Sira Sudhi Sudhindranath's Predictions

by Ed Sawicki, November 15, 2020

Sira Sudhi Sudhindranath, an astute political thinker and a frequent critic of the Democratic Party, which he calls the DONORcrat Party, has made political predictions for the Biden Administration. As his predictions trend true or false, I'll comment on them. The comments will be in green when Sira's prediction trend correct and red when incorrect.

1. The DONORcrat Party will lose both the GA Senate seats in the runoff in Jan 2021. The party faithful will be upset by this, but the Biden DONORcrat administration will secretly celebrate it. Can there be a better excuse for fulfilling their promise that “nothing will fundamentally change” than this defeat?

   Warnock and Ossoff won their elections. Sira was wrong about this. However, those wins were likely influenced by Biden promising $2,000 checks if they won. Those $2,000 checks were reduced to $1,400, and that's still up in the air. Will Georgia voters ever believe Democrats again?

2. Trump will leave the White House with no further drama than what is going on right now. No coup attempts, no military interventions, no marching in handcuffs and other dramatic stuff.

   Given the attack on the capitol on January 6, Sira was wrong about this prediction.

3. The Biden cabinet will turn out to be full of pro-war, pro-Big Oil foreign policy “experts”, pro-Wall Street financial “experts” and pro-Big Insurance health policy “experts”. In other words, essentially retreads from the previous DONORcrat administrations. Plus a few never-Trumper Republicans, who will keep admonishing the DONORcrats for not moving further to the right than they already have.

   It seems to be trending this way. The Intercept ran a story titled JOE BIDEN IS FILLING TOP PENTAGON POSITIONS WITH DEFENSE CONTRACTORS. It's surprising that Biden didn't bring back Timothy Geithner (Treasury Secretary under Obama). OK, that last sentence was humor.

   Ukraine. Sira was correct about pro-war policies.

4. Trump will start a right-wing cable channel (TNN?) and hire his favorite Fox News personalities. The leftovers will team up with the Lincoln Project Republicans to start a new media alliance whose job is to support the DONORcrats - as long as they keep moving right. TNN ratings will soar, sinking Fox News, and the drowning Fox News personalities will find refuge in MSDNC or CNN.

   Late 2021: One Fox News personality, Chris Wallace, has left Fox to work at CNN. In September, John Harwood, a frequent critic of Donald Trump, was fired from CNN. In October, Brian Stelter, who was thought of as a left-leaning host, was fired from CNN. The media is slowly shifting to the right, as Sira suggests.

5. There will be a COVID vaccine that would be reasonably effective and safe, but coverage in the US will be dismal not just because of the non-believers, but more because of the for-profit insurers and for-profit pharmaceutical corporations.

   Early 2020: Sira is correct about this. Many people that I know (who want the vaccine) are scrambling to find someplace where they can get an appointment. I know of one person who risked flying on an airplane to another city in her state to get the vaccine. Another has a vacation home in Florida and is considering flying to Florida if she can get an appointment there. Clearly, our for-profit healthcare system doesn't stand up to crises like this one.
   It's far better with the Biden administration than with Trump, but we need Medicare For All, and Biden is against it.

   Mid-2020: The vaccines became generally available, and a high percentage of Americans were vaccinated. Of course, few people are talking about how much money this cost us and the pharmaceutical industry profits during this pandemic.

6. Military budgets will keep getting big increases every year. Russia will continue to be the boogeyman, though depending on the situation, China might be added to the list, just to keep it “bipartisan”. All domestic policy and foreign policy disasters will be blamed on Russia and its “agents” in the Green Party, People’s Party, alternative media and the like.

   It's looking good for Sira on this one. Democrats voted for the $753 billion defense authorization bill without getting anything significant for it—well, anything that would help ordinary Americans. Either the Democratic Speaker of the House is not a good party leader, or the Democratic party is not interested in leveraging its power for the good of the people. Since Nancy Pelosi has been lionized as a great party leader for years, it's likely the latter.

   And then Ukraine happened. Putin demanded that Ukraine not become a member of NATO. The Russian leader didn't want another country bordering his own to possess NATO weaponry. But instead of using diplomacy to resolve the conflict, everyone involved sought out their military options instead. Putin became the boogeyman, as Sira says, and the Biden government supplied arms to Ukraine.

7. The DONORcrats will get wiped out in the 2022 House elections. If they are lucky, they will manage to hold 200+ seats. More likely, it will be in the 165-175 range. In the Senate, they will fail to make headway even though they will be defending only 12 seats and the other party will be defending 22 seats. I think it will be a 52-48 win for the GOP.

