WILL 2018 BE THE END OF THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

New Year approaches, and gamblers seek once again to profit from the oracular powers of the Hive. Early this year, I begged readers (well, not really—more like mildly advised, but indulge me) not to waste their money on betting that Donald Trump would fail to complete a year in office. If you chose to put money down anyway, all I can say is that you were brave—and, to be fair, the year isn’t over yet. But faith in the early-exit hypothesis still seems to be strong. At this point, London bookies still think it’s likelier than not that Trump will exit before his first term is over, something no president has done while still alive. So it’s time to revisit the betting terrain and prognosticate for the coming year.
WILL DONALD TRUMP BE IMPEACHED
, mighty unlikely. If you don’t stand to multiply your investment by 20, I’d skip the bet. Impeachment is a political act, and the Republican majority will remain in place through 2018. If the investigations into collusion with Russia were yielding anything seriously damning (and if journalistic blunders on the subject weren’t outpacing scoops), it’d be different. As things stand, however, special counsel Robert Mueller seems to have found little in the way of collusion—at least that we know of—and instead shifted his focus to the obstruction of justice.

Obstruction of justice is a significant crime in itself, of course, but people are more willing to punish it if it’s part of the concealment of a bigger crime rather than the sum of the crime. As people are starting to notice, independent counsel

Investigations have a tendency to start by focusing on one thing and then indicting people for something else, after the process itself has made them trip over their own feet. Republicans are not going to join a pile-on over what role Donald Trump played in the false statements that former national security adviser Michael Flynn made to the F.B.I. Even Democrats are likely to flinch from impeachment talk, recalling what happened during the Clinton years.