The Future is Autocracy

As of this writing, the November 5 election is still a few days away.  And it's not looking great for the republic.  I'll stand by my original predictions, but if anything, I'm even more bearish about Harris's chances based on the tea leaves.  The biggest tea leaf of all is from the state of Nevada, the only state in the country that, because of unique geography, gives us meaningful data related to early voting.  Registered Republicans are outnumbering Democrats by nearly 5% there in early voting.  There's no precedent for this in a Presidential cycle and spells probable disaster for Harris.  And Nevada is one of the only swing states I predicted to go for Harris!  It's very hard to believe the Democrats' problems are gonna be contained entirely within Nevada state lines.

But let's say that Kamala Harris manages to land the inside straight and squeak out a narrow victory next week.  Trump has hinted at a "secret plan" hatched with the Speaker of the House to steal it from her.  All it would take is a Republican Governor or legislature from a state Harris won refusing to submit their slate of electors by the December 11 deadline.  Mike Johnson could insist the electoral votes be processed without delay even without every state having submitted them.  With fewer than 270 electoral votes for either candidate, the election would be punted to the House of Representatives and Trump would win.  

Trump couldn't do this in 2020 because Nancy Pelosi was Speaker, but there's no reason whatsoever to believe our republic's guardrails would hold and he wouldn't get away with it this time.  Does anybody really believe either Johnson or Trump's Supreme Court supermajority would hesitate to stave off a homegrown junta if that was their only path to power?  In effect, Harris probably needs a victory of at least 290 electoral votes to avoid having her victory stripped from her by the kind of maneuver one would expect in a place like Senegal.

Of course, the odds are that Trump won't even have to cheat to win.  His victory would constitute the quickest and easiest route to an autocratic future.  "If Trump was gonna behave like Hitler, why didn't we see it in his first term?" is the inevitable half-witted, context-free counterpoint lobbed at us by his groupies, hilariously attempting to airbrush from history his ruthless attempts to overturn an election he lost and to incite a mob to stampede the Capitol with the objective of murdering Trump's own Vice-President.  But I'll play along and give two very obvious answers to their ignorant inquiry.

First, Trump knew he had to face the public for re-election in his first term, which imposed some limitations on his instincts to proceed with a host of broadly unpopular measures.  Facing the voters will no longer be a moderating force on Trump in a second term. 

Second, and most important, Trump did not yet have license for unlimited criminality without consequence in his first term.  As of July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court granted him that license by decreeing that Presidents can never be prosecuted for any "official act" undertaken during their Presidential term.  Even if the country avoids a second Trump term, this court ruling fast-tracks us to the inevitability of authoritarianism down the road and I can predict with unwavering certitude that it will go down as the worst Supreme Court ruling in American history.

Beyond that, Trump is a sociopath....and mentally ill people aren't known for self-corrective behavior as they approach their sunset years or when they're bequeathed a position of power.  Trump's behavior on the campaign trail illuminates the extent of his sociopathy, specifically the cheap thrill that he clearly gets by pushing boundaries to see what he can get away with.  He knows that his groupies will twist themselves into pretzels defending his every overheated utterance, and he enjoys watching the spectacle.  This was abundantly clear nine years ago when Trump bragged he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and not lose any voters.  Recall that 30 years ago, O.J. Simpson had bragged for years that he could murder Nicole and get away it....and then he murdered Nicole and got away with it.  

This is what sociopaths do.  If Trump promises the country he's gonna behave like a dictator, believe him!  If Trump repeatedly speculates on how his groupies won't abandon him no matter what he does, expect that he has every intention of following through, watching said groupies continue to defend his rising tide of autocratic behavior while cosplaying with copies of the U.S. Constitution in their hand every step of the way.

Trump's malignant narcissism is an extreme case of the most dangerous possible person to lead a country, but it's also not unique.  Aspiring autocrats tend to be ambitious, which is why history books are so full of diabolical strongmen who seize control of governments and do terrible things.  Trump's rise proves that the United States is not immune to the allure of the worst kind of autocratic personality, but it wouldn't even require someone as cartoonish as Trump to spiral our democracy into something more sinister.  If Harris manages to win decisively and become the 47th President, we're still gonna be uniquely vulnerable to the wiles of a budding madman based on electoral realignment patterns.

At one level, I think it's a positive development that so many young people are choosing to bypass the racket that is contemporary higher education after watching it foist a lifetime of debt on the generation before them with dubious benefits.  At least in the short term, I think it's a net positive for Gen Zers to vote with their feet and force these colleges and universities to clean up their business models, but the political trend visible with young adults, especially young men, eschewing higher education is alarming.  It's reasonable to argue that college professors and administrators had too heavy of a hand in filling their heads with propaganda in the past, but even less reliable news sources have occupied that informational vacuum in our fragmented, digitized world.  We have a generation of young men whose idea of "news" are TikTok headlines and random bros with podcasts who think they have the world figured out from their parents' basements.  

Furthermore, colleges teach critical thinking skills, or at least they're supposed to.  It's no accident that the Trump realignment breaks down so precisely along education lines.  The more education one has, the more likely they are to understand the complexity of geopolitical matters....and the less likely they'll be to embrace simplistic solutions such as massive tariffs, border walls, and pulling out of NATO.  And the less education one has, the more likely they'll be to buy into a con man's assurance of his business prowess because he played a successful businessman on a TV show 20 years ago.  Watching man-on-the-street interviews of noncollege voters this cycle and seeing how many people accept autocracy as a small price to pay for hypothetically cheaper cartons of eggs has convinced me we have a problem bigger than Trump, and that our vulnerability is assured of deepening amidst a void of either higher education or a shared media environment.

The same generation of young people, especially men, appears to be singularly motivated by standing in strident opposition to absolutely anything they consider representative of "the elite".  Earlier this year, I was getting an oil change and listened as a cluster of 20-something mechanics casually muse "since we can't drink Bud Light anymore...." as though a boycott of the brand over its ad campaign featuring a transgender influencer was being undertaken as part of a collective tribal backlash that didn't even require any sort of critical reflection.  "Owning the libs" is no longer just a hobby, it's a lifestyle....maybe even a religion.  This makes them putty in the hands of any demagogic autocrat.

The Democrats' astonishingly narrow-minded conceit of the last 10 years that rising racial and ethnic diversity ensured a more favorable political and cultural environment for them are poised to get a crushing reality check, whether it happens next week or when Trump's heir apparent runs down the road.  Neither the color of one's skin nor the country of origin of one's ancestors insulates them from the deceptions of autocrats with the misinformation landscape and polarized culture we're stuck with now.  And while I probably shouldn't read so much into the results of the Nickelodeon Kids' Poll released last week, keep in mind that nearly 50% of today's schoolchildren are nonwhite, and Harris managed only a paltry 52-48 victory over Trump.  The logic of the Trump-supporting children:  he's funny, tough, and they understand his ideas.  Doesn't sound much different than the logic of the adults who support him, amirite?  And perhaps a good warning sign of the consequences of arrested development.

That leads me to the most pernicious assumption of autocracy apologists....the notion that America will persevere either way because, well because we're America!  It's a pretty safe bet that the electorates of other nations who turned over their keys to the hands of an omnipotent autocrat were confident everything would be okay for them too.  And it's a pretty safe bet that the lieutenants and underlings of previous budding autocrats never expected they could be easily compelled to ride their coattails in pursuit of power and prevent them from fighting for democratic principles they had long defended. We've already witnessed how nearly every member of the Republican Party has allowed themselves to be co-opted into Trump's toxic orbit with almost zero resistance.  Lust for power will have the same corrupting influence on the supposed good actors needed to stand in the way of any future autocrat just as we've seen for the last nine years with Trump.

Specifically, the willingness to hand over the country to an unapologetically malignant madman even amidst favorable fundamentals for the incumbent party heightens my alarm about how much more vulnerable we'd be if the country really was in a precarious situation.  So even if Kamala Harris stitches together a win with an unwieldy and incoherent 1976-style coalition next week, there's no doubt in my mind that our 1980 revolution awaits us, and it will be an autocratic one.  The only question is whether this election is our 1976 moment....or if the last election was.

2024 Senate Race Predictions

Democrats have had a lopsided hold on Class I Senate races going back to 2006 (at least), so much so that nearly half of their overall Senate delegation comes from the races up for reelection on November 5, 2024.  As a consequence, they nearly need an inside straight to maintain their 51-49 majority, all while defending three seats in states that have moved dramatically in the direction of Republicans.  Very few thought it was possible, but it's a testament to how strong this group of Democratic Senators is that the party still has a puncher's chance of pulling it out even with an electorate that is at best split 50-50 in the Presidential race.  Can they do it?  Let's have a look....

