As someone who’s crazy enough to write a blog on politics, I am well aware that forecasting elections several years out is something of a fool’s errand. It is possible that I am, in fact, a fool, but making electoral predictions is one hundred percent the errand I choose to go on, even if I should prove myself a fool to the whole world in the process.
Nevertheless, hot from a strong track record of 2022 midterm predictions, I am going to throw all my poker chips on the communal pile and make the following bold prediction: President Biden will not only run for president again in 2024, but he will win in a landslide and sport some serious coattails. This is what I am predicting will be the coming Democratic Landslide of 2024.
Wait, you may ask! Won’t the 2024 electoral map for Democrats be more challenging that it was in 2022, at least where the U.S. Senate is concerned? Doesn’t demographic growth in the ‘Sun Belt’ presage a stronger showing for Republicans in the next two to three electoral cycles? Isn’t Joe Biden just too old to run for president again at 80 years of age?
Greymantle’s answer to those questions is “Nope, Nope and Nope”.
THE SUN BELT IS NOT SOME REPUBLICAN KINGDOM
Let’s deal with the second objection first.
The U.S. ‘Sun Belt’ that stretches from southern California through the deserts north of the Rio Grande via Texas all the way across the Mississippi to the southeastern coastal states of Florida and South Carolina is not some Republican kingdom.
Yes, Americans from other regions have moved to the Sun Belt in large numbers since the 1970s due to its lower taxation, warm weather, and the marvels of central air conditioning. And yes, the low-tax-advocating Republicans have done well in these regions over the past thirty years.
But, as in most other heavily populated parts of the country, the Republicans now face serious headwinds in the Sun Belt.
To begin with, social attitudes in states like Arizona, Georgia, Texas and Florida have become more liberal since the 1980s, much as they have in the U.S. coastal metropolises. As the party generally opposed to legalized abortion and same-sex marriage (at least until last week!), the Republicans carry a pretty serious albatross around their necks in terms of being stereotyped as ‘the party of the past’ or simply ‘the party of NO”.
Secondly, while Donald Trump and Republican candidates generally have been doing (surprisingly) better among Black and Hispanic voters since the late 2010s, the fact remains that American minority ethnic groups still favor the Democrats by a very strong margin – something like 60-40. So, as the southwest and southeast continue to ‘diversify’, the trend will, at least over the short term, continue to favor the Dems.
Thirdly, the surge in urban and suburban development in the Sun Belt over the past half century was made possible not only by central air, but also by abundant water resources. It takes hydropower to generate the juice for air conditioners, and sufficient water to fill the water and sewer pipes laid in the ground to build suburbs on the edge of the desert. But water supplies are starting to run low. Just look at what’s happening with the Colorado River.
As the party of unconstrained development and land speculation that is also the anti-environmental party – the party of climate change denialism – it’s pretty certain that the Republicans will draw a greater share of the blame as development in these regions is increasingly pressured by water scarcity and Republican elected leaders and media actors refuse to level with the public about the hard conservation choices that need to be made.
PURPLE IS THE NEW RED
You can see these trends beginning to shape electoral outcomes in Arizona and Georgia. That a relatively liberal Democrat like Katie Hobbs would be elected to Arizona’s highest office would have been completely unthinkable 20 years – even ten years – ago. And Arizona used to be as Republican a state as they come. As Republican as Montana is now. Think about that.
The association of Hobbs’ opponent, Kari Lake, with Donald Trump and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party notwithstanding, Gov-elect Hobbs’ relative social and environmental liberalism did not seem to be a turnoff to a pretty broad swathe of Arizona voters, including a majority of self-described ‘Moderates’ and even some Republicans.
Granted, a decent number of these folks were casting their votes against Kari Lake and Donald Trump rather than for Katie Hobbs…but still, a female, liberal pro-abortion Democrat would not have stood a chance against ANY Republican, even a crazy one, in 2006.
The same holds true in Georgia. Biden won Georgia by a hair in 2020 – by less than 15,000 votes – but he won, and won on a Democratic Party platform far to the left of where it was when Bill Clinton won Georgia in 1992. The votes for Biden were not all votes against Trump, as we can see by how Democratic Senator Warnock triumphed this past Tuesday over his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker.
