Five political stories to watch in 2016

President Obama delivers a statement at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Va., Dec. 17, 2015. (Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters)

A not-so-lame duck as Obama heads into his last year

Late in their second terms, presidents often look to shore up their legacies by seeking victories in the foreign policy arena, where Congress has less power than it does over domestic affairs. But President Obama is heading into his last year in office ready, even eager, to scrap with Republicans and lock in his biggest achievements at home.

He will also campaign aggressively for Democratic candidates around the country, including the party’s presidential nominee — the person most responsible to keep the GOP from rolling back the work he’s done over the last seven years.

In 2015, the administration that built the 2009 stimulus package, enacted Wall Street reform and made Obamacare the law of the land reached a historic deal with Iran to curb that country’s suspect nuclear program and reopened the U.S. Embassy in Cuba. Obama also announced tough new emissions restrictions meant to curb greenhouse gases blamed for climate change and, after a years-long, politically fraught review, finally said no to the Keystone pipeline.

But the president has labored to advance his six-year campaign to close the detention center for suspected extremists at Guantánamo Bay, releasing some prisoners to third countries but hitting domestic roadblocks in the form of legislation forbidding the transfer of detainees to U.S. soil. He has promised to keep transferring prisoners cleared for release to other countries, and said he will present Congress with a plan to shutter the notorious facility.

“It will be an uphill battle,” he acknowledged at his year-end press conference. “Now, every battle I’ve had with Congress over the last five years has been uphill. But we keep on surprising you by actually getting some stuff done.”

Several vexing foreign policy challenges are sure to stalk Obama into 2016. The military campaign against the so-called Islamic State, which carried out mid-November massacres in Paris that left at least 130 dead, still seems a long way from fulfilling his promise to degrade and destroy that terrorist army. Russia looks no closer to reversing its annexation of the Ukraine’s Crimean region or ending its support for pro-Moscow separatists in the country’s eastern areas.

And Obama announced in October that the U.S troop withdrawal from Afghanistan would halt, extending what is already America’s longest war. At the same time, he has expanded the U.S. military role on the ground in Iraq and Syria.

For the president who promised to get America out of Iraq and Afghanistan, it can’t be comforting to know that he will hand wars in both countries to his successor. —Olivier Knox

Republican presidential candidates, from left, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Rand Paul take the stage during the CNN Republican presidential debate at the Venetian Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nev., on Dec. 15, 2015. (Photo: Mark J. Terrill/AP)

How long will the Republican primary last?

Of course, the biggest story of 2016 will be the outcome of the November presidential election, but before the Republican primary has played itself out,
there’s far too little information available to speculate
knowledgeably on whether Hillary Clinton will be the next
commander-in-chief. The most immediate obvious big question is whether
the Republican nominee will be established by the end of March, or
whether the process will go all the way to June, or even to the
convention in July.

It’s important to remember: Primaries don’t happen in one day. They
play out over several months. For a few decades, states that voted
after the first month or so haven’t really mattered. But that wasn’t
always the case, and it may not be the case this year, because there
are still so many candidates and because the stakes for the Republican
Party are so high. If Donald Trump were to become the nominee, it
would likely mean the end of the GOP as we know it, and
could lead to the creation of a new third party.

The sequence of which states vote when is incredibly important. The
first four states have traditionally decided the contest. In 2016, they
may be more of a first act, eliminating some candidates and leaving a
few survivors to slug it out into the spring and summer. Iowa goes
first on Feb. 1, followed by New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada
in the three weeks that follow.

Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are battling for Iowa, but Cruz is a better
match for the state’s large number of religious conservatives and
looks primed to win there. If Trump places a strong second, it’s
unlikely that would be much of a setback. But if he reacts badly
to second place, he could lose the aura of invincibility. In New
Hampshire, Cruz or Trump will have to beat whoever emerges as the
establishment choice of that state’s more moderate electorate. Chris
Christie looks strong, but Marco Rubio could emerge there, as could
Jeb Bush. An open question in the Granite State is whether large
numbers of Democrats cross over to vote in the Republican primary,
which is allowed there, and if they do, whether they do so to stop
Trump.

South Carolina is very conservative, and is likely to be won by Cruz
or Trump, while Nevada is a question mark. The biggest unknown about how
that first month will play out is how much consolidation there will
be. Will Cruz and Trump — whose support comes from similar types of
voters — both continue into the second month of voting? It’s very
likely they will. If the hardcore anti-Washingtion wing of the GOP is
split, this will represent an opportunity for the more moderate wing
of the GOP, but only if they can cohere around Rubio, Christie
or Bush. The chances of that happening are not good.

March will be a huge month for the primaries. On the first of the month, 12 states will
hold primaries or caucuses, and seven of them are below the
Mason-Dixon Line. The heavily Southern tilt to that day’s results will
work in favor of a Cruz or Trump candidacy, but the results will not
be unequivocal for whoever wins the popular vote in each state.
Delegates will be awarded to multiple candidates based on what
percentage of the popular vote they got, or on which congressional
districts they won.

One advantage for the GOP establishment is the fact that some of the
states with the biggest number of delegates are some of the more
moderate states, like New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Ohio
and Pennsylvania, and those states award all or most of their
delegates to the winner of the popular vote, either in the second half
of March or later in the spring. That is likely to help an
establishment consensus candidate, assuming one has emerged.

