presidential predictions

Why?

Why not? My record of political predictions on this blog is actually pretty good, if I do say so myself. So here is my main prediction, followed by a couple of contingent ones.

The most realistic scenario: Clinton vs. Romney, Clinton wins.

The Democratic nomination is Ms. Clinton’s to lose; all she really has to do is not screw up in the next year, and the past couple of decades have made her a very calculating, careful politician. Obama will implode, Howard Dean-style. The Republican field is weak, weak, weak. Guilani polls well with the general public, but Republican primary voters outside of the northeast (i.e., most of them) will not vote for him. McCain is old, and he’s hitched his wagon to the war, which I suppose could pay off but probably won’t (see the worst-case scenario below). This pretty much leaves Romney, though it will be close because his religion is a bigger deal to evangelicals than they let on. But he does have presidential hair, and I just don’t see any other Republicans (declared or otherwise) pulling it out. I don't buy the Fred Thompson hype at all.

If I were going to bet on the election today, this is the outcome on which I would put my hard-earned money.

Best case scenario that could conceivably happen, but probably won’t

Clinton and Obama peak too soon, Richardson manages to come from behind and steal the nomination. The Republicans do essentially what the Dems did in ’04, and nominate John McCain because they figure he’s ‘due’. Then Richardson wipes the floor with him, because at some point people will figure out that while there is much to admire about McCain as a person, he’d be a very, very scary president.

Slightly better case scenario that’s even less likely

Chuck Hagel pulls it together and gets in the race, because he realizes that between Guiliani’s socially liberal tendencies, McCain’s history of pissing off the GOP establishment, and Romney’s Mormonism, a fiscally conservative Midwesterner who also happens to be critical of the Iraq war probably looks pretty damn to most GOP primary voters. His anti-war stance makes him the Republicans' best hope for beating Ms. Clinton.

Worst case scenario that could happen, and I hope to God does not

There is a significant terrorist attack sometime late in 2007 or early in 2008. Republicans flock to McCain. Clinton still gets the Democratic nomination, but this doesn’t matter. McCain picks someone you’ve never heard of for a running mate, and this person becomes President of the United States sometime before 2013 when President McCain dies in office, inheriting a full-scale occupation of Iraq and a Cambodia-style campaign in Iran.