On 2024 speculation

 In some ways, this is not surprising, and since I comment on likely scenarios for 2024, I may be living in a glass house.  Then again, I have blackout curtains and specialty reinforced glass.  Unless I got cheated by my contractor.  Anyway, the stories are piling up, months ahead of the 2022 midterms, and questions are headed my way from journalists, so sure.  Fine.  Let's do this.  I shall return to the topic many times anyway.

What will happen in 2024?

Who will be the nominees?  I do not have a clue whether or not Biden will make it, and neither do you.  The line of succession would put Harris in the Oval Office if Biden croaks, and there is no way that she gets passed over for renomination if that happens.  If Biden is alive but just in very poor health?  Does he step aside?  If so, does the party pass over Harris?  If so, for whom?  These are questions for which we have no real historical data, save perhaps for Lyndon Johnson.  When he stepped aside in 1968, the party nominated his VP, Hubert Humphrey, although that was under the pre-McGovern Fraser rules, which led to riots, and that's why the parties do everything with primaries and caucuses now.  Anything we might suggest here would be speculating outside the realm of our data.  But it also doesn't really matter.

Who will be the Republican nominee?

Do I have to dignify that with an answer?

The probability is not 1, but c'mon.  This is not an interesting question.

So here is where matters become more challenging.  What happens in two years and four months?  (As opposed to two years and six months...)

Under a normal, small-d democratic election, I would revert to the Abramowitz "Time For A Change" model.  The Democrats would not be facing a two-term penalty, and while Biden's approval rating right now is in the toilet-- hence the questions-- the real question is where the Democratic incumbent's approval rating will be six months before the 2024 general election.  Where will that be?  I have no clue, and neither do you.  That's two years away, and dependent largely on the other thing in that model.  The economy.  The Abramowitz model uses Q2 GDP, but that's not really why Biden's approval rating sucks.  That would be inflation.  Perhaps the Rivers model-- Bread & Peace-- would be better here, using change in real disposable income.  Still, inflation-- if it isn't under control-- will be baked like bread into the Democratic incumbent's approval rating.

Hence, the economy.

What will happen with the economy over the course of the next two years?  More importantly, what will be the trajectory, two years from now, because if it is an upward trend, the Dems "win."

Problem for the Dems: when the problem is inflation, it's out of their control.  Monetary policy and international geopolitics.  There is essentially nothing Biden can do about the oil markets, including kissing the Saudi royal family's royal shitbag asses, so he shouldn't have gone.  Fuck them all.  If we had been working towards renewables decades ago, we could have let that fucking shithole collapse, and the terrorists' funds dry up, but no.  We suck.  So instead, Biden fistbumps one of the worst human beings on Earth, we get nothing for it, and the Saudis keep jerking the world around propping up an oppressive shithole so that some compensating douchebag can go around rolling coal and owning the libs.

Where was I?

Oh, right.  Geopolitics.  Yeah, we got nothin'.  Fuel prices are going to stay high unless you want to let Putin have whatever he wants.  That drives part of inflation.  There are supply chain issues.  Biden can't do anything about that.  Then there's monetary policy.  That's Powell and the Fed.

So are they doing a full percentage point hike?  Really?  We don't know.  Slam the breaks on the economy to stop inflation and you cause a recession.  Then, pull back and the economy claws its way back, but that could be a hard path.  We don't know what the Fed will do, and we don't know the timing of the economy, given what the Fed might or might not do.

That means basically everything is out of Biden's hands.

But... but... but that's unfair!

Yes, that's unfair.  Life and politics are unfair.  Presidents are judged by things outside their control because Americans are too fucking stupid to learn anything about basic economics, much less geopolitics.  The alternatives include the glories of the Bolshevik or Maoist revolutions, military or inherited dictatorships, and other such things which suck even worse.  Basically, no.

And Powell would be committing economic malpractice to give a shit about Biden's reelection prospects.  If you recall, Trump's idea of how the Fed worked was as follows.  The Fed decides whether or not they like the president.  If they like the president, they keep interest rates low to reward the president with a strong economy.  If they don't like the president, they punish the president with higher interest rates, to hurt the economy, to get the voters to give the president the old heave-ho.  Grossly narcissistic and economically illiterate?  Of course.  I told you, I was talking about Trump.  The job of the Fed is targeting the NAIRU, and the Fed missed the NAIRU.  Now, they're trying to find their way back.  How are they doing?  Um...

Well...

Judging by inflation, not so well.

But however they do their job, they aren't supposed to give a shit about targeting the specific trajectory of the economy at 6 months prior to the 2024 election, so as to help the incumbent.  Nor hurt the incumbent.  And even if one thinks Powell has not done a particularly good job, he doesn't seem to have acted in such a manner.

Will the economy be in a recovery state six months prior to the election?  Who the fuck knows?  But that's the basic condition.  Carter lost in 1980 because the economy sucked.  George H.W. Bush lost in 1992, partially because of misperceptions of the economy (the recession was long gone), but really more because the GOP had won three elections in a row.  Trump lost in 2020 because the economy sucked.  (It was kind of shut down because of COVID, which he was grossly mismanaging.)  What does it take for an incumbent to lose?  Basically, a shitty economy, hitting the two-term penalty, or some combination.

There won't be a two-term penalty, but we don't know where the economy will be.  Right now, though, there are real questions about how anyone will manage the current shittiness of the economy.

Point being, I don't fucking know, so stop asking.

What do I know?  (Obviously, nothing.)  That even if the economy recovers and Biden (or Harris) wins, Trump will lie and insist that he won, Republican state legislatures will respond differently to his lies this time, the Republican majority in Congress (which will be there after the 2022 midterms) will obey his will next time, and basically, he won't need a riot/insurrection.  He'll have the Speaker of the House.  It may not even be Kevin McCarthy.  It could be Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise, or hell, Louis Gohmert.

Heads, Trump wins, tails, Biden loses.

Unless you think Kevin McCarthy is finally going to stand up to Trump.  Really?  Really?

Assembly of Dust, "Speculator," from The Honest Hour.