Like Arizona, Georgia has become a far more urban state in 2022 than it was thirty years ago. Less Deep South and more Big Box. Fewer country roads and more suburban sprawl.
URBANIZATION EQUALS LIBERALIZATION
Urbanization seems to lead to ‘liberalization’ in American social mores, if recent decades are any guide. The growth of big, ethnically diverse and anonymous cities appears to lend itself to a kind of socially liberal, albeit somewhat economically libertarian form of politics.
The check on the libertarianism comes from both the availability scarce resources and the need for public resources. If a county is running low on water, then they are just going to have to issue bonds to build a new reservoir, anti-debt sentiments be damned. If new roads and arts centers parks are needed to make a city less of an agglomeration of featureless neighborhoods and empty downtowns, then people will pay for that.
So, there are natural limits to the low-tax, pro-gun, socially reactionary ethos, even in traditionally conservative states. Purple might be the new red in some of these battleground regions.
ARTIFICIAL MAJORITIES
Another factor that deriders of a ‘future Democratic majority’ often point to are the great strengths of the Republican Party in many state legislatures across the Sun Belt and, until recently, in parts of the Midwest.
Greymantle questions the enduring strength of Republican state legislative majorities. We believe these majorities to be largely artificial, the creations of gerrymandering coupled with a robust national fund-raising apparatus for Republicans and assisted by the pervasiveness of right-wing news media, particularly the influence of Fox News.
Were any one of these ‘three pillars’ of Republican politics to noticeably weaken, it would be enough to critically threaten Republican control of several state chambers and the House of Representatives. And, in fact, Greymantle believes evidence of the second (a weakening fund-raising effort) was already apparent in the 2022 midterms.
There are also also signs that the first Republican ‘edge-maker’ cited above – gerrymandering – is beginning to unravel in several states. This has been true in Georgia since Stacey Abrams first rolled up her sleeves and got to work building up voter rolls and the Democratic party organization in Georgia in the mid-2010s. Abrams’ own near-victory in the 2018 gubernatorial face, Biden’s 2020 victory, and Democrats’ winning of more local and state legislative offices in 2018-22 are all proof of this trend.
But the bigger surprise – a shock, really, for many Republicans (but not for Greymantle) – in 2022 was the Democrats’ flipping of the Michigan state legislature from Red to Blue, in both houses. That was a remarkable achievement, on its face, given that Michigan’s governor has carried some pretty high negative polling during her first term connected with the 2020 public health shutdowns related to COVID-19.
However, Greymantle argues that the result was only remarkable to the extent that the observer believes the outgoing Republican majorities in the Michigan legislature were based on anything other than decades of favorable legislative district-drawing by Republican leaders bolstered by the deep pockets of Republican ‘super PAC’ donors.
Michigan’s independent, non-partisan redistricting commission re-drew all of Michigan’s electoral districts in early 2020, about seven months prior to the election. Political junkies predicted that the commission’s work would have no net effect on which party held the most seats, but Greymantle suspected early on that the commission was laying the groundwork for an electoral earthquake, whether intentional or no.
The fact of the matter is that rural districts are emptying of people and money across the entire country. Populations are gravitating toward the inner and outer-ring suburbs and 3-4 very large cities in every state.
If districts are re-drawn in order to more accurately weigh were voters actually live and attempt to balance out traditionally Republican with Democratic districts, then Greymantle believes that Democrats are likely to be the net beneficiaries in most cases.
ONE HUNDRED MORE STACEY ABRAMS’S
In our view, what is mainly needed to turn several currently ‘Red but leaning Purple’ states Purple or even Blue are one hundred Stacey Abrams clones in states like North Carolina, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania, to name three. Actually, one hundred is too many. A single mini Stacey Abrams in six states, combined with non-partisan redistricting commissions in the same, would be enough to flip big chunks of the electoral map to Blue.
