Predictions: Thad Guyer (predicted the Trump victory long before the election.)

Living in interesting times.

The Democrats will likely take the House. The Senate will bet a bit more Republican. Gridlock and tribal animosity: a bad combination.

Frequent Guest Post writer Thad Guyer is an attorney specializing in litigation on behalf of whistleblowing employees. Back in the summer of 2016 Guyer said the data showed that Donal Trump would win election. He nailed it.

I was more cautious but I saw the blue collar male frustration with politically correct walking- on-eggshells. Hillary represented a scolding mother. Behave! Watch your manners!. I saw the stagnation in the upper midwest economies. So I, too, predicted a Trump victory, against nearly all polls and punditry, but not until about ten days before the election. . 

My predictions:

1. Democrats will just barely take the House. There will be no big Blue Wave. 

2. Beto O'Rourke will lose in Texas. It is still a red state. Then he will run for president.

3. Presidential candidates will emerge.

  Elizabeth Warren

  Bernie Sanders

  Jeff Merkley

  Cory Booker

  Kamala Harris

  Deval Patrick

  Beto O'Rourke

  Tim Kayne

  Tom Stayer

  Michael Bloomberg

4. Democrats will look for star quality, not policy. Or a self-funding billionaire. The internet small dollar fundraising ability of a "star" makes the normal wine-and-cheese fundraiser and the big-dollar bundler fundraising unnecessary. Trump did it. Bernie did it. Beto is doing it. The candidate needs to be someone who can raise money that way, or who can self fund. Any candidate who raises money from PACs will force a divide in the left, rekindling the Bernie/Hillary divide.  

Guest Post by Thad Guyer  --  Predictions

A review of a yet-to-be-served Special Meal, to be on the menu immediately after the election of 2018

Thad Guyer

If the predictive models are right, in three weeks Democrats will retake the House but not the Senate.  While winning anything against Trump and the GOP might feel good, a calamity awaits us that will strengthen Trump for his 2020 reelection battle.  If you think it’s bad now, this “tiramisu of garbage” will be even worse.  (Listen podcast, Hysteria, “Tiramisu of Garbage” (Oct 11, 2018, https://crooked.com/podcast/tiramisu-of-garbage).  This will be the menu starting with the new Congressional term:

Amuse-bouche: The media will goad intemperate statements out of Democratic impeachment advocates, who will gladly oblige from the steps of the Capitol. Maxine Waters will delight us all with her dramatic victory calls “Trump, we are comin’ to get you!”.   The House will degenerate into a mosh pit of Democrats wanting quick impeachment despite know the effort will be hopeless in the GOP senate. Democrats will look like lunatics goring themselves on junk food.

Appetizers:  Nothing stimulates the political palate like Democratic internecine warfare, as the long knives come out by progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to oust Nancy Pelosi.  This is going to be especially bitter with flavorings of ageism, sexism and racism.  Over and over we will hear “it is time for old white people to get out of the way, move over your time has passed”. “White males” will have grim countenance from having their urge to fight back in kind muzzled by political correctness. Both the speakership and key committee chairs will be claimed to be off limits to these oldsters. Progressive will look like a racist mob more than ever.

Entre:  Impeachment will be the only main course offered, but with a variety of side dishes depending on which media outlet the clamoring Congressperson is pandering to. While a bunch of senators for the past two years have basked in the chaotic limelight as 2020 primary contenders, at long last it will be the turn of flamboyant House members. It will be unthinkable for these contenders to not heed the frenzied calls for impeachment.  Raucous and competing oversight hearings will jam the bandwidth in a tussle for camera coverage of whose “articles of impeachment” are better and should gain consensus.  Article after article will be proposed against Trump with certitude and derision.  A vote at long last will come, and nametags reading “hothead”, “traitor” and “milk toast” will be assigned. 

Sides:  The most ordered side will be “Cooling Saucer Tea” in honor of the storied role the Senate is supposed to play in tempering popular outrage in the House. Senate democrats will have little to do except counsel 2020 hopefuls in the House to “tone it down”.  Schumer will say the last thing we need is to give Trump a Senate vote rejecting impeachment.  “Cooling” talk will be about all there is to do since no legislation from House democrats will be considered by the GOP Senate and visa-versa.  Democrats will look feckless. 

Dessert:  Tiramisu du Garbage will be the star of the dessert tray.  It will be a media dish, layer after layer of shill cable news hosts with Hannity and Maddow belitting the opposition party.  The House will pile on investigations that go nowhere because Trump will gleefully flick away each subpoena.  Only the most die-hard politicos will be able to digest it.  Democrat voters, as 2020 approaches, will look ill. 

We are about to see two calamitous years of American history in the making.