Predictions for 2015
Dec. 27th, 2014 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maxomaiEarlier today (actually late last night), I posted my scorecard for my 2014 predictions. Now, here are my predictions for 2015. As usual, I'll grade myself on these a year from now -- but feel free to print them out or save a PDF to keep me honest!
Let's go into all of these in detail.
Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush will declare their candidacies for the Presidency of the United States before April 1, and will quickly dominate their respective parties’ Presidential races.
Clinton has been telegraphing this move for years. Barring a major incident or accident, it's a sucker bet that she's going to run. Once she does, pretty much the entire Democratic Party apparatus is doing to back her. (Howard Dean and Al Franken have already endorsed her.)
Progressives are well aware of this and already pine for a candidate more to her left, like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. However, progressive candidates don't poll anywhere nearly as well, neither among Democrats nor among the general electorate. One recent poll put Clinton at 50% support among Democratic primary voters, and Warren at 9%. Warren and Sanders lose against every Republican candidate; Clinton OTOH beats them all hands down. The better move for Progressives, IMO, is to push for a more progressive Senate ... which means discouraging Warren or Sanders from seeking a VP slot in order that they might focus on taking back the Senate. (It should also be noted that Warren has repeatedly denied running for President, although I've heard rumblings in Democratic circles of a Clinton/Warren 2016 ticket.)
Jeb Bush has nowhere nearly an easy climb, but he has two huge advantages: moderates like him and so do the wealthy. The Tea Party might field a half-dozen idiot contenders, but none of them will make it past the first few primaries. His money, his moderate appeal, the Bush name, and the fact that he's competitive, kinda, against HRC, will be enough to make him the Republican candidate in 2016.
Which means that 2016 will be a race versus a Clinton and a Bush. Try to contain your excitement.
ISIS will attempt a major terrorist attack on US soil
This is vaguely enough worded so that I could claim a successful prediction to saying that they'll attempt to bomb an embassy, so let me clarify what I mean here. I mean they're going to attempt a major attack, one capable of severe infrastructure damage, such as destroying an important bridge. Alternatively, the attack would be capable of killing thousands of people. I would not put an upper limit on how damaging the attack would be. By American Soil, I mean somewhere in the fifty states plus DC.
I don't make this prediction lightly. I scoffed when George W. Bush conjured fears of an Iraq-sponsored terrorist attack in conjunction with Al Qaeda, precisely because anyone who understood Iraq and Al Qaeda knew that such an alliance would be impossible. The same can be said for pretty much every other invocation of the Muslim boogey man since 1985. Al Qaeda was an exception, precisely because they had targeted the United States before 9/11.
ISIS is Al Qaeda with an additional fiscal motive. To continue operations, they need money. Their funding model comes from two sources: captured oil wells, and donations from rich wannabes in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. ISIS uses a slick social media campaign to promote themselves as the most sincere, baddest-ass players in the Middle East. The badder they look, the more money they get from the wannabes. They tweet videos of themselves executing anyone who doesn't follow their brand of Islam for precisely this reason. A 9/11 repeat would be the jackpot for these folks. The more brutal, horrifying, graphic and deadly, the better for their purposes.
Another key word here is attempt. The smart money is that someone will mess up, and the whole plan will fall apart without many casualties. Nonetheless, once the scale of the attack is revealed, and the connections to ISIS, Americans will demand blood. Which brings us to:
The United States will begin major combat operations against ISIS before December 31
Whether the attack succeeds or fails, ISIS signs their death warrants as soon as they pull the trigger. That said, even if the attack doesn't materialize, ISIS could come close enough to really threatening US interests (read: oil, the Green Zone) so that the Obama Administration has no choice but to start Gulf War III. And so, Barack Obama will order at least a division of troops back into Iraq. If there’s any good news to be had here, it’s that this time, a progressive-minded administration might have the good sense not to completely fuck up the post-war occupation the way The Drunk and his movement conservative dickweeds did.
The Supreme Court will declare that bans against same-sex marriage violate the Constitution.
I want this to be true, which is why I keep looking for reasons why it won’t be true. The evidence, however, is that such a ruling is all but inexorable, and likely this year. Both liberal and conservative judges have ruled against same-sex marriage bans in most states; in fact the argument for ending such bans is, in many courts, crafted specifically to appeal to Scalia’s sensibilities. We might not see a unanimous ruling, but I suspect we’ll see a 7-2 ruling (Alito and Thomas dissenting).
