Some predictions I've been mulling. And yes, I'll try to never include an easy one on these kinds of lists.
1. Barack Obama will beat John McCain in a landslide in November, sweeping purple states, and turning a number of formerly solid red states blue. He'll pick up a few southern states (like Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas) at least, and possibly more, and they are likely to remain long-term in the Democratic column.
2. Obama will win both Ohio and Texas on March 4th, and Hillary Clinton will drop out of the race sometime in the first half of March.
3. Calls for Clinton to become Senate Majority Leader (the job she's much better suited for) will greatly increase, and in the end it will happen.
4. Obama will be compared to Ronald Reagan in another way, as people begin calling him the next "Teflon president."
5. McCain will eventually be forced to choose between Independents and what passes today for conservatives, as the former begin to realize how much he's had to alter his tone and positions to become the GOP nominee. Independents will break for Obama.
6. Many will call for McCain and especially Obama to form thin shadow presidencies in the Senate an push major legislation, but they will only partially materialize. Things are too difficult to get done in the Senate already, and that trend will only amplify as neither Obama nor McCain will want to be seen as letting the other win significant accomplishments.
7. Republicans will largely blame their defeat on McCain rather than the blindly obvious weaknesses in their own agenda, tone, and dearth of ideas. In that sense, McCain's nomination will delay, perhaps for many years, the reforms needed to revitalize the Party.
8. Obama's election will usher in a new liberal era, but one that is reborn much truer to its 1950s roots than a rehash of that of the 1970s and '80s.
9. My dog will remain quite dim, but everyone will continue to love him anyway.
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Liberalism's "1950s roots?" What 1950's roots? The roots of liberalism now is probably the 1990's reaction to Clinton triangulation. Liberalism at its base in the US is still rooted in FDR's New Deal and internationalism.
I looked back and wonder why I used the word "roots." A better word would be "apogee" or some such. The point was that liberalism changed in the late '60s, and I think really lost its way as a movement. I believe Obama may be about to change all that. Clinton would not be able to do so.
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