YNot1989

Joe Liberman is dead, and his co-founder at No Labels has announced that they will not field a candidate, and that he personally will be voting for Joe Biden. Robert Kennedy Jr. remains on the ballot in all of 3 states (Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Utah) and has only made an effort to gain ballot access in six more states. Cornell West's campaign is essentially dead, with him appearing on the ballot in only three states (South Carolina, Oregon, and Alaska) and having made hardly any effort to expand his own ballot access. Jill Stein is attempting another run for the Green Party nomination, but her only activity has almost completely dried up much like West's. Trump has secured his party's nomination with barely a fight from Haley or DeSantis, despite the Press all but inventing their viability as candidates. And Joe Biden's strongest source of opposition is from a tiny minority of anti-war democrats voting "None of the Above" in the primary, usually with public statements that they have every intention of voting for the President in the general. With all of these trends in mind, I think we can safely say that if there is going to be a serious challenge from third party candidates in 2024 the opportunity is passing them by, and would require a major shift in both voter behavior, campaign competence, and foreign assistance online. Speaking of foreign interference in US elections, while the intelligence organizations of Democratic nations have been blowing the whistle about Russian intentions and online activities, the simple fact is that even on a compromised platform like twitter, there simply is no where near the amount of bad-faith posts from bot accounts trying to discredit the Democratic nominee. This shouldn't be much of a shock given the dismantling of Russia's greatest source of online propaganda: the Internet Research Agency. That's not to say there will be no foreign manipulation in 2024, just that it is unlikely to match its strength and effectiveness in 2016 or 2020. Next, we have polling data. Now, if you have been following the polls up to this point, firstly I think you need a hug and some kind of lovable animal to provide you emotional support. Secondly, what you've been seeing is mostly junk, largely the product of a concerted effort by the GOP and their allies to undermine confidence in the outcome of the election by saturating aggregate polling groups like 538 and RCP with heavily partisan polls that skew the results toward Trump... and even those polls are starting to show Biden pulling ahead. Further, down ballot races continue to trend towards the Democrats, even in districts/states where they traditionally struggle. This trend has had remarkable staying power since the Dobbs ruling, and is a good sign for Democrats come November. Finally we have the Republican party's money troubles. State-level parties have been going broke for the last four years as donors continue to jump ship from a party that they see as either too dangerous or too incompetent to get anything done. To make matters worse, Trump has now placed another family member and sycophant in charge of the Republican National Committee, with both members overtly promising to divert RNC funds to pay Trump's mounting legal bills. Trump has managed to defer justice thanks to America's endless appeals system, but that costs money that the President likely does not have as liquid cash. The former President's latest scheme to raise money via the IPO of Truth Social has been written off by the media due to recent drops in valuation by over a billion dollars... however that means the valuation is still holding at upwards of a $7 billion, with Trump's share being around $3.8 billion. Even if this declines by even as much as 90%, Trump would still gain around $450 million from the IPO, likely enough to help him cover his bond in New York. However, the law requires that insiders (founders, owners, employees) cannot sell their stock for 90-180 days, or around late September, early October at the latest for Trump. In the meantime, he will continue to syphon off funds that the GOP can't afford to lose. The race is far from over, but the strengths, weaknesses, and black swans are becoming far more defined.

A lot of the unknowns around the 2024 Presidential Election are starting to solidify. The Republican Primary is already down to just two candidates, former President Trump and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Biden is functionally running unopposed with crystal lady Marianne Williamson and Delusional Nobody Congressman Dean Phillips in the race with him. Beyond the primaries, the two independents of any note (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West) are struggling to raise money, maintain online support with the Russian bot networks going down, or get on the ballot in more than three states. In fact West and Kennedy have only managed to push through the paperwork for filing in all of a dozen states. The long touted biggest threat to the Biden Camp, the Republican financed, aging gomer led No Labels can't find a nominee, has failed to raise even a third of their targeted war chest, and is facing lawsuits from their biggest donors. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but its looking like this might be a straight 1 on 1 rematch between Trump and Biden. That said, Trump and Biden are both the oldest candidates in US history, and Trump's legal woes have not been banished. Through a combination of corruption (in the case of Florida) and timidity (in the case of Georgia), two of the criminal cases against the 45th President are functionally delayed indefinitely. However, the New York and DC criminal cases remain on schedule for trial dates in March of this year. Oh, and there's he Supreme Court case over Trump being removed from the Ballot in Colorado, which could open a whole can of worms for what this election looks like come November. I don't really have a point to all this, except to say that its only January 25th and this election is still lousy with inflection points.

