When I still watched The McLaughlin Group — before I realized what a tire fire it actually was — I used to especially enjoy their weekly, and annual, predictions. One of the things that I didn’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? If you extend this same argument to the rest of the pundit class, you have a pretty good summary of where the rot in our political discourse has been for many decades.
For this reason, I like to score myself on my predictions. You can see my predictions for 2022 here. Unlike earlier years’ predictions, I divided this one into five predictions of bad events and five of good events. As you can see, I did pretty well this year, even if I did somewhat overestimate how bad both the Russia-Ukraine War and the COVID epidemic per se would be.
Let’s go through these one by one, shall we?
Russia will invade Ukraine before July 1, conquering at least the Eastern half.
I’m giving myself half credit for this one. I got the timing of the invasion right (before July 1) but the area conquered wrong (Russia never occupied half of Ukraine). The really remarkable part of this story, of course, has been the resilience of the Ukrainian people in the face of what must have felt like overwhelming odds, and the way Ukraine has utterly dismantled the Russian invaders so far. What is just as remarkable — and not as much commented upon — is the way the War has changed the world economy, and how it has contributed to massively inflated fuel and food prices. All that said, we’re not even one year into this war, and Russia is making it clear that they’re in this for the long haul. I don’t think we’re going to be done with this war in 2023. (0.5/1)
The USA will exceed 1.2 million COVID deaths in 2022.
I got this one wrong — according to the best metrics available, we haven’t even hit 1.1 million yet. It is still sobering that we have not only failed to stop the COVID epidemic, but have lost more Americans than live in the tenth largest city in the United States (San Jose, CA, pop. 1,036,000). Even more remarkably, Republicans are dying of COVID at a higher rate than Democrats, precisely because the science around COVID has become a starkly partisan issue. (0.5/2)
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.
Unfortunately, I got this one right, and abortion politics have devolved to the State level. Opponents of Roe stupidly claimed that its undoing would soothe the abortion issue. In fact it has only made abortion hotter, including driving Generation Z voters to the polls. Ominously, both Justice Thomas and the court’s Liberals have warned that other rights — including access to contraception and LGBTQIA+ rights — are also due to be victims of the new conservative majority. (1.5/3)
The Democrats will lose the US House in 2022.
Unfortunately I got this one right as well. Democrats had an uphill battle after gerrymandering, and the pushback against the Red Wave wasn’t enough to save their House majority. Nonetheless, the margins of the Republican majority are so razor thin that it means that the future of the Speakership is still an open question. (2.5/4)
Bongbong Marcos will win the Philippines election and move the Philippines in a more authoritarian direction.
Not only did Marcos win election, but he appointed Sara Duerte (yes, of that Duerte family) to be his anti-drug ‘czar,’ and the two of them have indeed moved the Philippines in a more authoritarian direction. They won on denying the abuses of the earlier Marcos regime and using social media to re-write history. There are valuable lessons here not only for liberal democracies but for anti-authoritarian resistance movements. (3.5/5)
The Democrats will pass a voting rights law and a (somewhat limited) BBB, thus mitigating the damage done by losing the House.
I was half right about this. We did not pass anything like a voting rights law, and it it rather unlikely that anything like a voting rights law will happen in the next two years. We did, however, pass a very limited version of Build Back Better in the Inflation Reduction Act. (4/6)
Democrats will win major statewide races in Georgia.
Unfortunately this did not come to pass in terms of the Governor’s race or the Secretary of State race. It did come to pass in terms of Raphael Warnock’s Senate race, which is one of the ones I was counting for this prediction, so I’m going to give myself a half point here. (4.5/7)
Democrats will retain Oregon’s governor’s seat (barely).
Barely, indeed. Tina Kotek managed to win a squeaker of an election against two well-funded opponents, thanks in no small part to huge get-out-the-vote efforts in Multnomah, Washington and Lane counties. I of course did my part — knocking on doors, making calls, texting voters, marshalling volunteers, and of course donating money. Not gonna lie, I’m exhausted. I’m also excited for what’s coming. (5.5/8)
Democrats will expand their US Senate majority.
I got this one right by a hair. Of course, the Democrats expanded their majority — by one seat. As far as I’m concerned, that counts. (6.5/9)
The Biden economy will continue to grow at a strong clip.
I’m giving myself a half point on this one. It did grow, but I wouldn’t call it a strong clip — in fact, the economy shrank in the first half of the year, and only managed to barely achieve net growth for the year in Q3. Q4 is going to exhibit modest growth, thanks in part to war-caused inflation. (Anecdotally, I know this was a weak year for my wife’s art sales — she sold a lot more items, but in lower dollar amounts, than in 2021.) (7/10)
So, that wraps up my predictions for 2022. Aside from these, it’s been a pretty good year for me, not least of which because I got to see some of my favorite rock and alt-idol acts this year. I even made some new friends along the way.
This is my 20th year of making predictions. I started doing this on LiveJournal with predictions for 2003. Of those, my biggest miss, by far, was that I predicted no war in Iraq. I haven’t done an analysis of my results, but at a guess, I get about half right in a typical year. That would make this year better than typical for me.
With that, I’d like to announce that this will be the last year of predictions that I post on DailyKos. While I don’t intend to leave DK, I’m just not as into it as I was, and I don’t think this is a good landing place for my blogging efforts. As such, my next round of predictions will be on my post.news account. I hope you will join me there, if only for my 2023 predictions.