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Phil Harriman, a former town councilor and state senator from Yarmouth, is the founding partner of Lebel & Harriman, a financial services firm. Ethan Strimling, a former mayor and state senator from Portland, is the president of Swing Hard. Turn Left, which promotes progressive policy at the local, state and national levels.
Ethan: At the end of 2021, as we do every year, we made 22 predictions for 2022. Shall we see how we did?
Phil: Just like last year, we asked our intrepid Bangor Daily News opinion editor Susan Young to do the analysis. I know she will enjoy personally handing me, er, whomever wins, the trophy. Susan, the floor is yours.
Susan: Hi everyone. While Ethan won last year, as a team only half of your predictions were correct. While batting almost .500 in baseball would be remarkable, here, not so much. Hopefully, this year, you did a little better.
Ethan: I shine that trophy every morning.
Susan: In the big Maine electoral contests, Ethan correctly picked Gov. Janet Mills to win re-election while Phil picked Paul LePage to retake the governorship. However, Phil correctly picked Jared Golden, while Ethan picked Bruce Poliquin to head back to Congress in the 2nd District. That said, both of you picked Rep. Chellie Pingree as the CD 1 winner, a no-brainer. Two points for each of you. Not a bad start.
Phil: Ethan said Mills would win in a “squeaker.” Sadly, it was anything but.
Susan: Fair, but he still picked the correct candidate to win, so he gets the point. In terms of our legislative branches, Phil predicted that the U.S. House, U.S. Senate and the Maine House would all go Republican, while the Maine Senate would be the sole body to stay Democratic. He was correct on two counts and gets two points out of four for that (the U.S. Senate and Maine House did not go red).
Ethan: Phil is always wearing rose colored glasses. See what I did there?
Susan: Sigh. Ethan predicted a split Congress with the U.S. House going red and the U.S. Senate staying Democratic. At the state level, he predicted it would all stay Democratic. He actually nailed all four and earns four points. Nice work.
Phil: I would just like to mention that two months ago my brother from another mother changed his tune and predicted the state House would go red.
Ethan: Yeah, well just two months ago, you did the same with the Maine Senate.
Susan: Well, you were both wrong. Ethan also predicted that Build Back Better would not pass the Senate, and Phil said it would. You each get half a point here, as Ethan was basically correct that what ultimately passed was nothing like what the House passed, but so was Phil, as he said something would pass, although it was well below the spending level he predicted.
Phil: Hey, what’s half a trillion of spending someone else’s money between friends?
Ethan: So, it looks like 6.5 points for me and 4.5 for Phil going into our wild card predictions. I am feeling pretty good.
Susan: Well, you shouldn’t. You predicted that Sen. Marco Rubio would lose to Val Demmings in Florida, that inflation would be below 4 percent, that Portland would pass an executive mayor proposal, and that Bill deBlasio would become governor of New York. Exactly none of that happened.
Phil: I knew it! I’ll be over in the morning to get my trophy.
Susan: Not so fast, Phillip E. Harriman.
Phil: It’s never good when she uses my full name.
Susan: You predicted that Sen. Joe Manchin would leave the Democratic Party, Gov. Ron DeSantis would declare for president, that environmental groups would demand Congress restrict electric vehicles batteries, and that Vice President Kamala Harris would now be president because Joe Biden was too sick to serve. Obviously, none of that happened, and frankly, Biden had a pretty good year. So that leaves Ethan our winner for the second year in a row, basically by default.
Ethan: Don’t be discouraged, Phil. We still have two weeks left in 2022 for “President Harris” to be sworn in!
Phil: Should I resign or shall I try to pull off a Tom Bradyesque comeback?
Ethan: Did you mean an Eli Manning comeback?
Susan: How about if you both just try to do better with your 23 predictions for 2023 in a couple of weeks? Happy holidays guys.