2024 will be a year of people's nerves being constantly frayed by the US Presidential Election and ever growing global instability.

The Economy

Most economists have signaled that 2023 is closing out with an economic "soft landing," avoiding a recession in favor of slow, but stable growth. As I've said before: traditional economic rules no longer apply, so while 2023 avoided an actual recession, 2024 will see the gap between reported economic data and people's lived experiences grow further apart.

The Labor Shortage and Interest Rates

The Labor Shortage will only get worse this year. Despite the end of the lockdowns and the normalization of COVID-19, 2023 saw 2.4 million excess retirees, nearly identical to the numbers in 2021. This has translated to a shortage of 3.5 million workers. Labor Force Participation has fallen to around 62.8%, which would have been an all time low if not for the lockdown. In fact this is a 3 year high for labor force participation. Rather than repeat everything I've said before about how the labor shortage works, I'll simply refer you to my previous forecast, and point out to that in 2023 the Fed raised interest rates five times, from 4.5% to 5.75% (Final numbers insert), the highest since January 2001. We should expect a similar series of rate hikes this year, further constraining investor capital and doing nothing to arrest price inflation.

Tech Malaise

The Big Capital Crunch is only going to get worse for tech, and by extension consumers. The most hard hit will be companies and products that rely heavily on a lot of data capacity, aka a lot of electricity to power huge datacenters. Any Software as a Service (SaaS) operates on a business model where the cost of time on these data centers is made up for by the price of whatever data they can mine from huge numbers of users, and/or advertising they can sell to said userbase. But we've reached a point for many companies where that profit/loss ratio is now inverted. The capital needed to operate those server farms is too expensive to raise as venture capital or as debt. The only solution many companies can see is charging for services that used to be free. We're already seeing this through internal discussions at Twitter and now Amazon is considering charging subscriptions for Alexa. And if users have to choose between paying for these services and just not using them, most will choose the latter.

Many companies will be founded to exploit these newly uncommitted users, but their own free-to-play models will only work for a short while. Once BlueSky or Mastadon's user bases grow too large, they'll also have to start charging. As for AI toys like Midjourney and Chat GPT, they might survive 2024, but the ever growing cost of capital, shortage of chips, and having functionally lost their biggest potential customer due to the WGA's successful strike, their death is already a guarantee.

Energy

Energy prices remain high almost everywhere thanks to the drop-off in Russian oil and gas production, but its worth pointing out that, adjusted for inflation, a barrel of crude today costs around the same as it did in 2004/2005. This is thanks in part to reduced demand caused by the work from home movement, proliferation of energy efficient vehicles, and the growing use of renewables. These are incremental changes that have mainly arrested control of the situation with Russia. However, energy supply chains are now more vulnerable for much of the world than they've been in quite some time, particularly for Europe. Europe has now heavily diversified their sources of oil and gas, but given the risk to social stability in North Africa and the Middle East with the global food crisis this could lead to interruptions in energy supplies that would in turn create violent shocks to European energy markets.

If Venezuela makes a bid to capture the Guyanese Stabroek Block, this would be a big threat to global energy security. So expect the US and NATO to be very aggressive when it comes to defending foreign oil sources in places you often don't think about. And expect Russia to encourage their toadies to make such threats in the hope to start a war and with it a global oil shock that distracts the western allies. The final risk to energy this year is a harsh winter that stretches supplies thin, not much of a risk for North America thanks to El Nino, but winter has arrived early this year to Europe and while December is atypically mild this year, I'm not going to speculate on what the rest of the season, much less next year holds for the weather. Bottom line: expect periodic price spikes for energy in 2024.

Entertainment & Media

This will probably be seen as one of the less consequential topics on here, but the global entertainment and media (E&M) industry accounted for around $2.32 trillion in 2022, which is nearly as big as the global auto industry, so this matters. You might have noticed in the last year or so that global media companies have been cancelling projects, including movies that are finished and ready for release, and deleting content that they've already released in some cases. And in 2024 this is going to get worse, partly out of corporate greed, but mainly because the movie business died in 2020 with the mass closure of theaters in favor of streaming services. Bottom line: in 2023 only one movie with a blockbuster budget (over $200 million) was profitable. Companies and executives will blame workers as they always do, but without the huge markups of theatrical releases, and with the Chinese market closing its doors, the model that created the golden age of content has ceased to make economic sense. AI was a desperation effort by the industry to save itself, but even if the SAG-WGA strike of 2023 hadn't been successful, AI wouldn't have solved the problem because of the aforementioned capital shortfall. So get ready for another year of watching modern Hollywood shutter the bulk of its projects in a feeble attempt to stop the bleeding in a patient that died 3 years ago.

