Updated Ranking of Best Pictures Winners

Back in January I ranked all 93 Best Picture winners. At least, I thought I did. (It turns out that I missed "The Sting.")  

As of an hour ago, we have a 94th Best Picture winner to consider. So I'm sliding that one into my list and adding The Sting too, for good measure. I guess I will do this every year.

In case you've already read the old list to save you a little time, The Sting is at #38 and CODA is at #72.

See below:

 Tier One: The Unassailable.

These are the movies that stand out to me not just for their quality but for some amount of personal resonance. 

1. The Godfather (1972)  50 years on, it is still the gold standard for cinematic story telling. 

2. The Godfather Part 2 (1974) There is a case for ranking 2 higher than 1. The scope is more ambitious and John Cazale's performance is the best in the history of cinema. But beat for beat, Part One is just too solid. 

3. Casablanca (1943) Pour out a little for Citizen Kane, which belongs up here with the Big Boys but lost to  "How Green Was My Walley."

4. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)  If you take anything from scrolling through this humble blog post, make it that you need to see this movie. You will not think about America in the aftermath of World War 2 the same way ever again.

5. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)   

6. Marty (1955)  A joy to watch. As light and life-affirming as anything on this list. 

7. Unforgiven (1992) 

8. Moonlight (2016)  Roger Ebert famously said that the best movies are machines that generate empathy.  The life of this movie's main character could not be more different than mine, but I felt every beat of his journey. 

9. Schindler's List (1993)  

10. A Man for All Seasons (1966) As history, this movie is bunk. But as drama, it will make you root for Saint Thomas Moore, even if you know all the terrible things he did in real life.

11. The Hurt Locker (2009)  Still the best examination of the wars we chose to fight in this century and how little the people back home bothered to think about them.

12. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Already we have four movies about WW2 on this list. 

13. The Last Emperor (1987)  An underrated masterpiece. 

14. Rain Man (1988) Rain Man Focus Group

15.Annie Hall (1977)  Crimes and Misdemeanors is Woody's best film. Take the Money and Run might be his funniest and Midnight in Paris is probably his most entertaining. But Annie Hall is the template for everything else he did. 

16. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

17. No Country for Old Men (2007)

Tier Two: The Other Classics.

18. The King's Speech (2010)  The speech itself gets me every time.

19. The French Connection (1971)

20. Wings (1928)  Amazing achievement in film making. And a good story too. 

21. The Apartment (1960)

22. Patton (1970)

23. The Artist (2011)

24. 12 Years a Slave (2012)

25. Terms of Endearment (1983)

26. Birdman (2013)

27. In the Heat of the Night (1967)

28. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

29. Chariots of Fire (1981)

30. Dances with Wolves (1990)

31. Argo (2012)

32. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) 

33. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Tier Three: The Very, Very Good.

These movies are not, in the main, universally loved. Some are popcorn movies unfairly maligned for not being serious enough to deserve the Oscar. Others are overly serious movies about war. and tragedy. But they are all well made if you take them as they were intended.

34. It Happened One Night (1934) 

35. On the Waterfront (1954)

36. How Green Was My Valley (1941)

37. Rocky (1976)

38. The Sting (1973)

39. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

40. Forrest Gump (1994)

41. The Shape of Water (2017)

42. The Deer Hunter (1978)  The scenes in Vietnam are salacious and dumb. But the first half of the movie is great. I would have loved to see an edit of the movie that was just set on the wedding day.

43. Ordinary People (1980)

44. Amadeus (1984)

45. Braveheart (1995) and Titanic (1997)

This is my only tie. Braveheart and Titanic belong together on this list. They are both entertaining, both are overly long and each was made to resonate with one gender more than the other. But they both work, despite being riddled with on dimensional characters and cliches.

47. Nomadland (2020)

48. Chicago (2003)

49. Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Tier Four: The Good.

These are fine. But I don't need to watch them more than once.

50. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

51. The Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

52. The Lost Weekend (1945)

53. The English Patient (1996)

54. West Side Story (1961)

55. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

56. Parasite (2019)  This movie is enjoyable but let's be honest, it is a bit over rated.

57. Gandhi (1982)

58.  Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

Tier Five: Worthy But Flawed.

59. Green Book (2017)   This is the only recent winner that I had not seen before the awards ceremony. The field of nominees was weak that year. Black Panther was the popular favorite but I'm not shocked that the academy avoided giving its biggest prize to a Marvel movie. Roma was expected to win but did not for reasons that remain unclear.  There's a lot of tropes and it feels for stretches like a made for TV movie but the acting performances make it watchable.  

