Four More Years But For Whoah....Wait a Second. (2024 General Election Forecast, Take Three)

 Kamala Harris has had a very good week. Nearly everything in the news this week has been good for her and today we saw the first meaningful polls conducted entirely after Biden's withdrawal on Sunday. The results were quite good. To put it simply, the race went from favoring Trump and trending his way, to more or less a dead heat.

Not every week will go this smoothly. But for the moment, she has reenergized Democratic voters and independents seem glad to not have to choose between two very old men.

I. Veep Stakes Update.

I still think the VP choice will be one of the five that I wrote about in my last post. But it has been fun to watch them and a couple longshots jockey for position.  I'm adjusting my ratings based on the week that was and a sharper sense of where the Electoral College will likely tip.

The Top Tier:

1. Governor Josh Shapiro. He's had a strong audition. And Pennsylvania is the most important swing state because it has the most electoral votes. He's still not quite my favorite, but he's certainly unobjectionable and the logic of picking the guy most likely to get you to 270 is pretty hard to counter.

2. Governor Roy Cooper.  Same logic as above with the added twist that Harris is said to be on very good terms with him. NC has 3 fewer EC votes than Pennsylvania and that might cost Cooper the nod here. But he's definitely getting a long hard look.

3. Senator Mark Kelly. You know what overcomes the stigma of being short and bald? Being an astronaut. Kelly is probably the best national candidate. He will be a great contrast with JD Vance. I also like the way that he and his wife are going for the job without being unseemly about it. 

The Stretches.

4. Governor Tim Walz. If Minnesota is in play, then the Democrats are probably losing. But Walz will play well in WI and MI too. He's probably had the best television appearances this week, largely driven by a simple motto "Take care of your neighbors and stop being weird." That plays really well and is a nice reprieve from almost a decade dominated by Trumpism.

5. Governor Gretchen Whitmer.  I still think she's a great candidate. But she has said she doesn't want it and I think both she and Harris buy into the notion that they shouldn't put two women on the ticket. Let me push back against that idea for a moment. Can you imagine a voter who says, "I will vote for a woman but only so long as her vice-president is a man." If you find that unlikely, then you probably understand why I don't really buy this argument. 

But the issue is probably more subtle than this. So she has to be considered a long shot. But I do think that's a shame.

The Bad Ideas.

6. Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He's great on television. And it would be fun to watch him debate JD Vance. But...no. He's too young. He needs to get a bigger job before I can take him seriously. In 2032 he will be 50 years old. That seems like a good time to run.

7. Governor J.B. Pritzker.  Well if you really want someone to balance a ticket, I guess Kamala + JB weigh about the same as Trump + Vance. But let's not take that too literally.  Pritzker has been a pretty good governor of Illinois but he's a little smarmy and picking him will bring 14 weeks of Trump making fat jokes and (more importantly) talking about Chicago in the most ridiculous ways ever.

II. The Roads to 270.

As discussed last time, I think Harris is pretty locked in for 226 electoral votes. I think she is favored in Michigan (15) and slightly favored in Wisconsin (10).   That gets us to 251.  The last 19 are the interesting part. There are 2 ways to get there.

1. Win Pennsylvania. That gets Harris up to exactly 270.  If Shapiro is picked, this is probably why.

2. Win North Carolina or Georgia plus one more state. GA and NC both have 16 electoral votes, so winning one gets us to 267 and we need just one more state.  Winning both would get us there. The  other options are Nevada (6), Arizona (11).

III. My Updated Forecast.

So I am optimistic. The race has been joined and I hope things go well. But I understand that the GOP has an Electoral College advantage. The betting markets still favor Trump. 

I'm not ready to say Harris is the favorite. We need to see more polls. We need to know her roommate. But I started by saying it was a good week, and I am going to move Wisconsin from light red to light blue. 

Onward and Upward.

An Endorsement, a Concession and a Far-fetched Prediction

It has been nearly eight months since I wrote about the 2016 election cycle.  In a sane world, it would be another eight months before I felt compelled to break that streak.  But we are now living in a world of more or less permanent campaigns and now that the front-runner has officially declared, I think it's worth going on the record with how I see the next 16 months playing out.  I will start with the race, such as there is one, for the Democratic Nomination.

