Revised timeline

Yeah, so I proposed The Timeline some time ago, which you can find by clicking on the link below. Basically, it was how I thought the next eight years would turn out. So far, things are more or less on track, but I think I might have to revisit one aspect: Sarah Palin getting the Republican nomination. I don't think it's going to happen. I must admit that I never expected her to flame out so rapidly. Now that she has negative approval ratings in her state, I think it's going to be very difficult for her even to get the nomination. My guess is that she'll have a chat show or something similar. She has nothing to build on, nowhere to go. People with 40/53 numbers don't get elected to anything. If she can't even be counted on to carry her home state she's a goner.

At this point, my guess is that Huckabee is the prohibitive favorite, though I don't think he'll win, thanks to taking economic positions that happen to be popular with actual people instead of D.C. elites. I once thought that Huckabee could be a real reformer in the GOP--someone who could cultivate his own following, independent of the party apparatus, and kick out the Club for Growthers and the neocons, but it's become clear that Huckabee is not particularly principled, and is instead something of a suck-up who will adjust his positions if he has a reasonable expectation of power. Romney and Jindal have religious problems of different sorts with the base, and I don't think Jeb will run. I think the GOP might go uncharacteristic and pick a dark horse. Future New Jersey Governor Chris Christie seems like someone promising, but perhaps too sane. Jim DeMint, on the other hand, strikes me as a real contender for the nomination.

Obligatory post on La Palin

I feel like I have to address the Palin resignation, but I think the emerging consensus is largely correct: it's an inscrutable move by a borderline deranged woman who thinks that she can do literally anything to advance her ambitions, and that the resignation torpedoes any chance she has of actually beating Barack Obama in 2012. Okay, maybe others aren't being this blunt. Still, I have at times made several predictions about the next few years of politics, and I feel that they're still good ones (click on the tag below for more):

1. Sarah Palin will be the 2012 nominee.
2. At some point during the process of getting there, she will have a full-on breakdown (I think we've just seen one, but there may be more in the future). She cannot handle the pressure.
   
3. This will cause the remaining reasonable conservatives to abandon Palin, and vast chunks of the center-right apparatus will abandon the race rather than be associated with Palin, essentially mirroring the circumstances of the 1972 presidential election. I suspect that the GOP's division after the election will be roughly analogous to the Democrats' back then.
4. Charlie Crist gets the GOP nomination in 2016.

So, we're roughly on track for my predictions. I guess the most dubious one at this point is the first one. Can Palin still secure the nomination? I don't think she can beat Obama if she does. Putting up a loose cannon against the embodiment of Spock seems destined to fail (just like it did in 2008) and Obama would simply wipe the floor with her in debates. I mean, she couldn't out-debate Joe Biden, and Obama is of an even higher caliber than that. Palin lacks anything other than the support of a significant, fervent band of devotees, and I suspect that a Palin vs. Obama race would break records when it came to popular vote differences.

This being said, I don't think it's impossible that she'd get the nomination. Her acolytes simply don't care about such considerations as electability, and the grassroots support means lots of activists and a potentially strong grassroots network similar to Obama's in 2008. There was never a point where Obama led Clinton by more than a few points in the polls after the campaign reached its terminal stage, but from March on there was no way he could lose. This was because he and his supporters outhustled Clinton, plain and simple. Of course, Obama also had a top-notch team of logicians, which I don't think Palin will have (I basically agree with Mike Tomasky here). It seems to me that the biggest fight for 2012 will be between Palin and Huckabee. Romney is a natural target for Palin's resentments, but even if he gets out of the race it seems doubtful that Romney's country-club supporters will flock to Palin, while Huckabee's might. All three were roughly even in the polling the last time I checked, but it seems as though Huckabee and Palin have roughly similar profiles and attract roughly similar types of voters, and with both of them splitting those voters it's possible that Romney might squeak through.

And, on a related topic, I basically agree with these guys on Ross Douthat's latest column. You'd think that an upper-middle class, Harvard undergrad, New York Times op-ed columnist would avoid hackery about cultural signifiers about class, but you'd be wrong. It's not that I don't believe that there is cultural elitism, or that it's a bad thing, but I just don't think that (a) Palin's class or sex had much to do with her failure--if that were it, her facility at playing the reverse snobbery and sexist cards would have pulled her through, and (b) I simply don't think that Douthat has all that much insight into what "Middle America" thinks when he thinks Palin is huge over there, while President Obama won every state in the Midwest except for Missouri (and that was defeat by a razor-thin margin). Reminds me of Geraldine Ferraro's pitch about only Clinton being able to win Reagan Democrats--because who better to know how to do that than the person who lost them in the first place, right? It's not a completely bad column--it's sure as hell better than Kristol's usual sludge--but it sure seems like Douthat's hedging a lot these days, pretty much ever since he went from being a fairly obscure Atlantic blogger to being a prominent Times writer. He's gone from being an observer to being a player, basically. And I totally, totally understand this transformation, and Douthat at least has some scruples and principles, but I guess I feel that something's been lost in the transition between blog and column. He's establishment now.

The next McGovern? It ain't Obama.

So the Blue Dog thing sucks. The good news: Sarah Palin looks indeed to be headed toward a McGovern-like defeat if she's the GOP's 2012 nominee. It's 55-35 at this point, and Obama has substantial GOP support.

During the campaign I predicted the basic political contours of America until 2016. You can find the original post if you like, but it went a little something like this:

1. In 2008, Barack Obama wins thanks to the ineptness of the Bush Administration and the McCain campaign, and Democrats gain a bunch more Senate and House seats.
2. Republicans mobilize around defeating Obama but aren't successful. Obama makes great strides on health care, climate change, etc. The economy improves
3. In 2010, Republicans' move to the right gains them a few House seats, mostly from conservative districts like that of retiring Rep. Jim Marshall and Idaho Rep. Walt Minnick. They spin it as a huge victory, even though they don't take enough seats to dent the Dems' advantage and the Republicans drop a few more Senate seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Missouri.
4. The 2010 "victory" leads conservatives into a greater sense of confidence. Sarah Palin wins the 2012 GOP nomination, and picks Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina as her VP nominee (not entirely sure about that, but it will be a DeMint-like conservative). She gets defeated by Obama in a landslide that sees vast swaths of the center-right establishment uniting behind Obama.
5. Conservatives become less powerful in the GOP, reformers rise to the top, and the Republicans' business community begins pressing for some more moderate positions because they're tired of Democrats.
6. The 2016 election is between a Democrat (likely a woman, perhaps freshman Sen. Kay Hagan) and a Republican who is derided by the base as "Democrat-lite" because of his/her moderate economic positions.

I suspect that Evan Bayh's new Blue Dog Senate caucus will make (2) more difficult, though FDR had conservatives in his party too, so I don't think it's impossible. And it does appear that, contra the worries of progressives during the campaign that he'd be too incremental, Obama is very interested in accomplishing great things. But if there's one thing I know for sure it's that Barack Obama is a much, much better politician than Evan Bayh, so I'm not concerned. And this Palin item makes item (4) much more likely.