 

Arizona--Just last month, I shared my skepticism with the critical mass of polling showing Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego running several points ahead of Kamala Harris.  I was highly suspicious that there were tens of thousands of Grand Canyon State voters who were okay with Trump but that Kari Lake was a bridge too far, and predicted the races would converge by election day.  But an astute commenter raised the possibility that the ticket-splitters could disproportionately be Hispanic men.  That actually makes a ton of sense.  Even if the predicted shift toward Trump among Hispanics--and Hispanic men specifically--materializes, it's a demographic in the early stages of realignment and I can easily see many of them circling the wagons around Democrats downballot for another cycle or two, and particularly for a candidate who shares their ethnic identity like Gallego.  With that said, I still think the gulf between the Presidential and Senate contests tightens as election day nears.  Recall that Mark Kelly appeared to be running well ahead of Biden in 2020, but in the end it was a two-point race.  A victory of any kind will be a big deal for Democrats given how odds-against it seemed when Kyrsten Sinema switched to an independent two years ago.  Prediction:  Gallego by 2  (Dem hold)

California--There was plenty of excitement about this race during the primary season, which tends to be the only campaign that matters when it comes to statewide office in California.  The late Dianne Feinstein's Senate seat was contested by three high-profile Democratic members of Congress (Adam Schiff, Katie Porter, and Barbara Lee) with former LA Dodgers legend Steve Garvey running for the Republicans.  California Democrats went for the most establishment-friendly option and nominated Schiff with Garvey edging out Porter and Lee in the state's all-party primary.  It was the best possible outcome for both Schiff and state Republicans, helping them avoid a complete collapse in turnout.  Schiff is obviously gonna win big, but I think he'll run decisively below Harris at the top of the ticket as a challenger as innocuous as Garvey gives exhausted voters an easy protest vote against all that they see wrong with the contemporary Golden State.  Prediction: Schiff by 21 (Dem hold)

Connecticut--Six years ago, Democrat Chris Murphy won his second term against Republican Matthew Corey.  In 2024, Murphy will get a rematch in pursuit of a third term.  Expect a very similar outcome to last time.  Prediction: Murphy by 18  (Dem hold)

Delaware--The retirement of four-term Democratic incumbent Tom Carper left a rare open seat in the First State.  There's little doubt that the state's at-large Democratic Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester will win, but with little to no available polling, there's some mystery as to how divided the opposition will be.  Republican challenger Eric Hansen is a little-known businessman while independent challenger Michael Katz is a former state senator.  One can imagine a scenario where Katz gets double-digit support, which makes predicting Blunt Rochester's winning margin a challenge.  Prediction: Blunt Rochester by 24.  (Dem hold)

Florida--Republican incumbent Rick Scott is running for a second term and I predict this will be the first time Scott wins statewide office with a decisive margin.  He prevailed by 1 point or less in back-to-back gubernatorial contests in 2010 and 2014 and in his first bid for the U.S. Senate in 2018.  Florida's rightward shift has accelerated since then and despite his oily profile and call for sunseting every federal program after five years (including Social Security...in Florida!!!), the Sunshine State is too far gone for Democrats to effectively pounce.  Democrats have an interesting challenger in former south Florida Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who I expect to punch above her weight with Hispanics and run above Harris, but still fall far short.  Polls suggest the race is within reach for Mucarsel-Powell, but as I said in the Presidential race, the stampede of blue-state conservative seniors into the Sunshine State continues to render polling models obsolete after every cycle.  Prediction: Scott by 8.  (GOP hold)

Hawaii--Two-term Democratic incumbent Mazie Hirono will likely have the biggest margin of victory from any of this year's Senate contests, particularly with penniless perennial candidate Bob McDermott as her Republican challenger.  Prediction: Hirono by 43.  (Dem hold)

Indiana--As crazy as it may seem, a Democrat held this Senate seat six years ago in the increasingly crimson red Hoosier State.  Former Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly was beaten by Republican challenger Mike Braun by a surprisingly decisive margin in 2018, and Braun is pivoting to run for governor this year, leaving his Senate seat open.  It's quite telling that even in an open seat, Democrats are only putting up token opposition with psychologist Valerie McCrary making her first bid for elected office.  Republican Congressman Jim Banks, a Freedom Caucus guy well to the right of Braun whose seat he's vying for, will win in a blowout.  Prediction: Banks by 27.  (GOP hold)

Maine--Independent Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats, is vying for a third term in the Senate this year and is expected to get it, despite shockingly minimal public polling out there.  Once again, the Democrats have chosen to field a token challenger to him, which is unsurprising given their ranked-choice system.  That makes it very hard to predict margins, but I suspect Republican challenger Demi Kouzounas, a GOP party chair, will get closer to King than previous challengers have.  Prediction: King by 11 (Dem hold)

Maryland--You gotta admire former GOP Governor Larry Hogan's cajones for attempting to parlay his popularity as governor into a contest for federal office in one of the bluest states in the country.  Specifically, Hogan is running for the Senate seat vacated by retiring three-term Democrat Ben Cardin.  To call it an uphill fight is an understatement, especially in a year with Presidential turnout.  Even if the Presidential contest looked less favorable for Trump, it's hard to imagine enough voters in the Old Line State willing to split their ticket to allow for a Hogan victory.  As it stands, about one out of every three Harris voters would likely to have switch party allegiances on behalf of Hogan.  Democratic challenger Angela Alsobrooks has some financial scandals lurking in the background and one could imagine that if this race came during a midterm with an incumbent Democratic President, there would be a reasonable chance of Hogan pulling this out.  Even in that scenario though, it's doubtful.  Former Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen was very popular in Tennessee, but still lost an open-seat contest in a very Democratic midterm by double digits.....and Bredesen wasn't actively impugning the top of his own party's ticket the way Larry Hogan is with Donald Trump.  In the end, I suspect Hogan will probably get more crossover support than any other Senate candidate in the country, but will still come far short of actual victory.  Prediction: Alsobrooks by 12  (Dem hold)

Massachusetts--Even in the Bay State, two-term Democrat Elizabeth Warren is a bit polarizing and typically underperforms her party's baseline.  That doesn't mean I expect she'll have any problem at all toppling her token GOP challenger, attorney John Deaton, in her bid for a third term.  With Presidential turnout, I suspect she'll have her biggest win yet but also expect she'll underperform Harris.  Prediction: Warren by 27  (Dem hold)

Michigan--The battle of current and former Lansing-area representatives will coincidentally fill the seat of retiring four-term Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow, who preceded both Elissa Slotkin and Mike Rogers in representing the Lansing area in the House.  Rogers has always struck me as an odd choice for the GOP nominee in the MAGA era, well past his prime in tenure, temperament, and policy priorities.  But he seems reasonable enough to have picked off enough moderate, old-school Republicans in suburban Grand Rapids or Oakland County in less tribal times or if he had a more problematic challenger.  Fortunately for the Dems, Slotkin has a history of outperforming the baseline and doesn't seem inclined to lose many Kamala Harris voters.  Of course, Harris probably doesn't have many voters she can afford to lose in the Wolverine State, meaning that Slotkin better hope she can pick off some Trump voters.  At least for now, I'll predict Slotkin does just that, but I'm fully aware that Michigan is on the knife's edge presidentially and if things go haywire there, Rogers could get pulled past the finish line.  Prediction: Slotkin by 2 (Dem hold)

Minnesota--Three-term Democratic incumbent Amy Klobuchar has boasted she has won all eight of Minnesota's Congressional districts in all three of her previous races. It's been an impressive run, but it's gonna end in 2024, even with her facing off against Republican Royce White, who is by far her weakest challenger so far.  There's been a decent amount of polling and Klobuchar's numbers have been even more underwhelming than I suspected when White won the GOP primary, setting her up to lose four of Minnesota's eight Congressional districts.  A win is a win, but the cartoonish degree of trench warfare polarization in contemporary American politics is about to knock on Amy Klobuchar's door for the first time next month.  Prediction: Klobuchar by 8 (Dem hold)

Mississippi--Republican incumbent Roger Wicker will win a fourth term with the gentle breeze of a whipporwill.  Since I expect Mississippi to get more conservative presidentially thanks to reduced black turnout and some degree of downscale realignment, Wicker should see his numbers increase compared to 2018 against his token opposition as well.  Prediction: Wicker by 25 (GOP hold)

Missouri--Much like Indiana, it's hard to believe that a Democrat held this seat just one term ago with as bright red as the Show Me State has gotten in the Trump era.  Democrats once again have a strong candidate on their hands with attorney and Iraq War veteran Lucas Kunce, but once again he'll be wasted on the voters of Missouri.  And even though Republican incumbent Josh Hawley is one of the most controversial and despicable Senators in the country, expect him to prevail in Missouri by a wider margin than Amy Klobuchar prevails in Minnesota this year.  Prediction:  Hawley by 15 (GOP hold)

