Looking Deeply Into Our Crystal Ball

What does 2008 hold for Indiana, the United States and the World? The Directors of Hoosier Access all took turns playing Nostradamus and came up with these varying predictions for 2008. Check it out and then let us know what you think will happen.

*Prediction Update * - This just in…see fellow Director Jim Bank’s predictions for the future below the fold.

Scott Fluhr:

-Fidel Castro will die. (To paraphrase Bill Safire, this one has to come true sooner or later if you predict it long enough.)

-The Ayatollah Khamenei, supreme religious leader of Iran, will die. The Iranian factions will squabble to replace him. Rafsanjani will win out.

-The government of Pakistan will not be overthrown, but will continue to pretend to everyone that it is on the verge of it, garnering aid money and reducing American pressure on the Musharraf regime to actually do something about Islamic radicals and Al Qaeda.

-There will be a major terrorist attack on American soil, or one will be narrowly just prevented. If it is narrowly prevented, the methods used will be decried by the ACLU and the Democratic Party. If it is not, the Democrats will say Bush did not do enough to prevent it.

-Iraq will continue to improve. Nobody in the United States will notice, and those that do will either not be heard (Republicans) or will not admit it (Democrats). When troop reductions from Iraq are conducted, as they were before Christmas this year, they will be buried deep in the newspaper so that no one will notice. If a Democrat is elected and continues those reductions, they will appear on the front page.

-The Democratic Congress will continue to excel at the two things it does best, wasting your money and accomplishing nothing.

(Read more of our Predictions below the fold)

-Eight (though in a longshot, seven) of Indiana’s incumbent members of Congress will be sent back to Washington in November.

-Republicans will not win the seat for the 7th Congressional District.

-The economy will continue to chuff along happily despite bumps in the road. Nobody will notice.

-Evan Bayh will not be the Democratic pick for vice president.

-Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for President. Her nomination will send the far left of the Democratic Party, and most of the Republican Party, into a frothing rage.

-The Republican nominee for President will not be decided until the convention, unless that nominee is John McCain.

-Hillary Clinton will beat whoever the Republicans nominate. If the nominee is Huckabee or Romney, the defeat will be crushing. If the nominee is McCain, Giuliani, or Thompson, the margin of victory will be slim.

-Michael Bloomberg will not run as an independent.

-The Republicans will lose seats in the Senate and in the House.

-Senate losses will include Sununu of New Hampshire, the Allard seat in Colorado, and Warner’s seat in Virginia (though it will still remain Warner’s seat). Norm Coleman will survive. Mary Landrieu, in the lone Republican pickup of the night (though there is an outside chance to get the Johnson seat in South Dakota), will not.

-Mitch McConnell will survive the aftermath of that defeat. Ever the golden boy of K Street, John Boehner will also.

-The Hair will kill the marriage amendment in committee, again.

-Republicans, thanks in large measure to retirements, anger over the death of the marriage amendment, and lingering anti-incumbent sentiment, will regain the Indiana House.

-Republicans, thanks in large measure to lingering anti-incumbent sentiment, will lose one or two seats in the Indiana Senate.

-Unless there is a new entry to the Democratic gubernatorial field, Jim Schellinger will be the Democrats’ nominee for governor.

-If the Democratic gubernatorial field stays as it is, and there is no third-party bid by Eric Miller, Mitch Daniels will be reelected.

-If it has a new entry, or if Miller decides to run, Mitch will be defeated.

-Meaningful property tax reform will not be passed by the General Assembly, but a mishmash stopgap will be passed, kicking the can another five years down the road, and this will be touted as major reform. Voters will, by and large, be tricked into believing that they were well-served.

-This mishmash stopgap will include a sales tax hike, just like the last mishmash stopgap passed by the General Assembly and touted as major reform.

-None of the recommendations of the Kernan-Shepard Commission will be implemented.

-The Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision, will uphold Indiana’s voter ID law.

