The Next President

Introduction

WARNING:  What you’re about to read is non-partisan and apolitical.   Reader discretion is advised.

Election cycles seem to arrive with greater frequency, not literally of course, but the campaign seasons seem to overlap.  The 2020 election cycle is in full swing and candidates are positioning themselves for the vote that’s 21 months away.  In order to understand how the 2020 election will unfold, we need to find the origins of the country’s social mood, which can no longer be debated — it’s heavily polarized.

Electoral History (2000-2008)

I would posit that catalysts for polarization began with the contested election of 2000.  Recall the events of the Florida statewide vote when the term “hanging chad” entered the lexicon.  The term didn’t refer to an execution of someone named Chad, but rather an anomaly in a paper ballot.  That election resulted in a Supreme Court case that effectively awarded Florida’s electoral college votes to the Republican candidate.  The immediate social effect for Democrats was presidential illegitimacy.  Lost in the postmortem was the fact the Democratic challenger lost his home state, a state where he’d served as senator and where his father had served in public office.  Winning that state would have rendered the Florida case moot.

Coincident with the 2000 election was the end of an important economic cycle.  The public experienced the cycle’s end with the dot com crash.  That crash is the first of three financial and economic events that have shaped political preferences.  Thus, 2000 represented an important point in history both socially and economically.

We experienced brief national unity after the events of 9/11 and a recovering economy.  As we moved towards the presidential election of 2004, the mood worsened though not to the extent it would in the future.  The GOP incumbent won a narrow victory in the Electoral College and by over 3 million in the popular vote.

As we entered the 2008 election, I knew the GOP had no chance with the financial crisis and worsening economy.  It would simply be a matter of naming the Democratic party challenger.  A first-term senator from Illinois stole the spotlight, became the Democratic nominee and eventually president.   Immediately after the election, I read the book, The Audacity of Hope, to get a sense of how the president-elect would govern.  It was clear he viewed government as an instrument of social change.

No incumbent president or vice president ran in this election for the first time in over 50 years.  The absence of incumbency added a unique texture to the election.  The lack of political continuity represented a break with the past.  While this break afforded opportunities for new entrants to the political sphere, it also added turbulence to our national discourse as new ideas and philosophies challenged established dogma.

Social Mood Post-2008 Election

In the aftermath of 2008 financial crisis (crash number two), a couple of important movements emerged, defining the country’s social mood.  In my book, Escaping Oz: Protecting your wealth during the financial crisis (published late 2010), I wrote this in a chapter entitled, Human Behavior,

Overall, there is a groundswell of discontent without party affiliation with the Tea Party receiving the most attention.  To consider them an organized political party at this point is premature…..While the Tea Party itself may not become an organized political party, it may serve as the basis for a viable third party in the United States.

The Tea Party was a visceral reaction to the government bailout/spending that, in their estimation, should have never occurred.  Public anger then reached center stage during town hall debates regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The ensuing backlash featured racial epithets, nasty voicemails, and property destruction.  There seemed to be no middle ground on the ACA, you were in favor or vehemently opposed.  This polarity expressed itself among lawmakers and the public.

About a year after the passage of the ACA, a protest movement called Occupy Wall Street (OWS) began in September of 2011 in the Wall Street financial district.  This protest movement addressed social and economic inequality, greed, and corruption in the financial services sector.  This same sector received the much of the government’s largesse during the bailouts of the 2008 financial crisis.  The chasm between Main Street and Wall Street widened.

The Tea Party and OWS had something in common — they were mad at government — and yet differed in reasons for their anger.  Tea partiers thought the government should butt out while OWS felt the government needed to butt in.  Neither group supported the bailouts as delivered.

2012 Election

Fast forward to 2012 and the country’s mood remained fractured despite improved statistical economic measures and a strong stock market recovery.  It’s vitally important the reader understand this point.  Despite improved statistical economic measures and a strong stock market recovery, social mood continued worsening.  Generally, there’s a much stronger correlation between mood and economic statistics.  The divergence was largely a function of the #Omnibubble created by our financial Wizards.  This divergence created more inequality and continues to feed social anger.

Despite the cratering social mood, I would have bet a large sum that the incumbent president would be reelected in 2012.  He was.

