Will a President Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump face a serious economic downturn or a recession in the next four years? Quite possibly. The Federal Reserve could make a mistake, either raising interest rates too quickly, and stopping the expansion in its tracks, or raising them too slowly, and then needing to move abruptly to combat inflation. A new financial crisis could emerge; some shock we can’t even imagine might stop this expansion cold.

There is a decent argument that the United States economy is more susceptible to recession now than it has been for most of the last several decades, for two reasons.

First, growth has been around 2 percent a year, below the 3 to 4 percent that was commonplace in the second half of the 20th century. That means there is less of a growth cushion. It takes a smaller negative shock to pull the economy into contraction territory.

Second, the Fed may find itself with less room to reduce the damage of the next downturn. In modern recessions, the central bank has cut rates by an average of 5.5 percent, according to research by the Fed economist David Reifschneider. With rates below 0.5 percent and on track to rise very slowly, any small shock in the next few years could cause major economic damage, especially if the Fed’s less conventional monetary policy tools either go unused or don’t prove effective.

But those are separate issues from the more general idea that “we’re due” for a recession, and they’re also issues that have been present for all seven years of the current expansion.

It’s true that we’re closer to the arrival of the next recession than we were a year ago. But that’s tautological. We’re also a year closer to the destruction of Earth by the sun, or to a Cleveland Browns Super Bowl title.

And there’s no particular reason to think either of those are going to happen during the next presidential administration either.