[Update at end of post]
As I keep harping, I said back on June 1st that Romney was going to win big, and that’s certainly how it seems to be unfolding. Then on July 23rd, I doubled-down and said that the GOP is going to going to take control of the Senate, keep control of the House, and win yet more statehouses — something not yet fully supported by polls, but that I think will be a consequence of Romney’s coattails and discouragement among left-wing voters.
The real fun, however, will start after the election. I believe we will see the following:
- The Obama/Clinton feud will come to full boil, with many top Dem leaders, congresscritters and pundits being forced to choose sides. This feud will rage (through leaks, anonymous quotes, and tell-all books) for the next four years. [It's bubbling already -- see end of post.]
- Individuals within the Obama administration will start to leak lots of damaging information to the mainstream and online media, even before Inauguration Day, to get ahead of the tidal wave (cf. the Prisoner’s Dilemma).
- The MSM — having unabashedly prostituted themselves for the last four years — will turn against Obama & Co, though they will couch it terms of puzzled sorrow (“If only we had known…”). A few news organizations — mostly likely ABC and CNN — will even tack to the center, though more out of hope for ratings improvements rather than any increase in intellectual honesty (Jake Tapper aside), much less a true ideological shift.
- Harry Reid (who, I will note for the record, was a friendly personal acquaintance back in the years I lived in DC [1999-2005]) will step down (or be voted out) as Senate Minority Leader in the next Congress and be replaced by Chuck Schumer (D-NY). He will not run for re-election in 2016 and may even resign from the Senate shortly before the 2014 election (to minimize the time a Republican-appointed replacement would serve before a new senator could be elected).
- Nancy Pelosi will remain as House Minority Leader, but will not run for re-election in 2014; I have no idea who will replace her. Pelosi, meantime, will run for Mayor of San Francisco in 2015 and win.
- During Romney’s first term, Supreme Court Justices Ginsberg and Breyer will resign, deciding that they don’t want to hang around another 4, 8, or 12 years for another Democratic president to nominate their replacements. They may even do it in the next two years, out of concern that the GOP could pick up additional seats in the Senate in 2014 and thus get even more conservative replacements confirmed. Kennedy will stay until the Court’s balance shifts so that he’s no longer the deciding vote, and then will resign.
The winner in all this: Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), who, I believe, will be the Dem nominee in 2016. He authored an anthology called “Crossroads: The Future of American Politics” back in 2003 on how the Left needed to be more centrist and has been putting that into practice in New York, all while staying out of this election cycle completely.
Should be fun. If I’m right.
UPDATES [10/26/12, 1616 EDT, Orlando Int'l Airport]
First, many thanks to Rand Simberg over at Transterrestrial Musings for the link — if you’re not reading Rand’s blog, you should be.
Second, the Clinton-Obama feud has already started. Matt Bai over at the New York Times blog wrote a post on Wednesday (10/24) subtly titled, “How Bill Clinton May Have Hurt the Obama Campaign“. (Ya think?) Remarkably, just the very next day (Thursday, 10/25), the Examiner published an article headlined, “Clinton asked for more security in Benghazi, Obama said no“. Looks as though Christmas may be coming early, boys and girls. ..bruce w..