World Food Crisis

2023 closed out with lower crop yields and no end in sight to the Russian fertilizer shortage. Meaning that the first half of 2024 will see the global food crisis get worse, while farmers have less money from their 2023 yield to pay for the 2024 planting season, meaning yields at the end of 2024 will be even lower. This is before factoring any any extreme weather events, or the impact from a forecasted dry growing season across much of the world. The World Food Crisis will invariably lead to more political instability in the developing world, which will lead to social and political upheaval along with the suffering that comes from food scarcity.

International Politics

2024 will see greater instability in the developing world as the planet deals with the world food crisis and Russia's ability to act as a security guarantor comes further into question. Expect more coups, more brushfire wars, more border skirmishes, and watch closely as leaders act recklessly to save their own skin.

China

China managed to avoid utter catastrophe in 2023 by reducing their export of phosphates to make up for the drop-off in nitrate fertilizers being exported from Russia. But the country is still in a bad way. The biggest question mark is: Will China invade Taiwan.

Now, prior to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, I dismissed this idea out of hand, but the invasion has taught me a valuable lesson: leaders are not governed exclusively by logic. If Xi isn't getting reliable information, or worse yet, believes that despite all the obvious costs, a war would be the only way for him and the CCP to cling to power, he may very well start his own suicidal war over Taiwan. But if he did, it would lead to the end of China as a modern state after the US blocks off the Strait of Malacca. Still, the bottom line is that I don't have a high confidence that this war will happen.

Former Soviet Union

We came within a gnat's eyelash of the Russo-Ukraine War being over in 2023, had Prigozhin simply finished what he started and captured Moscow. Doing so would have kicked off a civil war that would have ended the Ukraine War. Instead he made the most inexplicable decision to withdraw I'd ever seen. Now Prigozhin and all his lieutenants are mulch, and Putin has purged his inner circle down to nothing. Hardly anyone is left who can challenge him, meaning the chances of this war ending with a coup are now quite slim. Ukraine was betting big on its 2023 counteroffensive pushing the Russians to mutiny against Putin. With that possibility gone the counteroffensive has strategically failed, in spite of some territorial gains and the destruction of a good deal of Russia's forward deployed Naval and Air forces. Ukraine is now left in the unenviable position of facing a war of attrition, one that could last at least another year. To make matters worse, aid from the US is unlikely to grow in 2024 so long as the Republicans remain in control of Congress. Biden does have some tools to unilaterally provide aid, and the rest of NATO is stepping up its shipments of material (although they cannot hope to equal the US military's logistical capabilities). Fortunately, what aid that has been provided has already stripped Russia's military down to the bone. The country is putting equipment in the field left over from World War II at this point, and by next September, most of Russia's troops recruited for its mobilization surge will be at the end of their service contracts. Russia was already scraping the barrel to meet troop requirements, and they simply won't be able to recruit an equivalent number of troops in late 2024 if Russian troops think they're losing the war. This will most likely force Russia to initiate Stop-Loss Orders, which will lead to desertions and possibly mutinies. Further, despite the cessation of the Wagner Mutiny, Russia's inability to stop a handful of mercenaries from simply driving up to Moscow has shown the fundamental weakness of the Russian state, and we should be prepared to see bolder action by separatist groups within Russia. Make no mistake: Russia has already lost, its just a question of how and when reality will sink in.

Meanwhile, the era of poachers will continue on Russia's periphery. Azerbaijan may very well broaden its war in Armenia to secure the Zangezur corridor and with it a land rout to its exclave Nakhchivan. Many former Russian satellite states are now looking to the US as an external security guarantor, and the US seems happy to abide, if only to initiate a containment policy toward Russia. Keep a sharp eye on the C5+1 talks between the US and the Central Asian states.

European Union/NATO

While the leaders of the EU and NATO have kept their blocs unified in 2022 and 2023, 2024 is likely to see the beginning of a fraying of that unity. As energy prices fail to substantively improve, and their governments continue to face a sovereign debt crisis that's been going on since before the Ukraine war, supporting a far off conflict will become increasingly unpopular. This won't be universal, and it won't stop foreign aid to Ukraine. NATO's European members still see this as an opportunity to defeat a major regional threat, and deepen the ties of the alliance. Even in country's facing elections with a strong opposition in 2024, most are boisterously in favor of continuing support to Ukraine.