1.  This Blog Endorses Lincoln Chafee.  He will not win. 

The foolish decision to invade Iraq in 2003 is the most important moment of this nation's history that I have personal memory of.  For the first time since the Polk administration, this country began a war not just of choice, but of naked aggression. And the consequences were disastrous. The United States lost 5,000 lives, several trillion dollars and untold prestige around the world.  The results for Iraq were much much worse, in human casualties and in future uncertainty.

Next year, I will probably vote for a woman who voted for that war in the presidential election.  But I have no intention of doing so in the primaries.  Luckily, there is one candidate with stellar anti-Iraq war credentials.  His name is Lincoln Chafee.  In 2002 he was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against the authorization of force in Iraq.  He has since left the party. He was elected as an independent governor of Rhode Island and eventually registered as a Democrat.  I will be voting for him in the Illinois primary next year.  Dozens of others will join me.  But he has no chance of being nominated.  None.

Here's a look at the rest of the field:

1. The Nominee in Waiting: Secretary Hillary Clinton.

Hillary has been the presumptive 2016 nominee from the day she agreed to be Barack Obama's Secretary of State.  Although her tenure was short on specific achievements, she didn't do anything to compromise her standing with the party or the voting public.  So even eight months ago I wrote that she had a 70% chance of being the nominee. Since that writing, Elizabeth Warren has made clear that she will not run.  Senator Warren was always the most credible challenger to Hillary and it's now obvious that she won't take up that challenge. Vice-President Biden has also shown no interest in running. I didn't think he was likely to beat her in a competitive primary season, but he could have at least sucked up some of her donor and volunteer base. He also had the right to run as Obama's preferred choice, a role that would have helped him a lot in the primary.  I expect that Biden will try to keep a toe in the water just in case Mrs. Clinton screws up.  But he's not making the steps necessary to run. That may have been related to his son's health challenges but I don't think Beau Biden's passing will change his plans for 2016.  It's hard to put a precise number on Hillary's chances of being nominated but it is comfortably over 95%.

But Bernie Will Have  a Surge.

Bernie Sanders has been actively campaigning for weeks and a few polls have shown him putting up respectable numbers in New Hampshire.  He has also raised enough money to put up a respectable boutique campaign in the early primary states.  And there are plenty of young people who will trot out to Iowa to knock on doors for him.

But he can't win.  At some point he will probably have to choose between a serious effort in Iowa or New Hampshire.  Hillary will run big in both states.  Bernie will make the debates interesting and the media will desperately want him to make this race competitive.  If he loses New Hampshire by less than 10%, they will act like this race is a contested one. It is not.

Someone Else Will Have a Boomlet.

The rest of the field is remarkably weak.  That's not surprising given that most of the serious contenders to be President one day are sitting this one out rather than spend a year sleeping in motels only to get crushed by Hillary. Here's the rest of the field:

1. Martin O'Malley.  A mediocre governor of a medium-sized state.  He also picked the wrong year to run for President on the strength of having been a mayor of Baltimore.  His biggest claim to fame is being the basis for Mayor Carcetti on the Wire, a distinction that he loathes.  He did a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" and about half of the questions were about the Wire.  More damning than his fictional portrayal on that show is his horrific record as a stone cold war on drugs enthusiast.  He can't outrun that in a democratic primary.  He might have been a VP contender but I expect him to go all-in on the primaries and he might burn some bridges along the way.

2. Lincoln Chafee.  My aforementioned candidate of choice.  He is bright, moderate and competent. He is as exciting as a grilled cheese sandwich. He has no ties within the national party.  He won't break double-digits in Iowa and might not get there in New Hampshire either.  But like I said, a good man.

3.  Jim Webb.  Oh, this guy had promise.  He holds the Navy cross and he was Ronald Reagan's secretary of the Navy.  Pretty hard to swift-boat that, if he ever got the nomination. While in the senat he also took some principled stands on issues like prison reform. But he's a bit too "principled" when it comes to things like being unable to say the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism. I also doubt he will be able to connect with the left-wing of his party and I doubt he'll make a serious run anywhere.  But I do think he would elevate the debates and be an interesting candidate to follow.  But he can't win.