Montana--It's been a helluva ride, Jon Tester.  One of my favorite Democratic Senators was his party's only hope to hold onto this seat for a fourth consecutive term but it was never better than an extreme long shot.  Tester had the wind at his back and was able to play offense in strong Democratic years, finding a way to eke out THREE low-single-digit victories in the Treasure State.  As the state continues to lurch to the right and Tester has to share the ticket with a wildly unpopular Democratic Presidential nominee, it was clear over a year ago that the borrowed time he was living on would run out in 2024.  The polls are showing that, as expected, it's not even gonna be close.  His GOP challenger, former Navy SEAL and aerospace company CEO Tim Sheehy, has made a long list of controversial statements but it's not hurting him a bit.  Four years ago, popular Democratic Governor Steve Bullock tried to get promoted to the Senate and lost by double digits.  Tester doesn't deserve to go out this way, but the same fate awaits him next month.  Prediction:  Sheehy by 12  (GOP gain +1)

Nebraska--Two-term Republican incumbent Deb Fischer has long been one of the most anonymous members of the U.S. Senate, but when you're from a one-party state like the Cornhusker State, I suppose you can get away with that.  Or maybe not!  The sleeper race of 2024 has Independent Dan Osborn, a centrist union leader, neck-and-neck with Fischer in some polls and ahead in others.  And yet....almost nobody seems to believe Osborn has much of a chance of beating Fischer on November 5.  Democrats have seen this movie before 10 years ago in Kansas when an independent candidate who "wouldn't say" which party he was gonna caucus with flamed out spectacularly when voters showed up, re-electing an unpopular Republican incumbent who had grown out of touch.  And even outside of that Kansas example, pollsters seem to have no idea how to model contemporary polling in these bright red states, which is why supposedly neck-and-neck gubernatorial races in Oklahoma in 2018 and 2022 ended up being double-digit Republican blowouts.  It would be pretty astonishing if Republican voters didn't come home by November 5.  It's kind of fun that there's a glimmer of hope that a union leader could win a Senate seat in Nebraska, but I'm not even sure if Dan Osborn himself believes that's possible.  Prediction:  Fischer by 14 (GOP hold)

Nebraska Special Election--There's another Senate race in Nebraska this year with a much lower profile.  Typically when there's a special election and a regularly scheduled race in the same state, it's the special election most likely to have fireworks, but in this case, the seat once held by Republican Ben Sasse and handed over to Republican Pete Ricketts when Sasse resigned is certain to stay in Ricketts' hands against token Democratic challenger Preston Love, a college professor.  Prediction: Ricketts by 28 (GOP hold)

Nevada--It just hit me that every single Senate contest in the Silver State since 2006 has been a hotly contested battleground race.  Every indication was that this year's race was gonna be another nailbiter, but for months, Democratic incumbent Jacky Rosen has shown surprising strength in her bid for a second term against Republican challenger and Army veteran Sam Brown, even as the Presidential race in Nevada looks incredibly competitive.  Unlike in neighboring Arizona, where there's a believable demographic-based explanation for the divergence between the Presidential and Senate races, no such explanation exists for why I should believe Rosen will run several points of Harris in Nevada as polls currently indicate.  Needless to say, I suspect it ends up closer than what current conventional wisdom points to, with Rosen still coming out on top.  Prediction: Rosen by 3 (Dem hold)

New Jersey--It's a bit strange that the Senate seat vacated by felonious long-time Democrat Bob Menendez isn't at least a little competitive, but there's no indication that it is.  Between the lingering stench of Menendez's corruption and the likelihood of Trump inroads at the top of the ticket in the Garden State, one would think the GOP would be able to capitalize on it some, but Republican real estate developer Curtis Bashaw has thus far been an invisible candidate while the Democrats scored with primary winner Andy Kim, a Congressman from a battleground district in South Jersey who seems well-positioned to overperform the party baseline.  I'm not discounting the possibility that Democratic fatigue could make this one closer than it seems, but I can't imagine a scenario where Kim would be in danger.  Prediction: Kim by 14.  (Dem hold)

New Mexico--It's always been a struggle to get a clean read on the partisan balance in New Mexico, and Gary Johnson has played a large part of that.  He got more than 15% of the vote running as an independent in 2018, and combined with the Republican, held Democratic incumbent Martin Heinrich to 54%.  Heinrich is running for a third term this year and, as is always the case in the Land of Enhancement, is considered a sure bet for re-election because of the (D) next to his name.  But after the unexpectedly close Senate race in 2020, a trend toward Republicans expected among Hispanic voters, and the last name of his Republican challenger this year, I'm predicting the race ends up uncomfortably close for Heinrich.  Nella Domenici is the daughter of long-time GOP Senator Pete Domenici, a legend in New Mexico.  Heinrich is litigating the race on the grounds of nepotism and carpetbagging and it may stick, but I don't think Heinrich has established himself in New Mexico nearly to the degree that Domenici's father did, and with the tide shifting to the GOP generally this year, I suspect that will count for something.  Prediction: Heinrich by 4 (Dem hold)

New York--Everybody's eyes were fixated on the hotly contested gubernatorial race in The Empire State in 2022 and nobody, before or even after the election, paid any mind to how poorly the Democrats' forever incumbent Chuck Schumer performed.  It was the opening salvo of what appears to be a longer-term realignment in New York as Presidential polls this year are pointing to a significant bounce for Trump compared to 2016 and 2020.  While Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is almost assuredly in no danger of being voted out, the 2-1 or better margins she's managed in her three previous runs are unlikely to materialize.  Her GOP challenger, businessman Mike Sapraicone, appears to be a token, but it will nonetheless be jarring to see the ocean of red on New York state maps that are probably coming with an unprecedented number of voters likely to vote "not Gillibrand" no matter who he is.  Gillibrand's previous victories have tracked pretty closely to those of Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota in terms of their comprehensiveness.  Expect the streak to end for both of them in 2024.  Prediction:  Gillibrand by 15 (Dem hold)

North Dakota--Democrat Heidi Heitkamp's 2012 victory in the Flickertail State remains one of the most amazing Senate race wins of this century.  Her double-digit defeat to Republican Kevin Cramer six years later was a wake-up call to the totality of the realignment.  With six additional years of that realignment, Cramer will have an even easier time prevailing for his second term against token Democrat Katrina Christensen, the party's candidate against John Hoeven in 2022.  Expect one of the most lopsided margins of any race in the country.  Prediction: Cramer by 41  (GOP hold)

Ohio--While I admit three-term Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown has held tough in the polling longer than I expected in the Buckeye State this year despite the state's stampede to the MAGA right, I suspect it's a mirage.  Not since 2012 has any Ohio poll correctly captured the state of its electorate, with Republicans exceeding polling by substantial margins in one race after another in the Trump era.  Brown is lucky enough to find himself running against an odious plutocrat in Bernie Moreno that has ostensibly helped keep him in the game, but in the end, nothing matters more than partisanship in today's tribal political landscape, as Tim Ryan learned when his perfect Senate campaign two years ago was wasted against shameless con man and current Vice-Presidential nominee J.D. Vance.  In the end, I don't even think this race will be close as Brown can only realistically run so many points ahead of Harris, who I suspect will lose Ohio by double digits.  Outright victory for Brown seems unthinkable by sheer arithmetic, as statewide victory cannot and will not add up without the Mahoning Valley, a former Democratic stronghold that rapidly realigned to the GOP to the point that their long-term Congressman Ryan got beat there against Vance in 2022.  Brown has long been one of my favorite Senators but I just can't see him pulling another rabbit out of his hat this time.  Prediction: Moreno by 7 (GOP gain +2)

Pennsylvania--This year's Senate class brings back such wonderful memories for me of 2006, my all-time favorite midterm cycle when I was still in my 20s and naive enough to believe that the widespread gains the Democrats pulled off that year would be enduring and sustainable.  Bob Casey was the face of those innocent times, wiping out Republican incumbent Rick Santorum by 18 points with a stunningly comprehensive win.  Casey's current bid for a fourth term is an equally perfect embodiment of the loss of that innocence, where he's favored to beat Republican rich guy David McCormick but has by no means put the race away and probably won't.  Casey has a brand in Pennsylvania that's probably worth a couple points more than the generic Democrat, but with Trump's coattails at the top of the ticket, I suspect we'll get a reminder of the diminishing currency of Casey's brand in today's poisoned partisan environment.  Prediction: Casey by 2.  (Dem hold)