Unity for Europe however, will not be reflected among the general populace. Far right groups are gaining ground, most worryingly in Germany, and antisemitic and anti-Islamic sentiments have only grown in light of the Israeli conflict in Gaza.

Global South

As the Ukraine War drags on the Global South will suffer the most as the World Food Crisis bleeds into 2024. Food protests like those seen in 2022 and 2023 (but hardly acknowledged to by western observers) will get more severe as food supplies from the poor 2023 harvest season run low. In turn, civil unrest will grow wherever food insecurity gets particularly severe, as will the number of brushfire conflicts. Afghanistan and Iran may come to blows over fresh water supplies in the Helmand, fighting in the Sahel is also quite likely, and of course there's the persistent risk of conflict between Ethiopia and its neighbors over water rights to the Blue Nile.

One area where I don't have a high confidence of war breaking out is in Guyana. Venezuela's recent bout of saber rattling is likely more to do with Maduro trying to improve his chances of winning re-election at the end of 2024, and not a serious attempt at annexation. If Maduro is not already acutely aware of how quickly his life and the life of his regime would end if he so much as touches Guyana/interrupts their oil industry, NATO will routinely remind him by continuing to make small naval deployments to Guyanese waters. However, if Maduro is backed into a corner in an escalation spiral similar to what we saw in Ukraine, the war would be over in a matter of months once the US gets directly involved.

American Politics

Check out my full analysis of the 2024 Elections, but in summary 2024 Elections will be so chaotic as to border on farcical. Donald Trump is facing more legal threats to his finances and freedom than any major party candidate in history, and anything done to hold him accountable or not will seemingly push the country closer to the brink. The Supreme Court is facing and will continue to face multiple legal challenges by Republicans designed to protect the former President, and frankly its anybody's guess how they'll rule, particularly given their increasingly erratic rulings following the backlash to their overturning of Roe. But I will keep repeating this for all who need to hear it: The Republican Party's base is fundamentally a cult of personality, and if Trump is in prison, barred by a 9-0 vote of the Supreme Court from even appearing on a ballot, he will still be the Republican nominee. And if he dies before election day, Don Jr. will probably run in his place and still win around 35% of the vote. And it should go without saying, domestic terror attacks by Republicans will continue and intensify this year as the legal system works to bring Trump to justice. Joe Biden is no longer facing any challenge for the Democratic nomination. Third party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornell West are failing to get on the ballot beyond a handful of states, have failed to raise any real money, and are losing online support following the destruction of the Internet Research Agency this past July. The only meaningful threats to Biden are: the icy grip of death, the economy slipping into a recession, or that No Labels actually manages to organize a center-right unity ticket. If No Labels gets their wish and we see a unity ticket of Joe Manchin and Jon Huntsman, their ability to spoil the election will likely impact Trump more than Biden, particularly if Trump's legal woes deny him ballot access in a large number of important states. In that scenario, Trump is effectively the spoiler candidate for a No Labels ticket. But its unlikely No Labels will gain enough electoral votes to win outright, and their strategy seems to admit that, and suggests that they plan to win the White House from the floor of the House. Which has a high chance of falling back into Democratic hands in 2024.

If the performance of Republicans in post-Dobbs ruling races is any indication, the party as a whole is in real trouble. Opposing Abortion access has been the kiss of death for many Republicans in 2024, and given Joe Manchin or Jon Huntsman's historical opposition to abortion that's likely to seriously hurt their chances at harvesting votes from Biden. So, tentatively, it looks like Biden is in a good position to win re-election in 2024, but given the advanced ages of both candidates, the unpredictability of the Supreme Court, and the skullduggery of Republicans to try and spoil the race with a third party challenge, all I'm willing to commit to in terms of forecasts is that this election is gonna be batty. Oh, and there will probably be at least one attempt to remove Mike Johnson as Speaker. I don't know why, that's just the level of incompetence we're working with in Congress.

