald Trump broke the following laws and ought to be indicted or impeached (or, less likely, didn't and oughtn't). This is implied by the existing indictments/charging documents but the fact that it's obscured behind "Individual 1" anonymity and that illegal acts are described without actually being charged gives Republicans the fig leaf they need to ignore the gravity of what's being alleged.
(*) Obviously he is not statutorily required to do so, and may even be discouraged from doing so by DOJ practice, but there's no way the public or the Democrats let Mueller wrap up the investigation without giving an official (possibly classified) opinion about Trump's culpability.
128 Lawyers I know wrestle with the 'legal' marijuana thing. A client wants to go into the marijuana business, in a way that does not run afoul of state law. And yet it's a felony. And we're not supposed to help our clients commit felonies, even if they really really want to do so. This is particularly awkward, I would imagine, for an Attorney General.
It pops up in funny places, too. At the annual water law seminar, the question was posed whether using water to irrigate marijuana plants is a 'beneficial use' of water, which is the necessary legal basis for any appropriation. You can read the statute and cases to mean that only a lawful use of water can be beneficial.
And we're not supposed to help our clients commit felonies, even if they really really want to do so.
Michael Cohen was sick the day that was covered in law school.
Here's a 2017 article on various state bar responses: https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/criminal_justice_magazine/v32/CJ_v032n01_Spring2017_McMUNIGAL.pdf
I can see why she'd be wary about state action, but even as far as federal policy, the level of change she was willing to advocate for was moving marijuana from Schedule I... to Schedule II. And reducing sentences for "nonviolent drug offenses", and hands off state medical marijuana programs, that kind of thing.
76: I believe Yggles has made the same argument, and I think it's correct, counterintuitive though it might be.
There are enough white candidates (it seems right now) that one of them may avoid/overcome this effect, but I think non-white candidates will have a leg up.
Also, HBNY.
Happy Bloody New Year. JRoth is identifying as Australian this year.
Thought on the predictions thread. I've been slowly reading Amy Chozick's Chasing Hillary which is both an excellent campaign memoir, and frustrating.
It prompted a thought that it is applicable to the question of who will be the favorites in 2019-20. Chozick talks about Clinton's difficulty answering the question, "why do you want to be president?" And I realized two things. First: the last 4 presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton) all arguably ran as people who weren't locked into the ideological fights of the day, and as people who might be able to break up some of the log-jams (none of them accomplished that, of course, but that all made that argument as candidates). Second, the real meaning of "why do you want to be president." is "what would be the symbolism of electing you as president" and that's not a question that somebody can answer about themselves. Like nicknames, it has to come from the outside and trying to get people to use your preferred shorthand is just going to feel clunky.
On that basis, I like Kamala Harris, who I think has the most flexibility to be able to be somebody that people project onto. I like Warren's politics, but I don't know if that's her strength. But, more importantly, that's the thing I would look for -- which candidate has fans who have the clearest vision for what that person would represent.