It’s almost precisely one year until Election Day 2016. Between now and then, there will be no shortage of furors and fireworks, attack ads and polls. What’s noise and what’s noteworthy? Here’s a look at five big questions with the power to shape, or reshape, who wins the White House on Nov. 8, 2016.
Does the FBI ensnare Clinton?
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has accused the House Republicans who are investigating her use of a private email server while secretary of State of waging partisan warfare. Last month, she emerged relatively unscathed from a congressional grilling about that and the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. But she continues to face an investigation by the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division into classified information found in those emails. At issue is whether she or her aides failed to appropriately safeguard intelligence information.
A negative report or even a decision to prosecute — by the Justice Department of a Democratic administration she had served — would be hard to dismiss as just politics.
Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor who has handled some celebrated cases against public officials, says given the information known publicly, he doubts it will go that far. “Using her own server — just for the obvious reasons everyone has identified, including her — is foolish, and maybe a breach of various protocols and policies,” he said in an interview. “But to the extent people are excited about the possibility of her being charged criminally because of mishandling classified materials, that seems absolutely fanciful.”
He says investigators may feel some pressure to resolve the inquiry as soon as possible. FBI Director James Comey told the House Oversight Committee last month that he was following the investigation “very closely” and promised the bureau would do its work “promptly, professionally and independently.”
That said, Zeidenberg acknowledged that investigations sometimes take an unexpected course. “This whole business about having an email server in the first place came as a result of an investigation that grew out of the Benghazi thing,” he noted.
Can Trump go the distance?
Some in the Republican establishment seem to be going through the classic Five Stages of Grief when it comes to Donald Trump’s candidacy. That started with denial that it was even possible the real-estate mogul and reality-TV star could end up as the GOP presidential nominee.
After leading in most polls through the summer and into the fall, though, Trump has gained credibility as a candidate. What’s more, his biggest challenger hasn’t been one of the governors or senators in the field. It’s retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson, another outsider who has never run for office before. That’s alarmed those Republicans — perhaps moving to intermediate stages of anger or depression — who note that it’s been more than a half-century since Americans were willing to elect a newcomer to the nation’s top political job.
“While I’m in the camp that eventually a mainstream ‘establishment’ Republican will carry the party’s torch, it’s clearly possible Donald could be the party’s nominee,” says GOP strategist Sara Taylor Fagen, a former White House political director for George W. Bush. She tempers predictions that a Trump ticket would doom the party in November. “While general-election prospects for the GOP look bad today with Mr. Trump at the helm, the electorate is very fickle right now. I’d be careful to read too much into polls now that say he can’t win a general election. And we shouldn’t underestimate his ability to adapt his message to new circumstances.”
Just FYI: The final Kubler-Ross stage is acceptance.
Does the economy implode?
While it hasn’t felt much like a recovery for middle-class Americans, the economy has been growing for the past six years. Unemployment was down to 5.1% in August and September, the lowest in seven years. Now some economists see worrying signs that a soft patch in the economy just might turn into another recession. “The dangers facing the global economy are more severe than at any time since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008,” former Treasury secretary Larry Summers warned in aWashington Post op-ed last month.
Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist for Vice President Biden who is now at theCenter for Budget and Policy Priorities, is skeptical. “Recent recessions have been generated by what I’ve come to call the economic shampoo cycle: bubble, bust, repeat, but I don’t see any bubbles inflating right now, and the public and household sectors are not over-leveraged.” That said, he adds, “One thing that could prove me wrong would be if an economic hiccup or self-inflicted wound were exacerbated by gridlocked politics and a Fed that’s largely out of ammo.” Interest rates already are near zero, and the Republican-controlled Congress would be unlikely to approve stimulus spending.
If there is a downturn, history says President Obama probably would bear most of the blame — and a president’s approval rating is one of the most significant single indicators of how his party will fare in elections.
“Under the safe assumption that most people aren’t running Keynesian models of the macro-economy, presidents get the credit for good times and blame for bad ones,” Bernstein says, even though “they typically don’t deserve either.”
Does Syria explode?
The civil war in Syria has become not only a humanitarian catastrophe but also an international flashpoint, and a continuing test of President Obama’s leadership.
Aaron David Miller, a former adviser on the Mideast to both Democratic and Republican secretaries of State, calls it “a kinetic situation” and “the most vulnerable place for this president and the Democratic nominee.” That’s because the confrontations involve not only Syrian President Bashar Assad — Obama has been demanding his resignation for the past four years, to little effect — but also leaders of Russia, Iran and the rising self-proclaimed Islamic State.
Obama’s decision last month to send 50 U.S. special ops forces to Syria has increased the risks to his administration, and to his former secretary of State. Clinton has made a point in interviews and in her 2014 memoir, Hard Choices, that she advocated a more muscular response to bolster moderate Syrian rebels early in the civil war, a step Obama was loath to take. Now she supports enforcing a no-fly zone, a sort of buffer zone to protect civilians, something Obama also has rejected so far.
But there are limits to how far Clinton, who will need the support of Obama’s most loyal supporters to win in 2016, can distance herself from her former boss, especially on foreign policy. “She’s tried,” says Miller, who is now a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. But “I think she’d have a very hard time walking away from him.”
Does a third-party candidate run?
Americans say they’re ready for an alternative to the two major political parties. In aUSA TODAY/Suffolk University this fall, just 30% of those surveyed said the Democrats and Republicans did a good job of representing the country’s political views. A 53% majority said a third party or multiple parties were necessary.
The outsider candidates in both parties have generated the most energy — VermontSen. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic socialist challenging Clinton, and Donald Trump and Ben Carson in the GOP. If they don’t win the nomination, what would their supporters do? Would Trump or someone else outside the party establishment mount an independent candidacy?
The possibilities of an independent bid seem higher on the right than the left because the insider-outsider divisions are deeper in the GOP than among the Democrats.
Indeed, even if an outsider won the Republican nomination, Sara Fagen speculations one of the insiders might choose to run.
“I believe there is a strong possibility that a third-party candidate would emerge if Mr. Trump were to win the nomination,” Fagen says. “If you think about it, any of these Republican governors now running would be in the middle between Trump and Clinton. Given the increasing number of people who identify as Independent, this would be the right place to be politically. If Trump were leading the Party, why wouldn’t they look at it?”
Remember this: Independent candidates don't have to win the race to affect the outcome. Just ask Democrat Al Gore about the impact Ralph Nader had in 2000, or Republican George H.W. Bush about Ross Perot's bid in 1992.
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