So, it's become apparent to me lately that as we hit 2023, we are now officially at the start of the 2024 election cycle. I was originally gonna hold off and wait for the year to go on before posting anything, but I feel like saying something now, so screw it.
As far as what I plan to do in 2024, I really don't know. I might vote Biden, I might vote for a progressive challenger, I might defect to the Forward Party or the Green party again. I will say that I've already been voter shamed once today, and want to remind people that this behavior makes me LESS likely to vote for Biden, not MORE, I tend to reward effort on the democrats' side to try to appeal to my concerns, rather than just mindlessly supporting them. So yeah, don't voter shame me. Every comment I get voter shaming me is just going to make me more likely to defect, just saying.
As for candidates, to discuss each side:
Democrats
The dems are presumably running Biden again. I have heard things about his age and how he might step aside, but I'm not sure if that's a wise idea. I question if someone can else can win vs the GOP this time if Biden doesn't run. Biden sucks, and his poll numbers kind of suck, but to be fair I thought 2022 was a going to be a GOP blowout at this point in 2021, so anything is possible at this point.
Realclearpolitics (my normal go to site) doesn't have any data on democratic primary polls, but they did have a recent poll out of New Hampshire showing the party preferring...Buttigieg over Biden? What? I know Kyle Kulinski looked at this recently and he seems bullish about Marianne Williamson, who I'm not opposed to, but I don't exactly like a ton either, but let's face it. Any challenger to Biden, especially a progressive outsider like Williamson is likely a long shot. That's not to say that I would not support someone like Williamson. If she's the best person to represent my ideas, I would support her. But...let's face it, it's a protest vote if Biden is the presumed nominee. Even if it were open, I could see someone like Buttigieg or Harris being the go tos for the centrist faction.
Checking out another site, it seems like Biden is the overwhelming favorite, with Bernie being second, Harris being third, and Buttigieg being fourth. Other possibilities are Warren, Newsom, AOC, and Warnock, but those guys probably don't have a chance. Williamson isn't even on here. So that's not a good sign.
Honestly, I don't think bernie is a good candidate this time. 80 is kind of my max age for supporting a candidate. While the dude could live to be 100 for all I know, you really don't know at these advanced ages. Biden gets a pass as an incumbent, but Bernie's gonna be 83 this time around. He will be 91 when he leaves office, yikes.
As for alternatives to Biden in the centrist camp, I'd prefer Harris over Buttigieg but it's sad that this is the best we got. Buttigieg is more moderate than Biden, and Harris I've somewhat warmed up to her over her healthcare plan, but I'm not really a huge fan of her either. And I don't think she really has a chance, ugh.
So what are the odds of any of these guys getting it? Well, Biden is gonna win, period, IMO, if he runs again. No one will compete with him outside of a random progressive outsider like Williamson, who won't get any attention and won't be taken seriously, and that will be that. He will be the presumptive nominee, with a 99.9%+ chance of getting it.
If you remove him, sure Bernie is second, but we all know what happens in these things. Biden's support would gravitate toward Harris or Buttigieg, and they would blow out Biden. Keep in mind the three major factions of dem voters: progressives, centrists, and the idpol crowd. And the centrists are firmly in control of the idpol crowd. So Bernie's chances of winning are minimal.
Idk whether buttigieg or harris would be preferred in the long term. Could go either way, with whomever is weaker dropping out and endorsing the other. Centrists stick up for each other after all.
Republicans
Right now Trump leads Desantis 46.4% to 30.8% for the nomination on the GOP side. There was some discussion of the party dumping Trump post 2022 mid terms as it seems like he kind of offers mediocre prospects for winning the general. A lot fo the country has turned on Trump, he's toxic, and he isn't considered very electable. Meanwhile DeSantis is a rising star in the party due to his willing to defy COVID safety protocols and open everything (which is, let's face it, a crappy thing to like a candidate for, but this is America and people are brainwashed and stupid), and his war on woke (which is, quite frankly, rank authoritarianism). I mean, really, while Trump is obviously the greater evil due to his authoritarian nature and willingness to incite insurrections to steal elections, DeSantis is a bit of a nutcase too. Anyway, it's going to be a war between these two and I expect it to be nasty and bitter given Trump's immature bullying tactics and attitudes of entitlement to the nomination.
