In 2016, when Marco Rubio is elected president....

[JimHow]

What will be the state of Bordeaux by then?
Will He Who Shall Remain Nameless still dominate in influence?
Will Bordeaux prices still be out of reach?
Will global warming continue to impact winemaking?
In politics, will the tea party play a bigger or smaller role in the Republican Party?
Will ObamaCare be a success or failure?
Will wine and wealth continue to move east, or will the west rebound?
What are your predictions of what the world will look like in 2016, the year when young Marco Rubio pulls out a shocking electoral college victory over a disappointing Hillary Clinton candidacy?

[Tom In DC]

I'll play.

- Bordeaux will have had at least three more vintages of the century, and at least one more best vintage of all time.
- After a scandal involving all 20,000 Chinese billionaires each buying a 27 liter bottle of the first wine rated 101 pts by HWSRN, the Wine Advocate will have been sold to Marvin Shanken's high school girlfriend for a symbolic $1 and Pomerolover's newsletter will have zoomed to the forefront. No one will be able to tell the difference.
- I'll let everyone draw their own conclusions from my prediction that China will have 20,000 billionaires by then.
- After a decade of dropping temperatures, and despite the world's developed countries spending 25 times the world's combined GDP to battle global cooling, winemaking continues to focus on what the people want - high alcohol, grippingly tannic, and teeth staining juice delivered in mylar pouches inside cardboard boxes.
- The tea party will have faded away, leaving the tea-stained party to epitomize the concept of rule by the few.
- ObamaCare will have been a wild success; unfortunately, every American citizen's identity will have been stolen due to computer security problems at the health care exchanges, giving rise to -- yes, you guessed it -- 20,000 Chinese billionaires.
- The west will rebound, but due to the lack of a strong point guard, the east will win easily.

[robert goulet]

Rubio over Hillary.....this is humorous

Is there any GOP that has a chance, christy...maybe, but he's a dem!!

[AlohaArtakaHoundsong]

14 US presidents have had names that ended with "n." Only one US president's name has ended in a vowel other than "e." Is the country ready for a president whose name - both first and last no less - ends in "o?"

[hautbrionlover]

Marco Rubio will not be our next president. Like the SNL cast of yore, he is among "The Not Ready For Prime Time Players."

[JimHow]

If Jeb is not the Republican nominee, who other than Rubio wins the nomination?
I'm having trouble seeing Christie getting through the primaries.

[jal]

My 2c predictions. You get what you pay for:

I'm tired of the same old characters. Hillary will be almost 70, and is the country ready for a 3rd Bush president in 25 years? I like Rubio, who will the Democrats bring?
The Tea Party will hopefully soon be remembered as one long bad dream
I think the China bubble is close to exploding, I see manufacturing moving back to the US, I think Europe may also have turned the corner economically. The West has immigration issues to solve, though.
The age of the wine critic is over. The age of the 100 point rating scale is also over. The age of the importer (think Kermit Lynch, Neal Rosenthal, Robert Kracher) is about to begin.
Obama Care will overcome its early glitches and become a huge success.
Bordeaux will always be relevant, prices there will probably stabilize.

[Jay Winton]

if the GOP would nominate someone like Susan Collins, they might take back the White House. Otherwise....

[JimHow]

I actually like Jeb, except for his evangelism.
Take the kooky religiosity away from him and he is a Republican I could actually like.
Of course the other big problem is that he is from Florida, those people are crazy down there.

I'd like to see a Warren-Klobuchar ticket myself on the Democratic side.

interesting observation on China and manufacturing, Jacques, I do think the U.S. manufacturing base is showing signs of life.

Regarding Obamacare, I don't think it goes far enough. I think it has a chance of failing. I'm struggling to see all these people, especially the young, taking the affirmative step of signing up.

Now if we can just resolve the debt.
As I recall, you've had some interesting perspectives on the debt in the past, I believe you've thought it was not quite as big a threat as everyone thinks, or am I misremembering that?

[Gerry M.]

While Jeb has the credentials to secure the moderates and evangelicals of his party, would he garner enough support from the conservatives and the far right? Has the backlash from the shutdown neutralized the tea party and far right to allow a more mainstream Republican to survive the primary process? I think the upcoming mid-terms and the next presidental election are going to tell us a lot about the future viability and composition of the party.

The entire center of the Republican party has slid to the right since the 1960's. Back then if you were a "Goldwater" Republican you were considered part of the conservative wing but from today's perspective, if you held those views, you'd be considered a downright moderate.

[jal]

To summarize my view on the debt in very simplistic terms: the government had to leverage itself because the private sector couldn't. As the economy slowly improves theses trends will be reversed.
Main reason the debt isn't so ominous is because the burden is a lot lower now that it was in the past. That's of course due to the low interest rates the US pays to borrow.

[pomilion]

Has the backlash from the shutdown neutralized the tea party and far right to allow a more mainstream Republican to survive the primary process?

The entire center of the Republican party has slid to the right since the 1960's. Back then if you were a "Goldwater" Republican you were considered part of the conservative wing but from today's perspective, if you held those views, you'd be considered a downright moderate.

