kamala has a 40 percent chance to be only a one-term president (unless …)

as i write this, kamala hasn’t even been elected president yet. i know that. i’m comfortable with that.

why?

because i predicted her presidential election victory ten days before joe biden ended his presidential re-election campaign:

i also saw the house and senate flipping months before harry enten did. so i think i’m pretty good at this.

how do i do it?

1. i know recessions end presidencies.
2. i know yield curve inversions portend recessions.
3. i ignore every political poll.
4. i don’t watch cable entertainment “news.”

that’s it. i don’t subscribe to a secret newsletter or catch a coffee with a fed insider every other thursday. i just take a page from james carville’s book: the economy, stupid.

but today i got to thinking: how predictable can all of this be? specifically, if we know recessions end presidencies, and we know yield curve inversions cause recessions, can we know what political phenomenon causes yield curve inversions?

i looked at house, senate and white house election results dating back to the enactment of the 17th amendment and the beginning of the direct election of senators. here’s what i found:

1. when the white house and both chambers of congress are controlled by one political party, and those chambers are held rather than gained by that party — in other words, not flipped but maintained — a recession is probably not incoming. in 25 instances of that election result occurring, a recession followed just four times: carter ’78, johnson ’66, fdr ’44 and hoover ’28.
2. when the white house is controlled by one party and the house and senate are either both gained or both held by the opposition party, a recession follows far more often. in the 15 instances of that election result occurring, a recession followed six times: bush ’06, clinton ’98, bush ’90, ford ’74, eisenhower ’58, wilson ’18. and when the white house is controlled by one party and the opposition holds one chamber of congress and gains the other, a recession has happened one time in three tries: obama ’14.
3. but when the party in control of the white house either gains both chambers or gains the senate and holds the house, no recession follows. that has happened four times: biden ’20, bush ’02, eisenhower ’52, truman ’48.

so for kamala to avoid a recession, her best bet is to gain the senate and keep the house. only two times in 12 tries has a president managed that: biden ’20 and bush ’02. and biden was doing it as part of getting elected, whereas kamala will have to do it in the midterms.

only bush managed that, and only with the help of a national tragedy.

another such event isn’t predictable by people outside the upper echelons of government intelligence. i will say people in cybersecurity and generally in defense have been warning the government that a cyber pearl harbor or cyber 9/11 is likely/possible, but lots of things get warned about. doesn’t mean threats materialize.

the other option is more controllable and less fatal but far less likely: a significant piece of economic legislation, like something tripling the minimum wage to $21.75 (which still wouldn’t be enough). i don’t know which is less likely: neoliberals supporting an economic policy that would require their corporate sponsors to loosen the purse strings or republicans allowing it out of committee, let alone a vote on it. mass uprisings might convince them, but that hasn’t gotten much action on ending the israeli government’s genocide of palestinians. also, kamala isn’t running on raising the minimum wage at all, let alone by $14.50. she’s doing the typical neoliberal thing of running on taking away less money rather than adding more, because god forbid corporations show people there is in fact plenty more money to go around.

now, at this point you might be thinking, “well, but if she wants to win, she’ll do what she has to, right?”

wrong.

she and the democratic party don’t want to win. they want to raise money. in fact, they so don’t want to win that they aren’t even contesting two in three downballot races nationwide because resources they devote to those lower-interest races are resources they can’t better monetize by devoting to the big races. further, those races are in places like montana, west virginia and louisiana, which are supposedly hick central. democrats are supposed to see montanans as the enemy (the real enemy is the oligarchy), so investing in races in montana functions as investing in the enemy.

montana implemented the affordable care act. is it still the enemy? west virginia and louisiana did too. still the enemy?

republicans support or nearly support significant pieces of the affordable care act.

still the enemy?

here’s a secret that democrats don’t want you to know: republicans aren’t the enemy. the oligarchy is the enemy. both major parties get paid by the oligarchy to keep the rest of us too poor to quit and too tired to protest. so instead of running an economics-based campaign promising to “momala like hell to more than triple the minimum wage and make sure every family has enough,” she didn’t even have an issues page for a month after joe biden ended his campaign and endorsed her. and even today, what’s democrats’ big issue?

trump.

and what was their big issue in ‘04?

bush.

not economics. a person.

in 20 years, nothing has changed. and that’s the way they like it.

within the next ten years, as the minimum wage becomes worth even less, the climate crisis will escalate, rendering more of the planet uninhabitable. high-level democrats and republicans will get paid by the oligarchy to watch this happen. to watch wars break out over resources. to watch tides swallow island nations and eat our shores. to watch extreme weather worsen and food quality and the birth rate fall. the government and the industrial sectors causing this crisis have known for decades what was coming and have funded massive misinformation campaigns so they could keep mining this planet like they have a second one they can turn to once this one’s done.

kamala could stop this. as president, she could. (if she can’t, she should step down so someone else can. bottom line.)

but she won’t.

she’d rather keep hoovering corporate cash.

profits over people.

and eventually the oligarchy will have to accept that most inconvenient of facts: you can’t eat money.

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