As foreshadowed by our podcast, it's time for the traditional ICBW end-of-year predictions post.  As always, we begin with our (rather unimpressive) slate of predictions for the past year:

• The US economy will slow markedly starting in early-to-mid 2019, though not into recession territory.  The stock markets will continue to decline throughout the year, rallying late but not by enough to prevent an overall negative year.  Real estate prices will also continue their decline, but oil prices will rebound modestly from their recent lows.

By no means is this the first time we have underestimated the resiliency of the current bubble economic recovery.

• President Trump's approval ratings will continue their stable modestly-underwater trend throughout 2019.  There will continue to be multiple non-stop investigations--this time including Congressional ones--of the president's activities, but they will result in no immediate legal jeopardy to the president himself, nor will he be impeached by the House of Representatives.  Numerous White House staffers and cabinet members will be investigated and prosecuted, however--including by politically ambitious state prosecutors unconnected with Congressional or Department of Justice investigations.

The first part of the prediction was rock-solid, but not only has Trump now been impeached, but the pace of investigation of Trump administration officials has been so lackadaisical that this tracking page hasn't been updated since March.  Apparently, Trump has the uncanny ability not only to draw an inordinate amount of media attention towards himself, but an inordinate amount of investigative attention, as well.

• The frontrunners for the Democratic Party presidential nomination at the end of the year will be the most viable candidates from the party's "mainstream" (read:  minority) and "progressive" (read:  upper-class/would-be upper-class) wings.  Kamala Harris and Kirstin Gillibrand are the current favorites for these respective roles.

I actually have a pretty consistent record of getting presidential nominees badly wrong, and this one fits the pattern.  However, my breakdown of the Democratic party's structure is now conventional wisdom, with Biden the favorite of the mainstream/minority wing, and Warren and Sanders splitting the upper-class/would-be upper-class wing's support.

• In Europe, "Hard Brexit"--without a negotiated deal--will come to pass, with far milder consequences than opponents are predicting.  As a result, British PM Theresa May will survive in office through 2019--partly out of Tory fear of the electorate, and partly out of the inability of her divided party (mirroring the pre-Trump US GOP's business/blue-collar split) to coalesce around an acceptable alternative.  Meanwhile, the EU will calm its many internal rebellions by acquiescing to greater immigration restrictions across the union.

This one almost came true, but some deft parliamentary maneuvering by remainers prevented it.  As a result, May was toppled and new PM Boris Johnson looks able to ram through a Brexit deal in January.  As for EU immigration policy, it seems more intent--for now, at least--on pushing the lump in the carpet around rather than flattening it.

• Justin Trudeau will win a comfortable majority in the coming Canadian federal election.  (Canadians usually re-elect their prime ministers at least once if they don't completely screw up on the job.)  Likewise, Benjamin Netanyahu will win re-election and remain in office through 2019, although a corruption indictment will be delivered against him, and its resulting legal process will drag on through the year, hanging over his political career without actually ending it.

I slightly overestimated the political strength of both leaders, although the real consequences of the difference remain to be seen.  Trudeau's near-majority is in practice little less stable than a majority, and while Netanyahu just barely failed to cobble together a coalition over two elections, his opponents have also failed to form one, and as a result he continues to be Israel's PM, despite the indictments issued against him.

• The combination of US withdrawal from Syria and increased Turkish intervention there to suppress the Syrian Kurds' territorial ambitions will turn the Syrian conflict into a Turkish-Iranian one, with the two would-be hegemons unable to work out an acceptable partition of the now-recolonized country.  Russia will recapitulate its historic rivalry with Turkey by siding with Iran, and the US will thus be pushed by its NATO commitments and geopolitical interests into siding with Turkey, despite the many tension-generating issues dividing the two countries (which may in turn be assuaged somewhat by this partnership).  Meanwhile, the US will reduce, if not eliminate, its involvement in Afghanistan, and refocus its energies on other geopolitical threats, such as China.

While this prediction accurately reflects the likely overall direction of the regional conflicts, it overstates the speed of their evolution.  Turkey and Iran aren't yet in full conflict, and Russia and the US are both still courting Turkey without either having fully won it over yet.  The predicted Afghanistan drawdown, on the other hand, has already begun.

• Louis CK's comeback will spark a minor explosion of politically incorrect comedy, as stand-up comedians escalate from complaining about politically driven constraints on their material to actively rebelling against them.  The change will mark a tipping point in cultural acceptance of leftist censorship, since comics are by nature conformist barometers of consensus opinion, rather than the daring vanguards of forbidden ideas they are often portrayed as being.  (Laughter, as I've explained in the past, is a product of comfort and reassurance--often following surprise and/or discomfort--and comics must therefore provide reassurance in their punchlines to succeed.  They do so, in most cases, by catering to audiences' consensus beliefs and prejudices.  Thus if comics feel confident in mocking and flouting the rules of political correctness, then rejection of those rules must have achieved a high threshold level of consensus among comedy audiences.)

One swallow does not make a spring, of course--but it may sometimes signal its imminent arrival...  

And now for this year's predictions:

• As mentioned in the podcast, Joe Biden will win the Democratic party nomination, and be elected president.  (Bonus "alternative reality" prediction:  if Biden somehow fails to win the nomination, then Trump will be re-elected.)
• Following another election in which Likud weakens slightly but not enough for the opposition Blue-and-White party to forge its own coalition government, Likud and Blue-and-White will strike a deal on a unity government, with the leaders sharing prime ministerial duties.  In Britain, Brexit will go through under the deal negotiated by Boris Johnson (with perhaps a few minor amendments), with no major economic consequences for Britain in 2020.
• The continuation of the Trump administration's absurdly expansionary economic policies will stave off an economic downturn through 2020 (at a likely serious cost in 2021, of course).  Equity markets will rise modestly, amid high volatility, and interest rates will finally be forced upwards, but only slightly, towards the end of the year.  Oil and real estate prices will follow a similar pattern.
• The civil unrest in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran will unfortunately be ruthlessly crushed, and will have completely disappeared by the end of 2020, with no significant interference by American forces (which will have quietly and all-but-completely withdrawn from Iraq, under Iranian pressure, by mid-year).  The strain of dealing with this unrest will however impede the Iranian regime from significant aggressive moves beyond this consolidation of power.  For example, as mentioned in the podcast, Afghanistan will not fall to the Taliban in 2020, although the latter will make significant progress following the reduction in US support for the ruling government.  
• Hong Kong will likewise be fully pacified at some point in 2020, and attention towards China will shift away from human rights issues in both Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and towards the increasingly dire state of the Chinese economy.
• Conditions in Mexico will continue to deteriorate, with criminal organizations scoring even more spectacular victories against government forces, and more Americans getting caught in the crossfire.  Crime in the US will also spike significantly, as soft-on-crime policies spread across more and more jurisdictions, driven by a strange-bedfellows coalition of radical leftists and libertarians.  Anti-Semitic attacks in the New York City area will continue to occur at a high rate, for example, as will incidents of homelessness-related disorder in West Coast cities.
• In the US, there will be much attention given to the decline of non-online retail shopping, as "dead malls" and decaying downtowns prompt pundits to ponder this decline's dire consequences for society and propose solutions to the problem--mostly involving boycotting online retailers and pumping money into local ones.

As always, you are enthusiastically encouraged to counter with your own opinions of these predictions, or alternative predictions of your own--even if you're my co-blogger LTEC, who's promised (in our podcast) to be even harsher on my past predictions than I was...