Space

2024 is the year of the Moon with around a dozen spacecraft either en route or set to lift off for lunar flights this year. Most will likely fail or be delayed in some way, but at least a few will make it to the surface successfully, paving the way for more Lunar Infrastructure projects. January will see another Starship test flight, and I'm a lot more confident that it will make it all the way to orbit. Its an open question if a successful reentry is possible, but frankly that's not the goal for SpaceX in 2024, or the hope of the broader Space Industry, NASA, or the Space Force. If SpaceX can build and fly Starship to orbit even once, that means they now have the biggest, cheapest rocket on the market which will open the floodgates or a lot of big organizations. I also won't be shocked if SpaceX attempts an uncrewed landing with Starship on the Lunar surface using a Starship that would essentially be a flying gas tank, simply to get some flight test data and stress test their engineering teams. One thing I don't expect to see in 2024 is NASA's planned crewed circumlunar flight, Artemis II. That's not a knock against NASA or any of the organizations involved in this mission, just an expectation based on the reality that human spaceflight is dangerous and NASA will always choose to delay a mission rather than risk harm to a crew. I hope I'm wrong, but don't expect Artemis II until at least January 2025.

Check out my original 2023 forecast here. Now let's begin:

The Economy

By all accounts 2023 has ended without a recession and an apparent "soft landing" if you judge economic health by unemployment and GDP growth. BUT, as I said before, the traditional economic rules no longer apply. The Labor Shortage is here, and what we're seeing is just the beginnings of employers competing for increasingly scarce labor. This has in turn led to a Big Capital Crunch as national banks raise interest rates, because that's all they know how to do. The only bit of good news is that the increase in wages has largely ended the NPL crisis, at least in the advanced industrialized world where mortgage delinquency rates are at historic lows. However, the Big Capital Crunch has exposed some weaknesses in a tech sector that since the Dot Com Crash has relied on extremely low interest rates to fuel a lot of "Free-to-Uses" business models, and server-heavy digital services. In English this means that a lot of companies are losing their shirts on solutionism technologies like Crypto and AI toys like ChatGPT. We're at the beginning of a new Malaise Era, only this time its for tech. That said, I didn't get everything right. I failed to see how the global Neon Shortage and Chip Shortage would end. Simply put: when the Crypto bubble burst with the bankruptcy of FTX last year I failed to appreciate just how many chips would be freed up by the drop off in Crypto projects that followed. By all accounts this did two things: It freed up the supply of chips to avoid disaster... AND said freed up supply made possible the AI Bubble. A lot of companies that might otherwise have gone belly up from the scarcity of new chips and cheap capital have continued to limp along as existing investors and venture capital groups throw good money after bad hoping to somehow arrest the crisis. Further, I did not appreciate the degree of truly suicidal pushback on Work-From-Home from both businesses and local governments. That said, the resistance has been marginally effective at best. As of June 2023 around 12.7% of full time employees work from home, while 28.2% work on some kind of a hybrid model. This has somewhat arrested the energy crisis from getting any worse (aided by an unseasonably mild winter and summer in Europe and North America) but the shortfall in oil and gas coming out of Russia didn't have any magic solution. Economically, I maintain the Malaise Era is the best possible comparison for our current situation, but even I failed to appreciate what that meant. People with money, be they national banks or private investors, do not understand the new economic reality of the Labor Shortage and are trying to solve it with the same old tools that have otherwise served them well for the last four decades. This period of irrationality is going to last a while, partly because we're no where near the nadir of how bad things will get.

World Food Crisis

I don't need to tell anyone that I was right that food prices would continue to rise in 2023, leading to a new World Food Crisis. By most estimates the Food Price Index has surpassed its 15 year high point that was brough on by the 2000s energy crisis. 345 million people are now facing acute food insecurity in 79 countries. International aid programs have managed to keep the situation from sliding into a global famine, thankfully, but don't count on that to last.