Rhode Island--Another member of the Senate class of 2006 is Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, who also toppled a Republican incumbent to win his first term.  Thanks to the deep blue hue of the Ocean State, Whitehouse has maintained a firm grasp on his seat and that's unlikely to relent this year.  Still, the high numbers of white ethnics and Puerto Ricans in Rhode Island continues to portend a slow-motion demographic danger for Democrats and I'm anticipating we see another hint of that this year.  Republicans are putting up state legislator and former gubernatorial nominee Patricia Morgan who likely has enough name recognition to pick up some votes that a generic GOP lawyer or businessman wouldn't.  She won't win or come close, but I suspect she'll get closer than Whitehouse's challengers in his previous two contests.  Prediction: Whitehouse by 18.  (Dem hold)

Tennessee--Allow me to romanticize the 2006 midterm cycle yet again as the last time a general election contest was close in the Volunteer State was when Harold Ford, Jr. came within 3 points that year.  Every statewide contest since has been a double-digit GOP blowout and that will absolutely happen again this year with Republican Marsha Blackburn running for a second term against Democratic legislator Gloria Johnson.  I can't even fathom the kind of perfect electoral storm it would take for a Democrat to win Tennessee in the 2020s, and this year's race won't force me to indulge that hypothetical any further.  Prediction: Blackburn by 25.  (GOP hold)

Texas--Six years ago, controversial GOP Senator Ted Cruz had a closer shave than most expected, winning by only 2 points.  Of course, 2018 was something of a wave Democratic year and while Cruz is considered nominally vulnerable again this cycle, it seems unlikely the stars will align by enough to take him out.  Democrats have an excellent candidate in suburban Dallas Congressman and former NFL player Collin Allred, but I suspect that he's not gonna come as close to victory as the polls show for the same reason so many races seem out of reach this year.....Hispanic males swinging to the GOP.  Cruz won't do as well as Trump, but he'll do at least as well as what the polls are currently showing for Trump.  Prediction: Cruz by 6.  (GOP hold)

Utah--It seems like Republican Mitt Romney has been in the Senate longer than six years, but he served only the single term and now promises to go away for good.  We'll see about that, but one thing we can all be confident about is that the seat Romney is leaving open will stay in Republican hands with Congressman John Curtis as his party's nominee.  Curtis will easily dispatch his Democratic challenger, environmental activist Caroline Gleich. To whatever degree Utah has become less Republican in the MAGA era, it's still a very red state and Curtis will demolish his token opposition and likely run well ahead of the top of the ticket.  Prediction: Curtis by 32.  (GOP hold)

Vermont--Independent Socialist Bernie Sanders is running for a fourth term in the deep blue Green Mountain State and will assuredly get it against the GOP's frequent token challenger Gerald Malloy.  I'm not expecting Sanders to get the crushing bipartisan margins that he used to though as he's now been too closely aligned with the furthest left reaches of the Democratic brand to expect much crossover support from what's left of Vermont Republicans.  I'm still betting on a 14-county sweep though.  Prediction: Sanders by 36.  (Dem hold)

Virginia--While there were signs that the Old Dominion was poised to flip to Democrats even 20 years, it's still astonishing that in the year 2024, a Senate race in Virginia is such a cinch for the incumbent Democrat that, two weeks before election day, I had to look it up for find out who Republicans were even running.  It turns out that two-term Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine will be running against former U.S. Navy captain Hung Cao on the Republican side.  I suspect Cao will perform better than Kaine's hapless 2018 challenger Corey Stewart, especially with a Presidential cycle to boost Republican turnout, but Virginia has become too Democratic of a state and Kaine too strong of an incumbent for the Republicans to credibly take down in all but the most lopsided GOP years.  And with Trump's promise to relieve the federal bureaucracy of its duties, it's hard to see such lopsided GOP years showing up on the horizon, at least in federal races.  Prediction: Kaine by 13 (Dem hold)

Washington--Democratic incumbent Maria Cantwell is running for a fourth term in the Evergreen State and will easily get it against token GOP challenger Raul Garcia, a physician.  Garcia's surname might help him win over some of the Hispanic vote and I suspect rural Washington will continue to realign against all things Seattle, but Cantwell is still poised for a comfortable double-digit win.  Prediction: Cantwell by 15  (Dem hold)

West Virginia--Given the trendline throughout Appalachia generally and in West Virginia specifically, Democrat Joe Manchin's three-point victory in 2018 was the most impressive Senate win this century.  It was obvious that it was also gonna be the last time a Democrat would be elected to federal office in West Virginia in my lifetime.  Even if Manchin had chose to run again in 2024, he'd have lost by more than 30 points.  Manchin called it a career and left the seat open, further assuring an easy GOP pickup.  Manchin's successor on the Democratic line, Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott, is getting pretty high marks for the campaign he's running, but he will assuredly be crushed by Republican Governor Jim Justice as he hopscotches from the statehouse to the U.S. Senate.  If Elliott's campaign is worth the hype, it might be worth a few points better than what Harris is poised to get in the Mountain State, but I seriously doubt anything better than that.  Prediction: Justice by 36 (GOP gain +3)

Wisconsin--I always feared that as the general election campaign got rolling, two-term Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin would find herself in a predicament comparable to Russ Feingold in October 2016 where a race that was widely expected to go his way slipped away spectacularly in the final weeks of the campaign.  Baldwin has been fortunate enough to run her previous races in strong Democratic cycles but I've never sensed any sort of unique bond with the voters of Wisconsin that could help guide her through a more defensive political climate.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if rich guy and GOP challenger Eric Hovde squeaked out a win with the help of Trump coattails, but I think Baldwin has mustered up just enough goodwill with Badger State voters to help her run 2 or 3 points ahead of Kamala Harris.  It could very well be the closest Senate race in the country, but I'm placing my bet on a narrow Baldwin win right now.  Prediction: Baldwin by >1.  (Dem hold)

Wyoming--The closest competition Mazie Hirono is likely to have for biggest statewide Senate race landslide will come in Wyoming, where Republican John Barrasso will win a fourth term overwhelmingly against Democratic educator Scott Morrow.  Prediction: Barrasso by 40 (GOP hold)

My current calculation would give the Republicans a 52-48 edge in the Senate after a loss of three Democratic seats, all seats in states that are likely to give Trump double-digit victories.  To be sure, the Democrats' have considerably more exposure than that, with hotly contested seats in all three "blue wall" states, among others.  Still, even the polls showing Kamala Harris struggling or just breaking even at the top of the ticket consistently show Democratic Senate nominees with leads.  Granted, MAGA electorates have shown up in 2016 and 2020 with Trump outrunning the polls and pulling GOP Senate nominees along with him, and that leaves a number of Democrats still at risk of an upset.  Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin seems the most vulnerable of the bunch, but as listed above, I think she's slightly better than even money to prevail.

This context is important since the potential existed for a historic Democratic wipeout in this Senate class, with losses possible in as many as eight or nine races.  That's doubtful to happen, and gives the Democrats at least some credible prospects of fighting their way back to a Senate majority in the cycles ahead.  A generation-long lockout from Senate leadership was and remains possible as a function of the GOP-friendly nature of Senate races in the current tribal era where every state can be counted upon to vote the same way in Senate contests as they do for President.

Still, even if the worst-case scenario is avoided, there's no sugar-coating the likelihood that Donald Trump is poised to become President with a Republican Senate majority and a Republican House majority, and that he'll be positioned to shape the judiciary for a generation with a nearly impenetrable GOP Senate majority all but assured for the next four years.  If only the "UAW for MAGA voters", as one example, had the vaguest hint of the collective self-immolation they're about to impose upon themselves....

2024 State by State Presidential Predictions

With less than a month before the November 5 Presidential election, I have a confession to make.  For the first time since 2000, I don't feel as though I have any legitimate insight as to who's gonna win this election.  That's not gonna stop me from making my quadrennial predictions, of course, but with all of the competing trends and untrustworthy polling, it feels like a genuine jump ball.  I won't be a bit surprised if Kamala Harris prevails either narrowly or decisively, and I won't be surprised if Donald Trump prevails either narrowly or decisively.  While my predictions below indicate a split decision among the seven primary battleground states, it wouldn't surprise me if Donald Trump swept them all.  And while it would surprise me if Kamala Harris won North Carolina, it wouldn't surprise me if she cleaned up in the other six.

The only thing I feel confident in stating is that if Kamala Harris wins, it will be because of reproductive rights, and if Donald Trump wins, it will be because of immigration.  These two issues represent the purest distillation of our bitterly divided country's priorities.  Reproductive rights are extremely salient among upscale and educated voters while downscale voters don't seem particularly moved by the issue.  Conversely, illegal immigration is spectacularly salient among downscale voters while upscale, educated voters tend to shrug with disinterest when the topic is litigated.  The election is thus, even more than usual, poised to be a tectonic battle between two groups that don't understand each other and are constantly talking past each other.  That means that the only consequential question is....which group will be larger?

