Open forum: your predictions, please!

Open forum: your predictions, please! January 15, 2017

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOperation_Upshot-Knothole_-_Badger_001.jpg; By Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

On the Saturday following Inauguration Day, protests are planned for not just Washington D.C., but a host of other cities across the country.  And these protesters, and countless others, politicians, grass-roots organizers, and pundits, have vowed total and complete opposition to Donald Trump and anything the Republican Party may do.  Yes, sure, plenty of Democrats will say this is just the GOP getting what is deserves for refusing to cooperate with Obama in prior years, and I’m not going to get into the debate about this.  But given that the GOP has the majority in the House and Senate, this is worrisome.  Will there be a legislative standstill as the Democrat minority in the Senate filibusters everything?  Will the GOP come up with tricks that let them escape the filibuster?  Will they “go nuclear”?  And if they do so, how great is the risk that the protests against those laws turn violent?  Certainly right now the House is playing a dangerous game of Obamacare repeal with, in the manner of “starve the beast” or sequestration, an expectation that if they put themselves into a position of being forced to come up with the alternative, that they will rise to the occasion — in the way that some people will claim that procrastination and being up against a deadline is a good thing in forcing them to get their work done.  And beyond that, I worry that a declaration of total noncooperation risks Trump playing the “imperial presidency” game, but with even greater risks than Obama’s “pen and phone.”  What will Trump do with respect to Iran, Syria, Russia, etc.?

So here’s my invitation to readers:  what are your predictions for 100 days out, 1 year, 4 years from now?

And I don’t mean your worst-case scenarios.  I want your most-likely, middle-of-the-road case.  What do you think?

 

Image:  no, I don’t think Trump is going to cause nuclear annihilation.  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOperation_Upshot-Knothole_-_Badger_001.jpg; By Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


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