As we know, the Czar is out of rational explanations for what happened in 2012. Now over a year ago, we had an election that was locked certain for Republicans to win. The question wasn’t the Presidency—that was surely Romney’s—the question was the Senate. Republicans might be able to squeak that out.

Of course, none of this happened. While Karl Rove was insisting that there were secret counties in Ohio that had yet to be counted, rabid Republicans insisting that Obama voters had pulled off vote fraud on a gigantically unprecedented scale, the real reason was that a lot of Republican and pro-Republican voters stayed home because they didn’t think Romney’s pro-business agenda was all that much different from Obama’s utter charlie foxtrot of an administration. The utter horror of this administration is how preventable it all has been.

So with that, the Czar is not about to predict the 2016 election. You don’t want to know his hunch, either, by the way. Let us see what the next 18 months will bring.

That said, Democrats are historically terrible at re-electing themselves for President. While a lot of folks are dead set on a Hillary Clinton victory—she certainly has a template in place to use—the history of voting trends in America are a lot more regular than polls, pundits, and popular consciousness would suggest. Most historians were pretty certain about 2010, and they are already patting the Democrats there-there on the back for 2014. Not looking good.

Okay, anyone here can name the last time a Republican president was elected during the term of another Republican president: George H.W. Bush did it in 1988. Before that, Hoover and Coolidge did it, and a little before them were Taft and Roosevelt. And so on.

But on the Democrats’s side, things are a little sketchier. Not Johnson—he took over from Kennedy under unfortunate circumstances…just as Truman did from Roosevelt.

We shall spare you the research: the horribly inept James Buchanan, in 1856, was the last Democrat to be elected under a different Democrat president (Pierce). And there was only one other example: Van Buren took over from the very first Democrat, Jackson. This one is worth mentioning not because this is as far back as you can go, but because it is the only example of a Democrat being re-elected after a two-term Democrat.

History does not make rules: just as Gore almost squirted into the Presidency, a Clinton, Biden, or even Return of the Kerry! could smash down a delightfully weak or ineptly run Republican campaign.

But history does say that the biggest problem Democrats have is their own record, particularly after 8 years. As Brian Stimpson said in Clockwise, “It’s not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.