It’s that time of year again! Time for us to peer into the deep beyond, pensively, with furrowed brows, and jot down our predictions for the new year.
How did we fare last year? See here.
Happy New Year to our Legal Insurrection family. 2018 was a tough year, but I’m optimistic about 2019. Here are my predictions:
1. I’m sticking with my 2018 prediction: As the Democrat field fills up with losers and users, Democrats of all stripes will panic at the thought that none of them can beat Trump. There will be a clamoring for a Democrat candidate who can unify and motivate the Democrat base and establishment sufficiently to defeat Donald Trump in 2020: Michelle Obama. She says she doesn’t want to be president, but there isn’t a Democrat who could come close to beating her in the primaries. It may take some time, maybe even into 2020, but wait for it.
2. Robert Mueller will issue his report, and it will not show any meaningful Trump campaign collusion with the Russians regarding the election. But it will try to make the case that Trump obstructed justice.
3. Democrats in the House will go so over the top in the attempt to get Trump that they will end up helping Trump. Republicans will run against Nancy Pelosi as a campaign issue in 2020, and that strategy will ramp up during 2019.
4. There will be a major confrontation between Iran/Hezbollah and Israel. Israeli cities will come under unprecedented rocket and missile fire, causing hundreds and possibly thousands of deaths. Lebanon will be flattened in retaliation since the missiles and rockets will be fired from civilian areas. The international media will blame Israel.
5. There will be a major announcement about Legal Insurrection. It will change your world, and rock you to the bottom of your soul. (Or at least, surprise you.)
Happy New Year to you and yours. May it be a year brimming with hope, peace, fulfillment, and joy. 2018 was hard. It was a year of changes, difficulties in abundance, and preparation. Headed into 2019, there’s a settledness that wasn’t here before, which has me more confident about the days to come.
I’m not sure I’ve fully recovered from the 2016 election, but ready or not, 2020 is about to kick it into high gear. At least this time, the candidate bloodbath will be amongst the Democrats. Trump’s signature needling will make the whole sideshow extra to the max.
So what do I think will happen in 2019?
1. Democrats will continue to overplay their hand, reacting to every bite and parcel of truth and reasonableness with as much insanity as they can muster, further alienating themselves from the general public, dragging their Hollywood counterparts with them. It will be glorious. A handful of Republicans (you know, those guys), will join them on their journey into irrelevance.
2. The media will act similarly, continuing to feign the moral high ground, biting at every Trump provocation on cue. Suggesting missing planes were sucked into a black hole will look sane compared to what’s to come.
3. Trump will not cease his Trumpness and by virtue of being, elicit the crazy from the crazy. The chasm between the irrational and the rational will widen. Many will be drawn to clear-headed reasonableness. Far more will not. Humbleness and boldness can coexist and should, especially this year, especially in this fight. Kindness goes a long way.
4. It’s going to be a good year.
4a. See Professor Jacobson’s 5th prediction and get excited. Very excited.
As for the rest of life, I look forward to a year full growth, of new memories. Most of all, I’m thankful to be here. Blessed to have an amazing husband and lovely family. Thankful to have another day to love and be loved, and grateful to spend my days with the LI family and you.
I predict a crazy 2019. The Democrats will hate Trump more than they already do. The party itself may implode as it prepares to take on Trump in 2020. I imagine they’ll give us a popcorn-worthy performance filled with contradictions and hypocrisy as each person fights to be the one to battle Trump. The MSM has passed the point of no return so they’ll continue on their downward spiral. I’m a tad excited!
But overall, underneath everything, everything will remain the same. Government will stay bloated. Politicians will say one thing and do the other. Planned Parenthood won’t lose federal funding. The world will keep turning and America stays the best country in the world despite some problems.
Personally, I hope my rheumatoid arthritis goes into remission. I doubt it will so I will keep fighting. You guys may not realize I am in pain every day. I have many days where I fight to get to the end of the day, but I do it with a smile on my face. Be kind to everyone because it’s the decent thing to do, but you never know what battles they’re fighting.
Happy New Year, Legal Insurrection team and reader family! May your 2019 be a wonderful year filled with love, light, and laughter.
I suspect that much of our laughter will be aimed at the Democrats in the coming year because they just won’t be able to help themselves and are all but destined to create an atmosphere that guarantee a second Trump term.
Along those lines, here are my 2019 predictions:
1. House Democrats are going to overreach in new and inventive ways that alienate moderate Democrat and left-leaning voters to the point that movements like #WalkAway and #Blexit take off into the stratosphere. With or without party leadership support, the fresh batch of crazed socialist Democrats are going to pursue impeachment of President Trump (and possibly even of Justice Kavanaugh). These attempts won’t go anywhere, but will invigorate the lunatic progressive socialist fringe, while the American people will be turned off in droves.
