mcgeedo

In another thread ("Why should I vote for McCain") I had the idea that we should have a thread that we could look back on in a few months. Since it seems inevitable that Obama is going to be elected by those who think he's going to be their salvation (i.e. provider) or the agent of some sort of "change" of some unspecified kind, why don't we put some predictions of how he'll be doing in a few months. Then we can resurrect the thread next Spring or Summer and make observations on just how he is doing with the great promises he's made. I'll bookmark the thread, and put a calendar reminder for it on my personal calendar.

So, make a prediction. Take one or more of The Saviour's great promises and tell us what he will have accomplished by, say, May or June. I'd like to ask, please, that we not digress into rebuttals or arguments at this point in time of whatever a poster might predict. Let's just make those predictions, and wait and see what actually happens.

I'll start with a couple.

I predict that Obama's "tax cut" for 95 percent of the people will happen and will take the form of a "stimulus" check (welfare) for those who make less than some certain amount of income.

I predict that the Dow index will fall below 7000 after Obama is elected, or when it becomes obvious that he will be elected (10+ percent lead in the polls).

I predict that Obama will be "tested" with an international crisis as Biden has predicted. His response will be more conciliatory than anything else, and it will generally be agreed that he will have dimished the stature and standing of the US by doing so.

I predict that the quality of life in both Afghanistan and Iraq will be poorer, and that violence will increase.

Derwood

I predict that Obama will need to fix the economic issues and the war before he can put forth any major spending plans in good faith.

I predict Obama will select the most diverse cabinet (in terms of race, background, partisanship, etc.) in US History

I predict that Republicans across the internet will seize every opportunity to say "TOLD YOU SO" every time they perceive an Obama let down

filtherton

I predict that the people who don't like him still won't like him.

dc_dux

I predict that Obama will remain calm and deliberative and will solicit opinions from a wide range of experts on the the enormous challenges that the next president will face as a result of eight years of failed policies and shotgun solutions.

__________________
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. "
~ H.L. Mencken

fresnelly

I can't assume Obama will win. Your elections are just too wacky.

I predict the winner will be heavily criticized for not delivering on promises fast enough. If the economy isn't "fixed" within a month (a fantasy to be sure) there will be much hand wringing and apoplexy.

I predict the winner will be both applauded and vilified for spending time overseas on diplomatic excursions.

I predict that the new administration will be discover new "shocking" misadventures of the previous administration. This could be played merely for partisan points or as an excuse to cut back on election promises.

I predict, win or lose, that we're going to see a lot more of Sarah Palin: touring the country as VP and public face of the administration, or as a pundit on TV and radio in opposition.

__________________
"I am Ronald of Mordor, the Mage, the Destroyer.

Taste the scorched fruit inside my pies.

Chew the bitter towelette of truth."

J Pod by Douglas Coupland

ratbastid

I predict at least three "OMGZ! Obama's the ANTICHRIST!!!!11!!" threads per week on Tilted.

Willravel

Prediction? Obama loses, the internet goes nuts, but no one really does anything but protest and we get four more years of bullshit. Despite the fact that, just like the last few elections, there's a mountain of evidence to suggest voter tampering, most sheeple will dismiss it out of hand. Obama will have a lot more votes, probably by a margin of at least 10%, but it won't matter.

President McCain will get my friends in the military killed. President McCain will continue to alienate us from our allies. President McCain will be caught up in several personal scandals. He'll die in his second term, and I'll leave the country for good.

__________________
ɯǝɥʇ ǝʌlos uɐɔ ǝʍ ʇɐɥʇ ǝɔuɐɹouƃı ɥƃnoɹɥʇ ʇou sı ʇı 'sɯǝlqoɹd ǝʇɐǝɹɔ uɐɔ ǝƃpǝlʍouʞ ɟı

ottopilot

I thought Obama would win by a landslide. But he's too close to the margin of error (in most polls) and it's late in the game. I'm leaning more toward the core of will's assessment:
However, I don't necessarily agree with these sentiments...
I predict McCain by atleast 54% and that he will probably die late in his first term. Palin will loose the general election in 2012.