Social Mood and Word of the Year

Before we get to the 2016 contest, let’s examine what happened from 2012 to 2016.  One gauge of social mood is studying the Word of the Year.  I discussed this in Escaping Oz: An Observer’s Reflections.  What do words of the year from 2012 to 2016 suggest?

(2012)  Socialism/Capitalism

(2013)  Science

(2014)  Culture

(2015)  –ism (socialism, fascism, racism)

(2016)  Post-truth

From 2012 to 2016 the economy continued to improve, though the “recovery” was not equally distributed.  I found it interesting that the “isms” were prominent in two of the five words of the year.  The suffix “ism” defines specific ideologies.  Society drifted toward ideological identification.  An anxious public searched for something.  There was no unification.

These ideological associations fold well into the 2016 word of the year, “post-truth.”  According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word is an adjective defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion or personal belief.”  It’s hard to debate that appeals to emotion shape what we consume in the twenty-four hour news cycle.  Emotional appeal and divorce from objective facts made the nation’s psyche quite fragile.  Politicians, keen in understanding the fragility, are too eager to cater to public emotion that’s only exacerbating our nation’s division.  Public angst belied surface level economic strength.

2016 Election

The lead up to the 2016 election reflected good economic statistics, a higher stock market and an economic recovery whose pace was tepid.  For the second time in eight years, no incumbent president or vice president ran for the highest office in the land.  The lack of an incumbent represented yet another discontinuity with the recent past.  Mix in the increased political divide and you had the makings of an election that would be something to behold.

I want to focus on three candidates from the 2016 election: Dr. Carson, Sanders,  and Trump.  The seeds for these three candidacies were sown many years ago.  I’ll direct the reader to the earlier quote from my book where I noted “the groundswell of discontent without party affiliation.”   While the seeds of discontent were certainly present, politics in this country does not facilitate running for the highest office, or most offices for that matter, as something other than a Democrat or Republican.  None of these three candidates fit into existing political parties, yet were forced to affiliate with them to have an audience and satisfy fundraising.

A year before election day, Dr. Carson polled ahead of the eventual 45th president and was the favorite among GOP hopefuls.  I single out Dr. Carson since he was a political neophyte who appealed to those identifying as Tea partiers.  What does it say when the leading contender in 2015 for the GOP nomination was a conservative non-politician and the candidate polling behind him, who’d eventually become the 45th president, claimed notoriety outside the political sphere?  Both candidates represented a clear break with the past.

The then Mr. Trump seemingly had the entire GOP marshaled against him.  Remember the “never Trump” movement within the party?  I remember many celebrities vowing to leave the country if Mr. Trump were elected.  Even the 44th president suggested Mr. Trump would not be president.  It certainly looked that way about a month before the election when audio emerged of the future 45th president making remarks about female genitalia.  It didn’t matter.  Remember when President Clinton got dubbed the “Teflon candidate” in 1992.  We had a new leader in the clubhouse.

The other candidate focus is on Senator Sanders.  The declared Independent caucuses with Democrats and is an avowed democratic-socialist.  Whatever you might think of his policies, the energy at his rallies was palpable.  Were it not for machinations at the Democratic National Committee, he might have been their nominee in 2016.   Contemplate that for a moment.  The GOP contender from far outside the political realm versus a democratic-socialist.  It’s not a stretch to imagine Sanders as the 45th president.  The eventual Democratic nominee drew nearly 3 million more popular votes than the GOP winner.  It’s also not a stretch to envision Senator Sanders winning the electoral vote in states the Democratic nominee lost.  Social mood and discontinuity with the old political order brought us the 2016 election.

The country loathed their eventual choices in 2016.  For all the talk of the electorate’s anger, it didn’t appear to draw them to the ballot box.  As I wrote in Escaping Oz: An Observer’s Reflections,

Social apathy is very evident when considering active voters.  You might have anticipated higher voter turnout in 2016 since there was great loathing for the opposition candidate.  In fact, there were more voters at the polls, though only 55.3% eligible to vote did so, a mere 0.4% more than in 2012.  In one state, Hawaii, only 38% of the voting age public showed up.  In California, 700,000 more people voted (yes or no) on Prop 64 (Marijuana Legalization) than the combined votes of Trump and Clinton.  There were more votes on Prop 60 (Adult Film Condom Requirements) than the combined Trump and Clinton tallies.