Predictions.
Hillary could run the table and win all 50 primaries, as Al Gore did over Bill Bradley in 2000.  And as Hillary did in the imaginary world of Bill Kristol's prognostications in 2008.  Bernie will carry Vermont and he might be able to pick off another state somewhere.  Jim Webb might carry Virginia or some oddball state like Oklahoma or some other state that does not matter in the general election.  And O'Malley could theoretically win Maryland, but I doubt it.  If I was making book, I would put the over/under for states won by Hillary at 48.5.

I haven't exactly made a lot of news in the blog post so I'll take one long term flier on Hillary's running mate.  I expect her running mate will come from Virginia, but it won't be Jim Webb. Mark Warner will be on the short list, but I think a better and more likely choice is Senator Tim Kaine.  He's a former governor, he's very smart and perhaps most importantly, he is fluent in Spanish. (He lived in Hondurdas for on year and has given the Democratic Spanish-language response to the State of the Union.)

So here comes the Far-Fetched prediction.
I think the GOP nominee will be very wise to pick Governor Susanna Martinez of New Mexico as his running mate.  The Republicans will need to do something to close the gap among Latin voters and women.  If the nominee is anyone other than Marco Rubio (it won't be Ted Cruz), then Susanna Martinez will make the most sense.

So here's the long shot prediction.  Next year, there will be a vice-presidential debate held in Spanish. And the next election will be decided by Latino voters. By the time the general election is underway, both parties will be vying for every last vote in Florida.  And New Mexico might become a swing state if the Republicans put Gov. Martinez on the ticket.  Yes, this will make head explode among the Fox News crowd, as so many things do lately.  But this is the way of the future and once the election is on the line, it will make sense for both parties.  The Republicans will probably need a long shot to come in and the Democrats would be crazy to decline the offer and risk alienating the fastest growing segment of their base.

Of course this won't happen if Donald Trump is the nominee.  But more about that in my next post.

This Blog Endorses....Anyone But Rahm (But preferably Chuy Garcia)

Spoiler Warning: 90 minutes of your life you can not get back.

Chicago goes to the polls tomorrow for a mayoral election.  This is a non-partisan primary with five candidates.  There are only two possible results.  Either the incumbent Rahm Emanuel will gain 50.01% and be re-elected or he will be below that threshold and be forced into a run-off in April.

Rahm Emanuel is a competent administrator. He's also a completely conventional politician who is primarily motivated by making Chicago a place for wealthy people to "invest" in and for middle-class folks to visit, either as day trippers from the suburbs or as tourists from around the country.  This election has been the rare time that he has to at least pretend to care about the people who actually live here because we actually control whether he keeps his job or not.

So the important thing tomorrow is to keep that window open.  Six more weeks of a mayor pretending to care about all of his residents is about the best we can hope for.  So this blog humbly endorses Anyone But Rahm.

Two Ways to Choose your Anyone But Rahm Candidate.

The latest poll shows Rahm winning 48% of the vote. His closest competitor, Chuy Garcia is at 26%. The third place candidate is back at 15%.  So if there is a run-off, we know who it will between Rahm and Garcia.  There are two strategic goals to pursue here, leave Rahm looking weak or give Rahm an incentive to run to the left.  But the field does not have a clear-cut Lefty.  It's basically 5 centrists of varying credibility and experience.

 I really wish there was an actual reformer in the field, but there is not.  I've done some research on all of the candidates and none of them particularly inspire me.  But he is the only candidate with a chance of surviving to the run-off.  It's better for him to be strong.  If nothing else, that will give us six more weeks of  Mayor who has to pretend to care about the people who live here.  So in lack of a better alternative, this blog endorses Chuy Garcia as the marginally best candidate of four alternatives to a lousy but not terrible incumbent. I somehow doubt he will use that quote in any of his ads, but it has the advantage of being true.   So please, Vote Garcia.