Every year, I like to make predictions as to how the year will go. At the end of the year, I like to grade myself. You can see my 2021 predictions here and my scoring on my 2021 predictions here.
Today I present my 2022 predictions, albeit a bit late into the year. Compared to what I predicted in 2020 and 2021, I predict 2022 is going to be rough. But it will have its bright spots.
First, the major bad stuff.
- Russia will invade Ukraine before July 1, conquering at least the Eastern half.
- The USA will exceed 1.2 million COVID deaths in 2022.
- The Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, and with them, the right to abortion for Americans in 26 states.
- The Democrats will lose the US House in 2022.
- Bongbong Marcos will win the Philippines election and move the Philippines in a more authoritarian direction.
Now, the major good stuff.
- The Democrats will pass a voting rights law and a (somewhat limited) BBB, thus mitigating the damage done by losing the House.
- Democrats will win major statewide races in Georgia.
- Democrats will retain Oregon’s governor’s seat (barely).
- Democrats will expand their US Senate majority.
- The Biden economy will continue to grow at a strong clip.
Let’s go through all of these in detail.
First, the bad stuff.
Russia will invade Ukraine before July 1, conquering at least the Eastern half.
By now we’re all aware that Russia has been building up troops on the border with Ukraine. US intelligence warns that this troop buildup bears all the hallmarks of a major attack. In response, the Biden Administration is applying diplomatic pressure and warning Putin that there will be economic and political consequences.
My guess is that Putin is unlikely to heed such warnings. In fact, I’m betting that he has made the calculation that invading Ukraine has much greater benefits than any political or economic costs the US, NATO, or EU can inflict.
For starters, he gets the more ethnically Russian, more urban Eastern Ukraine. That alone solidifies his political position at home. In addition, he sows doubt about NATO’s effectiveness as an alliance. Ukraine is not a NATO ally (even though it very much wants to be); but if the US and NATO can’t stop Russia from invading Ukraine, it opens the question of whether NATO can defend NATO allies from invasion. It also deals a black eye to Joe Biden, who unlike his predecessor is neither Putin’s towel boy nor an enemy of democracy.
The backlash of an invasion would be swift. Finland and Sweden are already preparing for possible war with Russia; the invasion of Ukraine would accelerate those plans and might even lend energy to the argument that they should join NATO. On the other hand, the Baltic republics, all three NATO allies and already dismayed by events in Ukraine, would feel rightfully nervous that Putin is serious about rolling through them to create an overland corridor to Kaliningrad. We can put more troops there to make taking the Baltics more expensive, but it’s doubtful that we could stop Russia from smashing through them.
This will put Biden in a difficult position. He doesn’t want nuclear war — nobody does. Nor does he want a drawn-out conventional war after the mess we just had in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand, he really doesn’t have a lot of diplomatic levers at his disposal. Ukraine invasion will show the ineffectiveness of targeted economic sanctions. Broad economic sanctions bring the risk that Russia will shut off Europe’s natural gas supply. And there’s not much more that NATO or the EU can do to isolate Russia politically. How Biden squares this circle is going to define not only his Presidency, but the next twenty years of American foreign policy. Brace yourselves.
The USA will exceed 1.2 million COVID deaths in 2022 (by the CDC’s count).
As of this writing, the CDC estimates that over 820,000 Americans have died from COVID (although that number is probably an underestimate). I’m expecting the US to add at least another 380,000 to that number.
Although I will not count this as a criterion for correctness, I believe that most of these will happen in the next six to eight weeks, as omicron overwhelms hospitals and COVID patients that might survive with hospital care die untreated. Simply put, we will run out of beds and oxygen. And, the less vaccinated the population is in your area, the faster they will run out of beds and oxygen.
You’ve all heard the same advice elsewhere, but it bears repeating. Get boosted if you can. Up your mask game to use N95 masks instead of, or in addition to, cloth or surgical masks. Reinstitute your pre-vaccine social bubbles until this wave passes. If you or a loved one are unvaccinated then you need to be extremely careful not to get them sick.
The good news is that this wave is likely to be relatively short, and mostly over by April, meaning that we might be able to get some kind of normalcy back by then. Also, if you’re vaccinated and boosted, the odds that you will need hospitalization are very low. The bad news is that we won’t know when another wave is coming until weeks before it hits; so where in 2020 you had to cancel all your plans and in 2021 you could be cautious about your plans, 2022 is when you need to be very flexible about your plans.
The Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, and with them, the right to abortion for Americans in 26 states.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone who listened to the questions asked by the Justices during Whole Women’s Health v Jackson. At least five are openly skeptical of abortion rights, and while Chief Justice Roberts might be a big fan of stare decisis, it looks like he’s outnumbered.
The consequences of this for American women would be difficult to overstate. 26 states have laws restricting or banning abortion that are not enforced because Roe is in place. Those will go into effect immediately, and more restrictions are on the way. States where abortion remains legal will need to expand capacity to meet demand from out of state. If you’re not giving generously to Planned Parenthood already, I suggest you start today and take the tax deduction.
Unfortunately I don’t think the rollback of our civil rights will stop there. Cultural conservatives have already overturned voting rights protections without the kind of backlash that many predicted, and they are already preparing to challenge Constitutional protections for contraception, same-sex marriage, same-sex relations in general, and so on. There are even rumblings that they will try to overturn Brown v Board. Ultimately it will be up to either the States or Congress to step in, and given the way Congress has been these last few decades, that means that it really comes down to the States. If you live in a state with a Democratic legislative majority, start thinking about how you can use those to enshrine existing protections in your state constitution. If you live in a state controlled by Republicans, be prepared for a really nasty couple of decades to come.
The Democrats will lose the US House in 2022.