Third parties
It's hard to know what third parties are doing at this point. I assume the greens are going to run Howie Hawkins again. I admit I've cooled on him since last time as I better fine tuned my ideology. I don't find his ideas to be as compelling in terms of his priorities and implementation. I mean, if anything makes me MORE likely to vote blue, it's the alternatives being worse. He still might make a nice protest vote, but who knows.
As far as forward, who knows at this point. Forward has no official 2024 plans, and seem to be focusing their efforts on keeping Trump out of office. I have to say that's somewhat smart. Also, can I just say, reading that wiki article is painful to me, seeing the progression of what once was, to what is now. Seriously, I'm really bitter over those guys dropping UBI and merging with those other movements. It's driven me away from them.
We might have something come out of the peoples' party, but who knows. Looking at them, I'm not to keen on them going in the democratic socialism/job guarantee direction but who knows. They just seem like another green party.
Libertarians, who knows. Not big on them anyway.
Honestly, I'm cooled on third parties this time around. All of the ones with decent platforms are more in the socialist direction than in the UBI/HCC direction, and the one party that was in the UBI/HCC direction abandoned it and has no plans to run anyone. Yay...
Honestly, this just makes me MORE likely to vote for the dems, in spite of the blue no matter whoers.
General election
Yikes. I want to remind people, the electoral college is set up in a way where the democrats need to clear a 3%+ popular vote lead to win, so this is actually leaning toward the GOP right now. Of course, given the mid terms actually largely followed 2020's margins and if anything expanded on them in practice, well, I'm not sure how reliable this is, but this doesn't look very good. Looks like Biden is heading toward losing. Right now we're talking about a 2:1 chance of Trump winning based on polls alone.
Desantis vs Biden is +1.5% DeSantis
As we can see Desantis has a much better shot at winning here. Around 5:1 if we go by my 2020 data for how the electoral college chances overlap with the popular vote.
I mean there's only a handful of pollsters here and they vary a lot. If I were to average the two we would get Harris +4.5, but that 15% one could be anomalous (and given the Biden vs Trump data probably is). I mean the most recent Harvard Harris poll has Trump at +6, but previous ones were +7 and +11, and previous Federalist/Susquehanna polls have harris at only +3 and +1, not +15.
If I were to average the most recent three polls from each, we get about +0.8 Trump. Which gives Trump around 5:1 odds here. Not good. This is why I'm leery of replacing Biden. Biden sucks, he's mediocre, but he seems to be the only one by the numbers who could probably beat the GOP.
Desantis vs Harris is also unclear
This time we got one pollster (harvard-harris) and they seem to be trending Desantis after a long period of trending toward Harris. Averaging the most recent three polls gets is DeSantis +2, which going back to my blog post gives Desantis a 7:1 shot of winning. This is close to where Biden was vs Trump in 2020 by the way. I think my final prediction was 88:12. That's about 7:1.
Yikes.
Again, there's a reason I'm arguing Biden is most electable despite not liking him. I have not seen any positive data on other candidates. Whenever I see how other candidates polls for 2024 other than Biden, their numbers are always worse. I havent seen more recent data on candidates like Sanders or Buttigieg that I can show you here, but I remember seeing some back in like 2021 and 2022, and yeah. It was closer to Harris than Biden here. I know we love to say "Bernie would have won", and while it was true in 2016, I'm not sure it's true in a 2024 environment. Bernie's numbers WERE better than Hillary's. But right now, Biden's numbers are the best.
Conclusion
Honestly, 2024 is looking depressing to me. It looks like it's going to be another Biden-Trump matchup again. With Trump potentially winning. Even though the dude should be in jail. While I expect a bitter primary between DeSantis and Trump meaning both are options, with the democrats it's either Biden gets the nomination, or we're screwed. Bernie is old and Im not sure he could win either the primary or the general any way. Harris and Buttigieg look like favorites for the primary if Biden doesn't run again, but honestly, I don't think either could win the general.
And the third party options are kind of disappointing to me this time. We're screwed. This looks like, to me at least, this is going to be a boring election. Seems like a good time to mostly focus on other stuff as any advocacy here is likely to be a waste.
I will post more here if I see a reason to, but yeah, that's the state of things in January 2023.
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