When 64% of Republicans, in one recent major poll, thought that Obama "probably" is not really (legally) our President because he either definitely or probably was not born in the U.S., our country is in trouble. Of course, something like 30% of Democrats think Bush knew about 9/11 ahead of time. The difference, of course, is that whacko, conspiracy-believing liberals don't have any seats in Congress (or any ability to affect primaries) whereas Tea Party or Tea Party-leaning folks occupy 90 seats in the House as well as holding a smattering of U.S. Senate seats. In most state and national elections, it's difficult for moderate, rational, sensible Republicans to get through the primaries. In law school in the 80s, Tom Campbell was my corporations law professor. Hard to imagine a smarter, more impressive guy (Harvard Law, clerked for Justice White, PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago, later taught law at Stanford, was a partner at Gibson Dunn and Crutcher for a while, was dean of the business school at UC Berkeley, etc.) and when I knew him as law professor, he was one of the nicest, brightest, most honest and ethical guys I'd ever come across. Just an amazingly impressive fellow. He's been in and out of various political offices in California, but he can't get any traction outside of the SF Bay Area because he's moderate to liberal on social issues -- he gets viciously and relentlessly attacked in any state-wide Republican primary. If there was ever a guy who should be a U.S. Senator, a Governor, or running for the White House, it's him (and I'm a Democrat).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Campbe ... olitician)

[RDD]

The mid-term elections should be interesting.
How badly did the scorched earth policy damage the Republican party?
They can't seem to find a reasonable center anymore.

[jal]

If you guys have some time to waste, this is a pretty interesting perspective:

http://www.waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/the-b ... -vote.html

[Nicklasss]

Who the He'll is Marco Rubio? An italian version of Michel Rolland?

Nic

[Tom In DC]

My 2c predictions. You get what you pay for:

...
The age of the wine critic is over. The age of the 100 point rating scale is also over. The age of the importer (think Kermit Lynch, Neal Rosenthal, Robert Kracher) is about to begin.
...

Politics, schmolotics. Let's get back to the important stuff -- WINE!

Hilary and HWSRN were both born in 1947, so they're both Medicare beneficiaries (thus no dog in the ObamaCare hunt) and both likely too old to lead the next wave of wine punditry.

The pendulum swings back and forth, jal. As I was (we were?) getting into wine, the merchants still held all the cards. The best information we could access came from our local wine merchants (or maybe Harry Waugh or Michael Broadbent if you were REALLY tuned in to the market) and all he (yes, the wine merchant was always a he) had to say was that what he had on the shelves was the good stuff.

Parker came to the fore because he was the first to buck the trend - he had no dog in the hunt of selling wine.

I have a hard time accepting the idea that the "age of the importer" is about to begin - all of the importers you mention must be of comparable age to the fading-into-the-sunset RP. I've met all of these guys, but let's go with their own websites' bios. According to Kermit's website, "In 1972 he opened a retail wine shop", so he's been running his own gig for over 40 years. Neal Rosenthal started in 1977, after "having stepped away from his corporate and international law practice". Bobby Kacher might be a little younger, but he according to his website he "came to Washington DC in 1971". So I think anyone would have a hard time thinking any of these guys aren't already well into their 60's. How much of a movement do you think they can lead going forward from here?

Additionally, all of these guys, as far as I can tell, owe a lot of their moment in the sun to RP. Maybe a bit less so Kermit, but I think a lot of national attention has been generated by Bob's "Focus on an Importer" articles.

Of course, I have no idea what or who will lead the market in the future.

[jal]

I have a hard time accepting the idea that the "age of the importer" is about to begin - all of the importers you mention must be of comparable age to the fading-into-the-sunset RP. I've met all of these guys, but let's go with their own websites' bios. According to Kermit's website, "In 1972 he opened a retail wine shop", so he's been running his own gig for over 40 years. Neal Rosenthal started in 1977, after "having stepped away from his corporate and international law practice". Bobby Kacher might be a little younger, but he according to his website he "came to Washington DC in 1971". So I think anyone would have a hard time thinking any of these guys aren't already well into their 60's. How much of a movement do you think they can lead going forward from here?

Additionally, all of these guys, as far as I can tell, owe a lot of their moment in the sun to RP. Maybe a bit less so Kermit, but I think a lot of national attention has been generated by Bob's "Focus on an Importer" articles.

Of course, I have no idea what or who will lead the market in the future.

Good points, Tom,

I will argue though that the importers are making a comeback, that they have built a successful business model that can survive even without their day to day involvement. This, as opposed to the Wine Advocate, which has run into a myriad of trouble; most notably - the tendency of its original owner to prefer sweet extracted alcoholic fruit bombs, the turnover in its staff of critics, the loss of influence in important wine regions (Spain and Burgundy come to mind).

I had not heard of that Bob article, but from its title I can imagine its contents.

I may be wrong about the age of the importer about to start, and who can predict the future, but I put the chances of it happening at better than 50%.