Ebola will kill at least 100,000 people, mostly in West Africa.
Not a day goes by that someone doesn't tweet about how Ebola "just disappeared all the sudden." Well, it didn't disappear; we contained one minor outbreak in the United States, and the media stopped paying attention. Ebola it's raging out of control in West Africa, and growing at an exponential rate. That exponential rate has slowed quite a bit since August, when cases were doubling every 30 days; but it remains exponential, now doubling roughly every 90 days. What's worse, that exponential rate might be much higher, as it assumes we're getting an actual full count. Because growth of the epidemic is now primarily in isolated, rural areas, it is very likely that we are dramatically undercounting cases and deaths. Finally, the social controls that keep the epidemic in check are starting to wear thin on the people. They're getting sick of being told not to socialize and to hold safe funerals, and it's only a matter of time before they start going back to routine and spreading the disease in earnest again.
Although this epidemic started in Guinea, it's burning hottest in Sierra Leone and Liberia. There have also been sporadic outbreaks in other parts of Africa as well as the US and Europe, all of which have been quickly contained. The best case scenario is that the world can keep things this way: the plague contained in West Africa, brought under control in Guinea, and stopped cold in Mali, with only a handful of cases elsewhere. Even in this scenario, it's unlikely that Liberia and Sierra Leone can get things under control. Even before the epidemic, Sierra Leone and Liberia were sorely lacking for health care infrastructure; this plague is wiping out health workers and overloading the few hospitals. US troops are feverishly working to build new field hospitals, but so far they're barely keeping up with need. My guess is the plague will continue to burn through those two nations until it's run out of fuel (read: people). The total population of Liberia and Sierra Leone, by the way, is 10.3 million.
That's the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is that the disease gains a foothold beyond West Africa, and then casualties could run into the multiple millions next year --- and into the billions the year after that.
The silver bullet that could stop this epidemic is an effective vaccine. There are several candidates in the pipeline, many of which have proven safe (although trials of one vaccine recently halted after recipients developed joint pains). But, none of these vaccines have proven effective (yet). Once an effective vaccine is found, the world should be able to produce a million doses a month by the end of 2015, and we might be able to keep this epidemic to the low hundreds of thousands of patients and mere tens of thousands of dead. Barring that, I fear we're looking at a 2016 that somewhat resembles 1348.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average will top 20,000.
As of this writing, the DJIA is over 18,000. For it to top 20,000, the DJIA would have to climb another 11.1%. Right now the economic recovery is particularly strong, which leaves me confident that the DJIA will make that climb.
The Chicago Cubs will make it to the postseason.
The Cubs had a dismal 2014, under new management, but things started to get better towards the latter half of the season. With new management and some clever trading, they have a good shot at the postseason. I don't think they'll make it to the World Series ... but with a few more years of rebuilding, maybe.
The Oregon Ducks will beat the Alabama Crimson Tide in the National College Championship Game.
Readers will, rightly, accuse me of being a fanboy. Fair enough, but look at the two teams. Alabama dominates. Oregon dominates, and this year they also have an amazing quarterback. In previous years Mariota hasn’t demonstrated that he can win when it absolutely counts, but I think the Pac 12 championship game shows that he’s changed. Alabama has many years of NCAA domination yet to come, but this year Oregon has a shot, and the awareness, I think, that this might be their best shot for a while. I think they'll make it.
The Seahawks will be repeat Super Bowl champions.
If this were to happen, pretty much the whole football world would be shocked, especially in Seattle. The Seahawks just aren't a legacy Super Bowl winning team, and nobody thinks of them as such. Nonetheless, the Seahawks have exactly what it takes to repeat this season. The Seahawks don’t have the best record in the NFL, but they’ve gotten scary good at just the right time, which is exactly what you need to win the NFL playoffs. It’s going to be a Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl, and the Seahawks are going to tear the Patriots apart.
- Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush will declare their candidacies for the Presidency of the United States before April 1, and will quickly dominate their respective parties’ Presidential races.
- ISIS will attempt a major terrorist attack on US soil.