Whenever Trump has been on the ballot in the past, the "deplorables" have charged the polls in unprecedented numbers to overwhelm the college boys, which is why I think a statistically tied polling landscape will ultimately tilt in Trump's direction.  On the other hand, the Dobbs backlash was a big deal in the midterms, enough to consolidate Democratic gains in upscale suburbs and throw off Republican-friendly polling models despite lackluster fundamentals for the incumbent party. Kamala Harris's blank-slate campaign about "joy" would be unlikely to win over enough suburban soccer moms to win if they weren't scared to death about their teenage daughters getting pregnant and having limited options to terminate.  Likewise, the guy who tried to have his Vice President murdered probably wouldn't be able to get across the finish line if a biracial working-class coalition wasn't existentially petrified by repeated images of mass humanity standing at the southern border getting a free ticket inside if they merely claim "asylum".

Still, only one of them can win.  Below I'll break down my expectations in the safe blue states, the safe red states, and the remainder of states that are either in the center or the periphery of the battleground....

Safe Biden States

California--Harris +25 (Biden +29)

Colorado--Harris +12 (Biden +13)

Connecticut--Harris +20 (Biden +20)

Delaware--Harris +16 (Biden +19)

Hawaii--Harris +28 (Biden +29)

Illinois--Harris +15 (Biden +17)

Maine--Harris +9 (Biden +9)

Maryland--Harris +33 (Biden +33)

Massachusetts--Harris +32 (Biden +33)

New Jersey--Harris +13 (Biden +16)

New York--Harris +16 (Biden +23)

Oregon--Harris +16 (Biden +16)

Rhode Island--Harris +20 (Biden +21)

Vermont--Harris +34 (Biden +35)

Virginia--Harris +10 (Biden +10)

Washington--Harris +18 (Biden +19)

 

Safe Trump States

Alabama--Trump +29 (Trump +25)

Arkansas--Trump +29 (Trump +26)

Idaho--Trump +32 (Trump +31)

Indiana--Trump +19 (Trump +16)

Iowa--Trump +11 (Trump +8)

Kansas--Trump +14 (Trump +15)

Kentucky--Trump +28 (Trump +26)

Louisiana--Trump +21 (Trump +18)

Maine CD-2--Trump +8 (Trump +7)

Mississippi--Trump +20 (Trump +16)

Missouri--Trump +18 (Trump +15)

Montana--Trump +21 (Trump +16)

Nebraska--Trump +22 (Trump +19)

North Dakota--Trump +37 (Trump +33)

Oklahoma--Trump +36 (Trump +33)

South Carolina--Trump +13 (Trump +12)

South Dakota--Trump +29 (Trump +26)

Tennessee--Trump +24 (Trump +23)

Utah--Trump +24 (Trump +20)

West Virginia--Trump +41 (Trump +39)

And lastly, the potentially competitive states:

Alaska--Nobody has The Last Frontier on their list of battleground states but that's more based on lack of curiosity than any serious tracking of its sharply leftward trendline in the last few Presidential cycles.  I don't really understand why, beyond a faster-than-the-national-average pace of racial diversification, but Alaska has gotten much less Republican at an accelerated pace since Sarah Palin was on the national ticket.  There's almost no polling this cycle so it's entirely unclear whether the trend will continue, but the lack of clarity keeps this on my "states to watch" list even if I'm highly doubtful that Harris can erase Trump's 10-point margin from 2020.  Still, the trend is too hard to ignore and I'll predict Harris inches toward a single-digit loss.  Prediction: Trump +9  (Trump +10 in 2020)

Arizona--There appears to be two competing demographic trends in Arizona.  The first is an upscale white population trending toward Democrats.  The second is a downscale Hispanic population trending toward Republicans.  The former group was disproportionately represented in the 2022 midterms, allowing for Katie Hobbs' surprise victory over Kari Lake in the gubernatorial race.  With Presidential turnout in 2024, expect the electorate to look more like the one in 2020, meaning the tie will be broken depending upon which group's growth has eclipsed the other.  My bet is that growth among MAGA-leaning Hispanic men outnumbers growth of Dobbs-averse white women, enough to give Trump a win.  But I won't be a bit surprised if it goes the other way.  Prediction: Trump +2 (Biden +>1)

Florida--The Sunshine State only makes my list because of its "swing state" legacy and the usual array of polls showing it close.  I have no confidence that any pollsters are capable of effectively modeling the dynamic electorate of Florida as the state continues to serve as a sponge for Republican-leaning demographics moving in by the hundreds of thousands, rendering the poll modeling from just one cycle ago obsolete.  Expect to see a lot of terrified pundit faces on November 5 as the Florida returns roll in by 7 p.m. and they're disastrous for Democrats.  Prediction: Trump +11  (Trump +3)

Georgia--The opposite scenario from its neighbor to the south, the Peach State's demographic profile keeps moving in a straight line to the benefit of Democrats.  I underestimated the speed of its transformation in 2020 when I predicted a narrow Trump win, and polling for this cycle tracks almost identically to four years ago at this time.  With that said, Harris has no room for error with upscale whites in suburban Atlanta, a demographic which Biden consolidated but where Stacy Abrams floundered in the 2022 gubernatorial race. Victory for Harris requires that she holds nearly all of the Biden-Kemp voters, and I'm gonna predict she falls just short.  Prediction:  Trump + >1.  (Biden + >1)

Michigan--Polling in the Wolverine State has not been particularly kind to Harris in recent weeks.  I can't remember the last time any poll has showed her leading by more than 3 points with most even closer than that, an unnerving contrast to four years ago when the polling average showed Biden winning by double that.  Media pundits are likely to chalk this up to collapsing support for Democrats among Palestinian-American voters in the Detroit suburbs.  I'm sure that's part of it, but there's more going on here.  My recent column musing how more than half of active UAW members appear to be Trump supporters is another red flag.  But perhaps the biggest issue of all is the rural white-working class vote.  Democrats likely have a long way to fall before they hit bottom among these voters, and there's millions of them in the Midwest generally and Michigan specifically.  Harris is just as likely to lose this race in Bay City as she is in Dearborn.  I'll narrowly lean in the direction of a Harris win, but I'm less confident about it with each passing day.   Prediction: Harris +1  (Biden +3)

Minnesota--Biden had a more decisive win than expected in the Gopher State in 2020, consolidating suburban centrists in a way he didn't do elsewhere in the Upper Midwest.  I expect Harris will hold on to that coalition, crushing Trump everywhere in the orbit of the Twin Cities.  However, she will do no better with the kinds of voters that Tim Walz was selected as running mate to help her with than....Tim Walz himself did in his 2022 gubernatorial re-election bid.  In fact, I expect Harris to do quite a bit worse with them, leading to a nominally tighter statewide margin this year than four years ago.  Prediction: Harris +5  (Biden +7)

Nebraska's 2nd District--Every indication is that metropolitan Omaha is sprinting in the Democrats' direction, with poll after poll showing incumbent GOP Congressman Don Bacon poised to lose.  I'd be surprised if Trump even got close here, in contrast to the further Trump consolidation I expect in Nebraska's other two Congressional districts.  Prediction: Harris +8  (Biden +6)

Nevada--So many states currently appear to be on the knife's edge and the Silver State is yet another.  I suspect the same trend lines are bedeviling Democrats here as they are in Arizona, with Hispanics becoming more amenable to Republicans generally and Trump specifically.  The magnitude of the drift is very hard to predict but as of now, I think Trump will come up just short.  Just as my prediction of Arizona in the opposite direction, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I was wrong here.  Prediction: Harris +1  (Biden +2)

New Hampshire--The Granite State swung left in 2020 and it seems unlikely they'll swing back this year, at least not far enough to become Trump country.  The MAGA embrace among the contemporary GOP probably nudges New Hampshire out of the party coalition for the foreseeable future, at least in federal races.  Prediction: Harris +8  (Biden +7)

New Mexico--Always on the outside periphery of the battleground states, the Land of Enchantment is regularly taken for granted as safe Democratic.  I suspect it holds for Harris this year, but if the swing to the GOP among Hispanics nationwide materializes, it's bound to disproportionately affect the most Hispanic state in the country.  Prediction:  Harris +7  (Biden +11)

North Carolina--Just as has been the case for the last three Presidential cycles, I'll believe North Carolina is poised to go Democrat when I see it.  And just as has been the case for more than a decade now, I suspect for every vote Democrats pick up from liberal expatriate Yankees in the metro areas, they will lose a Yellow Dog Democrat in the reddening rural areas of the state.  Furthermore, after the horrific consequences of Hurricane Helene, I suspect Tar Heel State voters to be particularly cranky next month and unlikely to reward the incumbent administration.  Prediction: Trump +3  (Trump +1)