International Politics

Well this was certainly a year for curve balls and screw ups in my forecast for geopolitics. I predicted catastrophe and it was more like we got a lot of small brushfires. The Civil Unrest I expected in 2023 did come on a smaller scale, but the bigger risk ended up being brushfire conflicts and coups, particularly in the Sahel. But it has yet to become a Global Arab Spring as I had predicted. My most embarrassing mistake by far was with regards to China. I predicted an apocalyptic famine and period of civil unrest and none has manifested. As it turns out, I misread the UN's report on China's fertilizer dependence and mistook data for Hong Kong as meaning the entire People's Republic of China. That's a hall of fame screw up for me. By far the biggest curve ball for me, for everyone, was how the mutiny from the Wagner Mercenary group shook out. As you can imagine, I wasn't the least bit surprised when a chunk of the Russian invasion force mutinied. The war had turned into a grinding slog, and the closest thing the Russians had to a success was the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam as a form of ecological terrorism. Russian troops were undersupplied, commanders and ammo dumps were being bumped off almost daily, and victory looked to be a complete fantasy. So when Prigozhin rebelled, I though, "Yup, right on schedule." His troops all but strolled up to Moscow, the leadership of Russia and even Belarus had fled their capitols, the local security forces were ready to just hand Prigozhin the city. A coup and civil war were within sight... and then Prigozhin just calls it quits? A couple months later Prigozhin and most of Wagner's leaders are dead in a plane crash, and Putin has purged the government of anyone in any kind of a position to challenge him who isn't utterly essential. And so Russia persists in its war with no real hope of victory, even with the US Congress being hijacked by a bunch of Putin loving Republicans. The only thing I got right in the former Soviet Space was that we're seeing a new era of Poachers, predictably in the Fergana Valley, Armenia, and Syria.

American Politics

Democracy had a better year than I ever could have hoped for, and I've never been so glad to have been so wrong. Not only did the Supreme Court vote to uphold the basic power of state supreme courts to enforce constitutional law in the Moore v. Harper, they went one step beyond and established a metric in Allen v. Milligan for upholding Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The impact of these decisions cannot be overstated, and not only will they seriously hamper Republican efforts to fix the election for Trump, they'll also clear the way for some very interesting midterm results in 2026 and beyond. That said, while I'm overjoyed to have been a worry wart about not only the rulings, but also the follow on of state sanctioned violence that would come in their wake, 2023 has still had a troubling uptick in acts of stochastic terrorism fueled by right wing media outlets and politicians.

As I, and anyone with eyes, predicted, the results of the 2022 midterms have left Congress in a chaotic mess. Split parties in split chambers have resulted in 2023 seeing virtually no movement of substance out of the legislature beyond bickering between Congressional Republicans and an impeachment push against Biden that remains stuck in committee. That said, while Biden's legislative agenda may have died, the results of his first 2 years in office have born fruit. The Inflation Reduction Act has proven to be the biggest investment in green energy ever, and his efforts to forgive student loan debt while stymied by the Supreme Court, have by all accounts endeared him to his base.

Trump and DeSantis spent the last year fighting over who is the bigger neo-fascist, to the determent of everyone in the state of Florida. And as predicted, even after not just one but four indictments, Donald Trump remains the frontrunner in the Republican primaries, and Ron DeSantis's campaign has failed to take control of the MAGA movement.

Biden was facing facing a primary challenge from Robert Kennedy Jr., a known antivaxxer loon who has now left to run as an independent. Meanwhile the loudest voices for party unity are indeed coming from the left, particularly Bernie Sanders who has gone all in on his former rival for the Democratic primary. There is division from within the Democrats, particularly over the latest flare up between Israel and Palestine, but its too early to see how that will play out.

Space

This was a middling year for spaceflight. As predicted Starship did lift off in Spring of 2023, under the most unnecessarily risky conditions imaginable, most likely thanks to the ketamine addled ideas of a certain transphobic, antisemitic white South African who's committed himself to destroying twitter. A second flight attempt took most of the year to achieve, mostly due to repairs to launch infrastructure and an investigation by the FAA, and this one actually flew past the Karman Line, making it all the way to space. But the bottom line is that Starship still hasn't made it all the way to orbit. Further, none of the private lunar landers have actually landed on the Moon, with only iSpace actually getting a vehicle to Lunar orbit. All of this is a little disappointing, but in my industry every step forward, even a half step instead of a full, is a big deal. Better luck next year for space.

Election season in America is upon us once again, featuring two Presidents and a gaggle of desperate weirdos and nobodies. A lot of hot takes have been made about this election, but most aren't factoring in any of the important trends shaping this election.

Background

A lot is being made of the polls right now showing Trump or Biden with wildly inconsistent approval figures. Polling data before the first primary, really before the conventions is meaningless. Trump isn't really in the race right now, and most people aren't paying much attention to the daily drama of his court proceedings or even his rallies. Most voters will pay attention when they have to, and when that happens the polls will shift. The big trends actually shaping this election are:

1. The Russo-Ukraine War - Russia is no longer in a position to significantly boost spoiler candidates and Trump with its online army. China may try, but their online propaganda network is notoriously bad. The war for Russia is lost, but with most of Putin's rivals dead its anyone's guess how long this war will last before Russia starts facing significant mutinies. If the war ends before the election, its a big boost for Biden's odds of victory.

