One of the parts of The McLaughlin Group that I enjoy every week, and at the end of every year, is that they make predictions. One of the things that I don’t like is that they aren’t held to account for their predictions. If you don’t call them on the quality of their earlier predictions, how do you know how their newer predictions will go? For this reason, I like to score myself on my predictions. You can see my predictions for 2020 here — of course I missed what would turn out to be the biggest, most defining story of 2020, but on everything else I did pretty well.
Let’s go through these one at a time.
1) Joe Biden will be the 2020 nominee and will win the the general election.
At the time I made this prediction, it might have sounded like a longshot, because the primaries were still in flux. I did not make this prediction because Biden was my preferred candidate among the Democrats — my preference was Elizabeth Warren. I based this prediction solely on polling. At the time it told me that Biden was the front-runner among primary candidates, and that EVERY Democrat would beat Donald Trump. Of course, Biden went on to win pretty big, which is fortunate, because otherwise there’s a good chance that the courts would flip the election to Trump. 1/1
2) 2020 will be the most negative campaign season of most of our lifetimes.
There has been so much mud from both sides that we’re still in the process of cleaning it up. In particular, Trump is still claiming that Biden cheated, and even though the evidence he’s presenting to back this claim is shit-tier, it’s still sticking with his gullible base. It’s gotten to the point where the GOP is tearing itself apart over whether to back his scam. It’s possible that 2024 might be worse, but for now, I’m calling this one. 2/2
3) Democrats will score huge wins in state-level and local-level races.
Unfortunately it looks like the opposite happened, and Republicans clawed back some of the gains made in 2017 and 2018. Republicans therefore control enough state legislatures to give themselves a substantial redistricting advantage for the 2022 elections. 2/3
4) Oregon will elect a Democratic Secretary of State.
My favorite (Jamie McLeod-Skinner) did not win the primary, but Shemia Fagan went on to win the general election against a surprisingly serious opponent (Kim Thatcher). This is good news for Oregon — even with a Democratic supermajority, it’s likely that the legislature will not be able to agree on a redistricting map thanks to the GOP’s strategy of denying quorum to kill legislation they hate. Which means that the Secretary of State will have to draw the final map. On a national level, this means that Oregon’s likely sixth Congressional district will probably be blue. 3/4
5) There will be political violence in America this year, particularly after the election.
And boy howdy, has there been. 4/5
6) Virginia will pass the Equal Rights Amendment, re-igniting the movement to ratify the ERA.
This happened January 15th of 2020. Not that anyone remembers, because, you know, election and pandemic. We’ll have to see what happens from here. 5/6
7) The UK economy will experience a recession as Brexit hits.
I got this half right. The UK economy is expected to shrink 11% in 2020; but that’s almost entirely due to COVID-19. Brexit, as it turns out isn’t going to hit until the new year. 5.5/7
8) The US will re-escalate the war in Iraq and attack Iran.
I got this half right. The US did indeed attack Iran, and for a while early this year, we thought that it might start a war. However, the US has de-escalated in Iraq, reducing troop levels to about 2500. 6/8
9) Taiwan’s center-left Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will win big in the upcoming election.
This happened as predicted. 7/9
10) The Kansas City Chiefs will win the Super Bowl.
KC beat the 49ers 31-20. 8/10
How about you? How did your predictions go?