Ohio--Only part of the battleground because of its legacy, the Buckeye State is likely to be a black eye for Democrats up and down the ballot again this year.  I suspect the Haitian immigrant situation playing out in their backyard will be especially salient among hundreds of hardscrabble Ohio communities who don't want the Springfield treatment to happen to them.  Prediction: Trump +12  (Trump +8)

Pennsylvania--Four years ago, everything went Biden's way just enough in the state he was born in to eke out a 1-point win.  It looks like it's gonna be an even tougher slog this year and my hunch is the Keystone State's demographic similarities to the Buckeye State will start to reveal themselves with similar electoral trend lines.  After John Fetterman's surprisingly decisive win there two years ago, I'm not filled with confidence about this prediction, but the Democrats really need to pull a lot of Dobbs-critical women out of their hats from the outer periphery of suburban Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to make up for all of the old union guys dying off or flipping MAGA.  Right now, I'm thinking Harris's decision not to pick Josh Shapiro as her running mate looks like a huge mistake.  Prediction: Trump +1  (Biden +1)

Texas--It appeared as though the perfect storm was brewing in the Lone State State four years ago, with enough Trump critics in upscale suburban population centers joining forces with the state's growing minority groups to get Biden within a stone's throw from victory.  The only problem is that the minority groups didn't play along to the degree needed to get Biden as close as the polls suggested.  It was actually quite jarring how much the pendulum swung toward Trump among Texas Hispanics, and since I expect that trend to accelerate four years later, Harris doesn't even seem likely to do as well as Biden.  Abortion rights voters in the suburbs could surprise me here and keep this race close, but I think the border issue runs circles around abortion in Texas this year.  Prediction: Trump +8  (Trump +6)

Wisconsin--I stand by my original instinct for the Badger State this year.  Most people will be looking to margins in Milwaukee, Madison, and the suburbs for tea leaves on who pulls out Wisconsin this year.   I'll be looking to Chippewa Falls, a perfect stand-in for the hundreds of rural, working-class communities in Wisconsin where I suspect Harris support collapses a few points below Biden's already anemic numbers from four years ago. Given that Democrats have so much more room to decline among rural voters in Wisconsin, I'd be a little surprised if Harris is able to pull this one out.  Prediction: Trump +2  (Biden +1)

If my predictions materialize, the Electoral College would break 291-247 in favor of Trump.  And my state-by-state margins also point in the direction of a popular vote photo finish, with the distinct possibility of a Trump popular vote win.  If Trump defies almost all expectations and prevails in the popular vote, I suspect this would be made possible by gains that outpace the national average in three of the four most populous states.  Florida will likely lead the pack in goosing Trump's national numbers with the tea leaves also pointing to New York being primed for a sharp turn toward Trump.  The demographic group where I expect the biggest movement is Hispanic men toward Trump, and if I'm right that will decisively shrink Harris's margins in her home state of California, among many other places.  Beyond that, I'm expecting softer margins for Harris among Jewish voters and at least some shrinkage in numbers among African Americans, led once again by men.  The mainstream analysts' instincts are always to ignore entirely the possibility that rural whites might get even more Republican than they were in previous cycles, but expect to see a continuation of that trend as well, with Trump's margin growing by the millions even among a shrinking population base.

Which groups will be moving toward Harris?  She may do a point or two better among women, but that will be offset by men going at least two points in the other direction.  Beyond that, upscale whites in the suburbs will probably reject Trump even more than they did in 2020.  This group's cultural footprint punches far above the weight of its actual voting muscle, so if you're a candidate poised to make gains primarily or exclusively among them, you might want to prepare for a rough election night.  

Then again, maybe I'll be proven wrong.  Maybe the abortion issue is capable of realigning yet another wave of previously untapped upscale suburban women with numbers that manage to overwhelm all of the other demographic groups that appear poised to shift toward Trump.  It's certainly a possibility, but it seems more likely that growth in the demographic groups where Trump is expected to improve will have math on their side.

Lastly, despite my reputation for pessimism as it relates to Democratic prospects, this is actually the first election of my lifetime where I've predicted a Republican will win the Presidency.  I was too young to make "predictions" about the elections of the 1980s, but beyond that, I predicted Democratic victories in eight consecutive Presidential elections.  It was easy to predict Clinton wins in 1992 and 1996.  In 2000, when all the polls were showing Gore would win Florida, I called a popular vote win for Bush but an Electoral College victory for Gore, the opposite of what actually happened.  In 2004, I was convinced the undecideds would break for Kerry, giving him New Mexico, Iowa, and Ohio and thus the Presidency.  An Obama win was obvious at this time in 2008 and his re-election seemed far more likely than not at this time in 2012.  Almost everybody who wasn't a MAGA true believer got 2016 wrong, and I was among them, thinking Hillary had so many paths to victory that it was a near-impossibility for Trump to prevail despite his momentum.  And of course, terrible polling showed Biden was poised for as big of a victory in 2020 as Obama had in 2008, making that one an easier call the month before the election than it actually should have been given how close it ended up.

I submit these predictions with unusually low confidence and the acknowledgment that I'm at least as likely to eat crow on November 6, 2024, as I was on November 9, 2016.   For that matter, I'm not even sure we're likely to know anything by November 6.  If the electoral vote is anywhere near as close as what I predicted, it'll likely be several more days before we have a definitive winner, and that in itself is another indication that we have some real and intractable problems as a republic.

This will be my official predictions as I've never felt comfortable making predictions two days before the election and pretending that was insightful.  I'll probably give updates the weekend before the election if my opinion has changed in any state, but I'll stand by these numbers barring a seismic development.

"Newshour" Story on UAW Clarifies Why Trump Can Win

Earlier this month, "PBS Newshour" did a Labor Day feature profiling the United Auto Workers and Trump's "surprising strength" with their members.  I went into the story not expecting to learn anything new beyond the usual anecdotal man-on-the-street chatter.  In some ways, that's what I got, but the relative consensus of Trump competitiveness was striking even amongst the people that Trump's party has so openly treated as their enemies.  

Much of the interview was spent talking to a UAW member who was a Trump supporter and, when asked what share of the UAW membership he believed was going for Trump, his response was "70%...and that's being conservative".  Strikingly, when a pro-Harris union leader was asked the same question, the best he could come up with to counter it was "that the number was closer to 40%".  The third party who broke the tie was a long-time Detroit journalist who opined that the real number of UAW Trump support was "likely somewhere between those two guesses".  In other words, at least half of UAW members are supporting the Republican nominee for President in 2024.

Now, if you'd told me that more than half of Teamsters were supporting Trump this year, I wouldn't be surprised.  That was reinforced this week when the Teamsters President refused to endorse a candidate and risk alienating the decisive majority of his members who wouldn't have been onboard with a Harris endorsement.  Likewise, if you'd told me that a majority of members of the pipefitters' union were Trumpers, I also wouldn't have blinked.  But the UAW is a different beast entirely.  

The only reason the UAW continues to exist in 2024 is because Barack Obama bailed out the U.S. auto industry during the financial crisis when Republicans loudly, passionately, and unanimously called for burning the industry to the ground with the primary objective of wiping the UAW off the face of the Earth and sending its members to hell during the inferno.  The political party that shamelessly advocated for the UAW's annihilation 15 short years ago now likely has the support of more than half of its members.

More recently, UAW leader Shawn Fain led a ballsy and surprisingly successful negotiation during last year's strike and got the majority of what they wanted with the public support of President Joe Biden.  It seemed like the perfect formula to at least consolidate UAW member support and put the Democrats on track for a decisive victory in Michigan.  But even this very recent reminder to UAW members of who their friends are appears insufficient to keep most of the members from voting for those who gleefully plan to exterminate them, and have been not been bashful in sharing their desire to exterminate them for at least a generation.

My instinct is to chalk this derangement up to either the overarching supremacy of culture war politics or the abhorrently short memories of a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately populace, but particularly as it applies to Trump, I think there's more going on here.  The original sin in the Rust Belt was the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement.  Its legacy of ruin and rage in factory towns throughout Middle America resonates more than the legacy of Obama's bailout.  The disaster that would have been in 2009 doesn't register the same way that the disaster that was in 1994.  

There has long been an opening for any politician of either party who was openly critical of NAFTA, and Donald Trump sagely filled that void in 2015.  The union members who held their noses and voted for another generation for the party whose President brought NAFTA to their doorstep didn't hesitate for a second to abandon them once somebody came onto the scene vowing to renegotiate the agreement.  The fact that Trump followed through with that unlikely campaign promise was the shrewdest moment of his first term, even if direct results aren't necessarily tangible.