-Kentucky will approve casino gaming. Indiana’s gaming lobby will convince the legislature (though not in this year’s session) to widen gaming in Indiana yet again to stay competitive.

-The Olympics will be held in Beijing. They will showcase everything about China that isn’t actually true about China. They will be filled with all of the splendor and spectacle of the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Nobody will boycott.

-Japan will amend its constitution to generally eliminate or render impotent its pacifist provisions. The Chinese will go nuts, and their state television will encourage anti-Japanese riots in Chinese cities. It would be amusing for this to happen at the same time as the Olympics.

-The fourth season of LOST will provide more questions than answers, and will be seen by most fans as a disappointment. They will continue watching it anyway. It will not be helped that the writers’ strike will delay the second half of the season by even more than the six or seven months that it is normally delayed. Season five will not air until 2010.

-The fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica will end the best science fiction television show in almost a decade. It will not win any major non sci-fi awards, despite richly deserving them. Starbuck and Apollo will still not get it on.

-The commentators on ESPN will continue to praise the Patriots and continue to long to have Tom Brady’s babies.

-The New England Patriots will narrowly defeat the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship game in Foxboro because of a missed field goal by Adam Vinatieri with mere seconds to go in the game.

-The New England Patriots will win the Super Bowl against the Packers in a blowout in which Brett Favre plays like the old man he is, not the young man he was pretending to be for much of the season.

-It will be discovered that Patriots coach Bill Belichick has still been cheating all season long. His hand will be slapped and nothing will be done to him.

-IU will win the NCAA Championship in Men’s Basketball. Sampson will be fined for yet more recruiting violations.

Josh Gillespie:

-Gov gets re-elected, though his opponent isn’t currently on the Democrat ticket.

-Republicans pick up seats on the state and national level. For the state, it’s enough to retake the majority. On the national level, it’s far short to take back the majority, but a far cry from where Republican’s thought they would be at the start of 2007. Because of this, Nancy Pelosi’s hold the Speaker’s seat starts to slip only to eventually lose it. But that’s a prediction for another year.

-Property taxes are the number one concern of the General Assembly with most of Mitch’s plan passing. Eliminating township officials almost happens, but fails in last minute negotiations.

-SJR-7 dies in the house starting the process all over again in 2009. Questions arise about whether that will even happen even amongst conservatives.

-Dan Burton slaughters John McGoff in the May primary closing out any hope he had of running in 2010.

-The winner of the Democrat caucus for the 7^th District will not be the nominee in the fall General election.

-Mike Huckabee makes great strides in early states only to fall short of the nomination because of his lack of organization. The battle eventually comes down to John McCain and Mitt Romney with Republicans holding their collective breath while voting for either in the fall. Fred Thompson, supposedly the great savior of the conservative movement drops out after Iowa. Giuiliani doesn’t make it past super-duper Tuesday.

-Ron Paul will not even get close to the nomination, but will run as a Third Party candidate becoming 2008’s version of Ross Perot and giving the White House to a Clinton. Thanks Ron Paul!

-Russia starts creeping out more people than normal. More world leaders take notice, but are quelled by looking deeply into Vladimir Putin’s eyes as he lulls them into a deep trance and says “The Soviet Union..I mean Russia is only acting normally.”

-Pakistan falls into utter disarray and potentially into civil war. The United States is blamed for it.

-Iraq continues to get better and no one pays any attention.

-The entire Indiana Pacers squad is jailed late into the season for a late night disturbance at a strip club leaving Larry Bird to play out the final 10 games by himself. The Pacers fall short of the playoffs, but end the season on a 10 game winning streak resurrecting the memories of “Larry Legend”. During the draft the Pacers trade their first round draft pick to Detroit for a rack of balls, but still have no cap space to sign real players.

-The Colts stun the Patriots in overtime in the AFC Championship game by a last second field goal by Adam Vinatieri thus causing all New England fans to collective rip out their own hearts in pain and disgust.