60. Mrs. Miniver (1942)

61. The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

62. The Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) 

63. All About Eve (1950)  Some people absolutely love this movie. I was bored at times but on a second watch, it was much better than I remembered.

64. A Beautiful Mind (2001)

65. Platoon (1986)

66. The Departed (2006) This movie being the one that finally got Martin Scorsese his Oscar is a bit like how Chuck Berry's only number one single is "My Ding-a-ling."

67. Grand Hotel (1932) 

Tier Six: Gone With the Wind.

68. Gone with the Wind (1939) This movie deserves its own consideration because it is very hard to judge in 2022.  I see all of its merits. The love story is great, if you overlook the scene of marital rape. And the heroine is easy to root for, if she wasn't trying to perpetuate her right to own human beings.

But I do not think this movie should be banished from the culture. You have to see this movie to understand American cinema and more importantly to appreciate the insane attitude this country had about the Civil War when most of the people who remembered it had died off.  

But this movie is not just sympathetic to the South or southerners. It is wistful for a lost way of life. That way of live is the right of rich white people to own black people and make them work their land without remuneration.  I can't pretend that this does not affect my reaction to the movie. 

Tier Seven: The Not Quite-Good.

69.  From Here to Eternity (1953)

70. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

71. Ben-Hur (1959)

72.  CODA (2021)  CODA is a nice movie. It has several very good acting performances. If I had an 11 to 15 year old child, I would want them to watch this movie. Its message and heart are in the the right place.  But it was born at the top of the cliché tree and it hits every branch on the way do

73. Cimarron (1931) 

74. American Beauty (1999)

75. Rebecca (1940) 

76. Spotlight (2015)

77. An American in Paris (1951)

78. Going My Way (1944)

79. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)  

80. The Sound of Music (1965)  Did I mention that I don't like musicals?  

81. All the King's Men (1949)

82. Oliver! (1968)

83. Cavalcade (1933) 

84. Tom Jones (1963)

85. Million Dollar Baby (2004)

86. The Broadway Melody of 1929 

Tier Eight: The Bad.

87. You Can't Take it With You (1938) 

88. Gladiator (2000)

89. Gigi (1958) 

90. My Fair Lady (1964) Audrey Hepburn is one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. But she was a lousy actress. They were smart enough to dub her singing parts but couldn't do that for her dialog, so here we are. 

91. Crash (2005)  If you have seen this movie, you're probably wondering why this movie is not DFL.  Read on, friends!

92. Out of Africa (1985) I fell asleep so many times during this movie that I forced myself to watch it a second time the next day, a decision I truly regret.

93. Hamlet (1948) Laurence Olivier must have been a marvel on the stage but in 1948 he had not yet learned to stop projecting his voice for the people in the last row of the 3rd balcony.

94. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) Irony. 

Confess: A Review of Rob Halford's Memoir

 This book explores the predictable themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll without being overly salacious, tedious, or catty. It is an honest telling of a life in a specific genre of music while living a love in a boozy closet and then of joyous sobriety.

I was relieved to see what this book is not. It is not a tell-all. Halford settles no scores and seeks no unjust credit for his success. He writes about his bandmates in respectful terms. He is obviously comfortable with his own talent and he is generous with praise of the other members of Judas Priest.  (I wish Keith Richards had taken this direction when he wrote his memoir.)

If there is one weakness of this book, it is that he writes about the other members of Priest in a style that is respectful but bland. They are not characters in this book and he clearly wants to avoid making any of them look bad, even when writing about some of the lineup changes and scandals that the band faced from time to time.

Let me explain that Judas Priest was my favorite band from the age of 12 to 14 or 15. They were my second concert. Over the years I grew away from Heavy Metal for the most part but the music you love when you are that age never really leaves you. Some of their songs hold up well and I've spent a fair amount of time listening to them even as an adult. But before this book I had not really read much about them since I stopped reading Hit Parader in 1989 other than a length GQ article from 1998 about the band after Rob had left it.

I. The Sex Parts.
As I read this book, it occurred to me that I had never read a memoir of a gay man before. I knew Rob was gay long before he came out publicly. People used to joke about it when I was a big Priest fan. That teasing was the only part that bothered me. I sort of assumed that the rest of the band knew all along too (they probably did) and that off-stage he could express himself freely. (He could not.)