I still think it's delusional for UAW members to think their future is brighter with a Republican administration than a Democratic administration, but it would appear that that's where we are.  Those of us concerned back in the mid-90s that a Democratic President signing NAFTA would realign American politics have certainly been vindicated, even if that realignment took longer to fully materialize than expected.  A Democratic Presidential nominee could very easily lose the 2024 election because of something her predecessor did more than 30 years earlier.

About Those Senate Polls.....

The 2024 general election season is officially underway with Labor Day having come and gone.  The latest rounds of polling indicate zero convention bounce for Kamala Harris and actually show nominal movement toward Trump.  I have zero faith in contemporary polls for giving an accurate read on the race but Trump's mirage of resilience in the face of his campaign going completely off the rails in the last month will undoubtedly result in a lot of entirely legitimate sweaty palms among Democrats.  But another theme that has remained consistent throughout 2024 and continues to heading into the general election campaign is that Democrats are outperforming Harris (and Biden before her) in nearly every competitive Senate race.  In some cases, the Democratic Senate candidate is running way ahead of the top of the ticket.  But is it sustainable?  Or even real in the first place?

It's hard to qualify the answer to the second question.  Voters have been late to engage this cycle even in the Presidential race and I suspect their interest is lagging even further in the Senate races.  It's likely to only be in the next few weeks that voters start paying attention downballot, insofar as paying attention even matters anymore given the degree of polarization in contemporary politics which ultimately renders nearly every Senate race a mirror image of the Presidential race.  And that probably helps answer the first of my two questions.  I just don't see the Democratic advantage in battleground Senate race after battleground Senate race being sustainable now that the general election season spotlight is shining.  The gravitational pull of hyperpartisanship seems extremely likely to rear its head.

The two Senate races that epitomize the Democratic overperformance that I suspect won't last until November are Nevada and Arizona.  In the Silver State, first-term Democrat Jacky Rosen has been crushing GOP challenger Sam Brown by an average of 10 points.  This one makes the least sense on paper as Rosen is about as anonymous of a Senator as exists in the country and certainly doesn't have the kind of unique brand that would explain this kind of overperformance.  Perhaps Brown's physical deformity left a bad first impression on voters or perhaps he simply hasn't gotten the kind of exposure needed to close the gap on Rosen, but the only way I see Rosen winning by double digits as the polls suggest is if Harris significantly outruns the polls as well.  Since it's Nevada, that's a possibility but I'd be stunned if the gap between Harris and Rosen was ultimately more than 2 or 3 points.

Ditto for the open seat in the Grand Canyon State.  Polls would have us believe Democrat Ruben Gallego is running away with it and that the GOP challenger, 2022 gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, is so badly damaged that voters are unable to take her seriously.  Considering how closely Lake is tied to Trump, it defies any kind of credibility that there would tens of thousands of Trump voters who split their tickets and vote for Gallego in the Senate race.  The premise currently being peddled of Lake being way behind while Harris and Trump are neck and neck is assuredly unsustainable.  I'd be surprised if there was more than a single point of separation between the Presidential and Senate ballot lines in Arizona come November.

As for what's widely agreed upon as the Democrats' two most vulnerable incumbents--Montana's Jon Tester and Ohio's Sherrod Brown--I still think the "settling" of the races post-Labor Day dooms them both.  It looks like Tester's goose is already cooked, with a trio of recent polls showing him running behind GOP challenger Tim Sheehy.  Nobody should be surprised to see him losing, but what's delusional is that the conventional wisdom peddled by both parties as recently as last month is that Tester could run 15 points ahead of Harris at the top of the ticket and still win....but would only be doomed if Harris were to lose Montana to Trump by 20 points or more.  This is far-fetched.  Not since 2012 has any Senate candidate run double-digits ahead of their party's Presidential nominee.  Granted, Tester was one of those who did in 2012, but the more recent example that better depicts the contemporary polarized spread was 2020 when popular Democratic Governor Steve Bullock ran for the Senate and lost by 10 points in a year Trump beat Biden by 16.  And by modern standards, that's a really big spread between the Presidential race and the Senate race.  It's unthinkable that Tester would be able to triple that spread as would be needed to win in Montana this year.  I expect him to lose by double-digits just as Bullock did four years ago.

The Ohio story has been a bit different thus far as long-time Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown is leading his heavily flawed GOP challenger Bernie Moreno in all recent polls, including polls showing Trump winning the Buckeye State by 10 points.  Republicans are nervous about this race, even assigning Brown magical survival powers.  I don't think they should be nervous, particularly since campaign laws have prevented Moreno from running ads since his primary while Brown has been pulverizing him on the airwaves.  Between Moreno's pending comeback on the airwaves and the strong partisan tide at the top of the ticket for Trump, it's a pipe dream that Brown can defy gravity for another two months.  Recall that Brown underperformed polls the last time he was on the ballot in 2018, and that was a Democratic year.

On the other side of the aisle, don't expect Maryland's former Republican Governor Larry Hogan to continue keeping it close in the Bay State.  It's just too overwhelmingly Democrat.  In the end, there's no serious case for his candidacy and he'll almost assuredly lose by double digits.  He's gonna be the Linda Lingle of 2024.  I'd be astonished if he didn't.

That brings us to the trio of "blue wall" states, all of which are hosting competitive Senate races.  The polling has been more unpredictable in these three Senate races and has failed to show the kind of commanding Democratic overperformance noted above in Nevada, Arizona, and Ohio.  This could be big trouble for Democratic incumbents Tammy Baldwin and Bob Casey, as well as Elissa Slotkin running for the open seat in Michigan, given Trump's tendency to outperform the polls in all three states in November.  In other words, these three races already seem to be in the place where I expect Nevada, Arizona, and Ohio to be by election day, with little voter interest in crossover voting detected.  I don't think Republicans are likely to pick up all three, but the sweep is certainly within reach if the race breaks in any way toward Trump in the next two months.

Now is it possible that I'm wrong and Democratic Senate candidates like Gallego, Rosen, Brown, and Tester continue to run ahead of Harris by double digits or high single digits?  I mean, after all, this kind of ticket-splitting was very common in the Bush years and even into the Obama years.  As an eye-opening example, recall that 20 years ago North and South Dakota had FOUR Democratic Senators.  Could it happen again in 2024?  Possible, but doubtful.  In 2020, only 43 out of more than 2,000 counties with Senate races on the ballot voted differently in the Presidential race than they did in their state's Senate race.  Have we become that much more bipartisan in the last four years?  I don't see it.  

The only vaguely plausible scenario for this to occur was more tenable two months ago when it looked like Trump was poised to beat Biden.  Perhaps there were wide swaths of reluctant would-be Trump voters that wanted to hedge their bets with a Democratic Senate.  Ultimately I think very few voters nowadays make such a calculation, and even if they did, those voters probably aren't nearly as confident that Trump will win now as they were two months ago.  That makes the prospect of 100,000+ Arizona voters casting a ballot for Donald Trump but deciding that voting for Kari Lake for the Senate is a bridge too far that much more implausible and unlikely.

I'll return with formal state-by-state predictions in the Presidential and Senate races next month.

Will The Kamala Sugar Rush Subside Before Election Day?

Just a few things have happened since my last post on here.  I felt a little guilty referring to President Biden as a "selfish old man" when he was stalling his departure from the race even as the walls had been closing in on him.  Biden's more than half century of public service has been far from "selfish" and there's been more upside than downside to his Presidency, but I still say he was being selfish by choosing to run for re-election and refusing to bow out even when it was abundantly clear that he wasn't up for nearly five more years on the job.  But after observing the last three and a half weeks in American politics, it makes me wonder if anything we've seen thus far in 2024 has been real.

Republicans seemed like tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists when they insisted that Biden would be replaced as the Democratic nominee before the convention.  It turned out that they were right, but it mostly doesn't seem like the comedy of errors the Democrats endured through June and July could have been planned.  After all, Hanlon's razor tells us to never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.  Still, what about that June debate?  

I wrote a post on here blasting the debate for being planned so early in the cycle.  It didn't make sense and still doesn't that Biden would call for a general election debate in June....unless of course an escape hatch was being plotted back in the spring when the debates were requested.  Even up to the point of Kamala Harris taking the reins from Biden, I wouldn't have believed that this switcheroo had been in the works for a while as it all just seemed too risky.  But having seen the way events have unfolded since July 21, it becomes harder believe that the state of the race today is merely a happy coincidence.

Within 48 hours of Biden abandoning his re-election bid and endorsing Vice President Harris, she secured nearly unanimous support from every establishment Democrat.  It made sense that the party wanted to avoid a messy nomination fight or to try to take the nomination away from a woman of color who was next in line, but the instantaneous speed at which Harris transformed from a national embarrassment to a folk hero doesn't make sense.  I shared the relief most Democrats felt when we put the burden of Biden's endemic performance deficiency in the rear view mirror, but that doesn't explain the Harris rallies with tens of thousands of attendees seemingly put together on the fly with A-list performers in tow.