The one thing I absolutely knew after the results of the 2016 election was that what I called the “Bernie movement” was far from dead.  I stated to friends and business associates that the word “progressive” would be common in the political vernacular moving into the 2018 election and beyond.  It’s no coincidence his policy positions are being adopted by those who successfully ran for office in 2018 and with declared candidates for 2020.  I’ve heard numerous GOP or conservative commentators equate Sanders’ progressivism/socialism with failed regimes in Cuba/USSR/Venezuela.  Strategically, this is a grave mistake.  The brand of socialism espoused by Sanders and his acolytes is more akin to what exists in the Nordic countries or perhaps Denmark.  I would also note that Sanders tilts towards domestic versus international priorities — much like the 45th president.

2020 Election

The setup for the 2020 election will be the bursting of the #Omnibubble and income/wealth inequality.  Sanders and his policy adherents will be perfectly positioned to address both.  Let me digress for a moment.  The economic recovery of the last decade has been tepid and felt quite differently between Wall Street and Main Street.  With all the discussion of RussiaGate, immigration, walls and government shutdown, the media’s not cast a spotlight on the flashing red light on the economic dashboard — the nation’s debt.  We added a cool trillion to the nation’s debt during a year with an ostensibly healthy economy.  This is unprecedented and dangerous.  Additional debt is now hurting long-term economic growth.

While we don’t know when the #Omnibubble bursts, many signs have emerged.  Not if, but when this occurs, there will be calls for government action.  Trillion dollar additions to debt will be the good ole days.  Get ready to hear more about something called Modern Monetary Theory or MMT which rationalizes government debt for the national good.   This time it won’t be Wall Street telling government what to do.  It will be government telling Wall Street and the Fed, those that I affectionately call “Wizards” in my Escaping Oz books, what they’re going to do.  Any politician calling for a bailout of Wall Street will meet the full force and fury of a populist uprising.

The country is ripe for the emergence of brand new, political third parties.  I don’t mean a one and done political run.  Thus far we’ve heard rumblings of a couple of candidates potentially running under a third party banner, to the chagrin of established parties who always claim that a third party vote is a wasted vote.  It’s that sort of thinking that limits choices.  I think the American public spoke loud and clear through their support of the three candidates mentioned earlier who did not fit the established political mode — and one of them became president.  Recall also how many more people in California voted for propositions versus the two main candidates for president.

If the #Omnibubble continues to unravel, it will practically guarantee a Democratic victory in 2020.  The Dems will have a woman on the ticket as Prez or VP.  The challenge for the Dems is coalescing around a candidate and an ideology.  Will it be more centrist or tilt in the direction of Senator Sanders?  If they cannot coalesce, would a third party, say Progressive candidate emerge?  Who will challenge the 45th president either within his own party or separately?

Presuming the two party system remains intact, the next president will sound like a Progressive.  Don’t get encumbered with naming conventions.  The aim is to show the nation’s political tilt.  There will be a strong lean on the part of both parties towards using government as an instrument to fix economic problems, the clash of politics and economics discussed throughout my books.  This outcome was guaranteed when a GOP controlled Congress and White House added a trillion to the nation’s debt in a strong economy.

Both major parties have drifted on the political spectrum from the vision of the Founding Fathers towards the “isms” noted earlier.  How do we know this?  Look at the size of our nation’s funded and unfunded liabilities.  We’ve asked government (Republicans and Democrats) to do more and more, and they’ve complied.  This will also be our future — more government participation.  Call that participation whatever appropriate.  The government is under no fiscal restraint, for the time being, permitting the unbridled expansion of power and reach.  That trend will continue unabated until there is a monetary crisis.

My concern for some time has been that capitalism will be branded a failure.  Unfortunately, what we’ve experienced since 1971 is a quasi-capitalism that’s morphed into a crony-capitalism supported by the Wizards.  This is not capitalism.  The consequences inevitably result in the embrace of other economic systems.

Who will be the next president?  I can’t tell you what she or he will look like but I can tell you what they’ll sound like — a progressive democratic-socialist.