Reading about his life in the closet was truly disturbing. He was 30 years old before he had a real relationship with a man. He writes about truck stops and glory holes, but not to be lurid or titillate the reader. This is what he had to resort to, even as a man of means. Even as someone living the ultimate rock and roll lifestyle. He eventually has some less than ideal relationships with men but spends most of his 30s pursing straight men who are not capable of loving him and one gets the sense that he probably didn't think he was worthy of being loved.

Rob is at pains not to blame the rest of the band for this fact but I have to say it disappointed me that they were also quiet about the subject. He attributes this to their working class north English stoicism but it's really hard to fathom. Eventually, of course he comes out, become a gay icon and meets the man of his dreams. His fans do not leave him when he does any of this, and that is the connective positivity that holds this story together.

II. The Drug Bits.
I don't usually like to read about the struggles of recovering addicts. The arc is predictable and the punchline is usually sanctimonious. But Rob describes his issues (primarily with alcohol, later with cocaine) in a way that is devoid of romance or machismo. This is the life of a sad alcoholic, not a party king. And the alcohol only makes the loneliness of the closet worse. Until he stops, rather suddenly. Once he does, he gets reengaged with is music.

III. The Metal of it All.
One really charming aspect of this book is how much Rob remains committed to the very specific field of heavy metal. He really is a zealot for it and he is unabashedly proudest of the music that is loudest and most intense. That is where I part way with him, albeit slightly.

You know when people ask you what celebrity would you most want to meet? I have at times said that mine is Rob Halford. And if I ever did meet him, it would be to ask him about one specific song, Dessert Plains.

Dessert Plains came out in 1981 and is on my favorite Judas Priest album, Point of Entry (1981). What I like about Dessert Plains is that it was the one song that even as a straight adolescent male, I just knew was written by a man singing about another man. I've pored over the lyrics and there's not an adjective or pronoun to give this away. It just feels like a song about a man. I've often wanted to tell Mr. Halford that this song made me understand that such feelings were as real to him as anything I could have felt for a girl or (later) a woman. It's an important song to my development for that exact reason.

Point of Entry is slightly softer than the bands that came just before and after it. Most Priest fans would probably say their favorite album was British Steel (1980) or Screaming for Vengenace (1982). But Point of Entry for me is the most delicate writing the band ever did. It's is poppy without being overly commercial and it is metal without the need to be faster than the other stuff on the market. Not every song works, but I sometimes day dream about a contemporary artist doing a song-for-song cover version of the album. Maybe this is the project that Lady Gaga and Rob can work on when they finally get together.

But Rob is not a big fan of Point of Entry. He thinks the band missed the mark and he dismisses Dessert Plains as one of the songs that is "just okay." Fair enough, Rob. But I do want you know that even when you missed the mark, you produced some really cool art. And I am glad that you are still here to be proud of all of it.

Blood in the Garden: A 5 Star Review of a Terrific Knicks History

The four teams I root for in each of North America's major professional sports, have won 17 championships in my lifetime. The Yankees have won seven, the Steelers six, the Islanders four consecutive. The Knicks however, have not won an NBA title since about six months before I was born. I grew up with the echo of those early 70s teams but I have never seen a ticker tape parade for an NBA team and I fear that when I do, it will be for the Brooklyn Nets.

But my most intense sports memories belong to the Knicks. I was in sixth grade when they won the Patrick Ewing lottery and a jaundiced adult when they traded him to Seattle 15 years later. This book is a loving and thoughtful record of the best of those teams. Chris Herring finds the right balance of the personal and the professional. He also give just the right amount of coverage to all of the personalities that made this team of contenders so beloved in a city famous for its obsession with winning.

Anthony Mason, John Starks, and Pat Riley are the biggest personalities associated with these teams and Herring gives great insight into each of them. Mason's death at 48 gives extra poignancy to his life but I like how Herring centers him as the only New Yorker on those teams. He's sort of a half-fan half-NBA star in this telling. Maybe sources felt a little more free to speak truthfully about him since he is the only character that won't read these accounts. But he comes across well on balance, despite some horrible misbehavior along the way.

Starks is easy to write about. He will always be the most beloved member of this team, his failings quickly forgiven by Knicks fans, even if they dominate his legacy among every other group. What I wouldn't give for the chance to watch him play in today's game.