2. Allen v. Milligan and Moore v. Harper. These two Supreme Court Decisions have protected state courts' power to overturn gerrymandered maps and unconstitutional election laws AND created a metric for applying Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that explicitly guarantees minority groups an equal number of districts proportionate to their population. This won't be applied wholesale in time for the elections in November, BUT it will be applied in a few southern states Republicans normally don't have to compete to hold. Alabama and possibly Louisiana will see their maps redrawn by election day creating 2 new majority-Black Congressional districts. With Kevin McCarthy and George Santos's departures, the GOP will enter 2024 with only a 4 seat majority.

3. Trump's Legal Troubles - At time of writing, Trump, his adult sons, and the Trump Organization are appealing a civil court ruling that has ordered their New York business certificates canceled and their business entities sent into receivership for dissolution. Trump is also facing a trial in Georgia which won't begin until August 5, 2024 at the earliest, which means it will likely be deferred until after the election. Trump's trial in Florida has an administrative placeholder date set for May 20th. In New York his criminal trial over falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels is set for March 25th. Finally, his trial in Washington DC for his involvement in the January 6th Insurrection is set on March 4th, just before Super Tuesday. Prosecutors will continue to battle for a speedier trial and Trump will fight for indefinite delays and appeals. Federal convictions are likely as federal prosecutors have a 95% conviction rate and don't even take cases to trial if they're not confident of gaining convictions. However, these trials will take months, and in that time, Trump's ability to campaign will be seriously hampered. The legal drama will embolden the ~35% of voters that make up his base, but the other ~15% he needs to win have the attention spans so poor they border on lacking object permanence. Polling has also suggested that Trump will see a serious drop-off in support if he's convicted. The Trump campaign and the GOP will most likely address this by placing Don Jr. front and center as the party's primary surrogate.

4. Dobbs v. Jackson - The overturning of Roe v. Wade turned abortion rights from a complex national legal issue to a very real local issue, and that has translated into some very interesting off-year election results. Referendums in Kansas, Missouri, Ohio have all lead to overwhelming support for protecting abortion access, much to the frustration of state Republican parties who've taken on more anti-democratic stances in the wakes of their defeat. State Democratic Parties have been very effective at tying the Republicans to their unpopular opposition to abortion rights, although you could just as easily argue that Republicans have been perfectly willing to do the job for them with calls for a national abortion ban.

All of these trends hamper the Republicans and the prospects for underfunded third party candidates. The civil fraud case in New York is already seriously hindering the former President's finances, and Trump is shamelessly using GOP campaign dollars to cover his legal expenses, which will hurt the party at large come November. Republicans are very aware of the risk of losing their foreign cyberpropaganda arm, which is why they are and will continue to do everything they can to hamper aid to Ukraine.

The Primaries

Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. I doubt any of his rivals will last past Super Tuesday. There will still be brief periods where the press and the voters try to act like someone else will be able to unseat him, particularly after any legal trouble the former President might face, but I promise you this: If Donald Trump has a pulse by the convention, he will be the nominee. If he is convicted for his involvement in the January 6th Insurrection, he will still be the nominee. If he has to run from a jail cell, he will still be the nominee. And if he drops dead before the convention, one of his idiot kids will be the nominee.

As for the Democrats, for all the hay being made over Joe Biden's response to Gaza, the party's off-year election turnout is a very good sign for Joe Biden's chances. With RFK Jr. running as an independent, there isn't even the delusion of a serious primary challenge. The only way he's not the nominee is if he dies before the convention, and at that point it will probably be Harris or Newsom depending on how much time is left for either to campaign.

The General

With the primaries being largely a formality, the General Election has, in a sense, already begun, but don't expect most voters to pay attention until the Iowa Caucuses in late January. Also, don't expect Donald Trump and Joe Biden to stand on a debate stage together, especially after the RNC withdrew from the Commission on Presidential Debates. Probably the only piece of election news that will matter before March will be the results in the Michigan primary on February 27, not for their results, but for turnout and exit polling from Muslim Americans, which will be an interesting indicator of Biden's chances in the state come November, and will probably set the tone for the President to prioritize the Midwest on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, Trump will hold rallies between courtroom appearances, battle gag orders, and possibly even face jail time for contempt. Expect Trump to only get more overt about his dictatorial ambitions, which will energize the ~35% of the electorate that makes up his base, and to everyone's horror not dissuade the 5-10% of the electorate that consider themselves "swing voters." But it will be a very effective motivator for Democrats and a sizable bloc of independents. Biden will try to tie the Dobbs decision around Trump's neck, but this is one position the former President has consistently flip-flopped. Biden will benefit more from state and congressional Democratic candidates, who've been far more effective at painting the Republican party at large as dangerous, anti-abortion radicals. Finally, we must expect that Trump will pre-emptively try to discredit the results of the election, as he did in 2020, and 2016. Like with those elections, this will not dampen voter turnout, rather it will motivate voters from both parties to get to the polls.

