37 Predictions From 2016. Donald Trump was elected President on…
By: Mike Machowski
Tags: 2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, 2020 Presidential Race, Politics, Predictions

Things I was confident in

1. Economic Recession

In November of 2020 we will be emerging from, or still in, a global recession brought on by unnecessary and destructive trade wars, policy volatility, tax cuts, irresponsible deregulation, and general economic mismanagement. The recession will be serious and drawn out, but not as destructive as what happened in 2008. The recovery will be especially weak, because Republicans were unwilling to spend money to jump-start the economy.

The stage is being set:

Deregulation has begun in earnest.

A foolish tax-cut was passed.

Some share my prediction that the next recession will be pretty bad, for the same reasons I cite.

In 2018, many economists are predicting a recession by 2020.

Verdict: 4/5

By mid-2020 we were in a full-on recession, due largely to the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump’s foolish tax cuts and trade wars didn’t help and made “real” economic indicators weak, but the core reason for the recession was not exactly what I (or anyone) predicted. Still, the mismanagement of the economy before the pandemic and the catastrophically bad handling of the pandemic by the federal government has made the resulting recession significantly worse than it needed to be.

2. Wall along the Mexican Border

There will not be a 30' tall wall along the length of the US-Mexican border that has been paid for by Mexico. At most, there will be a relatively small wall built for show and Mexicans will have “paid” for it only via tariffs, which ultimately will have been passed on to American consumers. The Trump administration will instead try to spin the idea of high-tech border surveillance and more border agents as the “real” wall. In either case, the real or virtual wall will be only marginally more effective than what we have now.

Almost immediately, Trump backed off the promise that Mexico will outright pay for this wall. He’s asked Congress for money for the wall. He more-or-less admitted it was always a ploy in a phone call with the Mexican President. Now it will supposedly be funded by American taxpayers and Mexico will pay for it “eventually” via tariffs or import tax, which, of course, will be passed on to American consumers. Congratulations taxpayers, you get to pay twice for the wall that you don’t want.

A prototype of the wall is supposedly being built in September 2017, but I’ve not seen any actual evidence of that.

Just about a year after being elected, there are already signs that a real, physical wall may not be constructed along the entirety of the US-Mexican border. Rather a “virtual” wall and bureaucratic obstacles will be used to reduce illegal immigration.

In January of 2018, small prototypes of the wall were on display in San Diego. Additionally, Trump asked Congress for $18 billion to build the wall in a section of the south-west border.

Just before the one-year mark of the Trump administration, Kellyanne Conway is walking back Trump’s promise for a full-border wall. Apparently, the totally not narcissistic self-declared stable genius “discovered” that we don’t need a wall for the entire border and can make due with a combination of a wall, better technology, and fencing. And mountains and rivers.

“After conferring with the experts who are involved in this process, Christopher, the president has discovered that part of it, he knows, will be the physical wall, part of it is better technology, part of it is also fencing.” -Kellyanne Conway

Verdict: 5/5

By the time of the election, very little “new” wall had been constructed and Mexico had paid exactly $0.00 for it.

3. Deportation

There will have been a short-lived, violent, relatively ineffective attempt at rounding up and deporting undocumented aliens. Only a small percentage of the alien population will actually be deported. If anything, the collapse of the economy will have done more to get immigrants to return home than any deportation program could ever do. The optics of armed, pseudo-military garbed ICE agents forcibly rounding up migrant families in the middle of the night will go over like a lead balloon. Think millions of Elián Gonzálezes.

Deportations are being pursued more vigorously than before, and Trump has wavered on DACA. However, there’s no substantial pushback on deportation. Yet.

Immigration officials detained and threatened to deport a 10-year-old girl with Cerebral Palsy who was in a hospital where she was recovering from emergency surgery. It did not go over well.

It took a while, but ICE started rounding people up en masse and separating children from their parents. The children were moved into shelters/detention centers. Children being kept in secretive, over-crowded detention centers that are adorned with cult-of-personality propaganda proved naked

Verdict: 4/5

Not only did Trump fail to deport nearly as many undocumented aliens as he claimed he would, but his “border cage” policy was also wildly unpopular. Putting separated children in cages was terrible optics. Somehow he handled this so poorly it upset both the left and the right.