The portrayal of Riley is some of the best stuff in this book. It will always frustrate me that Riley had so much success before and after his Knicks tenure. I've long thought that he should bare most of the blame for the losses in 1993 and 1994. How could a coach of his caliber trust Charles Smith to be on the floor in closing time while Charles Oakley was on the bench? And how could he not see that John Starks needed to be pulled in Houston when he had Rolando Blackman sitting right there?

The truth is that Riley in the 1990s was a bit of a poseur. A lot of his success with the Lakers came easy. He had Magic and Kareem for god sakes. As much as he projected the cool image of a handsome man in perfectly tailored suits, he was still a crank who could whine about not being reimbursed for $10,000 he gave to his players at a casino and to contemplate leaving his second best player off the playoff roster in a fit of pique. Herring does get across that Riley has since matured. I was touched to read that he has sent Blackman multiple handwritten notes over the years and that he eulogized Anthony Mason.

And then there is the other Pat. Patrick Ewing. (Did you read that in the voice of Mike Walczewski?) Much as Paris Hilton is famous for being famous, Ewing is famous for not being famous. At least not as famous as he should be as the centerpiece of a New York sports franchise for 15 years. Ewing is almost always short-changed in the memories of this team. His greatness had a quiet consistency that never raised eyebrows and is now most remembered perhaps for not winning a championship. But this team would have been nothing without him. And Herring does him justice-writing about the work ethic the principled stands he took for his teammates and coaches behind the scenes and the difficult years of his life as a Jamaican immigrant in Boston. 

I  was left wanting more of Patrick Ewing, but that is the way Ewing will always be. Herring interviewed 204 people for this book but Patrick Ewing's name is not among those listed in the very helpful post script about sources. I can't think of another athlete who is less interested in correcting the record about his legacy. 

So let me do a little bit of that. Some years ago a dipshit Celtics fan with a podcast coined a scurrilous phrase "The Patrick Ewing Theory" to explain the phenomenon when a team does better without its best player. This was supposedly inspired by the 8th seeded Knicks run to the NBA finals in 1999, which Ewing had to sit out with an injury. But the facts say otherwise. Ewing was a huge part of that run. He played heroically on an injured leg in game one of the Eastern Conference finals, stealing home court away from the Pacers. He had 16 points and 10 rebounds. The next game he left the game with an aggravated the injury and was not able to play the rest of the playoffs. Without him, the Knicks went just four and six. 

I'm not saying the Knicks would have won the finals with Patrick that year. But he would have been 2 points better than Chris Dudley in Game 5, and that series goes back to San Antonio for at least game six. The next season Patrick led the Knicks to the Eastern Conference finals. Then he was traded and the Knicks have stunk ever since. 

Some "theory", asshole. 

As you can tell, this team brings out my passions. And this book brought to life so many of their most important moments, both good and bad. Highly Recommended! 

OKAY, A LITTLE MORE GEEK STUFF

The history of the New York Knicks can easily be divided in to five eras.

I. 1946-1968. The Early Days. (22 Seasons) 

.466 winning percentage 

No NBA titles, 3 NBA Finals

9-13 in playoff series. 

II. 1968-1974 The Glory Years aka Red Holzman's first coaching tenure. (6 Seasons)

.650 winning percentage

2 NBA titles, 3 NBA Finals 

11-3 in playoff series.

III. 1974-1985 The Interregnum(11 seasons).

.476 winning percentage, 

0 NBA titles, 0 NBA Finals

3-5 in playoff series.

1985-200 Patrick Ewing (15 seasons)

.556 winning percentage

0 NBA titles, 2 NBA Finals

16-13 in playoff series

V. 2000 - Present Post-Patrick. (21 seasons)

.407 winning percentage

0 NBA titles, 0 NBA Finals 

1-6 in playoff series.

I guess you can see why people still love these never champion Knicks of the 1990s so much.

Every Best Picture Winner, Ranked

For years, I have been slowly making my way backwards through the movies that have won the Oscar for Best Picture. A few days ago I finally made my way to "Wings", the 1928 silent film that won the first such award. I then decided to rank them from best to worst. Because it is the style of this blog, I also separated them into tiers from truly great to downright terrible. 

Yes, there are a handful of terrible movies on this list. But even they have something to teach us about American taste at some specific point in time.  

Tier One: The Unassailable.

These are the movies that stand out to me not just for their quality but for some amount of personal resonance. 

1. The Godfather (1972)  50 years on, it is still the gold standard for cinematic story telling. 

2. The Godfather Part 2 (1974) There is a case for ranking 2 higher than 1. The scope is more ambitious and John Cazale's performance is the best in the history of cinema. But beat for beat, Part One is just too solid. 

