Campaign 2016 (Keeping Current)

You can bet, or not.

Something unknown will come up.

All bets are off then.

Let's, for just a moment, postulate three unlikely scenarios to have played out in December 2015 as a few Americans looked forward to Election 2016, then less that 11 months away.

Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate at that time, proposes a plan for the war refugees flooding an increasingly nervous Europe. His proposal: "Send us the refugees. You pay to ship them all to the USA. We will provide them safe, but secure facilities. The United Nations will agree to provide for them We will train any who want to go back and fight to secure their homelands. When their homelands are secure, we will send them all home. We will grant none of them citizenship. We will only provide secure, temporary sanctuary. And we will send them all home."

Former First Lady Clinton, the leading Democrat candidate at the time, makes her own proposal: "Rather than intern refugees here in America, my proposal is to set up internment camps in the overburdened Eurozone countries for the refugees who make it to Europe, and we will fund providing for those refugees needs in those camps until they can go back to their own countries when peace is restored."

Senator Bernie Sanders, the other leading Democrat running to be president, makes his own proposal: "America has always been a welcoming nation for the wretched mass from Europe's teeming shores, and history proves that works out just fine. We will accept and integrate 20% of those refugees, allowing them to work their way toward citizenship with an initial stipend of $2,500 (US) for each man, woman, and child we accept, while providing free medical care and counseling, education through the 12th Grade, and job counseling."

This hypothetical set of proposals, dealing as it does with only one concern the world has had in 2015 and early 2016, would not be a factor in Election 2016 (even if the proposals were actually made) until November's voting in 2016.

Why should we even consider these hypothetical proposals?

Undoubtedly some proposals will be needed to deal with the contentious issue of Syrian, Afghan, and various Middle Eastern refugees flooding into Europe at a time when Americans are clearly divided about what humanitarian role a nervous United States of America should play in the crisis.

But, looking at that one issue in the context of 11 months of campaigning, while a sitting president must deal with any American role in that particular crisis, illustrates that eleven months of campaigning simply means that many unknowns can cloud the final outcome when we try to crystal ball what will actually happen between the end of 2015 and Election Day 2016.

As we try to look that far ahead we are handicapped by the existence of a number of other potential opponents for their parties' nominations, debates which are winding down but incomplete, party conventions which must be held, and policies the final candidates themselves have not even finalized. And then there are always the unexpected surprises along the way.

Mrs. Clinton in December 2015 was still the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation into her conduct while Secretary of State in the Obama administration. Donald J. Trump was still a politically incorrect campaigner working to gain a solid foothold on his over exuberance. Senator Sanders was as apparently radical in promoting his version of "democratic socialism" as Mr. Trump was in emphasizing his own political incorrectness. And, the other potential candidates were still lingering as America's low percentile, traditional underdogs.

Americans will listen to the political pundits, the roller coaster pollings, the billion dollar ad campaigns, and all the rest of the hoopla....politically correct and otherwise....until it all comes down to who gets out their dedicated, locked-in voters, and what all those undecided (even uncaring) voters from a distant December 2015 finally do at the November 2016 ballot boxes.

As they say in a game of pool, "It's an open table."

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© 2015 Demas W. Jasper All rights reserved.