2024

 October 23, 2020

This will be the last column I’m writing until after the November 3 election. The final presidential debate was held last night and did not deliver any October surprise. It felt like a draw and it probably has not changed any minds. There isn’t much to do with the 2020 election that I have not already written about and with less than two weeks to go in that campaign, I leave it alone, convinced as I am that the outcome has already been baked in with more than 50 million votes already cast and no evidence that anything has been able to cause a dramatic change in the polls, which have been remarkably consistent through all the upheaval we have witnessed so far this year. I truly believe that this election has already been decided, even though the votes have yet to be tallied and we are still in the dark as to the outcome. It still can go either way, but the voters who have not yet submitted their ballot, some 100 million of them, have made up their mind if they will vote and who they will vote for if they do. So, the outcome is pre-ordained. We will just have to wait and see what the oracle of Delphi proclaims.

Therefore, while this time around there is some serious validity to the overused statement that ‘this is the most consequential election of my lifetime’, let’s leave 2020 for what it is and look ahead at the election of 2024, which, after all, is only 4 years away and will be significant in many ways, including the absence of an incumbent. As much as DJT claims to be entitled to a third term, if he wins this year and is still alive in 2024, a third term will stay reserved for FDR only. And with DJT out of the way, Biden, if still alive in 2024, will almost certainly not be renominated by the Democrats even if he would run for a second term, which is unlikely.

The 2024 election will also be significant for the fact that it will have to sort out if the Trump ambush of the Grand Old Party was a one-time hiccup experienced by the Republicans or a lasting takeover of American conservatism. In the same vein, it will force the Democratic Party to sort out if it will position itself center-left in the American political theater or at the far left. We will get a hint of the direction the Democrats will move in the 2022 mid-term election.

To get a view of what we will be facing in 2024, I’ll review three possible outcomes of the 2020 elections:

1.       Trump wins and the Congress stays as it is today

2.       Biden wins, but the GOP keeps control of the Senate

3.       Biden wins and the Democrats control both houses of Congress

I rule out the possibility that Trump wins a second term, but loses control of the Senate. The ‘coattail’ effect of a Trump victory would almost certainly preclude that scenario from developing.

1.       Trump wins and Congress stays as it is today.

This scenario will signal a complete takeover of the Republican Party by the populist Trump fraction and a stunning rejection of the moderate center-left wing of the Democratic Party by the voters. It is a disaster scenario for the health of the American democracy, as it will be seen as a mandate for an authoritarian President on steroids with all the shackles of any Congressional oversight and constraint removed. Assuming that the Democrats will hold on to their majority in the House of Representatives, Trump will continue to rule primarily by executive order and further dismantle the regulatory network that protects our environment, public health, and social support system. He will be given another four years of judicial appointments to further fill the bench with conservative judges, build on his border wall and otherwise restrict immigration. No doubt, he will further distance himself from global institutions and alliances and may even take the USA out of NATO. Another four years of Trump will forever change America’s place in the realm of nations and leave America isolated, bereft of friends and allies.

For 2024, this scenario means that the Trump takeover of the GOP is complete and that the nominee for the 2024 Presidential election will be coming out of the Trump stable, possibly a Trump family member. The ‘Never-Trumpers’ will have to decide if there is still a home for them in the GOP or the time has come to split off and create a new center-right political party. Having been sidelined for eight years, the Democrats will have to scramble to keep their coalition together, settle on fresh new leadership and develop a winning formula for electoral victories down the road.

2.       Biden wins, but the GOP keeps control of the Senate

Although it will feel good to a majority of Americans that Trump has been moved out of the way (and into a world of criminal and civil legal jeopardy), this result will be a Pyrrhus victory for Biden and the Democrats as they will be denied a workable platform for the legislative initiatives they have developed in the platform on which they have campaigned. Assuming that Mitch McConnell will have won his re-election and been able to hold on to the post of majority leader, he will do everything he can to block any proposal coming out of the Democratic House of Representatives, not allowing Biden any wins on taxes, immigration, healthcare or the environment. The GOP strategy will be to convince the voters that the change they wanted could not and would not bear any tangible results, leading to electoral losses for the Democrats in the 2022 mid-term and the 2024 Presidential contest.

Biden will be a lame duck, relegated to governing, much like Trump has done, by executive order and unable to reverse the trend of filling the judiciary with adherents of the Federalist Society. The one area in which Biden would be able to achieve effective change is in foreign policy, where he can start the process of reconciling America with its traditional allies. Failure of the Biden administration to implement its agenda will strengthen the hand of the left wing of the Democratic Party and play in the hands of the GOP. Whether the GOP can take advantage of the Democratic slump will depend on its own capability to reconcile its internal differences between the Trumpers and the establishment Republicans.

3.       Biden wins and the Democrats control both houses of Congress

Only in this scenario will we have an administration that can methodically implement a legislative agenda of change, although it will have to depend on President Biden’s capacity to work across the aisle and get enough moderate Republicans on board with its agenda to secure 60 votes in the Senate. Democrats will, at least for the first two years, have only a slim 1-3 seat majority in the Senate and will have to get Republican support for their initiatives or be forced to trigger the fateful ‘nuclear option’ and eliminate the Senate’s filibuster rule. The Biden administration will be under pressure to move aggressively ahead during its first two years in order to be able to defend and consolidate their hold on Congress, which means that it will have to hold its coalition together and accommodate the left wing of the Democratic Party. In this context, highly contentious issues like Statehood for Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico and expansion of the number of Justices on the Supreme Court will come into play. How well the Biden administration will be able to navigate these troubled waters and come through the 2022 mid-term elections will decide who will represent the Democratic Party in the 2024 Presidential election. In the meantime, the GOP will have to decide if it will jettison the populist experiment with Trump and revert to its traditional conservative creed of small, fiscally responsible, government, free trade, open borders, and global alliances.

Whatever happens, it will be a whole new ballgame in 2024.