Informed speculation, keen predictions and totally wild guesses for 2020
Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic U.S. senator from Minnesota, will be elected president of the United States in November.
There’s not enough salt on the famous flats of Bonneville with which to take this, my most fearless prediction for 2020 — remember, I’m the guy who 12 months ago predicted former Texas U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke would be leading the Democratic field heading into the Iowa caucuses.
Prompting this guess is my sense that base Democratic voters will ultimately turn from uninspiring former Vice President Joe Biden, the overwhelming choice of the 825 readers who participated in my annual online news prediction survey.
Biden’s main selling point is that his experience and moderate positions make him attractive to swing voters in the heartland who will decide the election, but Klobuchar checks many of the same boxes Biden does without feeling like a rickety bridge back to the 20th century.
And though Klobuchar has a reputation for being an intemperate boss, she, unlike Biden, isn’t going to have to spend the entire campaign season trying to explain why a foreign company once gave her child a cushy job.
In fact, these advantages are likely why readers narrowly chose Klobuchar over California Sen. Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ probable vice presidential nominee. My pick is Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, but if Biden is the nominee I agree that he’ll select Harris.
I’m in accord with the majority of readers who expect the Democrats to take back the White House from incumbent President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, and to maintain control of the U.S. House. Yet I predict the Democrats will also take back control of the U.S. Senate, while six in 10 readers disagree.
and I agree that no Republican senators will vote to convict Trump at his upcoming impeachment trial and that Trump is likely to issue a pardon in 2020 to at least one person implicated, indicted or convicted in the various scandals swirling around his administration.
Will the Dow Jones Industrial Average drop below 28,000 (it’s nosing up near 28,700 at this writing)? The hive mind and I say yes, yet we agree this will not signal the onset of a recession. I say the unemployment rate, currently at a very low 3.5%, will be over 4% by the end of the year, but the majority of readers have confidence that it will stay under 4%.
I expect Trump to free imprisoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich by commuting his sentence but probably not until safely after the November election, and for there not to be a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court for Trump to fill. Readers, who trounced me in this little game last year, disagree.
Locally, the biggest question for 2020 is whether the federal investigation into political corruption in Illinois will ensnare veteran House Speaker Michael Madigan. But though he is portentously adjacent to several of the key figures already caught up in G’s web, he is also a very careful, famously cautious practitioner of the political arts, and both readers and I are predicting that he emerges from the year legally unscathed.
We also agree that, because of the maddeningly slow pace of the justice system, indicted Ald. Ed Burke, 14th, will still be awaiting trial on the corruption charges facing him a year from now.
Will Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx survive the controversy over her office’s troubling, mysterious handling of the Jussie Smollett case to win reelection? Seven in 10 readers say no, but I say yes — strong Democratic Party backing will allow her to eke out a plurality win over three challengers in the March 17 primary, which is traditionally tantaReaders mount to victory in the fall.
Readers think Illinois voters will approve an amendment to the state constitution that will allow for graduated income tax rates, that Chicago’s next police superintendent will be a man, that bulldozers will go to Jackson Park to at last break ground on the oft-delayed Obama Presidential Center and that Democrats will renominate conservative U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, of Western Springs.
I don’t.
The threshold for passing a state constitutional amendment is high — either three-fifths of those who voted on the question or a majority of those who voted in the election — and the campaign against this one by those who think rich people should not pay a greater share of their income in state taxes, as they do for federal taxes, will be ferocious and effective.
Appointing Chicago’s first female police superintendent would be very on brand for Mayor Lori Lightfoot. When she was Chicago Police Board president in 2016, a woman was one of the three prospective superintendents she and her panel offered to Mayor Rahm Emanuel as a replacement for Garry McCarthy, whom Emanuel had fired.
The Obama Center feels mired in bureaucratic inertia. And I was in agreement that Lipinski would again squeak to victory until Thursday, when his name appeared as a signatory to an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that two of the Court’s key decisions upholding abortion rights — Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — should be “reconsidered and, if appropriate, overruled.”
That’s leading with your chin in a Democratic primary, so my guess is that energized supporters of challenger Marie Newman will oust him.
Yet I agree with the consensus of readers that U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, of Naperville, will win reelection in what looks to be a hotly contested race in a traditionally Republican district; that 12 months from now, nothing tangible will have come of the grandiose plans to construct a Tiger Woods-designed championship golf course on the footprint of two adjacent Park District courses on the South Side; and that Lightfoot will ultimately persuade the General Assembly to lower casino taxes in order to spur gambling development.
Readers and I also agree that the ho-hum Chicago Bears won’t replace either general manager Ryan Pace or head coach Matt Nagy. Indeed, underlings have already started to take the fall for the team’s mediocre performance in 2019, as four assistant coaches got their walking papers Tuesday. Because, you know, they were the real problem.
We made a few other predictions on sports, politics and entertainment. Enjoy the full list along with my picks and final results from the survey at chicagotribune .com/zorn.
Check back in late December to see how we all did and to join in the speculation about whom President Klobuchar will select for her Cabinet.
Re: Tweets
The winner of this week’s reader poll to select the funniest tweet was “To those who put something in a closet, close the door, hear something crash and walk away. You are my people” by @Kids_kubed.
The poll appears at chicagotri bune.com/zorn, and you can receive an alert when it’s posted by signing up for the Change of Subject email newsletter at chicagotribune.com/newsletters.