As has been the case with every mid-term election since 2006, 2022 is not going to be kind to the party that holds the White House, for three reasons.
First, Democrats just aren’t excited about what Congress and the Biden Administration have been doing (or, perhaps more to the point, NOT doing). $1.2 trillion in infrastructure spending was a big win, but a lot of the Democratic base have been expecting Congress to pass Build Back Better and a voting rights law for almost a year. As I predict later, I think Congress will eventually pass both; but they will be stripped-down laws written to get key votes from Sinema and Manchin.
Second, Republicans are very, very pissed off, and pissed off voters vote. For two years they will have been fed lies about how the 2020 election was stolen from them, how Democrats are trying to destroy America through ill-defined “socialism,” and how Biden is responsible for both inflation (caused by Trump-era mass spending to prop up the economy during COVID) and the failure to contain the COVID epidemic (caused by Trumpies, among other things, spreading lies about COVID and refusing to engage in COVID mitigation efforts).
Third, the map will remain gerrymandered in favor of the Republicans. So far it doesn’t look like 2022 gerrymandering efforts will produce a map that is that much more in favor of the Republicans than the 2020 map was; but the 2020 map was already grossly gerrymandered in states like Wisconsin and Texas. My guess is that won’t change by 2022, even with a Federal voting rights law.
The damage done by the GOP taking control of the House in January 2023 is hard to overstate. In particular, any progressive spending program will be on the chopping block, and new proposals will be gone for a long time. In addition, the House investigation into the January 6 insurrection will come to a dead end. The good news is that their takeover, like the last one, will probably be short-lived — maybe four to eight years.
Bongbong Marcos will win the Philippines election and move the Philippines in a more authoritarian direction.
IMO the story of the last decade (2011-2021) goes like this: the Arab Spring was a fight over the future of democracy; and democracy lost. That trend will continue as China and Russia continue to prop up authoritarian movements abroad and dismantle democratic institutions at home. The latest example of this will be the 2022 Philippines election, where Bongbong Marcos (yes, of that Marcos family) currently dominates the polls. We can expect Marcos to continue Duarte’s policy of favoring closer cooperation with China at the expense of cooperation with America. Part and parcel of that will be continued attacks on Philippine democratic institutions.
Now let’s consider the good stuff.
The Democrats will pass a voting rights law and a (somewhat limited) BBB, thus mitigating the damage done by losing the House.
The Democrats are in trouble in 2022 and I think they know it. If they don’t pass a voting rights law in 2022, they won’t have a chance again for a long, long time. Biden has already signaled a switch in priorities and the Senate leadership has followed. The path to a voting rights law goes through Joe Manchin, who has already proposed a very modest version of the law. So something will pass, although it will pale in comparison to HR1. Nonetheless, the law should suffice to protect American democracy from a GOP takeover of the US House.
Similarly, the Democrats know that a big part of their constituency is ready to stay home in November unless they pass Build Back Better. Once they pass a voting rights law, I expect negotiations to begin on BBB again. Of course, this version is going to be tempered by what Joe Manchin wants.
Democrats will win major statewide races in Georgia.
January 2021 laid the pathway for more wins in Georgia, which the Georgia GOP have tried to quash by passing voter suppression laws that make it illegal even to provide water to voters waiting in line in grossly underserved Black precincts. The Warnock/Ossoff playbook combined with the new Federal voting rights law should give Warnock and Abrams a chance, which I think they will seize.
Democrats will retain Oregon’s governor’s seat (barely).
The Governor’s race in Oregon is, to put is simply, a mess. Kate Brown, who in my opinion is doing an excellent job on keeping COVID from overwhelming our hospitals, nonetheless has the worst polling of any Governor. But, Brown won’t be on the ballot this year, because she’s term limited, and so the race is wide open.
Democrats have a substantial registration advantage in Oregon (over 1 million vs the GOP’s 700K); but there’s a huge pool of non-affiliated voters (slightly under 1 million), each of whom is an open question. Both parties are scrambling to identify which non-affiliated voters are going to vote their way. Ultimately I think the Democrats will have a slightly better effort here, and if they can nominate a candidate who will both (A) crank out the Multnomah and Lane vote while (B) having a good answer to the lack of healthcare options in rural areas, they can eek out a win.
By the way, I am confident the Democrats will retain control of both chambers of the state legislature, although I am uncertain as to whether they will be able to keep their super majorities.
Democrats will expand their US Senate majority.
The US House elections look scary, but the US Senate elections a bit less so. Check out the election map for this year. Among Democrats there is only one retirement, in Vermont, and I think there’s a good chance that the Democrats will retain that seat. Other Republican pickup opportunities include Georgia (Warnock v Walker, which I covered earlier), Arizona (Mark Kelly versus a rat pack of possible Republican nominees), Nevada, Colorado, and New Hampshire. Republicans are retiring in five states. Of those, the best Democratic pickup opportunity is in Pennsylvania. Democrats also have good pickup opportunities in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida. Ultimately I think the Democrats will end up picking up one or two seats in the Senate, not only saving their majority, but also making it possible to pass legislation without Manchin or Sinema having a stranglehold.
The Biden economy will continue to grow at a strong clip.
Despite the pandemic and the aftermath of the insurrection, Biden has enjoyed one of the strongest economic recoveries of any President in the last twenty years. The recovery might have been too good as inflation has set in. I expect the recovery to calm down somewhat due to three factors: the omicron wave in January-March, the Fed putting the brakes on inflation, and increased labor actions (read: strikes) particularly in the health sector. While the growth will slow down, growth is still growth, and with BBB this will hopefully start to lift some more people up.
Those are my predictions for 2022. What are your predictions this year?