3. Casablanca (1943) Pour out a little for Citizen Kane, which belongs up here with the Big Boys but lost to  "How Green Was My Walley."

4. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)  If you take anything from scrolling through this humble blog post, make it that you need to see this movie. You will not think about America in the aftermath of World War 2 the same way ever again.

5. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)   

6. Marty (1955)  A joy to watch. As light and life-affirming as anything on this list. 

7. Unforgiven (1992) 

8. Moonlight (2016)  Roger Ebert famously said that the best movies are machines that generate empathy.  The life of this movie's main character could not be more different than mine, but I felt every beat of his journey. 

9. Schindler's List (1993)  

10. A Man for All Seasons (1966) As history, this movie is bunk. But as drama, it will make you root for Saint Thomas Moore, even if you know all the terrible things he did in real life.

11. The Hurt Locker (2009)  Still the best examination of the wars we chose to fight in this century and how little the people back home bothered to think about them.

12. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Already we have four movies about WW2 on this list. 

13. The Last Emperor (1987)  An underrated masterpiece. 

14. Rain Man (1988) Rain Man Focus Group

15.Annie Hall (1977)  Crimes and Misdemeanors is Woody's best film. Take the Money and Run might be his funniest and Midnight in Paris is probably his most entertaining. But Annie Hall is the template for everything else he did. 

16. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

17. No Country for Old Men (2007)

Tier Two: The Other Classics.

18. The King's Speech (2010)  The speech itself gets me every time.

19. The French Connection (1971)

20. Wings (1928)  Amazing achievement in film making. And a good story too. 

21. The Apartment (1960)

22. Patton (1970)

23. The Artist (2011)

24. 12 Years a Slave (2012)

25. Terms of Endearment (1983)

26. Birdman (2013)

27. In the Heat of the Night (1967)

28. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

29. Chariots of Fire (1981)

30. Dances with Wolves (1990)

31. Argo (2012)

32. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) 

33. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Tier Three: The Very, Very Good.

These movies are not, in the main, universally loved. Some are popcorn movies unfairly maligned for not being serious enough to deserve the Oscar. Others are overly serious movies about war. and tragedy. But they are all well made if you take them as they were intended.

34. It Happened One Night (1934) 

35. On the Waterfront (1954)

36. How Green Was My Valley (1941)

37. Rocky (1976)

38. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

39. Forrest Gump (1994)

40. The Shape of Water (2017)

41. The Deer Hunter (1978)  The scenes in Vietnam are salacious and dumb. But the first half of the movie is great. I would have loved to see an edit of the movie that was just set on the wedding day.

42. Ordinary People (1980)

43. Amadeus (1984)

44. Braveheart (1995) and Titanic (1997)

This is my only tie. Braveheart and Titanic belong together on this list. They are both entertaining, both are overly long and each was made to resonate with one gender more than the other. But they both work, despite being riddled with on dimensional characters and cliches.

46. Nomadland (2020)

47. Chicago (2003)

48. Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Tier Four: The Good.

These are fine. But I don't need to watch them more than once.

49. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

50. The Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

51. The Lost Weekend (1945)

52. The English Patient (1996)

53. West Side Story (1961)

54. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

55. Parasite (2019)  This movie is enjoyable but let's be honest, it is a bit over rated.

56. Gandhi (1982)

57.  Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

Tier Five: Worthy But Flawed.

58. Green Book (2017)   This is the only recent winner that I had not seen before the awards ceremony. The field of nominees was weak that year. Black Panther was the popular favorite but I'm not shocked that the academy avoided giving its biggest prize to a Marvel movie. Roma was expected to win but did not for reasons that remain unclear.  There's a lot of tropes and it feels for stretches like a made for TV movie but the acting performances make it watchable.  

59. Mrs. Miniver (1942)

60. The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

61. The Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) 

62. All About Eve (1950)  Some people absolutely love this movie. I was bored at times but on a second watch, it was much better than I remembered.

63. A Beautiful Mind (2001)

64. Platoon (1986)

65. The Departed (2006) This movie being the one that finally got Martin Scorsese his Oscar is a bit like how Chuck Berry's only number one single is "My Ding-a-ling."

66. Grand Hotel (1932) 

Tier Six: Gone With the Wind.

67. Gone with the Wind (1939) This movie deserves its own consideration because it is very hard to judge in 2022.  I see all of its merits. The love story is great, if you overlook the scene of marital rape. And the heroine is easy to root for, if she wasn't trying to perpetuate her right to own human beings.