Looking at it from multiple weeks after the fact, it's hard to shake the feeling that this wasn't the game plan for months.  Whether Biden was in on it or a useful idiot whose cognitive decline inadvertently served its purpose to force him out of the race is open to debate, but that's nonetheless how it played out, and with storybook timing.  Harris got her endorsement from Biden and basked in the most successful campaign rollout in history, buying herself two weeks of positive media.  Then she picked her running mate, winning another two-week media cycle.  And next week begins the Democratic convention, giving her another two weeks of scripted, scrutiny-free salesmanship.  That takes us just about to Labor Day before even the first opportunity arises to test the Democratic Presidential nominee's proficiency for the position she's applying for.  

Whether this is serendipity or something carefully planned in a smoke-filled room back in the spring when Biden's cognitive slippage was unmistakable, it's been simultaneously clever and disturbing.  It's clever because it completely caught the Trump campaign off-guard and sent the GOP nominee into a messy and defensive spiral, but it's disturbing because the public and the media have so unquestioningly fallen in line in elevating someone to the highest office in the land based on a rudimentary image makeover.  It reminds me of the spring of 2008 when Hillary Clinton, when contrasting herself against Barack Obama in the primaries, successfully reinvented herself as a beer-swilling, white working-class hero, and both voters and the media seemed to buy it without hesitation, at least for the rest of that primary season.

The conventional wisdom has been that reality will catch up to Harris after Labor Day when the convention is over and her campaign gets more scrutiny...and, for that matter, when the Trump campaign and its surrogates finally settle on a more cogent line of attack against her.  I'm not so sure.  When Biden was the nominee, certainly in 2024 but even in 2020, the strategy was to silo him as much as possible from unscripted situations and let the press's anti-Trump bias work to the campaign's advantage by accepting that few hard questions will ever have the opportunity to be asked.  Four years ago, it was just a matter of Biden getting through the scheduled Presidential debates and then letting him be the guy who records videos from his basement for the rest of the campaign.  Expect more of the same with Harris, for the obvious reason that there's precedent for voters liking her much less when they get to know her.

Just as was the case five years ago, when she ran one of the worst Presidential campaigns in recent memory, Harris had nowhere to go but down when she opened her mouth.  She was astonishingly bad in debates ("I answered wrong because I didn't hear the question"...on three separate occasions) and awkward on the stump and in media interviews.  I suspect her handlers know that this version of Kamala Harris needs to be kept under wraps.  It's not a trend I like, and one that I think could blow up in the Dems' face much as it (almost) did in 2020 when the late-deciding vote broke for Trump who seemed to be working much harder to win.  In one sense, I'd be willing to accept whatever strategy is most helpful to keep Trump from returning to the White House, but for the second cycle in a row, the process makes me feel dirty.  Voters should see as much of their candidates in pressure-cooker situations as is possible, and nobody is ultimately served well if the parties work overtime to shield them from it.

And on a note of personal privilege, it appears my instinct was right back in 2006 when I speculated that recently elected southern Minnesota Congressman Tim Walz seemed like a guy who was going places.  I met him in person on the campaign trail as my parents lived in his district and I was impressed by his energy and charisma.  He survived six terms in a conservative-tilting Congressional district and then got the Democratic nomination in a crowded gubernatorial field in 2018.  His gubernatorial tenure wasn't perfect and he shifted dramatically left from the guy who was elected in Rochester in 2006, but he still got re-elected by a more comfortable margin than I'd have predicted in 2022.  And while I never could have foreseen he’d go national up until now, when I heard he was on Harris’ radar as a running mate, I quickly got comfortable with the idea that he’d once again rise to the occasion and exceed expectations.

Was Walz the best choice?  We won't know until the November 6 postmortem.  I think Josh Shapiro was probably a better strategic choice, but who knows what can of worms might have been opened over the Israel-Palestine issue if he was selected.  Walz should be a reliably plucky communicator on the campaign trail and in media interviews, generating positive buzz for the campaign.  I don’t think that moves votes from one column to the other, but it keeps the Democrats on offense and could enhance enthusiasm and thus turnout.

Indulging Octogenarian Egos, Chapter 36

Eighty years ago, amidst the fiercest months of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt was poised to run for a fourth term.  His health was terrible and while the country had its suspicions, it was an era of limited mass communication which allowed FDR and his campaign handlers to hide his condition from voters.  In November 1944, FDR was comfortably reelected to a fourth term...and died five months later.  Fast forward to 2024 and current President Joe Biden's campaign has spent the better part of a year operating as though it's still 1944 until it caught up to them spectacularly last month.  

Ten minutes into the June 28 debate--a debate that Biden requested personally!!--it was clear that the already troubled Democratic campaign was in much more serious trouble than we'd considered.  It was also clear that those closest to Biden--and even those only moderately close to Biden--had advance notice of the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee's cognitive decline.  There's no other explanation for why no Cabinet meeting or press conference had been held so far this calendar year.  Honestly, a modestly attentive 11-year-old could have picked up on Biden's escalating infirmity, and yet the entire Democratic establishment was ready, willing, and able to cover this up for more than a year.  Had it not been for the Trump campaign's willingness to accept an unusually early June debate request from the Biden team, the cover-up would have succeeded until after the conventions when it would have been effectively impossible to replace a spiraling geriatric from running again for the most powerful position in the world.  How the hell did it come to this?

The answer is quite simple.  Despite a long list of very recent neon orange warning signs of the risks associated with deferring to the egos of octogenarians who don't want to relinquish power, Democrats from the President's staff to a near-unanimous slate of Congresspersons to rank-and-file voters in primaries in all 50 states stupidly put their trust in Biden's ego anyway.  Common sense was not allowed into the conversation at any point in the last year, even as geriatric Senators Dianne Feinstein and Mitch McConnell suffered embarrassing and terrifying health episodes broadcast on national TV and, more notably yet, even in the recent aftermath of bequeathing a right-wing supermajority to the Supreme Court because its elder stateswoman rolled the dice on continued ego gratification and it came up snake eyes.  Somehow, even after all of those primal screams from the hands of fate, Democrats put their faith in the suffocating hubris of the gerontocracy largely without question, and as expected the result resembles a tragedy of Shakespearean proportion.

As of this writing, Joe Biden is still the official Democratic nominee for President, but few at this point expect that to hold.  His colleagues and campaign donors that had given him a pass before that debate have since given him the option of the easy way out of his ill-conceived reelection bid. Given that Biden won't take the hint, it seems inevitable that the likes of Schumer, Pelosi, and Jeffries--and potentially even Obama--will defer to taking the hard way next, a public vote of no confidence that will dry up campaign donations and destroy his campaign.  Then what?

The all-but-certain outcome is what seemed like a nightmare scenario a year ago...the ascendancy of bumbling Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket, another unfortunate legacy of bad strategic choices made by Biden dating back four years ago.  Such a scenario is still a nightmare as Harris has all the public relations skills of Pete Rose, but if the Democrats have any hope of turning this calamity around in the next three months, it'll require someone who can prosecute the case against their challenger Donald Trump who by all realistic metrics is running ahead.  Biden clearly isn't up to that job.  But given that Harris's background is as a prosecutor, it's possible that she can. Plenty of others in the party would likely be better at it than Harris, but given that elevating them to the top of the ticket would require the construction of an entirely new campaign infrastructure and starting fund-raising over from scratch with a half-billion-dollar head start for Trump, they are scarcely an option.  There are likely only two realistic options for the Democratic nominee for President and their names are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Biden has been an above-average President, and I suspect an amateur like myself would be even more impressed by how he's managed the situation in Ukraine if I parsed the details and the crossroads of difficult options he's faced along the way.  None of that matters anymore though, at least if Trump wins in November.  Biden will go down in history as a goat, a guy who didn't know when to call it a day and sabotaged his party's ability to beat a challenger who is dangerous in every possible sense.  Part of me feels sad for Biden about this, but the more I think about it, the more furious I feel toward him for fomenting the totally avoidable political crisis unfolding in real time.  

Obviously Biden, or more likely Harris, could still find a way to win if the tide somehow turns their way or if there's widespread polling error undercounting the anti-Trump vote, but let's be real and put the odds of that at less than 20% right now.  So much is at stake but when it came down to it, averting national catastrophe appears to have taken a back seat to the ego of a selfish old man and the cravenness of those who enabled him.  A second Trump administration is likely on the horizon and plenty of people deserve that fate.  Far more of us did nothing to deserve this fate but are nonetheless poised to suffer it anyway.