4. Tax Cuts

Massive tax-cuts, aimed at the rich and corporations, will initially be popular but will, like the Bush tax-cuts before them, fail to jolt the economy and will add tremendously to the deficit and debt. The Republican Congress and Trump administration will call every tax cut “revenue neutral” by using some tortured resurrection of trickle-down economic theory that never quite seems to work out.

At the end of 2017, a tax cut aimed at the rich and corporations was passed. So, I was right about that. It is deeply unpopular, so I was wrong about that part.

Naturally, the Treasury Department released a one-page (!!!) “study” of the tax cut that claims it will be revenue neutral because the economy is going to grow at an “optimistic” rate that must be sustained for 10 years running. That optimistic rate is about 30% higher than most other serious studies predict. Because…. magic.

Verdict: 5/5

Tax cuts aimed at primarily the rich? Check

Tax cuts failed to stimulate the economy broadly? Check

Exploding debt and deficit? Check

5. Economic Growth

The economy will have never hit sustained 4% growth.

Verdict: 5/5

It wasn’t even close. Even before COVID hit.

6. Repealing Obamacare

ACA will have been repealed or largely dismantled with nothing equivalent in its place. A larger percentage of people will be uninsured than what we currently have. The Republicans will go through the motions of saying they’re in the process of replacing it, but nothing substantial will ever materialize.

The Republicans in Congress have tried numerous times to repeal the ACA, but thus far it seems that they’re all bark and no bite. They can’t come up with a plan that doesn’t result in millions of people losing coverage, increased premiums, and (at least) tens of thousands of people dying prematurely.

Skinny Repeal loses by one vote in July 2017

Graham-Cassidy in September 2017, killed before it came to a vote.

The individual mandate was repealed in the hacked-together tax bill passed in 2017. PPACA is still standing, but this repeal hobbles it. The coming spike in premiums and the uninsured (It’s estimated that 13 million people will loose health insurance) can’t be good news for anyone.

The Justice Department doesn’t want to defend protections in the PPACA guaranteeing people with pre-existing conditions can’t be denied health insurance.

Verdict: 3/5

I’m glad to say that I was wrong in predicting that Obamacare would be largely dismantled or repealed. While efforts are still ongoing, it seems unlikely that PPACA is going away, thankfully. I was right that Trump, and the GOP on the whole, would claim to be proposing a replacement that would fail to materialize.

7. Restoring Manufacturing Jobs

Manufacturing jobs will not have come-back from overseas because they didn’t go overseas. Those jobs were automated away. The government won’t pass laws that tell businesses that they aren’t allowed to replace semi-skilled labor with software and robots.

When you can’t keep people from quitting your American Manufactures Council during the first six months of your term, it’s probably not a good sign that those jobs are coming back.

There is a lot of evidence that automation is replacing manufacturing/blue-collar jobs at an increased pace.

Verdict: 5/5

Even before the pandemic, manufacturing was bleeding jobs. By 2029, it’s predicted we’ll lose 444,800 jobs in that sector, even though net productivity is rising, due to automation.

8. Climate Change

We will have experienced (at least) two more of the hottest years on record. We still won’t be converting our energy production to something sane quickly enough.

Quitting the Paris Climate Agreement is not a good sign.

From NOAA’s Global Climate Report in September 2017: “September 2017 also marks the 41st consecutive September and the 393rd consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average.” Think about that, every month since January 1984 has been warmer than the 20th-century average.

And, of course, Trump tweeted that a cold-snap in the winter means that we should want Global Warming.

Verdict: 5/5

The world’s seven hottest years on record have all occurred since 2014. Can we please start to take this seriously and act? Please?

9. Trump’s Approval Ratings

Donald Trump’s approval will have wavered mostly between 25% and 45%. If the economy really tanks, it could go lower.

His polls are really terrible so far.

Trump came in second place to Obama as the most admired person. A year after Trump was elected. Ouch.

Verdict: 5/5

Trump’s approval was remarkably stable in the high-30s to mid-40s and it cratered at the end of his term.