- The United States will begin major combat operations against ISIS before December 31.
- The Supreme Court will declare that bans against same-sex marriage violate the Constitution.
- Ebola will kill at least 100,000 people, mostly in West Africa.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average will top 20,000.
- The Chicago Cubs will make it to the postseason.
- The Oregon Ducks will beat the Alabama Crimson Tide in the National College Championship Game.
- The Seahawks will be repeat Super Bowl champions.
Let's go into all of these in detail.
Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush will declare their candidacies for the Presidency of the United States before April 1, and will quickly dominate their respective parties’ Presidential races.
Clinton has been telegraphing this move for years. Barring a major incident or accident, it's a sucker bet that she's going to run. Once she does, pretty much the entire Democratic Party apparatus is doing to back her. (Howard Dean and Al Franken have already endorsed her.)
Progressives are well aware of this and already pine for a candidate more to her left, like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. However, progressive candidates don't poll anywhere nearly as well, neither among Democrats nor among the general electorate. One recent poll put Clinton at 50% support among Democratic primary voters, and Warren at 9%. Warren and Sanders lose against every Republican candidate; Clinton OTOH beats them all hands down. The better move for Progressives, IMO, is to push for a more progressive Senate ... which means discouraging Warren or Sanders from seeking a VP slot in order that they might focus on taking back the Senate. (It should also be noted that Warren has repeatedly denied running for President, although I've heard rumblings in Democratic circles of a Clinton/Warren 2016 ticket.)
Jeb Bush has nowhere nearly an easy climb, but he has two huge advantages: moderates like him and so do the wealthy. The Tea Party might field a half-dozen idiot contenders, but none of them will make it past the first few primaries. His money, his moderate appeal, the Bush name, and the fact that he's competitive, kinda, against HRC, will be enough to make him the Republican candidate in 2016.
Which means that 2016 will be a race versus a Clinton and a Bush. Try to contain your excitement.
ISIS will attempt a major terrorist attack on US soil
This is vaguely enough worded so that I could claim a successful prediction to saying that they'll attempt to bomb an embassy, so let me clarify what I mean here. I mean they're going to attempt a major attack, one capable of severe infrastructure damage, such as destroying an important bridge. Alternatively, the attack would be capable of killing thousands of people. I would not put an upper limit on how damaging the attack would be. By American Soil, I mean somewhere in the fifty states plus DC.
I don't make this prediction lightly. I scoffed when George W. Bush conjured fears of an Iraq-sponsored terrorist attack in conjunction with Al Qaeda, precisely because anyone who understood Iraq and Al Qaeda knew that such an alliance would be impossible. The same can be said for pretty much every other invocation of the Muslim boogey man since 1985. Al Qaeda was an exception, precisely because they had targeted the United States before 9/11.
ISIS is Al Qaeda with an additional fiscal motive. To continue operations, they need money. Their funding model comes from two sources: captured oil wells, and donations from rich wannabes in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. ISIS uses a slick social media campaign to promote themselves as the most sincere, baddest-ass players in the Middle East. The badder they look, the more money they get from the wannabes. They tweet videos of themselves executing anyone who doesn't follow their brand of Islam for precisely this reason. A 9/11 repeat would be the jackpot for these folks. The more brutal, horrifying, graphic and deadly, the better for their purposes.
Another key word here is attempt. The smart money is that someone will mess up, and the whole plan will fall apart without many casualties. Nonetheless, once the scale of the attack is revealed, and the connections to ISIS, Americans will demand blood. Which brings us to:
The United States will begin major combat operations against ISIS before December 31
Whether the attack succeeds or fails, ISIS signs their death warrants as soon as they pull the trigger. That said, even if the attack doesn't materialize, ISIS could come close enough to really threatening US interests (read: oil, the Green Zone) so that the Obama Administration has no choice but to start Gulf War III. And so, Barack Obama will order at least a division of troops back into Iraq. If there’s any good news to be had here, it’s that this time, a progressive-minded administration might have the good sense not to completely fuck up the post-war occupation the way The Drunk and his movement conservative dickweeds did.
The Supreme Court will declare that bans against same-sex marriage violate the Constitution.
