2017 FORECAST STIRS THE POT OF POLITICS

Questions for a new year with an abundance of them

Prognostications for 2017 range from the assured confidence of Trumpkins in American restoration to Democrats’ fears of a political apocalypse.

As we wake on Sunday morning following New Year’s Eve revelry, we welcome a year with far more than the usual share of questions and doubts. Every new year involves a step into the unknown. What adventures and discoveries await? What opportunities are on the horizon? What challenges and disappointments will we be dealt? Twelve months hence, will we place the year on the plus side of the ledger and look back on it in some happy glow? Or will we consign it to the book of lesser years to be forgotten as quickly as possible?

Of course, the taking stock, planning and positive resolve attendant to this annual rite of passage are, first and foremost, personal in nature. That’s where our lives are led – in internal joy and struggle, and in our closest partnerships with those we cherish.

But for our purposes here, let’s focus on the political and geopolitical contours of 2017 and what the year might hold.

One huge disclaimer is necessary at the outset. That being that in the aftermath of 2016, with its unprecedented twists and unforeseen denouement, anyone venturing into the realm of predictions must do so with more than a bit of humility.

Following the most unexpected political year, and with prognostications for 2017 ranging from the assured confidence of Trumpkins in American restoration to that of the typical, stunned Democrat in something close to global apocalypse, we can safely dub what is to unfold as the year of question marks. Including:

Will President Donald Trump (still doesn’t roll off the tongue) confirm highest hopes or worst fears?

Or, more likely, something far more nuanced and in-between? The President Trump who shows up in the Oval Office for his first real day of work on the morning of January 21st (almost certainly following some wee-hour tweets) will bring with him more uncertainty and volatility than any previous occupant of that rarified space.

Without denying him his own unique style, will he govern with dignity or taunts? Grace or grievance? Discipline or distraction? Vision or blinders? Intelligence or bravado?

Will his administration bring to mind that of Ronald Reagan in reinvigorating America’s charge and confidence? Or of Warren G. Harding with its legacy of fear and self-dealing? (And libido?)

Will Trump set a tone of unity or division?

Barring some true miracle over the coming few weeks, Donald Trump will be inaugurated with the highest unfavorability rating of any modern President. In fact, he will be the first

newly-christened President since the advent of polling to take office with such ratings underwater (below 50 percent) and with no real reservoir of broadbased public hope, trust and goodwill.

So the choice confronting him in early months is whether to double-down with his base or to reach out in search of a broader coalition. The former may be sufficient for some short-term victories. But it is a longer-term prescription for trouble, both for Trump’s political prospects and for the country he’ll lead.

Following the most negative and uninspiring of campaigns, Election Night brought surprise but precious little closure. The divide in America is now a chasm. Trump’s 46.1 percent victory, albeit with a significant Electoral College edge, offered no real balm. The weeks following served to accentuate the division with some hateful characters finding permission to behave in a manner contrary to any accepted societal norm. And with the president-elect doing a victory lap to red states and further rousing his true believers.

What message or outreach, even symbolic, does he intend for that 53.9 percent of voters who preferred an alternative? Is he willing to rein in some of the basest elements of his base, even if relatively small in number, while professing and demonstrating an aspiration to bring the country together as a president for all?

What now for an ascendant but fractious GOP?

The party of anyone-butTrump has now become Trump’s party. The party that was forecast to crash and burn on the rocky outcroppings of dismay, discord and dissension emerged triumphant, momentarily united and rather fully in control of the political levers.

But can that last? Can a president who first had to defeat multiple exemplars of establishment Republicanism before even taking on the opposition party now rally the troops over some sustained period as the unrivaled party leader? Will a party richly marinated in philosophical debate and, sometimes, uncompromising absolutism follow a leader with few fixed philosophical moorings?

Will a party deep in ambitious political talent endlessly defer to someone regarded by many Republicans as something of an imposter? If the Trump ship veers off-course and encounters choppier waters, how firm a hold will he maintain over the party and how much latitude will he be accorded?

And for a shell-shocked, despondent Democratic Party?

For Democrats, the past year went badly, horribly off script. The plan was for an orderly handoff to the long-waiting, longsuffering, designated heir of a president beloved by his party’s grassroots, if not all that much by the broader electorate. As a subplot, the party was to reap a windfall down the ticket due to the purported disarray of the other party and the seeming unviability of its standard-bearer.

If the reader has any remaining doubt as to the unpredictable nature of 2017, please refer back to 2016.

So how do Democrats respond to the unexpected? Even the unfathomable? Do they write it off with convenient explanations (Wikileaks; FBI; Electoral College)? Or do they search deeper? Do they hurl insults at those Rust Belt voters who swung the presidential race away from them? Or do they absorb that these voters were known not that long ago by a word different than today’s slurs? That word being “Democrats”.

Do they try to reclaim the political center? While calling out the foolishness and excess in their ranks? Or do they follow the Republican precedent during their wilderness time in the early Obama years by succumbing to the gravitational pull of a more rigid ideological orthodoxy? Otherwise put, do they stake a claim near the political mid-point or do they follow their liberal base in a noticeable drift to the left?

And how do they rebuild? Do they ignore the law of mortality and stick with the remaining survivors following the decimation of Democratic ranks since 2010? Knowing that many of those officials are in their 70s or nearing that mark; and that most of them now represent the safest of Democratic districts? Or do they build a bench and consciously hand the baton to a younger generation with the potential of broader appeal?

Will there be any commitment to reforming a broken political system? Or only to entrenching and fighting harder?

If there was any doubt as to a fractured political process, this past year should have provided all the answer and confirmation necessary. Everyone has their favorite culprit and simple diagnosis. In reality, the causes are multiple and the repair work will be anything but easy.

But the question for this new year and new era is whether there is even any appetite for the task. Is the takeaway from this most troubling, depressing cycle to undertake that hard work in some kind of bipartisan spirit of political revival? Or is the response to just dig ourselves deeper into our respective political corners and arm-up for the next battle?

What will be the headline events of 2017? How will the country respond?

Rather than good intentions or the best laid plans, events are what determine the course and context of a year. Expect a new, untested president to be tested early and often.

Will ISIS find new recruits, ambitions and theaters of action? Will we see one-off terrorist attacks here in the homeland? Or will we face something of more devastating scale?

Will Russia provoke with further expansionism? Will European nations pull further within while the European Union withers? Will German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the anchor she provides, fall by the political wayside? Will NATO continue to include the Baltic states under its shield? Will tensions escalate in the South China Sea? Will Syria continue to unravel while the West sits idly by? What country will be the scene of the next Islamist revolution? Will the sad, hopeless stream of migrants grow? What will be the consequences of an American administration more assertively pro-Israel? Will the fragile stability hold between the nuclear states of India and Pakistan? Will North Korea become even more unhinged and aggressive?

Will the post-election stock surge continue into the new year? What curveballs does Mother Nature have in store? And on; and on.

Now insert your question here as the extent of 2017 variables is almost endless. Happy New Year.