But I do not think this movie should be banished from the culture. You have to see this movie to understand American cinema and more importantly to appreciate the insane attitude this country had about the Civil War when most of the people who remembered it had died off.  

But this movie is not just sympathetic to the South or southerners. It is wistful for a lost way of life. That way of live is the right of rich white people to own black people and make them work their land without remuneration.  I can't pretend that this does not affect my reaction to the movie. 

Tier Seven: The Not Quite-Good.

68.  From Here to Eternity (1953)

69. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

70. Ben-Hur (1959)

71. Cimarron (1931) 

72. American Beauty (1999)

73. Rebecca (1940) 

74. Spotlight (2015)

75. An American in Paris (1951)

76. Going My Way (1944)

77. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)  

78. The Sound of Music (1965)  Did I mention that I don't like musicals?  

79. All the King's Men (1949)

80. Oliver! (1968)

81. Cavalcade (1933) 

82. Tom Jones (1963)

83. Million Dollar Baby (2004)

84. The Broadway Melody of 1929 

Tier Eight: The Bad.

85. You Can't Take it With You (1938) 

86. Gladiator (2000)

87. Gigi (1958) 

88. My Fair Lady (1964) Audrey Hepburn is one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. But she was a lousy actress. They were smart enough to dub her singing parts but couldn't do that for her dialog, so here we are. 

89. Crash (2005)  If you have seen this movie, you're probably wondering why this movie is not DFL.  Read on, friends!

90. Out of Africa (1985) I fell asleep so many times during this movie that I forced myself to watch it a second time the next day, a decision I truly regret.

91. Hamlet (1948) Laurence Olivier must have been a marvel on the stage but in 1948 he had not yet learned to stop projecting his voice for the people in the last row of the 3rd balcony.

92. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) Irony. 

A Framework for the 2024 Presidential Election

Don't call it a Morning Line. It is too early for that. But Joe Biden has been president for six full months. That is 1/8th of his term. That is 1/4 of the portion of his term before Republicans start declaring their intention to replace him and become the 47th President of the United States. 

And we have learned a few things about him and the state of politics in the Republican party to make some observations about what is likely to happen between now and three years from this month, when the parties are holding their conventions. 

This is a big-picture conceptualization of how 2024 might go. I want to lay down a few assumptions here and then get into some hypotheticals. A lot will change between now and then, but I think it's helpful to discuss a few fundamentals about the election at this stage. The short version is that I think the next election will feature the same candidates as last time and will have a similar result.  The long version follows below. 

 I. Joe Biden is very likely to be the Democratic nominee. 

Joe Biden will be in his 80s when his first term ends. A lot of people seem to think that he will not run for a second term. I find that highly unlikely, for the following reasons. 

A. Presidents like being president. You know who was the last president to be elected and then voluntarily decide not to run for a 2nd term? James K. Polk in 1848. Anyone ambitious and confident enough to run for president has a pretty solid ego. Winning only reinforces that instinct. And presidents are surrounded by people who tell them they are doing a great job. Every single one of them believes it. There is no reason to think Joe Biden will be the exception. He's going to run because the alternative is unthinkable. For God's sake Polk died three months after his term ended. Retirement is no substitute for being the President. 

B. Incumbency Helps. Being president helps with everything from fundraising to setting the narrative. There is no campaign plane as impressive as Air Force One and no rolodex like the one that would be on the Resolute Desk if people still used Rolodexes. One of the reasons the 2020 election was closer than the polls suggested it would be is that some unexpected voter blocks gave Trump the benefit of the doubt. This happens to just about every president. The thinking is that if we've survived one term with any given fella, we can probably survive two.  A distressing number of people felt that way about the previous president, no matter how terrible he was. 

Since World War 2, sitting presidents have won eight times and lost only four times. One of those four was Gerry Ford, who was appointed to the Vice-Presidency rather than elected. The presidents who lost a second term are remembered as some of the worst presidents we ever had. If Biden has any success at all, the institutional party will want to run him again and the causal voter will be inclined to choose him. 

C. He Probably Won't Face a Primary Challenger. Biden has managed to keep his centrist identity but has achieved a lot of progressive policy goals. The expanded income tax credit alone will probably be enough to make most of the left wing stay on the bench. Bernie Sanders is too old to run for a first term. AOC is too young. Any other plausible candidate knows that starting a serious campaign against an incumbent president is political suicide. They will sit this out. 

