My background with politics and political predictions comes from being a high school civics teacher for some 20 years. It was always fun to challenge my classes to predict the outcome of elections. Students go with their heart, tend to believe that everyone else thinks like they do, and that gives them lower odds of getting it right. I had quite a string of accurate predictions because I knew a lot of the more accurate and reliable sources, which I would show them after making a correct prediction.
With round-the-clock news channels competing for viewers, a plethora of trivia floods the pundit forecasts and predictions and the experts become mired in minutia (sorry, I could not resist showing off my vocabulary skills) making it difficult to tell what they are really predicting. And of course, this is sprinkled with sensational headlines aimed at ratings rather than providing voters with an accurate election forecast.
I'm not going out on any limbs here, and welcome readers to compare my notes to their own, and to those of the pundits. Hang on to it and come back with a comment when the election doesn't turn out like I said it would, I don't really care. But I hope you have more fun reading my comments than those of the professionals who are paid to be deliberately elusive and vague.
The Democratic Candidate and How the Party Shapes up in 2024
I'll write one brief paragraph for the two Democrats who are considered candidates for the party nomination in 2024 who aren't Joe Biden. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, has a recognizable name and is an anti-vaccine nut. And that's about it. Self-help guru Marianne Williamson is probably less popular this time around than she was the last time. And that's about it on her. I doubt that either of them even breaks the fundraising threshold to qualify for debates. They're gone after the Iowa Caucuses and South Carolina Primary.
President Biden has achieved a leadership threshold that even his age can't minimize as a disadvantage. He was clearly the man for the hour, and aside from the concerns about his age, which shouldn't be concerns with Kamala Harris as Vice-President, he will coast to the Democratic nomination without spending campaign money. He can sit back and watch the Republican field dwindle down, hopefully helped along by indictments and a conviction or two of the orange headed buffoon, which will throw the GOP nomination into confusion. OK, maybe that's wishful thinking, since Trump has eluded justice for all his life. But Biden will be nominated by acclamation.
Biden wins the popular vote big, adds North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa and Florida to his electoral vote totals. He'll get Florida thanks to the work of its Governor, the Democrats get control of the House back by somewhere around 22 seats, and pick up at least two more Senate seats, including Missouri, and from what early polls are looking like, Florida. Iowa and Ohio are both matters of investment for Democrats. Sherrod Brown running for re-election makes Biden carrying the state feasible in 2024, and Iowa is a matter of campaign finance investment and turnout. We can talk later about whether Trump and George Santos wind up in the same federal prison.
And on the Republican Side
The assumption is that the orange headed buffoon will once again elude justice, and will wind up getting the GOP nomination for President. The fact of the matter is that the field shaping up against him is pretty lame, but he's not completely a shoo-in. Republicans have lost their collective minds over this incompetent, inept boob, but he's never actually picked up the majority of votes and I think, and all of the evidence supports my thoughts, that he's on a steep, downhill slide now. An increasing number of Republicans are done with him, he'll have a tough time convincing independent voters to support him and unless he figures out a way to cheat, which can be counted on, he stands no chance at re-election, and I'll honestly say that his odds to win the GOP nomination are not up to the 50-50 threshold.
If there is justice, which would involve grand jury indictments and a DOJ prosecution in trials that they push to pre-election dates, which is my devout hope, then Trump will be ineligible to run and the GOP will be in hopeless confusion about which of its current array of weak candidates will get the nomination.
Well, here goes.
Nikki Haley is one of two current GOP candidates who has, in my opinion, the best chance of unseating Trump. Her biggest obstacle is the misogynistic perspective of many in her party when it comes to women in leadership positions and she is, in their eyes, also a "foreigner." In terms of image, she is articulate and can show flashes of educated intelligence, which gives her the chance to bury the buffoon in a debate, if she will take that chance and be honest. She's been on again, off again as far as Trump goes. One of the more "left wing" things she's done is get rid of the Confederate battle flag flying over the South Carolina capitol. She's kind of a mess on policy, depending on the audience, can be a flaming right winger or a moderate, depending on who she's talking to. She has no chance against Biden.
Mike Pence must be dreaming. I can't think of a niche constituency in the GOP that would find him an attractive candidate, and his poll numbers, less than 3% at the present time, are already an indication of doom for this vanilla zero of a candidate. Indiana didn't want him back as governor when Trump snatched him up to run on the ticket in 2016, and his lack of integrity in crawling onto that ticket and accepting the nomination of a corrupt, worldly politician nullifies his claims to Evangelical purity. Pence's political career was over the day the January 6th mob screamed to hang him.
Then there's Vivek Ramaswamy. Who? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Asa Hutchinson, former two term governor of Arkansas, is the most traditionally "Reagan Republican" guy in the field, which is why he doesn't stand a chance at winning the nomination. He has been an outspoken anti-Trumper, denounced Trump's claims that the 2020 election was "stolen", and has served in several capacities in the executive branch. I don't see much hope for Mr. Hutchinson in the nomination process, since Republicans for the most part are no longer the party of Reagan.