There’s a real possibility, of course, that if Cruz and Trump fight
over the base and Rubio and Christie and Bush fight over the rest of
the voters, nobody wins the 1,236 delegates needed to secure the
nomination (out of 2,470) and the nominee has to be chosen at the
convention. If TV executives are wishing for anything this
Christmas, it’s for that scenario to come to pass. —Jon Ward

Rosario Reyes, left, and her son Victor chant ‘Si se puede!’ during a prayer for justice vigil and rally in front of the Supreme Court on Dec. 11, 2015, in Washington. Organized by the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) and CASA, about 40 people gathered to pray for the Supreme Court justices after they agreed to hear a case regarding President Obama’s executive order to expand Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and implement Deferred Action for Parental Accountability. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Will the Supremes continue to uphold Obama’s legacy?

The Supreme Court has been surprisingly kind to President Barack Obama’s legacy, passing up multiple opportunities to knock down his health care law and vindicating his Justice Department’s decision to abandon the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The court is dominated by five right-leaning justices, but they’ve refrained from delivering death blows to most of Obama’s liberal policy achievements in the past seven years. (The majority of Supreme Court decisions are unanimous, but partisan splits tend to emerge in the highest-profile cases.)

Will the Supremes continue to side with Obama in his final year in office? That remains to be seen.

The Supreme Court has yet to say whether it will wade in and decide a dispute between 26 states and the government over Obama’s executive action to extend protection from deportation to an additional five million unauthorized immigrants. A lower court has struck down the presidential action and is preventing the Obama administration from going forward with its plan. Meanwhile, an earlier Obama program that is not being challenged has already extended temporary legal protection and work permits to nearly a million young, unauthorized immigrants.

The court is also set to decide whether Obamacare illegally compels religiously affiliated nonprofits to provide contraceptive care to employees. In the past, the court has ruled that private companies with religious objections do not have to provide contraceptive care to their employees.

The justices won’t deliver their opinions until June, so the president will get the news with just months to go until he leaves the White House for good. —Liz Goodwin

House of Representives Speaker-elect Paul Ryan gestures as he stands with outgoing Speaker John Boehner after Ryan was elected on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 29, 2015. (Photo: Gary Cameron/Reuters)

Can Speaker Paul Ryan maintain control of the House?

The House Freedom Caucus, the group of 45-50 ultraconservative House Republicans who constantly challenge the GOP establishment, finally got what it wanted in 2015: Speaker John Boehner resigned after nearly five years of pressure from them to step aside.

In 2016, these conservatives could face some existential questions: Can they prove they stand for more than just ousting the current speaker — and will they be able to outmaneuver new Speaker Paul Ryan?

Ryan, unlike Boehner when he ascended to the post in 2011, took the position in full knowledge of the havoc these conservatives are able to wreak and, it appears, is taking immediate measures to strengthen his hand and counter them. In the opening seven weeks his speakership, he has been much more aggressive with press than Boehner or any other major congressional leader, regularly appearing on television and holding briefings with the Capitol Hill press corps. Ryan has said that his shift in approach is because he is of a different generation than other leaders, but it’s also clear that by becoming more aggressive himself on the platforms conservatives exploited to attack the previous regime, he’s made himself his own top message man.

In 2015, this strategy kept the most conservative Republicans quieter while giving others cover to support his policies because conservative audiences were exposed to his thinking in a way they weren’t to Boehner’s.

The biggest question is whether that will be enough to maintain a relative peace in 2016. Ryan says he wants to use the year to promote Republican policy proposals within Congress and to define the party outside of it as the GOP seeks to retake the White House. But Tea Party conservatives have never shared the congressional leadership’s incentives to prove Republicans can govern.

The first few months of 2016 should reveal whether Ryan is able to contain the forces that doomed his predecessor. —Meredith Shiner

Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton talk before the CNN Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nev., on Oct. 13, 2015. (Photo: David Becker/AP)

Don’t forget the Democrats

Thanks to a highly competitive primary and the presence of a certain big-haired billionaire, Republicans have dominated the headlines in the 2016 presidential race so far.

But while they may be less in the spotlight, the Democratic side of the political contest is definitely going to heat up in the coming months.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remains the frontrunner in spite of a surprisingly strong challenge from self-described “democratic socialist” Sen. Bernie Sanders. However, polls show Sanders is within spitting distance of Clinton in Iowa, where the first voters weigh in on February 1. He’s also got a strong lead in the next primary state, New Hampshire. If Sanders is able to pull off an
Iowa surprise while holding on to his lead in New Hampshire, it could
change the whole ballgame and make for a real race on the Democratic side.

Even if the unexpected doesn’t occur, there are still plenty of questions hanging around Clinton’s White House bid. If she secures the nomination, everyone will be watching Clinton’s veepstakes, particularly whether she chooses a running mate with the left credentials designed to appeal to the Sanderistas.

Whether its Clinton or Sanders, it will be fascinating to watch whether the Democratic nominee runs towards President Obama or away from him. Obama’s approval rating has dropped in recent months, raising the possibility that the Democratic nominee will want to remain aloof from his legacy in order to woo independent voters.

This approach could have its advantages, but there are also pitfalls. Obama remains popular with the Democratic base, and his allies will almost certainly not take attacks on him lying down, even if they come from within the party. Specifically, Vice President Joe Biden, never shy about speaking his mind, stressed he would be an outspoken defender of the administration’s legacy when he decided not to throw his hat into the 2016 ring.

Navigating the relationship with the current president while trying to plot a route to the White House will be a delicate balancing act for the Democratic nominee that may be more fun to watch than anything we’ve seen thus far from the party’s primary. — Hunter Walker

Related slideshows:

2015 in photos: News
2015 in photos: Politics
2015 in photos: Animals

See the countdown of our top ten news slideshows for the year!