D. He is a better political option than Kamala Harris. I have talked to people who think that Biden is a caretaker president. Because of his age and the changing demographics of his party, he will step aside after one term and endorse his vice-president. But I don't see it happening. No one in the party will accept that endorsement as a coronation, which means a contested primary. That's a huge distraction and squanders the advantages of being the incumbent party. 

Vice-President Harris has not had a breakout moment to claim the spotlight. She is being a good and faithful Vice-President. She knows that she will be the heavy favorite for the nomination in 2028 and she can afford to be patient at her age. To be blunt about it-Donald Trump would much rather run against Kamala Harris than Joe Biden. She is not a great or even natural politician. She is serving her president well and that will probably be rewarded down the line. But it's not enough to jump the queue.

II. Donald Trump is EXTREMELY likely to be the Republican nominee. 

Donald Trump has spent the last six months perseverating of the result of the last election. He is actively involved with defending the rioters who tried to prevent the peaceful transition of power in our democracy. And he remains overwhelmingly the most popular figure in the Republican party. 

He is almost certain to be the Republican nominee, for the following reasons. 

 A. He's got nothing better to do. The first rule of thinking about Trump is to remember that it IS about Trump. And the common mistake that people make when thinking about presidential candidates is to pretend they are normal people. None of them are. They want power and glory in ways that very few people can relate to. 

A lot of people thought the loss of an election would cow Trump into a life away from the spotlight. Such people do not understand the brain of a true narcissist. Trump is incapable of believing he lost anything fair and square, so his brain has erected the defense mechanism needed to convince himself that he was robbed. This aggrieved act is based on certifiable nonsense and bullshit. But it is enough to keep his ego afloat., in part because the entire Republican apparatus in the media and in Congress has lined up behind his delusions.    

He is going to run because he loves attention and the only thing that can match the attention of running for president is being president. Donald Trump will happily run in a primary. He will have his center modicum for all the debates. All of the news outlets will go back to taking him seriously and give him the coverage he needs. Twitter and Facebook might even let him have his accounts back. 

B. He has cleared the field by emasculating all his rivals. 

For five years, the most important endorsement in Republican politics has been Donald J. Trump. The vast majority of Republican office holders have lived in fear of Trump turning on them. He has turned his back on anyone who does not share his belief that the last election was stolen. Even Mike Pence, as loyal a lap-dog #2 as the world have ever seen, is now persona non grata in Trumpland. The Rubios and Cruzes of the world have forfeit any attempt to credibly run against Trump in a primary. Nikki Haley, among others, has said she won't even run if Trump runs.

Of course, he will have primary opponents. There will be a nominal Never Trump candidate-Larry Hogan of Maryland will probably run. Maybe Liz Cheney will try to settle some scores if she loses next year's Republican primary for her House seat. And there will be a couple plausible candidates who at least put a toe in the water in the hopes that Trump doesn't run. Ted Cruz is so damn ambitious that he might just sign up for another round of humiliation. Like Trump, he has nothing better to do with the next 3 years of his life. But no one can beat Donald Trump in a Republican presidential primary. Off the top of my head, this is what the 2024 Iowa Cacuses might look like. Trump 53%, Cruz 19%, Hogan 14%, Cheney 4%. Rubio and Haley and a few other dumb-dumbs can fight for the scraps. If Donald Trump runs for the nomination, and doesn't die in the first half of 2024, he will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. 

C. Beating Donald Trump in a Republican Primary is a Booby Prize.

Let's pretend that Donald Trump is somehow chastened by his loss to Joe Biden. That he has some scintilla of reluctance to run again. Maybe he dawdles for another year-never declaring his candidacy and letting some others explore their options in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Maybe he even in fit of pique says that he will not run or may not run.

So the field fills up. The Hogans and Cruz' and maybe a Kasich or two decide to run. The filed takes shape. Polls start to be taken and DeSantis or Cruz looks strong.  Trump has some personal distractions-an indictment or a divorce or a fun new project somewhere. All of a sudden, people are talking about DeSantis as the better candidate.  So Trump waits and waits. The first debate happens and he's not on stage. That will be enough to snap him back into it.

He can't resist the attentions. He can't let the Republican party love someone else they way they once loved him.  So he declares after all. Maybe right before Iowa. By then a lot of talent has signed up in other camps. Cruz and DeSantis are both pros-they raise a lot of money.  Somehow, some way, they deprive Trump of a majority of delegates and agree to run together in order to lock down the nomination.

