MY PREDICTION WAS ACCURATE


The art of prediction nowadays is no longer magical but scientific and I learned this over a decade ago through the 1991 New York Times bestseller by Pat Robinson’s “The New World Order”. Mr. Robinson made no less than ten major and profound predictions to happen in the world of economics and governance before the year 2000 and he was 90% accurate. In any given situation, once you study the subject well and you are abreast of its progress and development, you would be able to pre-empt the direction it is likely to take with increasing accuracy. Last week, on the eve of the American elections, I wrote an article “WOULD TRUMP LOOSE?” where I predicted that the incumbent president Donald Trump would lose. I responded to my question with an affirmative and cited my reasons. The pollsters had put Biden consistently since the beginning of the pandemic ahead of Trump on national polls with a wide margin of between 8-9%. On the swing states too, there is a margin of between 0-2%. Had there been no pandemic I think Trump would have been a tough opponent to beat, considering just before the outbreak, American economy was at its highest rise and employment at its lowest in 70 years. Trump’s handling of the corona virus was so poor that America became the epicenter of the pandemic with the highest lost of lives and infection.

On the other hand, the way Trump handled critical issues like immigration, race relations, his unilateralism, unguarded statements etc had earned him more enemies within and outside America. He fired many of his people from the white house and the administration like no other president in the past. That had made him lost key and critical supporters (Take John Bolton) that started working against his re-election. The way he divided America also worked against him as opponents are looked upon as enemies which heated the polity and entrenched the polarity. The economic downturn has impacted on so many lives especially the youth, thus we have seen the biggest mobilization of youth voters in this election which I, like everyone that is following the election, can discern the possibility of being a record election in terms of voter turnout. The black lives matter protests after the extrajudicial killing of George Floyd enraged colored peoples and minorities across American and they turned out enmasse to vote him out. Biden has made history with the highest votes ever received by a candidate in the American elections and the elections too had the highest voter turnout as well as the republican votes. I also predicted that Biden’s gap in the overall votes against Trump would be higher than the gap Trump gave Hilary in 2016 (we are now having over four million votes and still counting, between them, higher than the 3.5 million votes Hilary gave Trump). My prediction on the Electoral College, that it would be a narrow margin, wasn’t quite that, considering at the end of the day Biden is going to get over 300 electoral votes with as many as over 50 votes difference.

At last Trump would join the ignoble club of one time president, an anathema to any politician in America but he will have the consolation, which I also pointed out, of packing the Supreme Court with conservative judges. He appointed three in his four years and it tilted the balance heavily. You cannot appreciate this legacy of Trump until you understand that the Supreme Court is originally conceived by the American founding fathers as a means to implement policies that couldn’t get through either the legislature or the executives. We have seen the landmark gay marriage ruling during the Obama administration, something that couldn’t pass through a legislature that has republicans as majority. The Supreme Court justices’ serves for life and with the 6 conservative justices against the 3 liberals, we are set on having conservative supreme court for a generation at least.

Now that the Democrats are here we should brace up for America’s rejoining the climate change accord, talks on denuclearization of Iran, military build up in flash points around the world, rejoining WHO and the general revival of multilateralism.

The American politics had always been like this, that is periodically the Republicans used to stir murky waters, heat the polity and the Democrats will come preaching unity, pacification etc. Richard Nixon, a republican, was the first president to resign in 1974 over the Watergate scandal. Jimmy Carter, a democrat replaced him, he also enjoyed one term due to the American hostage crisis in Iran during the 1979 Ayatollah Islamic revolution. Ronald Reagan, a republican, succeeded Carter and enjoyed two terms until 1988 when Bush Senior, his own vice president succeeds him. The first gulf war cost Bush his re-election and Clinton, a democrat, succeeded him and served two term of economic prosperity. Bush junior came in after a heated campaign and elections that has to be decided by the Supreme Court. The most tumultuous two terms, were indeed Bush junior’s, as we saw the 9/11, Afghan and Iraqi wars. Obama succeeded Bush and stabilize America until when Trump came. We have seen how Trump is edged out as Biden became the 46th president of the United States. The swing between the republicans and democrats in American elections were like movie scripts and the only difference between the two in implementing American domestic and foreign policy is about procedure not essence. The essence has always been the same with different tactics until when Donald Trump came. I believe Biden and the Democratic Party will try as much as they can to bring back that status quo that was disrupted by Donald Trump.

America is lucky in dismissing Trump as China under him has all the advantages of clinching the coveted position of most powerful economy in the world. If the Americans will re-invent their lost values in education and research, which China is concentrating on now, they might have the chance of continuing their leadership position for a few more years, as China is certainly poised to overtake them sooner or later. China ascendency scares me for many reasons which are not in the purview of this article. May God help humanity in the decades that are coming as we are collectively facing grave threats in climate change, growing nationalism, increased poverty and wealth disparity between nations and individuals.

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