Predictions for 2004 and Beyond

1. Dean will get better at controlling his mouth to hold on to the party nomination. After losing by 80 or more electoral votes, he will fade into obscurity with McGovern and the Clintons will succeed in pulling the party back to center in time for Hillary to run for president in 2008.
2. Daschle will lose his re-election bid to Thune, Bobby Jindal will win the Louisiana Senate seat left open by John Breaux. In all, Republicans will pick up four seats in the Senate.
3. Cheney will not drop out of the race due to "health reasons" to make way for VP that is being groomed for the presidency. Instead, Frist will complete his tenure as Senate Majority Leader (which is better training for president than the vice-job) and will begin positioning for a run in 2008 against Hillary.
4. Ed Bryant will run for Frist's seat in 2006 -- and win.
5. Bush will not announce plans to colonize the moon or man an expedition to Mars. There may be a shakeup at NASA and (hopefully) a redefinition of direction, but nothing that major.
6. Iraq will hold free elections in October, just in time to upstage Dean.
7. Everyone but France will stop talking about Kyoto as the true cost/benefit soaks into the public's consciousness.
8. Liberal Radio will become another failed dream.
9. With the Senate more firmly controlled by Republicans (with a 55-member majority), campaign finance will be revisited in 2005 with the aim to stop billionaires from controlling elections.
10. Also, the rules for "advise and consent" for judicial nominees will be restructured by 2006.
11. The DOW will increase to 11400 by year's end but will not establish a historical high. The NASDAQ will hit 2800.
12. The stocks to be in will be banks and biotech. Oh -- and wireless technology. Expect to see decent wireless modem access by the end of 2006. Also, the buzzwords of the year will be "grid computing" and "voice over IP".
13. It will be the year of the Athlon 64 processor as more software is written to take advantage of 64-bit processing. This will keep AMD alive and competitive for now.
14. Spam will move offshore. There will be no noticeable slowing of the deluge.
15. Spam controls and lapsing of internet tax moratorium were only the beginning. Congress will begin trying to regulate the internet, promising to eliminate the "digital divide" and control porn. Both initiatives will fail but will play well with voters.
16. The RIAA will scale back activities as internet music sites explode -- everyone from Costco to Joe's Garage will set up a site. But by year-end there will be consolidation in the industry.
17. Job needs in the tech sector will continue to grow, creating a crisis that will finally be addressed by Congress in 2005 when they rework requirements for H1B visas. As they will try to address all immigration problems at once they will only succeed in making the world's most complex immigrant program even more complex, to the point where only lawyers will benefit.
18. Yasser Arafat will finally die, a bloody power struggle will ensue and the person that takes his place will be an even bigger thug. Israel will make great progress on the security fence and the results will be very good. But there will be no progress on the "roadmap".
19. Tre Hargett will become Majority Leader of the TN House as Republicans finally take control. Neifeh loses his re-election bid.
20. I will return to school to work on a masters degree in Political Science. I will quickly change my mind because I must work to support my addiction, blogging, and will find that I cannot do all three (work, school, blog). I will then attempt to establish a 12-step program to help bloggers control their addiction, but will fail because I will blog everything I do.
21. My wife will, inexplicably, continue to support me in everything I do.

22. Kurds will be given semi-autonomy in the new government of Iraq, which will prove to be a mistake. (Of course, not giving them autonomy could be predicted to be a mistake. No matter which way it goes, someone isn't going to like it and make trouble, so any prognosticator can point at it and say, "See? I told you so!")
23. U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair will rebound from his current problems and begin to remake his party. I hope that he will take it Right, but of course he won't.
24. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder will lose the next election and his Social Democrat party will take a beating as well.
25. Russian President Vladimir Putin will continue to take control of the country to the point of making a mockery of democracy. It will all be fine -- for now. If anything happens to him the resulting power struggle could prove dangerous to that part of the world.
26. All attempts at passing an EU constitution will fail next year -- and probably the next as well.
27. China's first fumbling attempts at allowing private property will be successful and exceed the governments expectations. But no further changes will be implemented in 2004.
28. There will be a major terrorist attack on American interests, probably on the east coast, in an attempt to influence the election. Failure of the attack will ensure a Bush landslide. But the thing is, depending on how it is handled, even a successful attack may lead to a Bush landslide if the Democrat nominee is perceived as weak on Homeland Security.
29. The pope will die. Francis Arinze from Nigeria will not be selected to take his place (he's black). Instead, it will be Dionigi Tettamanzi.
30. Osama bin Laden will be found alive in the badlands of Pakistan. He will be killed during the capture attempt.
31. Iran will make no progress towards democracy. Dissent inside the country will appear to be disorganized and ineffective as the mullahs continue to come down hard on protesters and activists.
32. North Korea will continue to stall. Each time a multinational conference is about to take place, North Korea will find a way to derail it. Washington will pressure China. China will pressure North Korea, but not too much. It is in China's interest to have Bush lose.

Blog post #2097 in category Miscellaneous

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