The 2024 US Presidential Election
American Politics
Let’s begin to do the calculus of the upcoming presidential election in November of 2024.
The Realities
1. Both candidates are old, Trump 77, Biden 80, either would be the oldest elected president in US history.
2. Trump has a mountain of legal problems, balanced against the relatively small legal problems of Biden’s son.
3. The economy has stabilized and grown under Biden, although this is not necessarily the popular perception.
4. Trump remains popular, in spite of his very antiauthoritarian stance.
5. Biden appears to be intent on continuing as a foreign policy Cold Warrior, pushing a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, a festering confrontation with China over Taiwan, and supporting Netanyahu in his reprisals against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and his hawkishness about Iran and Syria.
6. Republicans are generally hurt by the Supreme Court rulings, especially on abortion, and implied threats of other social sensitive cases.
7. There is a perception that the Republican Party, especially under Trump, would be radically anti-democracy.
8. Although the Democratic Party is certainly more concerned with supporting democracy, it is open to criticism because it still has operated mostly within the confines of preserving free-market capitalism and has generally opposed the progressives within the Party; what Paul Wellstone called “the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party”.
9. Although Biden did yeoman work to deal with Covid after the Trump debacle, the reigning narrative seems to be that none of that was really necessary, and that the health of free-market capitalism should have been the primary concern.
The Variables
1. Trump’s legal issues: Many of the trials will likely be drawn out past the election date, perhaps making them all moot if he is elected. Even if he is brought to trial before the elections, the appeals will drag on and we are all concerned about what his Supreme Court is likely to decide if and when it gets to them.
2. The results of the Supreme Court instituting a code of ethics.
3. The economy.
4. The fallout of the Netanyahu support is still playing out, but it can hardly end up being helpful to Biden in the long run unless there is a dramatic change of his direction.
5. The possibility of small wars and confrontations growing into larger regional wars, or super-power wars.
6. The continuing disfunction of Congress with threats to government funding.
7. The continuing and growing abuses of the electoral systems in states.
8. The likelihood that Trump will not accept the election results unless he wins.
9. The continuing manipulation of the political system by those with money and influence.
10.The unexpected in our current political system
11.Further climate catastrophes.
12.A new pandemic, or other global health issue.
13.The unknown.
Perhaps we will end up with Joe Manchin and Marjorie Taylor Greene being the candidates as everything dissolves into absurdity and it is ultimately left to the billionaires to decide who should run the nation.