Larry Elder, a radio talk show host, which is the first of many things that disqualify him as a candidate (think Kari Lake), is a typical Trumpie politician. He runs against mostly straw man issues, making things up as he goes along to knock down and sound serious. He's a rewind of the same old themes, alleging the 2020 election was stolen, management of the pandemic is the cause of all our problems, crime is terrible, we need more school choice so private, religious zealots can get their hands on your tax dollars and oh, he wants to eliminate the minimum wage. He's an African American carbon copy of Trump, and offers no alternative to motivate voters.
Tim Scott, the first black Senator from the South in more than a century, but rarely represents the interests of most black voters in his state, walking a conservative political tightrope and backing himself into corners on issues like police reforms while arguing against the Democratic position on structural racism in America. He is not the kind of politician who would attract black voters to the GOP, not by any stretch of the imagination. I wonder how extremist Evangelical Christian Nationalists will look at black Republican candidates, since they don't believe blacks have any stake in this country.
Ron Desantis has been campaigning by turning Florida into a civil rights nightmare. That is slowly but surely making him increasingly unpopular in his own state and has doomed any chance he had at convincing people on the national level that he is a serious candidate for President. Aside from a semi-entertaining spitting contest he has engaged in with Trump, he has offered Republicans the kind of politics that guarantee lost elections. Yeah, he did win re-election in Florida, and is term limited, which is why he waited until his second term to get started on his ridiculous, "anti-woke" agenda. And while it may be labelled as "anti-woke," it is definitely waking up Florida voters who are increasingly against his measures. He has no chance at the nomination, and with his shrinking numbers, may be one of the first Republicans out after the Iowa Caucus.
Chris Christie was a loyal Trump lackey through the 2016 election, panting at the table for scraps that were thrown his way. He helped lead the 2016 transition team, helped Trump prepare for debates in 2020 and then, when Trump was done with him and threw him under the bus, became an outspoken critic. So does Christie have the cojones to stand up to his former boss and inamorata, and if so, is that out of political expedience, or does he have genuine convictions and remorse over supporting the worst, most corrupt President in American history? Christie is pretty darn corrupt himself (remember the George Washington Bridge scandal?) and was more than willing to give up what little integrity he had in order to beg for whatever the orange headed buffoon tossed his way.
I'm not convinced that Donald J. Trump will ultimately be the GOP nominee. He's a loser, evidenced by the fact that he has lost the popular vote every time he ran for the Presidency. The gap has widened in the GOP, enough that I don't believe he will get enough votes to pick up the electoral votes he needs to win in 2024. And I hope, if there is real justice, that the raining down of indictments on his head for all of the crimes he has committed, will lead those in the GOP who still have hands on the power strings to pull him up short and get him out of the race, out of fear of a potential Democratic landslide, at least of twenty-first century proportions, coming down on the party with him at the top of the ticket.
The Coming Democratic Landslide
Google "The coming Democratic landslide" and you'll get an assortment of liberal, conservative and moderate comments about the 2020 election, the 2022 mid-terms, and the coming 2024 election, with lots of hints and points to polling data that President Biden and the Democratic party are seeing political attitudes lean in their direction as 2024 approaches. There are several reasons for this.
One, the Supreme Court is showing that the conservative direction Trump appointees were put on the court to provide is taking hold, and is angering many more moderate, independent voting Americans, as well as activating constituencies that have been dormant, especially in some conservative states, like Florida for example, or Texas, for decades. The Dobbs decision was given credit by a substantial number of pundits for the turnout on the left that stopped a potential "red wave" in 2022. Using that as the new norm, the numbers for 2024 point to significant change in the attitude of the electorate when it comes to the Republican party, of which a glimpse was visible in November 2022. The wave of "anti-wokeness" articulated by people like Ron Desantis is a vote killer. And high profile mass shootings, and the total and complete inaction of politicians to deal with them, is yet another vote killer. This trifecta of issues on which Republicans are on the wrong side will bring them down.
Then there is the orange headed buffoon himself. People really are getting turned off of him by the sheer volume of information about his corruption and when the pressure gets tough, he opens his mouth, or his outlet on Truth Social, and spews, convincing more people not to vote for him. His hard core base is large, but it is shrinking and what's left is not enough to elect him. He's lost most independents and some moderate Republicans. At most, his MAGA base can deliver maybe 35% of the popular vote, but not enough to give him electoral votes in enough states to win. A few detailed indictments and Trump's support will evaporate. I think, if indictments are handed down in the documents case, that will be the end of any meaningful shot he might have at the GOP nomination. That's when the party's inner circle will pay him a visit and do whatever they need to do to get him out of the race.
On the other hand, it has been very frustrating to see President Biden's success be minimized and shoved to the back seat by a wishy-washy media. In any other political era, this President's accomplishments would have generated nightly news coverage and accolades from multiple sources broadcast on television. "His job approval ratings are still low," says the media. Well, duh. That has to do with your reporting and coverage, not our opinion of the President. We're more than a year down the road from the first predictions of a recession coming, and there's no recession, inflation is getting smaller, unemployment is at record lows and the economy is roaring.
Now, wasn't that more fun than what's on today's news cycle?
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