__________________
"I'm not an animal, I'm a human being" - the Elephant Man

roachboy

not being a prophet, even after a few lovely malt beverages, i have no idea what the future will hold.
if obama wins, i think he inherits a shitty situation thanks to the republicans and their idiotic neoliberal worldview. i cannot tell at this point exactly what that situation will look like, any more than you can--things keep changing, as they do. i don't have a particular degree of faith that obama will be able to break with that nitwit socio-economic worldview in a manner that's hard enugh to address the structural crises that the republicans have created (like it or not-neoliberalism crosses party lines--clinton was one of you, the entirety of the republican party was as well--the left/right spectrum that conservatives pretend describes the world is meaningless except as the private language of conservatives--and you know what they say about private languages)...
but i have some hope that he would be able to do that.

i have no hope---at all---at any level---that john mc-cain would be able to deal with the problems that he will have to address straight away. i have no reason--at all--to think that a "maverick" republican whose maverickness consisted in supporting the bush administration 90% of the time will be able to think far enough outside the ideology that 3 months ago he endorsed enough to deal with the problems created by that ideology.

i just don't buy the arguments he floats.
i dont believe him, i dont believe his campaign. i think mc-cain is a direct route onto the shoals. go there if you want, but i want no part of it.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dc_dux

There is no way to predict if an Obama administration and a Democratic majority Congress will be successful given the enormous challenges they will face.

It appears the American people are ready to provide them with the opportunity, given the failures of the Republicans over the last eight years.

At the very least, I do believe it will be much more transparent and much less of a president operating on the very edge of Constitutional authority.

__________________
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. "
~ H.L. Mencken

Amaras

I believe the right wing will hound him every step of the way, not letting him govern.
Until a crisis will arise and Obama will be called upon to rise above the trite and
become transcendant.
Will he or won't he? I hope, for all our sakes, he does. And I'm Canadian.
If McCain wins, the left has proven far less capable at causing the machinery of Gov't
to stop, so a lot of right wing rhetoric and empty BS will continue.
I can only hope he shows himself to be at least somewhat the man I believed him to
be in 2000.
Anyways, it looks like you need Democrats to come in, save your economy, and then
leave show the Republicans can take credit for it. Like usual.

__________________
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
-Noam Chomsky
Love is a verb, not a noun.
-My Mom
The function of genius is to furnish cretins with ideas twenty years later.
-Louis Aragon, "La Porte-plume," Traite du style, 1928

Manic_Skafe

I'm with you Will, but I do believe that Obama will win. The votes will actually count this time around but only, and obviously so, because the reps don't want to touch the next 4 years (at least) with a ten foot pole.

I predict that Obama will lose a lot of his popularity simply because it'll be his job to announce exactly how fucked we are. Wearing the straight jacket of the last eight years, he won't be able to perform all of the magic tricks he's promised and he'll of course be criticized for it.

His presidency will improve our relationship with the rest of the world, we'll be nudged further toward energy independence and bettering the environment, he'll eventually accomplish some of what he's proposed but many of the changes will be cosmetic.

Things will be different but still very much the same. We'll continue to make like the Romans and the Corporate States of America will continue to chug along.

__________________
"Porn is a zoo of exotic animals that becomes boring upon ownership." -Nersesian

energus

From my perspective (across the oceanic divider) I can't help wonder how a 72 year old man, whom (as I understand it from the media) has had several encounters with cancer and ,as the Life Expectancy in the USA is somewhere near the middle to late seventies, stats wise might not even make it till the end of this term is still in the running? Don't get me wrong as a foreigner it is hard for me to judge American politics and society, but there has to be a younger more viable option among 305,500,000 Americans?

As for Barrack Obama. Yes Obama is a liberal (so what it is a democracy, isn't it. Land of the free and so), most conservatives will say the same of Bill Clinton (who left the Oval Office with a surplus on the balance). So being a liberal does not exclude a good economic policy.

As for his legacy in a couple of months/years? Fox will hound him (like they did Clinton), depending on the Senate and Congress elections they will try to block him, there will be a large mess to clean up (economy, foreign affairs, Iraq, Afghanistan, but also what to do with Cuba when Fidel kicks the bucket) and he will have to unite a (seemingly) divided country.

