After This, I Promise, No More Political Predictions

A couple of nights ago, I watch the Republican debate in Boulder.   I haven’t watched any of their other debates, but my grandmother-in-law was curious.  And so my wife brought home a couple of six packs, and we all made a drinking game out of it.  Every time they said they’d cut out a major department or program – the Education Department, the IRS, etc – we drank.  Every time they mentioned Nazis, Communists, or Benghazi, we drank.  When anybody told a lie, we drank.  (We missed quite a few, though, as I found out later.)  

 I was drinking hard cider, Marisol was drinking beer, and my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law were drinking non-alcoholic beer.  We were all pretty tipsy by the end of the evening. 

And although I can’t form a real opinion until the Bad Lip Reading version comes out, it did make me start thinking.  It is very, very tempting for an astrologer to make predictions about the election based on the aspects at the time.  And I’m not that kind of astrologer, I don’t generally go around predicting things.  I talk about the options.  I describe all the different possibilities that each transit can bring, and the various ways you can make good use of the energy. 

No astrological transit is absolutely good or bad, and there’s no way to be specific about how it’s going to manifest.  Most events have many nuances, with rippling outcomes over time.  If an astrologer tells you you’re going to walk out of your house and get hit by a falling anvil, and it happens, then they’re very psychic.  Or they happen to know your upstairs neighbor is an Olympic medalist in the anvil toss.    

Still, I couldn’t help it.  I had to look.  And I have to say it looks pretty good for Hilary on Election Day 2016.  Uranus in Aries is trining her Saturn, and this is a transit that brings together the new and the old.  This could mean that her years of political experience will take her to a new beginning.  It  doesn’t look like an aspect that signals retirement. 

And there’s more.  Saturn in Sagittarius will be trining her Mars/Pluto conjunction, and this Mars/Pluto conjunction is what gives Hilary her stubbornness, her grit, and her ambition.  This doesn’t necessarily mean winning an election, but it does indicate that she is going to be really focused and strong around that time.  She’s not going to make a false move.

On Election Day, the asteroid Juno will be at the first degree of Sagittarius, the sign of vision and inspiration, and it will conjunct Hilary’s Jupiter.  This is a fitting aspect for the first female president.  Juno has been found to show up a lot in charts connected to social leadership and public service, and it’s important in Barack Obama’s and Bill Clinton’s charts as well.       

So then naturally, I’m wondering who her opponent is going to be.  At this point, it could be anybody.  None of the Republican candidates seem particularly viable to me, but that’s just my perspective as a middle-of-the-road lesbian feminist, somebody who doesn’t believe that guns are the most effective deterrent to government overreach.    

So let’s look at the Republican convention in Cleveland next July, and see what kind of aspects these folks will be fielding. 

First of all, there’s an element of surprise.  The moon/Pluto conjunction that introduces the convention indicates intense power-brokering, still going on as it starts, and during the event, there are hard aspects to Uranus (planet of change) from the sun, moon and Mars.  So they may do something daring, mainly nominate someone who doesn’t look like your mainstream white male candidate. 

Uranus in Aries will be squaring Trump’s Saturn, and that looks to me like a very large speed-bump. He’ll actually hit this around the middle of May, when it will occur to him that he’s spending a heck of a lot of money, and not having as much fun as he thought he would.  (Pluto will be squaring his Jupiter too, not good for finances.)  

I think Chris Christie will bow out in January, when Saturn squares his sun, when he’ll be dealing with issues around health or money.  John Kasich is also likely to take a reality pill and bow out early in the year, although he’ll have a good time at his party’s party in July.   Huckabee will have his groupies following him around at the convention, with Pluto sextiling his Saturn and inconjunct his Jupiter, but it’s not his time to rise. 

Things look pretty intense for Rand Paul, with Pluto conjuncting his sun.  Mainly, he’ll be going through an identity crisis of some kind.  Has he compromised his principles?  What are his principles?  Who is he?  This hits early in 2016, but he may try to ride it out.  If he makes a bargain with his devils, he’ll still be a contender at convention time.  But because the aspect comes back more strongly at that time, the stress could get to him, and he could start resorting to strong drink.

Rubio has some nice aspects going for him, although they’re not as dramatic.  But with Pluto opposing his Juno, I don’t think he’s getting the top spot.      

Jeb Bush is a lightning-rod, with Pluto opposing his Uranus and Uranus opposing his Neptune.  If he doesn’t make it to the end, it’s because he has that feeling of being a pawn in the game.  He’s already complained that it’s not the gentleman’s game that his dad and brother got to play.  My sense is that he will be passed over.  However, Saturn is trining his Venus, so he may end up being the compromise candidate, the one considered most solid, and he’ll be most appreciative.    

Ted Cruz’ aspects are actually pretty good at convention time.  Pluto is trining his Saturn/Juno conjunction, so it seems like he’ll be influential.  Neptune will be trining his Mars, giving momentum.  Pluto is also squaring his moon, and so he’ll get a lot of flak from a particular bloc of people – like women.  It could hurt his feelings, but it may not derail him.   

Things look fairly exciting for Carly Fiorina.  There will be several aspects to her Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto, some easy and some challenging, so she will also be a lightning rod at that time.  I think she has a chance to get on the ticket, probably as vice-president.   

Ben Carson has Saturn trining his Jupiter, so he could also be a compromise candidate.   The Republican voters could get behind the idea of a more tractable African-American, after Obama.  They could also calculate that it might get African-American voters to stay home.  Uranus stations right at the inconjunct of Carson’s sun in July, and this could throw him into the limelight.  However, there is a chance he’ll self-sabotage right around the time of the convention.

So, yeah, I think a Carson/Fiorina ticket is possible, and it would be a way for the Republicans to try to get back onto the moral high ground as far as diversity goes, without compromising their core value of shoring up corporate wealth.  And of course, I don’t think anybody is going to fall for that.  I hope.   

Well, now I’ve gone and done it.  I’ve made predictions.  I can never help myself. 

This coming month, there’s a Neptune/Saturn square in mutable signs.  Saturn is about what binds us, while Neptune is about our desire to be unbound, to connect with some beautiful, elusive cosmic goodness.  Neptune can be very escapist, and we all need to get away from reality at times.  But how far away do we get?

So November is a month of flux, of nervous energy, of sudden surges of faith and hope.  Just like all those Republican candidates, everyone has their little pet beliefs, often at odds with reality.  As the month goes on, these beliefs will become fuzzier, attracting the lint of allied convictions. 

At the Republican debate, we learned that if you say everything with confidence, categorically deny whatever is inconvenient,  and make abundant use of scapegoats (like the press), you can “win the debate”.   But can you win the people that easily?  Of course, these candidates don’t need to convince most of us.  They just need to make it all seem clownish, irrelevant, stressful or confusing enough so that most people won’t vote.  And that is what generally happens.  Most folks stay home, symbolically expressing their sense of exclusion from the corridors of power.   

Pluto will be in Capricorn for eight more years, and they will be lean ones, with a focus on maturity, responsibility and accountability.  These are the years in which we fulfill a promise to our descendants, by redesigning our social structure so that it can endure.  In November, our beliefs and illusions bump up against pragmatic realities, and we could sustain a few bruises.  But this is just the beginning.  We will have many, many occasions to separate truth from lies, during the coming years.