10. Democratic Nominee in 2020

If the Democrats nominate a person who is both charismatic (Hillary wasn’t) and obviously competent (Hillary was) they will win the White House in 2020. If this happens, the 2020 election will transfer control of the Senate back to Democrats as well.

This thought-exercise from late 2017 regarding possible Democratic nominees has a lot more (really old) chaff than wheat. Ugh. Still, anyone on this list would be a far better choice than what we have now.

Verdict: 5/5

Joe Biden is very charismatic and pragmatically competent, even if he may not have not always been super transformative. Still, this election was closer than I thought it would be. Moreover, the GOP has followed Trump over the cliff (mostly) and the Democrats have (barely) won back the Senate and kept the House. I’m glad the Democrats eeked out a win, but it should have been a vicious curb-stomping of the GOP.

11. Republican Platform is Unchanging

The Republicans will double-down on what worked in 2014 and 2016 and will not make accommodations to their policies to reflect a changing society.

Verdict: 5/5

The GOP didn’t even pretend. They literally didn’t present a platform at their 2020 convention. That is insane.

12. Balkanized News Media

The 24 hour news cycle in general, and cable news channels specifically, will not have made any meaningful changes. Media outlets will still be ideologically segmented and Balkanized; consequentially people will still consume media that confirms their pre-held beliefs.

Verdict: 5/5

If anything things have gotten worse. Trump turned on Fox News and other right-leaning outlets (e.g. Drudge) when they occasionally told the truth that he didn’t want to hear. OAN and NewsMax, extreme far-right outlets that are little more than Trump/GOP propaganda machines are ascending. CNN seemed to grow a bit more overtly anti-Trump over the last four years.

What I didn’t predict was how social media would both exacerbate and broaden the problem.

13. Fake News and Fact-Checking

Internet/algorithmic based news outlets will figure out ways to inject fact-checking into news media in a useful way. There will be ideologues on both sides that introduce distrust of fact-checking veracity. Even so, this fact checking ability will give these digital news media outlets an aura of legitimacy that threatens television.

One thing I didn’t really see coming was the backlash from the government towards Social Media for allowing fake news to be injected via advertising. Facebook didn’t see this coming either, apparently. #ffff00 journalism.

NewsGuard, a start-up announced in November 2017, will use dozens of humans (journalists even!) to rate news stories for trustworthiness. It will be interesting to see if this sort of approach gains traction, and if it does, if it is scalable. I’d also imagine that this approach might find itself in a never-ending series of lawsuits. If NewsGuard rates a bunch of stories from some website as fake/untrustworthy, will the website sue? My suspicion is that a better approach would be some sort of crowd-sourced system with inlined, live rating system. Imagine an icon associated with news stories linked on Facebook and Twitter that indicates the trustworthiness and fact-check status of the story and/or provider.

Facebook, Google and others are trying to figure out how to incorporate “trust indicators” into some content.

And…. not long after Facebook added “trust indicators” to linked news stories, they’re removing the feature. Instead, they’re automatically adding links to related stories, perhaps exposing users to multiple facets of a particular story.

Google has added a very innocuous side-bar on search results for media outlets as a low-friction method of indicating the trustworthiness of news outlets. This data, added only to sites that third-party factchecking sites have frequently cited as false, is only attached to websites and not to specific stories. Still, some conservatives are in a twist over this because they feel like they’re being disproportionately called out…. Shoot the bearer of bad news. :)

Verdict: 2/5

Television and radio have struggled to fact-check in real-time. Social media has fared slightly better, but until the Jan 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol (a phrase I couldn’t have predicted I’d be writing in 2016) social media was reticent to challenge lies. There have been some efforts to label untruthful “news” as such, but full-throated banning and purging at scale didn’t really begin in earnest until after the election.

14. Trump’s Cabinet

Trump has a cabinet largely populated by second-stringers and erstwhile has-beens because 1) Trump’s id can’t handle being challenged by competent adults so he’ll surround himself with sycophants and betas 2) He can’t attract legitimate talent for the same reasons he lacked/lost endorsements in 2016 3) He has a managerial style wholly unsuited for government. This team of inexperienced and incompetent buffoons causes his administration make a large number of amateurish mistakes and unforced errors which in turn makes it initially very ineffective. This gives the few “adults” in the administration disproportionate power. (Chief-of-Staff Gingrich will wield the real power?) This also empowers Congress to dictate the details of most every bill. The Trump Administration will learn how to maneuver at least somewhat effectively after a very rough start, but they will only appear professional when graded on a curve.