   Early 2021: It's looking like Sira will be correct. A good portion of the population are feeling betrayed by this administration. Biden is against the $15 minimum wage. His promised $2,000 checks are now $1,400. The Democrats appear to be in no hurry to get out the relief checks.

   Late 2021: Biden is being praised for passage of the Infrastructure Bill—legislation that both parties and their donors wanted. Both parties were successful in killing the Build Back Better Bill that their donors hated but would have helped average Americans. Members of the Progressive caucus were the only ones willing to leverage their power to try to force a vote on the bill but were later vilified by the mainstream media and clueless talk show hosts like Bill Maher.

   November 12, 2022: Yes, Sira was wrong about this but the bigger story is that everyone else was wrong—including me. We may never take polling seriously again. Also, when Sira made the prediction, the January 6 Insurrection, the Supreme Court overturning Roe, massive election denialism, poll workers and voters threatened by right-wing hoodlums with guns, the Herschel Walker insanity, and much more had not yet occurred. Who could have predicted the degree to which fascism would take hold in this country?

8. All the 7 (or 8 or 9?) foreign wars will continue unabated. But the war on Syria will get escalated to a whole new level after 2022. Any progressive Democrat or any other anti-war group protesting these military actions will be branded a “Putin puppet”, “Assad apologist”, etc.

   Early 2021: After just 36 days of his presidency, Biden ordered air strikes on Syria. A Pentagon spokesman used rhetoric about the Biden Administration prioritizing diplomacy over military action. Yet, their actions don't seem to support this. Instead of showing Iran remorse for Trump's cancellation of the nuclear deal and trying to craft a new deal, some talking heads on TV are praising Biden for his tough stance.

   This air strike may be a diversion from the failure of the Democrats to include a federal minimum wage hike in their COVID relief bill. If this strike was intended to be a wag-the-dog scenario, it didn't work. There's far more discussion and complaining about minimum wage on social media than this air strike.

   This makes Sira's prediction look good, even if it is happening much earlier than he predicted. It's not a good harbinger of what's to come from the Biden administration.

   Late 2021: Biden removed our troops from Afghanistan. Sira didn't address this, so this text is neither green nor red.

9. Biden will try to “improve” the ACA by passing a Republican favorite - allowing insurance companies to sell health insurance across state lines. Of course, Joseph Biden (D-MBNA) knows a thing or two about this. Allowing credit card companies to issue credit across state lines helped them sidestep the more stringent usury laws of some states, and to totally screw the cardholders. So, that is a “success story”, in his view.

   Adding additional detail: Many states have their own insurance commissioner who sets rules for their state. Allowing insurance companies to sell their products nationally may remove the protections these commissioners provide for their citizens. Of course, some of these commissioners are likely corrupt anyway. Ed

10. Depending on how much pressure there is from TNN, Biden will be impeached sometime during 2023 or early 2024 - if he is still around. The Hunter Biden Ukraine saga is sordid enough that some investigations into it will result in enough material for 2 or 3 counts of impeachment.

    November 12, 2022: Given that the Democrats held their majority in the Senate, but we do not yet know about the House, it's possible that the House may impeach Biden or hold a hearing on Hunter Biden, but the Senate will not vote to convict.

11. The Republicans will nominate a candidate in 2024 who will have the blessings of Trump as the leader of TNN (if it is not Trump himself again). There is no way they can ignore a candidate who got 10 MILLION more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. This candidate and his VP pick, whoever it may be, will win against the Biden-Harris (or Harris-<some other DONORcrat>) ticket more convincingly than the Trump-Pence team won in 2016.
    
    In the Senate, the DONORcrats will be defending as many as 23 seats while the other side will be defending just 10 seats, and will sink further, perhaps to a 45-55 tally, or worse. In the House, if they have already been beaten badly in 2022, the DONORcrats will manage to hang on. But if the rout was not total in 2022, this time around it will be completed.

12. The Republicans will invoke their highly successful “Two Santa Claus Theory” strategy and start screaming about the budget deficits again. Biden will once again surrender to them and present the previous DONORcrat Party administration's “Grand Bargain” of 2011 again, where he offers to cut Social Security payments in exchange for... nearly nothing. And this time, the Republicans will accept it.

    The Republicans are already beating the deficit drum. It doesn't seem to matter to their base that it was THEM that caused the deficit. As for Biden cutting Social Security, he said he'd do it in the past. So did Hillary Clinton.

13. Biden will reintroduce a “new, improved” version of the TPP. Any pro working-class group opposing it would be smeared as a “Russian operation” and the TPP will be passed with a clear bipartisan vote in both the House and the Senate. About 40 Democrats and 70 Republicans in the House and 10 Democrats and 5 Republicans in the Senate will vote against it. This will be one of the things that will pave the way for a Trump 2.0 to emerge in the 2024 Presidential contest.