Why not guess as to who wins the White House in 2024? It’s more than 2 years away, which is something like a thousand dog years, so anything could happen. I think it’s easier guessing who the two main nominees will be, because I think the general election will depend on whether Republicans overplay their hand after winning the House (and probably the Senate) next week, and I don’t know how far they will go versus figuring out they’re shooting themselves in the foot. I’m figuring Trump is the most likely next President, but not way more likely than some others, and not probable. And I’m not trying to game out whether there will be a valid election and peaceful transfer of power, so, not who actually gets into the White House, and exactly when. Just, who will be recorded the winner in history books of the future?
Candidate, Probability
Donald Trump, 25%
Ron DeSantis, 22.2%
Joe Biden, 15.4%
Kamala Harris, 7.7%
Gavin Newsom, 5.9%
Mike Pence, 4.8%
Pete Buttigieg, 3.8%
Trump wins if he runs, and he will run if he is legally able to run. I also agree with that list that DeSantis stands a pretty good chance of winning. Basically, the Republicans have a massive advantage in that their voters will vote for anything with an R next to it. The more vile the better.
Democrats will have the problem they always have. Their insist that the progressive agenda is a non-winner, and they need a moderate. The Dems will run the Joe Biden and the progressives will feel betrayed by his lack of a progressive agenda in the first term. Four years is a long time for the uninformed voter to forget just how awful Trump was.
If things continue in their current path, Republicans will win every election at every level until the next civil war. Democrats have been totally inept in fighting the transparently evil Republican agenda. No top level indictments (much less convictions) of trumpist insurrectionists or grifters. Ineffective action to remove political trump appointees from post office, DoJ, homeland security. No protection of critical civil rights. And this problem with Dems has been around since Bush II. Republicans have openly espoused voter suppression, a national religion, and the destruction of fair elections- Dems have dithered and failed. Republicans may be evil incarnate, but they win. Whether with or without a legislative majority, with or without cheating, they win. Dem ineffectiveness has doomed us all.
I strongly disagree with this characterization. A more accurate read is that the Democrats have largely continued to work within the system, which, I fully admit was full of flaws and an outdated assumption that people would play by the rules, written and otherwise. The Republicans on the other hand, have been willing to bend and break all those rules with gleeful abandon, causing wins across the board, especially in stacking the Supreme court.
The Democrats, if we insist on using the terms good and evil, are by-and-large, being good and not stooping to the Republican level, which means they are indeed losing. This is why there’s the old saw that “Evil Will Always Triumph Because Good is Dumb.” And yeah, being willing to sink to the lowest level is often the winning choice. Historically, law always falls before the willingness to embrace force and corruption. The fact that we Americans ever thought we were different, is what is more laughable.
Agreed. It’s a fight in which one of the combatants is following the Marquess of Queensberry boxing rules, and the other combatant is using a tire iron and a knife.
Trump is the individual front runner for 2024 because he’s a bit more certain to run than is Joe Biden, and a bit younger than Joe.
But as to which party wins in 2024, I think it is hard to predict. I’ve posted before that, month after month, Trump has been a smidgen ahead of Biden in the far-in-advance 2024 polls. But, today, Biden is that smidgen ahead.
I can say that, in the United States, neither major party has any long-term, or medium term advantage.
Today, the international business cycle helps the GOP. Two years from now, it will probably be more positive.
I’ll disagree with this, if only because the GOP has used gerrymandering (both of Congressional districts, and state-level house districts) and judicial appointments to create for themselves structural advantages in many areas, so that they can win elections and have outsized control of legislatures, despite not being a majority-supported party in many cases.
I think Biden really only won because of COVID. Trump bungled the response to COVID so poorly, and seemed to have such a lackadaisacal attitude towards containing it, that it really brought people out in force to vote against him. A lot can change in the time before the 2024 election, but if the economy isn’t doing substantially better, and barring a major resurgence of COVID (which I doubt is in the cards), I see Trump beating Biden. The Trump fans are suffering from serious Trump deprivation and they WILL crawl enthusiastically to the polls to bring their guy back.
If it’s someone other than Biden running against him, all bets are off.
Does he have a high enough profile to have a realistic shot? Is he capable of getting people fired up? I had heard of him, his name vaguely rang a bell, I had to look him up (he’s a Senator from Virginia.)
For the Republicans it will either be Trump or Desantis. The only way someone else gets the nomination is if both of them are unable to run for health reasons.
I think he could. But Biden would have to put his imprimatur on him first, and then his profile could be raised. He would never do it otherwise.
My other choice would be Jay Inslee, current Governor of the State of Washington. But he has even less name recognition than Warner. That’s not insurmountable, though. Obama was certainly an unknown.
I remember being impressed by Inslee in the 2020 debates. He was in at least one of those debates, wasn’t he? I think he may have only been in the first one, and dropped out of the running soon after. But what I saw of him, I liked. He seemed like an authoritative presence with good ideas.
He’d be wonderful. His big issue is climate change, and he excites younger voters. And yes, he did debate in 2020, as you said, perhaps only once.
Jon Tester, Senator from Montana, would be another good pick – though I think it would be nuts to sacrifice him as perhaps the only Dem Senator able to be elected for the State of Montana.
Others waiting in the wings: Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Corey Booker… there are others, but they probably would have a harder slog.
If I was a man of the left, I might say that gerrymandering forces the Democrats to take centrist positions, that being the only way they can continue to win approximately half the time.
And they’ll be mad that Biden did not magically get enough done after the Republicans have control of the House and Senate in 2022. So they won’t vote. And Republicans will gain the House, Senate and Presidency in 2024, along with many State houses. And the Democrats will never have to worry about contesting an election again.
Because the country will be under de facto one-party rule for the foreseeable future.
If Hitler had 3,750 active nuclear warheads, and he means to deploy them anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice, I think he would have lasted more than 8 years. This is what the Republicans will control. If they don’t just make more.
There are several more systemic advantages for Republicans in both medium and long term:
They are quicker to cheat.
They do not try to govern much.
One of the only things Republicans try to do in governance is slash taxes for very rich people, who in turn donate to them, so they have far more large donations.
The Electoral College gives them an advantage because states with fewer residents tend to be more Republican, and carry a greater vote power per resident in Presidential elections, have more representation per resident in the Senate, and can therefore get overrepresentation on the Supreme Court.