2. The crowded commie clown show that will be the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary field will create havoc on the left. The vocal but fringe progressive SJW socialist base will reject white men (and women) out of hand, while the progressive socialist base will be pushing its white heroes Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. The more moderate Democrats will want a tried and true progressive white male like Gropin’ Joe Biden, and the more moderate SJW Democrats will want Robert O’Rourke (who will be laughed off the national stage in a New York minute). The more strategic Democrats will want Michelle Obama or Sherrod Brown, both of whom can sell themselves as appealing to crossover, if ill-informed, voters. I still think that Spartacus Booker is their best bet (but don’t tell anyone).
3. Related to the above, I think it’s safe to count out Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bloomberg. Harris is dwarfed by Bernie, Michelle Obama, O’Rourke, and Elizabeth Warren; in this age of shrill shrieking from the left, she’s just another shrill shrieker and simply doesn’t have what it takes to get off the ground. Klobuchar is only being considered because she’s seen as someone who can bring home the rust belt voters who went with Trump in 2016, but she’s flat, boring, and far too “nice” to stand toe-to-toe with Trump. Bloomberg and his nannying, not to mention his war on the Second Amendment, are a non-starter.
4. Trump will regret answering any of Mueller’s questions and will wish he had listened to the prof who advised strongly and repeatedly not to do this.
5. The attempts to deplatform conservatives and right-leaning voices in social media will continue, and depending on how successful they are, will quickly move to all but the most frothing-at-the-mouth socialist progressives.
6. The agitation from the left will escalate as they try to perfect their do-over of their failed 1960’s revolution. To that end, there will be more anti-Trump, anti-capitalist, anti-American protests, Antifa fascists will ramp up their activities, and a range of leftist identity groups will become ever more militant.
7. There is a silver lining to all of this: as the Democrats and their media and Big Tech allies overreach and tighten the screws on normal Americans, there will be backlash. Democrat favorability will decline, distrust in media will spike, and Big Tech will find that alienating more than two-thirds of the American populace wasn’t such a good move after all. Normal Americans will be increasingly repelled by the violence and rhetoric of militant leftists, and while they may get their 1960’s do-over, it will end the same way: with their abject failure and relegation back to the fringes where they belong.
I’m not one for making New Years’ resolutions, but if I were to make one, it would be this: channel my anger and outrage into constructive and positive endeavors like educating voters about the socialist Democrats: about their true agenda and about the real world disaster their agenda would inflict on all but the richest, powerful, and politically-connected. If even a few of us did this, we could turn back this red tide.
The media, which has been obsessively negative for two years and focused almost exclusively on Trump, will suddenly start reporting lots of positive news about the now Democrat controlled House and everything they want. Expect issues like climate change, socialized healthcare, and gun control to be front and center.
The 2020 election and defeating Trump will also become daily news, as dozens of Democrats announce their intention to run.
We are about to enter a two-year campaign by the Democrat Media Complex to oust Trump in 2020 at any cost.
Based on the news topics I cover, as well as recent developments related to these areas, I would like to make 3 predictions about events that we are likely to see in 2019.
1) Given the amount of earthquake and volcanic activity in the “Ring of Fire”, I predict that there will be a volcanic eruption so significant that it will impact global temperatures. The ensuing temperature plunge will be blamed on mankind.
2) As attendance and donations drop in the Catholic Church, due to the continuing sex scandals and needless political involvement that is overseen by church leadership, Pope Francis will follow his predecessor into retirement.
3) President Trump will remove troops from Afghanistan, as he begins to rely on regional allies for anti-terror support. More security attention will be focused on China, as we help strengthen regional allies Japan, India and the Koreas. And while there won’t be an official end to the Korean War in 2019, North and South Korea will continue to reconnect economically — and while there may be theatrical dialog between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, it will be done to distract attention away from the slow, steady progress toward peace.
See you next New Year’s Day to see how I did!
After failing to foresee the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election, I vowed never to make any political prediction again. Having said that, there are some trends I will be keeping an eye on in 2019.
The European voters will be electing a new EU parliament in May. For the first time in the bloc’s 60-year history, a pan-European alliance of anti-establishment parties poses a serious challenge to the political class in Brussels. Traditionally, the Left has been apt at infiltrating institutions and subverting them into tools for enforcing their ideological agenda. But UKIP’s Nigel Farage has already shown how to beat the EU elite at their own game. Will the European Right put on a united front to stall the EU power-grab? With the growing popular discontent over illegal immigration, surging crime, and austerity, the EU election is there’s to lose.
I will be following the Israeli elections scheduled for early April. The Jewish State will need a strong political leadership to face an increasingly belligerent Hamas-Hezbollah alliance. Will the new U.S. economic sanctions cripple Iran’s ability to arm and finance these terror proxies? The coming year will tell.
I will be keenly watching China’s One Belt One Road Initiative, as it makes inroads into Europe and Eurasia. Beijing’s hold on Europe’s ports, railways, and road assets will be a commercial and strategic game changer. Do these developments carry the seeds of the conflicts of tomorrow? We may have to wait longer to figure that one out.
Two predictions:
1) The Women’s March movement burdened by the anti-Semitism and fortune seeking of its leadership and by its untenable racist ideology will collapse.
