As always, I like to make predictions at the end of a year and then revisit them when the year is over. Last year's post can be found here but I am going to copy/paste the relevant stuff and then see how bad/good I did. In the next few days I plan to have another post up for my 2020 predictions. I will be giving my self a score at the end and every correct prediction I make will give me 1 point and I will give myself half credit if I was partially correct. I was fairly conservative last year so I am guessing that my predictions will do well, but we shall see. The original predictions will be in plan text but my comments and scores will be in red.
POLITICAL PREDICTIONS:
President Trump will still be the president in 2020 and will not be removed from office or otherwise be out of office. Correct. 1 point
Efforts will be made to try and impeach President Trump but those efforts will die in the Senate. I'm giving myself credit here. Impeachment was filed but never even made it to the Senate by the end of the year. 1 point
The Mueller investigation will linger on but will not find any wrong doing by President Trump. For all intents and purposes, correct. The Mueller report landed with a thud and though they went out of their way to imply that the president did something wrong, no actual findings of wrongdoing were found. 1 point
Congress will pass no major bipartisan legislation and will be deadlocked. Wrong, the Mexico/Canada trade agreement, USMCA was passed and ratified
3/4
There will be at least one incident of violence directed at prominent Republicans. Wrong.
There will also be at least one incident of violence directed at prominent Democrats. Wrong again.
At least one politician or pundit on either side will be seriously injured or even killed due to this violence. Still wrong.
One way or another there will be work done on the border wall with Mexico. Correct! 1 point
President Trump's approval rating will be near or higher than the current rating of 46% (via Rasmussen). Correct, today's rating was 46% and it's been mostly above or near that in recent weeks. 1 point
At least one major politician will go down to #MeToo accusations. Correct, congresswoman Katie Hill resigned for an inappropriate relationship with her staffers. 1 point
There will be no clarity on who will be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2019. Correct, though Biden is the front runner, he very well could lose to Bernie Sanders or maybe Elizabeth Warren. 1 point
The Democratic Debates will have lower ratings than the GOP ones in 2016, (don't worry, I will still do my reactions if I can watch them). Correct, sometimes it seemed like I was the only one watching them. 1 point
President Trump will face a primary challenge with at least one major candidate declaring in 2019. Correct, he actually had three though one has dropped out already. 1 point.
6/9
WAR PREDICTIONS:
America will not get involved in any new wars in 2019. Correct, 1 point
US Troops will no longer be on the ground in major numbers in Syria (with an exception for special forces) Correct, 1 point.
Despite lower troop levels Afghanistan will remain an absolute mess with the Taliban making further gains. Half credit. Though Afghanistan is still a mess there are signs that a diplomatic solution might be found. 1/2 point
ISIS will lose whatever remaining territory they have in Syria. Correct, 1 point
3.5/4
There will be a terror attack in the United States where 10 people are injured and/or killed. Correct, the El Paso shooting probably counts as it was political in nature. 1 point
There will be a terror attack in Europe where 10 people are injured and/or killed. Wrong
There will be at least one terror attack in Canada and Australia. Wrong, though New Zealand had one.
There will NOT be a terror attack that kills and injures more than 100 people committed by Islamic terrorists in a Western country in 2019. Correct, 1 point
2/4
President Trump will meet with Kim Jong Un and will have a successful meeting. Half credit, the meeting happened but fell apart at the last moment. 1/2 point
Real work will be done on the peace deal between North and South Korea and the North will begin to get rid of their nuclear weapons. Wrong.
The Russia/Ukraine conflict will remain status quo ante with no major changes. Wrong, thankfully work is being done to end the conflict.
The Mexican Drug War will continue with large numbers of deaths and little media coverage. Half credit, for the first time there was media coverage of the war in Mexico due several high profile battles and the mass murder of some American citizens. 1/2 point.
1/4
CULTURAL PREDICTIONS:
Tech censorship will get even worse to the point where more mainstream Republicans will be banned from placed like Twitter, Facebook and Google. Correct, 1 point
Nothing will be done about this tech censorship by the United States government. Correct, 1 point
This will lead to another incident like the YouTube headquarters shooting. Wrong.
Black Lives Matter will continue to be irrelevant. Correct, haven't heard from them all year. 1 point
The Alt-Right will also continue to be irrelevant. Half credit. There was some noise made by Nick Fuentes who arguably counts as alt-right, but the movement as a whole is dead. 1/2 point
Targeted harassment for people expressing political opinions openly will continue at a fever pitch. Correct, 1 point
Ratings for the NFL will continue to be stagnant but the kneeling issue will get next to no media coverage. Half credit, ratings have improved but the kneeling issue is dead. 1/2 point
Star Wars Episode 9 will have a lower opening day than The Last Jedi (we won't have enough time to see if it will be a bomb before the end of the year, will be release on December 20th). Correct, though it didn't do as bad as I thought it would. 1 point
#MeToo will claim a few more scalps in Hollywood. False, the movement appears to be over with no notable names that I can recall other than Katie Hill.
The backlash against #MeToo will continue as more truly innocent men are caught up in it. Correct, the backlash was severe enough that it is totally spent as a social force as far as I can tell. 1 point.
7/10
TOTALS:
22.5/35 64%.
As you can tell I didn't do great this year. Mostly it was because I was too pessimistic. 2019 was a fairly good year compared to the past few years and we generally didn't have as many problems as we have been having with violence and terrorism. Though tensions are still high in the culture war I was way off base in expecting actual violence, which there wasn't much off, at least directed at politicians. Other than that I was pretty spot on with my political predictions as most of what I said came true.
On the warfare questions I was overly pessimistic on the amount of terror attacks we had. There weren't any major Islamist ones targeting the Western world and only the Easter Sri Lanka attacks were hugely notable. There were a few attacks done for political reasons but they weren't in the countries I was predicting and not for the reasons I was predicting.
I was too optimistic with North Korea. I was expecting a political solution to be found but the meeting happened and didn't produce the kind of results we wanted. Then impeachment came up and totally overshadowed the peace effort to the point that it's hardly on anyone's radar anymore, let alone the US governments. But I was too pessimistic with Ukraine which seems to be coming to a conclusion sooner rather than later.
As for the cultural predictions I was mostly spot on. I didn't expect Me Too to die the way it did but honestly it wasn't much of a factor in 2019. I think leftist groups and the Democrats realized that their own people were getting caught up in it and that was that. The backlash was pretty severe to the point where prominent Democrats are criticizing the movement for taking down some of their leadership.
Overall, I think I am happy to be wrong in most of the cases. I was overly pessimistic this year but I was pleasantly surprised that 2019 was a good year. Other than the various mass shootings, it was a very good year for almost anyone. Too bad the good news has been totally drowned out by the impeachment nonsense.
Finally, I will say that I plan to do predictions, in basically the same format, for 2019 soon. Due to the holiday and other factors it might be this weekend, but I hope you will join me then for what I think 2020 will look like. It's a new decade and I am pretty optimistic that things will go well compared to the last 10 years, both for the world in general and for me personally. Thanks again for taking the time to read and support this blog!
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