An Autumnal Prognostication

A couple nights ago, the GOP-7 (Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, and Mike Pence, aka ‘everyone not named Donald Trump’) had their second debate, and the sandbox is full of chatter about who won, who lost, who was picked on, and to what degree this resembled a clown show. The gambling markets, which I look at for in-the-moment trends, didn’t budge. Trump is still the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination.

The same chatterers are either making hay or poo-pooing some recent polls that show Trump beating Biden in the general election, a possibility that seemed slim-to-none a couple months ago. This shift, if we are to believe it, has, in my view, little or nothing to do with Trump himself. Rather, it’s a reflection of a combination of Biden factors:

• His ever-more-obvious physical and mental decline.

• Mushrooming scandals that have become impossible for the legacy media to ignore or paper over.

• Policy excesses (inflation, energy, spending, et al) that have started to actually affect voters’ lives.

And, finally, in response to all these, a slow and somewhat subtle shift in the press. Left leaning media are questioning what they used to dismiss, covering what they used to ignore, and quietly turning on Uncle Joe.

Given what I see in the sandbox, what I read in the tea leaves, and what I smell with the turning of the leaves, I’m going to go out on a limb (well, not really - I reserve the right to change my predictions as future events, facts, and data come to bear) and make the following prediction:

The primary processes will unfold as things currently appear. Trump will ignore the GOP-7, and his loyalists will vote him into the GOP nomination. This will be spurred by the continuing dog-pile of prosecutions, insinuations, and accusations, their validity or lack thereof being totally irrelevant to the Trump voters. Biden will be nominated as well, RFKJr and any other challengers notwithstanding.

Biden will, either at or after the Democratic National Convention, withdraw from the race, citing health and familial reasons (side note: he will pardon Hunter in December 2024). This will put the Democratic nomination in the hands of a few hundred Party insiders, who will pick whomever they feel is best positioned to beat Trump in November (and since the GOP has its convention first, they’ll have the same “pick last” luxury even if one of the GOP-7 beats Trump in the primary. The sure money: It won’t be Kamala, it won’t be Hillary, it won’t be RFKJr. It might be Newsom, it might be Whitmer, it might be Michelle O.

No matter what, JoeB will not be our President in 2025.

As to who will win the White House?

I’ll save that prognostication for a future post.