Seems to be mostly true. Nobody wants to work for him. Trump cannot fill 100’s of posts in his administration.

Moreover, those that do come work for him report he’s an abusive, demoralizing boss and many don’t last long.

When there are actual proficient adults in the administration they, unsurprisingly, keep things from going completely sideways. At least for a little while.

Verdict: 5/5

The longer Trump stayed in office and the more unhinged he became, the more difficult time he had attracting and retaining competent adults. He had an astronomically high 85% turnover rate and, well, it shows.

15. Promises Kept From 2016 Campaign

More than half of the outlandish promises Trump made during the 2016 campaign (e.g. a total travel ban on immigrants from “certain” areas of the world) are never followed through on in any meaningful way. When he’s called out on this in 2020, it fails to dissuade his base.

Verdict: 5/5

As of his last week in office, this website finds that only 21 of 174 promises made were achieved.

16. Congressional Investigations into Trump

Despite persistent calls for impeachment from a segment of the population, Trump is never investigated or prosecuted by Congress, as Congress is held by Republicans who don’t want to be primaried by failing an ideological purity test.

Well, Congress isn’t (yet?) investigating Trump, but the Justice Department is. So in one sense, I was wrong. In fact, Trump made one of the dumbest political moves possible when he fired the original investigator looking into Russian meddling in the election and then admitted on national TV that was the reason he fired Comey.

It remains to be seen what the investigation finds, and what actions are taken if indictments are handed down.

Verdict: 1/5

Trump was impeached twice. Half of all impeachments in the country’s history belong to him. As of this writing, it looks like there’s a decent chance he’ll be convicted by the Senate and may be denied his benefits and barred from running again. I’m glad to have been wrong about this one.

17. Democratic Resistance in Congress

Democrats in Congress put up consistent, but mostly ineffective, roadblocks to Trump’s agenda. Occasionally they offer effective opposition, filibuster, etc., but most of it is for show.

Verdict: 3/5

After winning back the House in 2018, the Democrats provided pretty effective resistance to Trump, impeaching him twice and simply not passing bills to support his agenda. However, he did manage to pack the courts and act unilaterally via Executive Orders.

18. The Resistance

Trump is hounded by protests everywhere he goes in the world for the entire four years, but he never alters his policies because of it.

Day One of the Trump Presidency was met with the Women’s March, which was the largest single-day protest in American History.

Verdict: 3/5

Trump endured pretty consistent protest and pushback, especially after police brutality protests came to head. He never really seemed to care and even tried to exploit bad actors on the left to take a Law-and-Order position in the 2020 election. That backfired pretty badly both before the election and especially after it.

19. Tax Reform

The tax code will not be significantly simplified, but Trump will say it is.

The 2017 Tax Reform and Jobs Act was passed with no Democratic votes and was by all accounts rushed. While the number of tax brackets was reduced, the tax code was not simplified in any meaningful way (in fact it may be more complex and have even more loopholes for the wealthy) and it has the added benefit of adding $1.5 trillion to the debt, eventually raising taxes for 53% of people, hamstringing the PPACA (which may have the ironic side-effect of making more people dependent on government-provided health insurance, so… gg GOP?) removing tools to jump-start the economy during the next recession, and shifting more capital to the wealthiest people.

Verdict: 4/5

The tax code is, if anything, more complex. To his credit (I guess) Trump didn’t make a big deal out of claiming he simplified it.

20. Ted Cruz is Terrible

Ted Cruz will still be the world record holder for douche-bagginess. Everyone, including most members of his immediate family, agrees that he would be immeasurably improved if he would cover himself in dog shit and then run headfirst into a brick wall.

This one is pretty much a gimme.

This interview with Ted Cruz is maybe the most overtly hypocritical thing you’ll ever witness.

Verdict: 5/5

Ted Cruz is possibly the least liked human in the Senate, assuming he’s human. You have to work so hard to be the least liked person in the Senate. It’s a sort of accomplishment.