Initial 2024 Election Post

 

I guess I have to admit the 2024 electoral campaign has started.  If candidates have already entered and failed, then something must be happening.  Indeed, something similar seems to have happened to the campaign of the Marquis (de Sadeness); Governor Ron DeSantis' campaign has already peaked and is imploding. 

Another indicator:  PredictIt has posted its first market on the popular vote margin (Dem%-Rep%).  As far as PI is concerned, this clarifies the limitations they have agreed to with regard to new markets, after a hiatus for over a year.  They still focused the brackets on the null scenario of an Electoral College nailbiter, in the interests of generating revenue (and academic research, too!) To note the initial market take for the record, Dem winning % (tie being the exception) is about 60-40, taking into account the bid/ask. 

I don't count that initial debate as part of the campaign, as such; more like spring training in baseball. I can't resist a couple of comments, anyway. Smarmy Vivek has postulated himself as the most Trumpy of all, and it will be hard to top him for smarminess. Ah, DeSadness!  I think it was a little too evident Ron saw that gig as nowhere.  He was back in his element at home with hurricane warnings and gratuitous insult to Biden. 

I will proceed with a scenario-based analysis, considering the effects upon the massively-important House and Senate races for each.  The 2022-23 status of Congress is anomalous, with the House improbably with a Republican majority, considering the Senate has a narrow Democratic majority.  Most likely outcomes are reversal of both, but the Presidential race should be so consequential that it will carry more coattails than many recent partisan re-alignments in Congress. 

 I will also need to consider possible effects of significant third-party candidacies in each scenario, something that has not happened since Ross Perot in '92 and '96 (the marginal effects of Nader/Stein-type results, as we can expect for Cornel West's candidacy, for example, not changing the scenario, though they could be tiebreakers). 

The planned sequence of posts by scenario is as follows, starting, arbitrarily, by my choice of the most desirable one: 

1 - Trump Collapse.  The weight of his criminal trials cripples him--it only takes a few percent of his following turning against him, but he won't quit. 

2- Biden Weakened - Either economic weakness or undeniable physical/mental weakness makes him less-than-viable for all but his committed supporters. 

3 - War/Chaos - A crisis of massive proportion.  Think Pearl Harbor/9-11/COVID/UFO's, or widespread insurrection.

4 - Trump Out - He does quit, or die, or he is barred from campaign as a result of any of his convictions or court rulings. 

5 - Biden Out - He becomes deathly ill and must be replaced.  Or won't leave and is the victim of a successful party revolt. 

6 - Both Out - The most likely way is Trump gives in or is out for whatever reason, and Biden then finds a reason he doesn't need to run.

7 Stasis - the Null Scenario.  Biden and Trump run until the bitter end.  Debates will be few, and Trump's plea in the Georgia case proves the climax, one way or the other.

I don't want to get too precise about the likelihood of the scenarios, but I would say 1 and 2 are about equally likely at 10% or so, Scenario 6 is probably more likely than either 4 or 5, and all three add up to 20-30%, and Scenario 3 we can pull a number out of the air and say is no more than 5%.  Those events have happened several times in the past century, but have not often come in election years, as it turns out (2020 the exception!)   

That leaves no more than 40-50% likelihood for the Null Scenario that everyone focuses on.  It is, though, the one with the highest likelihood, so I will go into it with the most depth. 

I do not want at all to trivialize or counter the argument that this election is extremely important, on the order of ones like 1860, 1932, or 1968.  In most of these scenarios I describe briefly above, the key question underlying the competition is whether our Constitution can hold up under the threat of Executive malfeasance and manipulation.  It managed to hold up during Watergate, but this combines that with elements of classic American rebellious behavior threatening our way of governing ourselves.