I don't think it matters who wins there will be a lot of issues to deal with. Pro-life, guns, gay marriage all have the potential to create or enlarge a divide. I don't envy the candidates, nor you lot for who have to choose between now and the 4th.

For the record I did a Dutch poll on issues and turns out I am 88% Obama, not weird since I am from that liberal hell hole called the Netherlands

__________________
Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnus lemures, portentaque.
Horace

Daniel_

I suggest anyone wondering how things will end up if McCain wins should read Rober Heinlein's Revolt in 2100.

__________________

╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

djtestudo

This thread (and really this whole election) is starting to remind me of an old Dilbert cartoon.

__________________
"Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen."
--Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

guyy

I think the Dow will rise on the day after Election day. Not that that will change anything...

Derwood

I think it will too. Clearly the issue of the economy is what has pushed Obama's numbers up over the past month, so I would assume that Obama winning the election would provide a boost in consumer confidence, at least in the short term

The_Dunedan

Predictions:

1: Obama will win. McCain and his handlers have run an absolutely numbnutted fustercluck of a campeign, and Obama's appeal to the Pay My Way Club is too broad-based for him to lose at this point.


2: Within the first year, I and my family will be unemployed. We own/run a successful small business, and we -cannot- sustain that business with 2x-3x MORE of our paychecks and company money running out the door. Additionally, we're gun dealers, which brings me to...

3: Victim Disarmament. LOTS of it. HR1022 will come out of committee and be passed by the Democratic majority and signed (if needed) by President Obama. This will make nearly every semiautomatic firearm in the country illegal (if you own a C-96 Mauser or Bergmann, consider yourself lucky), along with 90% of my inventory. That's not counting, of course, the -total- ban on sidearms that Sen. Obama has supported in the past, or the fact that his idea of "reasonable restriction" was the Washington DC ban which the Supremes recently struck down, or his support for banning virtually every centerfire rifle round in existence.

4: Inflation & Depression: Where's the money gonna come from? All these "changes" the good Senator is talking about are damned expensive, people, and since 40% of the country already pays no taxes and Obama's promising a tax-cut for 95% of the population...where's that money gonna come from? "The other five percent! Right. Sure. Maybe if you take everything they own, that's if you can stop them from moving to St. Kitts and taking their toys with them. Just like the bailout, it's going to have to come down to printing money. Or, I suppose he could always borrow it from the Chinese, if they'll still loan us so much as a cup of sugar.

roachboy

dunedan: my brother runs a successful small business, supports obama, is informed about the policies he actuall advocates and runs out a scenario for small business that has not resemblance to yours. why do you suppose that is?

on guns---i think obama supports local gun control. hell, i support that. i've lived in cities for a very long time and see no reason why urban spaces should NOT have strict controls over guns. but i don't see the same need for it applying everywhere. i don't think obama does either (dc put up some good posts about this question)---so i don't see the basis for your position on that either.

on the last point---what you're running into is the outline of your own economic views mapped onto obama. i don't see anything like the scenario you outline as happening. but this is obviously the diciest area, because the mutation of capitalism that seems to be underway could go in any number of directions and coping with change is not something that any system does terribly well. so on taxation, the main change is a reversal of republican tax breaks for the wealthy because the famous "trickle down" theory has been demonstrated empirically to have been not worth the napkin laffer drew his curve on. there are a host of areas that could be transformed---i maintain (speaking entirely for myself here) that the republicans have used bloated, obscene levels of military spending as a way of diverting tax revenues into the economy by way of the faction of the capitalist order that most consistenty supports the party--you know, patronage--and that an enormous amount of money could come from ending the candy binge of unnnecessary shiny high-tech toys for the military. a rethink of what the military is and what it's role is needs to happen--the cold war logic, which the reagan period simply extended and which has been extended since--except for the fact that the republicans saw the draft as anathema (the one thing they seemed to have learned from vietnam)...there are all kinds of other areas that can be rethought. the period of conservative domination may well be over---i hope it is--good riddance---and maybe it will be possible to develop a saner social system for that.

end political part===========================

i suspect that while you may not like what appears to be coming politically, you'll end up better off that you think you will.
at least i hope that's the case.
i seriously hope that your predictions for yourself and your family are wrong.
political differences aside, no-one wants to see others suffer, particularly not if they're linked by a sense of community, no matter how curious that community might be.
i hope you're wrong, sir.
best of luck and try not to worry so much.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Derwood

Another post in this forum shoots down most of your claims about Obama's stances on guns

The_Dunedan

And his associations, endorsements, and voting record speak for themselves. HR1022 is real, and would put us out of business, along with nearly every other gun-dealer in the country. Where is this thread, I'd love to see this "debunking."