Which six states? Well, the three named above, for starters. Wisconsin would probably be susceptible to this kind of push, as well. And then there are South Carolina and Texas. South Carolina still has a reputation outside its region as a kind of ‘Deep South’ holdout like Arkansas or Mississippi, but Greymantle’s view is that its economics and sociology are slowly, but surely, converging with those of other U.S. coastal regions.
It’s just a question of the time scale. The convergence is inescapable.
Texas would be an incredible prize for the Democrats. To the extent that young, Democratic Party activists who see themselves as the ‘Resistance’ and grew up on dystopian novels like ‘The Hunger Games‘ are fixated on flipping Red states Blue, flipping Texas is equivalent to the rebels in Suzanne Collins’ “Mockingjay” novel (part of the same series as “The Hunger Games”) capturing District 2 from the evil President Snow’s forces.
It’s “cracking the nut” in the terminology of the novel’s rebel heroes, which roughly means capturing the enemy’s key strategic point of strength, which is also the best-defended and hardest to take. However, once taken, the rebels can lock in certain hard-to-surmount strategic advantages. Texas and its 34 electoral votes represent much the same to the Democrats.
Greymantle doubts the Democrats will capture Texas in the 2024 general election. 2024 seems a bit early for that. But the election of a Democratic governor in 2026 seems possible and a 2028 “”flip” possible as well.
However, to win re-election in 2024, President Biden won’t need Texas. He will just need to secure the states we have mentioned above that have been trending “purple”, keep his base, and maybe take one or two other states to balance out the loss of an Arizona or Nevada, and he is home free.
THAT CRAZY ELECTORAL MAP
Now let’s deal with objection #1 to a 2024 Democratic landslide. Remember here that an electoral landslide merely equals the winner of a presidential election taking 55% or more of the popular vote. Joe Biden secured 53% in 2020 while basically campaigning from his basement and without all the advantages of incumbency. What’s to stop him from securing 55% in 2024? It does not seem like all that much of a long shot.
In terms of a more challenging electoral map for Democratic senators, while this is definitely true for 2024 under existing assumptions about which states trend Republican or Democratic, my core argument here is that many of our existing assumptions about US politics are out-of-date.
Arizona now has two Democratic senators. So does Georgia. Michigan has recently flipped Blue and Senator Manchin, though distrusted by other Democrats, is seen in his home state as an authentic representative of their interests in Washington. So, how is it that so many political junkies believe Joe Manchin and Debbie Stabenow are deeply vulnerable in 2024?
Manchin is the Senate’s most powerful member. West Virginians have traditionally elected powerful senators who knew how to bring home the bacon. Anyone heard of Robert Byrd? I rest my case!
Although Senator Tester of Montana is probably vulnerable to a Republican challenger in 2024, the same is undoubtedly true where the hated senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri are concerned (To clarify: hated by all Democrats and not a few fellow Republicans).
In a state that is trending purple like Texas, Greymantle would not take Senator Cruz’s re-election as a certainty. Hawley is a pure MAGA guy distrusted by many old line Republicans who could be persuaded to vote for a Democratic challenger in 2024. And interestingly enough, Missouri was a state cited by Stacey Abrams in a February 2021 interview with Ezra Klein of the NY Times as being ripe for a “purple repositioning”.
In short, Greymantle simply doesn’t buy the argument that the 2024 electoral map somehow gives Republicans a natural edge.
OUR VERY OWN ADENAUER
Lastly, there is the matter of President Biden himself and his relatively advanced age, or so the argument goes. Having just turned 80, Biden would be 82 years old if sworn into office for a second term in January 2025. Biden is already the oldest man to hold the Oval Office. Social media regularly echoes with arguments for why Biden should not run again.
But let’s take a step back. Senator Grassley was just elected to a sixth six-year term in office on Nov. 8, and he is 89 years old. If he serves out his entire term, he will be 95 upon his retirement from the Senate in 2029. The legendary Strom Thurmond served as senior senator for South Carolina until a month after his 100th birthday. No one ever said he was too old.
Americans are living longer than ever. Virginia McLaurin, a civil rights activist who went viral less than a decade ago when she danced with the Obamas at the White House recently passed away at age 113. Compared to the late Ms. McLaurin, President Biden is the proverbial “spring chicken”.