I want this to be true, which is why I keep looking for reasons why it won’t be true. The evidence, however, is that such a ruling is all but inexorable, and likely this year. Both liberal and conservative judges have ruled against same-sex marriage bans in most states; in fact the argument for ending such bans is, in many courts, crafted specifically to appeal to Scalia’s sensibilities. We might not see a unanimous ruling, but I suspect we’ll see a 7-2 ruling (Alito and Thomas dissenting).
Ebola will kill at least 100,000 people, mostly in West Africa.
Not a day goes by that someone doesn't tweet about how Ebola "just disappeared all the sudden." Well, it didn't disappear; we contained one minor outbreak in the United States, and the media stopped paying attention. Ebola it's raging out of control in West Africa, and growing at an exponential rate. That exponential rate has slowed quite a bit since August, when cases were doubling every 30 days; but it remains exponential, now doubling roughly every 90 days. What's worse, that exponential rate might be much higher, as it assumes we're getting an actual full count. Because growth of the epidemic is now primarily in isolated, rural areas, it is very likely that we are dramatically undercounting cases and deaths. Finally, the social controls that keep the epidemic in check are starting to wear thin on the people. They're getting sick of being told not to socialize and to hold safe funerals, and it's only a matter of time before they start going back to routine and spreading the disease in earnest again.
Although this epidemic started in Guinea, it's burning hottest in Sierra Leone and Liberia. There have also been sporadic outbreaks in other parts of Africa as well as the US and Europe, all of which have been quickly contained. The best case scenario is that the world can keep things this way: the plague contained in West Africa, brought under control in Guinea, and stopped cold in Mali, with only a handful of cases elsewhere. Even in this scenario, it's unlikely that Liberia and Sierra Leone can get things under control. Even before the epidemic, Sierra Leone and Liberia were sorely lacking for health care infrastructure; this plague is wiping out health workers and overloading the few hospitals. US troops are feverishly working to build new field hospitals, but so far they're barely keeping up with need. My guess is the plague will continue to burn through those two nations until it's run out of fuel (read: people). The total population of Liberia and Sierra Leone, by the way, is 10.3 million.
That's the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is that the disease gains a foothold beyond West Africa, and then casualties could run into the multiple millions next year --- and into the billions the year after that.
The silver bullet that could stop this epidemic is an effective vaccine. There are several candidates in the pipeline, many of which have proven safe (although trials of one vaccine recently halted after recipients developed joint pains). But, none of these vaccines have proven effective (yet). Once an effective vaccine is found, the world should be able to produce a million doses a month by the end of 2015, and we might be able to keep this epidemic to the low hundreds of thousands of patients and mere tens of thousands of dead. Barring that, I fear we're looking at a 2016 that somewhat resembles 1348.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average will top 20,000.
As of this writing, the DJIA is over 18,000. For it to top 20,000, the DJIA would have to climb another 11.1%. Right now the economic recovery is particularly strong, which leaves me confident that the DJIA will make that climb.
The Chicago Cubs will make it to the postseason.
The Cubs had a dismal 2014, under new management, but things started to get better towards the latter half of the season. With new management and some clever trading, they have a good shot at the postseason. I don't think they'll make it to the World Series ... but with a few more years of rebuilding, maybe.
The Oregon Ducks will beat the Alabama Crimson Tide in the National College Championship Game.
Readers will, rightly, accuse me of being a fanboy. Fair enough, but look at the two teams. Alabama dominates. Oregon dominates, and this year they also have an amazing quarterback. In previous years Mariota hasn’t demonstrated that he can win when it absolutely counts, but I think the Pac 12 championship game shows that he’s changed. Alabama has many years of NCAA domination yet to come, but this year Oregon has a shot, and the awareness, I think, that this might be their best shot for a while. I think they'll make it.
The Seahawks will be repeat Super Bowl champions.
If this were to happen, pretty much the whole football world would be shocked, especially in Seattle. The Seahawks just aren't a legacy Super Bowl winning team, and nobody thinks of them as such. Nonetheless, the Seahawks have exactly what it takes to repeat this season. The Seahawks don’t have the best record in the NFL, but they’ve gotten scary good at just the right time, which is exactly what you need to win the NFL playoffs. It’s going to be a Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl, and the Seahawks are going to tear the Patriots apart.