Edit: Found it. This is a pile of crap. Allow me to respond in detail.
From FactCheck.org: NRA Targets Obama

First off, "Sportsmen." The 2nd Amendment a'int about sports, period, The End. Secondly, there is no such bloody thing as the "gun-show loophole." It doesn't exist. It's a figment of Sarah Brady's imagination. What she's metamorphosing into a convenient and scary straw-man is the right of normal people to sell a firearm in a private sale, not for profit. It's like buying a used car. Thirdly, as it relates specifically to me, a renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban, especially in the form of HR1022 (which Obama supports) would put us clean out of business. We can't all sell Kreighoffs to John Kerry, you know.

This is perhaps a mischaracterization; what they should have said was that Obama wanted it to remain a crime to use a firearm in self-defense. He didn't even want the possibility of an affirmative defense out there!

These handguns are neither few nor uncommon. They exist in huge numbers and are chambered in everything from .218 Bee to .500 Nitro Express. While I'm unaware of a specific AP loading in .500NE, if past history is any guide, one will be invented. What most people outside the gun industry don't realise is that the BATF&E can unilaterally declare something "armor piercing" when it isn't, can unilaterally declare what had previously been a legal "sporting-purpose" weapon an illegal "non-sporting-purpose" weapon, and all this at the stroke of a pen. Give them an inch, they'll take five miles.

Granted, this one's a bit of a stretch. But I don't trust slimballs like Kennedy to keep their promises, and I don't trust poll-chasers like Obama to leave something alone if it'd be popular to muck around with it.

This restates Obama's alleged current position. Even this is insane, but one must consider that the original survey in question had Obama's signature. Either he's lying, or he signs things without looking at them, and I don't want Col. Henry Blake for a President, thanks. The proposals above are rediculous enough; civil liability alone would be a disaster. Sarah Brady, Mike Bloomberg, and their dispicable ilk would be more than happy (and have more than enough money) to sue ever gunmaker and importer in this country clean out of business. They've been trying for several years now, and a wide-open license like this would kill the industry. It's a backdoor gun-grab.

See, here's the thing. It ALREADY HAPPENS. About 2-5 times a year, we get a call from the ATF Tracing Center in Atlanta, GA. They ask for information pertaining to a certain gun. We look it up in our records and call them back. This happens when a gun falls into the hands of Law Enforcement for some reason (we never know why) and some LEO someplace is trying to figure out where the gun went, or came from. Everything needed to trace guns already exists, more's the pity. What he's talking about, the Tiehart Amendment, is a law that prevents local LEOs from going on fishing expeditions in federal firearms records. The gun-grabbers want this revoked, thankfully they've so far been unsuccessful. I'd rather not have my shop used as a blackmail/gossip factory by our idiot Depputies, thanks.


Well, that says it all right there. I'm not going to debate the virtues of concealed carry here, though.

The "renewal" of the AWB that he's referencing here is HR1022, the oft-mentiond and never-to-be-sufficiantly-damned horror mentioned above. It radically expands the AWBs scope to include a whole lot more Scary Black Guns (which are rarely used in crime), banning virtually every semi-auto of any description. Nice bit of wordplay, factcheck, but try checking your facts next time.

Well, did he say it or didn't he? And isn't "no comment" universally understood to be PolSpeak for "Yes I did it, but I'm not gonna admit it"?

See above.

Factcheck seems to be awfully short of facts, and not very inclined to check things either. And I can unequivocally state that if even half of this passed or became a nationwide trend, we would be out of business. So would 90% of the FFLs in this country.