So, why are so many people harping on the president’s age, if “age ain’t nothing but a number”?
Where Democrats are concerned, the griping about Biden’s age mainly reflects the restlessness of the young generation of progressive Democrats – ethnically diverse and hot-blooded – to take their place in the sun. They are looking forward to a generational handover of power (much like they just got with Nancy Pelosi making way for Hakeem Jeffries) and are impatient with the fact that their party is represented at the highest level by an octogenarian white man. For them, representation means a lot. Sometimes too much.
Where Republicans are concerned, the focus on Biden’s age is part and parcel of a pattern of attacks that casts Biden as a witless dotard whose strings are being pulled by Vice President Harris, the Squad, Bill Gates, Hollywood, Oprah Winfrey — you name it. It’s all pretty much B.S., but the Republican base truly seems to believe all this…we’ll call it malarky.
If Greymantle’s memory serves, Biden has been making the same verbal gaffes and misremembering who just introduced him at the podium for the past 40-odd years. In 1988, when Biden first ran for the Democratic nomination for president, his misstatements, gaffes and whoppers were about the same as they are now: kind of embarrasing, but hardly proof of senility. In fact, they seem to have more to do with his childhood stutter.
In a lot of ways, Biden is playing an analogous role in American politics to the role played by German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in the 1950s: an elder statesman brought out of retirement after the country had been sorely abused by the rule of a deranged populist demagogue.
Trump is a far cry from Hitler, but they are a similar type. Biden hasn’t had to rebuild the country, but he has been pressured to undo similar types of damage. Similar in kind, if not nearly in degree.
Adenauer was 73 when he was elected West German chancellor in 1949 and left office in 1963 at the age of 87. Considering the Herculean task he accomplished in an era of less advanced medicine and sans regular exercise, it is pretty impressive what Adenauer pulled off in his 80s. Though the comparison is not exact, the shoe fits okay. There is no real reason to be worried that Biden will be unable to handle job through 2028.
WHY A LANDSLIDE VICTORY?
A few final thoughts here. In an era of deep US social polarization, it often appears a foregone conclusion that no Presidential candidate can win a landslide victory. There can be no Johnson in 1964. No Reagan in 1984.
This thinking is misguided. The electorate is polarized, but a large portion of this polarization is merely a mirage generated by media figures of both Left and Right to sell advertising space and, on the other hand, a simple product of uncompetitive electoral districts. They are American’s version of Great Britain’s “rotten boroughs” of the 18th century.
Redistrict enough swing states and send out enough Democratic canvassers to register voters and you will find that Republicans are only 35% of the total electorate. It will only take a handful of good, hard pushes against the rotten edifice of early 21st century electoral scaffolding and the whole structure will collapse. The chief losers will be the Republicans.
Perhaps Ron DeSantis can still steal the Republican nomination from Donald Trump and beat Joe Biden. Perhaps DeSantis’s skill in bringing more voters into the Republican tent, as he has recently done in Florida, will translate well outside of the southeast. Perhaps, and perhaps not.
Its possible that some “black swan” event might still crush the Democrats’ political aspirations for 2024: another financial crisis brought on by aggressive Federal Reserve rate increases, a major terrorist attack, war with China, a Russian nuclear detonation in Ukraine. Or maybe President Biden will have a stroke, like Woodrow Wilson, and be incapacitated.
As much as Biden is healthy, his age does present some liabilities.
The world is an unpredictable place. But I know two things: inflation will be much lower in 2024 than it was in 2022, and all that American Rescue Plan Act money sent to the states will still be being spent in 2024, creating jobs and building highly visible infrastructure across the American Heartland.
Unemployment is likely to remain low. The US recession expected by most economists for 2023 is likely to be shallow and short-lived, and followed by a rapid recovery unencumbered by supply chain disruptions, COVID-19, and another oil shock.
After the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, Americans are starting to feel a taste of normalcy again. It’s not the ‘old normal’, but a new normal. And voters are going to reward the president who gave them that normal feeling in 2024. And he will have long coattails.
Until next time, I remain —
Greymantle