While the campaign between the major party candidates will be important, this election has produced a particularly egregious group of third party candidates, but their impact as spoilers is not equal. Cornell West has seen a drop in online support since the Internet Research Agency (IRA) saw its founder and most of its leadership die in a plane crash this year, all while his campaign is struggling to gain ballot access. RFK Jr. is facing a similar problem, but will likely get a surge in support from older voters, mostly for name recognition. However, most polling seems to indicate that RFK Jr. is pulling slightly more support from Trump than from Biden. The biggest wild card is No Labels. The latest polling available (and common sense) points to this party actually being a bigger threat to the Republicans than the Democrats. Not really a shock, considering the proposed candidates are either all Republicans or a Democrat who hates every Democratic policy except for labor rights. They're on the ballot in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota, and Utah. However, the group is so far about $50 million short of its own fundraising targets, has cancelled plans for an in-person convention, and is plagued by rampant internal corruption. The movement is facing "open revolt" from the center-left members of their own Problem Solver Caucus in the House, whose own co-founder resigned in protest of the group's plans. They're also facing opposition from other centrist groups and opposition from a Super PAC being set up specifically to oppose them. So, I'm not confident such a group would be anything more than a pack of Republicans whining about how they've been exiled from their own party, and could very well push the election more in Biden's favor. From where I stand right now, Biden has a pretty good chance of winning a second term. A second defeat for Trump would only further radicalize Trump's supporters.

House and Senate

Based on midterm and off-year election performance, I'd say that the Democrats have a stronger chance to retake the House than Biden does to win the White House. If the performance of Republicans in post-Dobbs ruling races is any indication, the party could be in real trouble, especially given the Republicans inability to get anything done. Don't pay too much attention to articles talking up the rash of Republican retirements in 2024, as nearly twice as many Democrats are also retiring or seeking higher office, and for both parties these retirements are in pretty safe districts. The Senate is a little trickier. Democrats are defending 20 seats to Republicans 11, but the only Democratic seat that's a sure thing for Republicans is West Virginia now that Joe Manchin is retiring. Preliminary guesswork says the race will come down to Montana and Nebraska where Jon Tester is in a tight race and a local union President is currently in the lead as an independent candidate with no Democrats running. If the Dems lose Montana along with West Virginia, but the Republicans fail to hold Nebraska, Dan Osborn will become the most powerful man in the US Senate. Osborn is essentially a Democrat without the branding issues the party has in Nebraska, so in all probability he'd caucus with the Dems giving them a majority with Harris as a tie-breaking vote.

Black Swans

From where I sit there are three black swans that could upend this entire forecast:

1. Recession - I've covered at length how the normal rules of economic health no longer apply due to the labor shortage, but if there was a genuine market panic later next year it would be devastating for Biden who's currently enjoying the results of massive short and long term economic growth.

2. Venezuela Triumphant - Its too early to know for sure, but I'm quite convinced we'll be seeing further escalation by Venezuela over their claims for Guyana, but I don't expect it to come to open war. Venezuela's odds of avoiding retaliation by the US are high, but not a certainty. If Maduro's regime does star a war over Guyana, but can force a surrender from Georgetown before the first American warplanes reach their airspace, it would cause an oil shock and a humiliating geopolitical defeat for Biden.

3. Gaza Runs Long - The public largely disapproves of Biden's handling of the situation in Gaza, and while that is dangerous for him electorally, particularly in Michigan with its outsized Muslim minority, it isn't nearly as big a problem as many believe, particularly when its unlikely to be a story that will dominate the news cycle for the whole of the election... that said, if Israel's actions become particularly egregious or the situation intensifies rather than draws down, it could put Michigan in jeopardy, because Democrats have a habit of staying home on election day when they have a disappointing candidate even when the opposition is overtly worse.