2) Another publication – one that is both bigger and more mainstream than The Weekly Standard – will collapse.
Last year I played it quite safe with my predictions, and sure enough, they all came true. But hey, what use are predictions if you’re going to play it safe? So now I’ll go out on a small limb (more like a twig, actually) and predict:
(1) Trump won’t be impeached, but the Democrats will threaten it at every turn.
(2) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s star will keep rising as Elizabeth Warren’s sinks slowly into the sunset.
(3) Like the Energizer bunny, Mueller will just keep going and going and going—or, alternatively, will issue a report that won’t be made public.
Happy New Year to all!
I hate to admit it, but political scientists are notoriously lousy forecasters (e.g., they didn’t anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union; they were writing about the Branch Davidians when Al Qaeda was plotting 9/11; they thought Donald Trump’s victory would be very, very unlikely). So, as a political scientist, I probably should be sitting this one out. But, for what they’re worth, below are my three New Year predictions for 2019, each related to the anti-Israel movement arrayed against the Jewish state and the prospects for Middle East peace—the two main topics that I write about at Legal Insurrection:
Prediction #1: The MSM will continue to obsess on Israel’s alleged transgressions while ignoring the abuses of the so-called ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority (PA)—presumed to be Israel’s ‘partner for peace’. To take just one example: this past year saw the PA cracking down hard on Arabs who sell homes and property to Jews. Yet even when an American gets ensnared in this bigotry, as has recently happened, it’s pretty much a non-story outside of the Israeli media. Expect this trend to continue—and to get even worse in 2019.
Prediction #2: Despite some recent shake-ups in Israel’s coalitional politics (i.e., Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked just bailed on their party to form a new one that they’re calling the ‘New Right’), PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party will have a big win in the upcoming April elections (I expect that Netanyahu won’t be indicted beforehand). Note though that the Joint List—the coalition of Arab political parties—will end up among the top five, and may even emerge as Israel’s third largest party, thus dispelling yet again the insanely stupid claim that Israel is an ‘apartheid state’.
Prediction #3: The virulently anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement will become even nastier in the coming year. We’ll see fewer divestment resolutions being proposed, debated on and voted up in college student governments but we will see more obnoxious efforts to isolate Jews on campus and even to ‘kick the Zionists’ out. More faculty will play a visible role in advancing BDS and the academic boycott of Israel, while a lot of anti-Israel activism will also take place off campus—in city politics, K-12 education, and in mainline churches. Once again, mainstream Jewish organizations will be asleep-at-the-switch as BDS campaigns score new wins in these arenas.
Despite my political science training, I’m fairly confident these things will happen in the coming year, which will give me a lot of material on which to write about for LI in 2019.
Happy New Year to all!
Hollywood’s march into Social Justice will continue unabated. The Oscars will probably forget to nominate Blackkklansman or Crazy Rich Asians for anything and #OscarsSoWhite” will return with a vengeance. Beyond that, the entertainment industry will continue to double down on progressive protest movies. Worst-case scenario: this problem seeps into major non-politicized blockbusters like Avengers and Star Wars and the moments that should be uniting in seeing a big exciting film together becomes contentious and helps to further fray the tenuous bonds that are barely holding society together.
Bonus Round: Frozen 2 is probably going to become a point of contention when it’s revealed trailer comes out this summer and it’s revealed the plot is extremely “woke”. Disney might very well play it safe but they know that the movie is going to earn them a $1 Billion domestic and they might capitulate to the progressive crowd to get the film more press.
My prediction for 2019 is first of all, never try and predict anything in Israel! No matter how certain we are of the situation when we go to bed at night, you can be sure that by the morning everything will be turned on its head! Just this week we have seen the splitting of the Bayit Yehudi party, and today the collapse of the Zionist Union party. I can probably safely predict that by the time the general elections roll round in April there will be 120 parties contending for 120 Knesset seats. Nevertheless somehow yet another coalition will be cobbled together, led more than likely by Binyamin Netanyahu once again (though please don’t hold me to this prediction! Nothing is certain at the moment).
Beyond that I do not dare predict anything regarding Israel’s security situation: not when the next flare up will be with Hamas, where, when or if the next clash with Hezbollah will be, nor what might happen in the Middle East now that the US will be withdrawing its troops from Syria. The only thing I think I can predict (I hope, please God) that Israel will prevail in all these arenas.
I can safely predict that Israeli medical researchers will continue to invent new medicines and medical treatments to save our lives, Israeli startups will come up with brilliant devices to make our lives easier, Israeli writers will continue to produce great TV shows that sell all over the world, and that Israel will continue to be a beautiful, thriving, growing and robust country with a strong national identity and proudly patriotic population.
Yes, I’m sure we will face many challenges in 2019, but I am sure that with God’s help we will overcome them just like we did in 2018.
I wish all my friends here at LI, and all our supporters in the United States and worldwide, a year of health, joy, prosperity and peace.
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