This post is going to be short and sweet. I’m not going to break down individual election results.
A week or two ago, I shared on my Facebook page that I didn’t see a red wave coming. Admittedly, my evidence was less than compelling but the combination of early voting numbers and the results of the abortion vote in Kansas in August left me feeling that there was going to be no red wave this year.
There should have been. The party that wins the White House almost always loses big in the next election. The fact that it didn’t happen this time is more significant than any other pundit will tell you.
Unfortunately, I can’t yet unpack precisely how this is significant moving forward because I need to wait for the demographic numbers to see who actually voted in each state. But I do know that this is monumentally significant.
In terms of the practical implications of how these toss up races land, virtually nothing will change even if republicans keep 50 seats in the senate. We get to keep Social Security for at least two more years and absolutely no major piece of legislation will pass in the next 2 years.
I don’t really like predicting election results. Literally no one is better at it than a coin toss would be. That said, I was actually pretty spot on this year mostly because I don’t predict races where I don’t have any clear indicators. I never commented on Wisconsin or Arizona. I nailed everything else I called this year. Once I knew that Fetterman recovered from his stroke, I knew that he was going to win with absolute certainty because he ran a masterful campaign. I knew Warnock was in trouble. I didn’t know if he was going to win or not, but I knew that it was going to be way closer than it should have been, given his opponent. The media kept trying to make the governor’s race here in NYS sound like it was going to be close. I never thought it would be.
So on the heels of my prescient prognosticating, let me blow up all of my credibility by attempting to forecast a presidential election two years out, with absolutely NO idea about what will be happening in the country or the world when that election happens. What I’m trying to say here, is that you would be foolish to read anything I’m about to say in any context other than light entertainment.
Trump is going to officially announce that he’s running for president again in the next week or so. It doesn’t matter who else runs in the republican primary; Trump will be the nominee unless he drops dead in the next 2 years. He has a solid (roughly) 35% of the republican electorate squarely behind him. They are as immovable as a 4 year old who loves their meth addicted, domestic partner abusing, unemployed daddy. No other republican has a high enough profile to successfully run against him except for DeSantis (or DeSanctimonious, as Papa has referred to him). DeSantis has already declared that he’s too scared to run against daddy. That could still change, and I hope it does because I really need the entertainment value of watching 2 republican “stars” viciously tear each other apart. This matchup in particular would be as down and dirty as politics have ever gotten. It would be white walkers vs dragons.
So Trump will be the republican nominee. Biden is going to run again and democrats will go along with that even if they have to Weekend At Bernie’s him to cross the finish line. Despite the leaks we’ve been seeing in the media over the past year, he’s going to keep Kamala on the ticket even though she’s been an unmitigated disaster. Democrats aren’t bold enough to drop a sitting VP. Sorry, Mayo Pete – you’re going to have to wait a little longer. Unfortunately for you, by the time it’s your turn, the only demographic that doesn’t think you’re oily will be a tiny sliver of the electorate.
Trump is going to lose. He’s going to lose because instead of running a populist campaign like he did in 2016, he’s just going to keep whining and crying about his imaginary victimhood. That is just not an appealing campaign strategy. He’s going to lose. Biden isn’t going to win, so much as Trump is going to lose. I really believe that Trump is the only republican candidate who Biden wouldn’t lose to.
So there you have my preposterous two-year-out election prediction. I stick by everything I’ve said about Biden, Trump, Harris, and Mayo but anything can happen over the next 2 years so I’m just having fun with this.