-The Yankees win the World Series in seven games over the Los Angeles Dodgers and former Yankee manager Joe Torre. It’s a bittersweet World Series for Yankee fans, like myself, all over the country as we have to root against Joe Torre and Don Mattingly.

Brian Sikma:

-Mitch will be re-elected next year provided he can either enact some sort of property tax relief or effectively show that a lack of relief is courtesy of B. Pat Bauer. The Governor will also have to effectively communicate his achievements. Lately the Green Team seems to be doing a solid job of talking about the successes of the MMM years thus far, the big job is to make sure the average voter is aware of what the right-of-center blogosphere and political activists already know.

-If Schelinger is the Democrat’s gubernatorial nominee he will be trounced.

-Unless he feels that property taxes are not being sufficiently dealt with, Eric Miller will stay out of the gubernatorial race.

-Mike Sodrel beats Baron Hill…again.

-At least one of Indiana’s Blue Dogs will go back to Congress.

-Republicans will gain control of the Indiana House provided they run on an aggressive plan for change.

-Democrats hold the U.S. House.

-McCain survives New Hampshire to continue the fight and hurt Rudy.

-Souder will survive a potentially hot fight for the 3rd Congressional District.

-Republicans stand to lose a seat or two in the State Senate but will continue to hold the majority.

-President Bush will not win re-election. Okay, I’m being funny here for our liberal friends.

-Iraq will continue to improve but it will never be a representative democracy with the same protections of liberty found in our own country.

-We will see a confrontation with Iran over their nuclear weapons program, this confrontation may escalate into some sort of military action unless Iran changes course and backs down from it’s nuclear program. Russia will oppose our “interference” with Iranian affairs and until we and our allies become more energy independent, Russia will continue to have leverage over what kind of a coalition we form to meet Mid-East threats.

-Local government reform will be a much debated topic and the result will be some sort of restructuring short of a full implementation of all of the recommendations made in the Kernan-Shepard Report.

-Neither Eric Miller’s plan to eliminate property taxes nor the Governor’s plan to cap property taxes will pass. Instead, some sort of hybrid plan will emerge that caps some property taxes and eliminates homestead property taxes.

-Local government officials who find they may be forced to raise the LOIT as a result of property tax reform will kick and scream about having to implement such a tax in an election year.

Greg Magnuson:

-Mitch Daniels will be reelected to a second term by a wide margin.

-The Indiana House will struggle, but ultimately pass the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

-Property taxes will be a big issue during the legislative session. Lawmakers realize their jobs are on-the-line.

-We will see another showdown in the 9th, with Sodrel winning by a very narrow margin.

-The GOP will not regain control of the Indiana House.

-Crime in Indianapolis will decrease next year.

-Indiana will back the republican presidential nominee.

-A democrat will fill the 7th congressional district seat.

-There will be at least one notable death this year.

-There will be a historic showdown in Foxborough with the Colts emerging victorious even admist playing in the snow and bitter cold.

-The Pacers will end up being .500 or worse.

-We will not see Clinton or Guiliani as the nominee for their respective parties.

-It will be one of the most interesting/unique presidential races in 50 years.

-The Internet will have a big impact on the race for President.

-Hoosier Access rapidly expands and becomes the number one source of political news in the state.

Jim Banks:

-Governor Daniels and Lt. Governor Skillman win their re-election campaign handily.

-Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney win their party nominations. Clinton picks Richardson after quickly dismissing the thought of putting Evan Bayh on her ticket for VP and Romney picks a female Senator.

-Legislators and moderate Republicans argue that they can’t fix the property tax fiasco and the marriage amendment at the same time. The marriage amendment is sacrificed. Voters retaliate by defeating record number of incumbents. Republicans win control of the Indiana House of Representatives narrowly with one vote majority.

-Hoosier Access triples in visitors per day from 2007 averages.

-Colts win the Super Bowl without facing New England in the playoffs.