How do you think Trump reacts to that? Graciously?  Please. He will whine and bitch like the whiny bitch that always has been.  He may or may not run third party but he definitely spends the summer and fall shitting on the people who beat him. The people who conspired against him. 

Maybe he runs third party and turns the legitimate nominee into Taft '12. Or maybe he just sits on the sidelines and his minions stay out of the rigged election, this time for good. 

Trump is going to be the Republican nominee because he is the only person that controls enough Republican voters to affect the general election outcome and enough spite to use them against the Republican party.  The party is his possession. 

Now that my assumptions are on the table, let's turn to some probabilities. 

III. Democratic Primary Probabilities.

Event	Probability
Joe Biden Will Run for a 2nd Term	96%
Joe Biden will be Nominated again.	90%
Kamala Harris will be the Nominee	5%
Neither Biden nor Harris will be the nominee.	5%

    

Caveats & Context: 

Only a health problem will prevent Joe Biden from running. At his age, that is a non-negligible probability. But he is tall and trim and has no history of alcohol or tobacco use. The actuary charts like his chances of making it well beyond 2024 and even 2028.  But things happen. If Biden doesn't run, it could mean that Kamala Harris is the incumbent. At minimum, she will be the heavy favorite and presumptive heir.  

If Biden were to simply decline to run, than Harris would still be the favorite for the nomination. But she would face a competitive primary. Andrew Cuomo would run. Sherrod Brown could make a strong run. People will talk up AOC, but I think she's too smart to do that now. (She turns 35 in 2024.)

IV. Republican Primary Probabilities.

Event	Probability
Donald Trump Will Run for a 2nd Term	95%
Donald Trump Will Be Nominated Again	94%
Ron DeSantis Will Be The Nominee	3%
Neither Trump nor DeSantis will be the Nominee	3%

Caveats & Context:

Trump will run if he is physically capable. I know some people fantasize about him being prosecuted and incarcerated and therefor unable to run. But that is very unlikely. 

The Trump organization was recently indicted along with its Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg. Some have speculated that Wesselberg could flip on Trump and cooperate with the Feds. That certainly is possible. But even if that happened tomorrow, it would take time for Trump to be indicted. An indictment is not goin to prevent Donald Trump from running for president. It would just be a fundraising message for him.  And the sort of crimes that Trump would be accused of are not easy to prove. It would require a lengthy trial.  I do no think there is enough time for Trump to be indicted, tried, convicted and incarcerated before the Iowa caucus. It's just not going to happen.  (And for the record, I think it's unlikely he will ever be prosecuted for a crime. This one prediction, I will be quite happy to get wrong.)

If Trump doesn't run, Ron DeSantis is the obvious front-runner for the Republicans. He appeals to every large swatch of the party and he manages to sound Trumpian without being an obvious moron. He has the Yale/Harvard pedigree of Cruz and Hawley, but none of the childish need to impress the faculty lounge. Assuming he is re-elected in 2022, he would be the obvious Trump successor.

There is no obvious third choice for the Republican nomination. Pence probably alienated too much of the base by you know, believing in democracy for one day.  There will be plenty of runners, but I am inclined to believe that the nominee will be a white male. The only scenario where I see that not happening is some sort of crazy brokered convention where the grown-ups settle on Tim Scott or Nikki Haley. But the party of "Build that Wall!" chants is not going to fall in love with any brown candidates. That just will not happen.

So I think DeSantis is the obvious nominee if Trump doesn't run. The only way I do not see that happen is if something disastrous happens and he is not re-elected next year. Or maybe he wins but the election is close and that puts doubts in the minds of the party establishment. That could happen, so I leave room for the field. But just three percent.

V. General Election Probabilities.

General Election Probabilities	Probability
The Democrat Wins	60%
The Republican Wins	40%
Biden Beats Trump	51%
Trump Beats Biden	34%
Biden Beats DeSantis	8%
DeSantis Beats Biden	5%
Not-Biden beats Not-Trump	1.3%
Not Trump beats Not-Biden	0.7%

Caveats & Context:

Red states netted three electoral votes from the 2020 Census. If the 2024 election has the same exact result as 2020, the Democrats would win 303-235 instead of 306-232. But it's hard to come up with a scenario where these changes put either party over 270.  A lot of the changes cancel each other out.  (Montana's gain is West Virginia's loss, Oregon's gain is Illinoi's loss, etc.) 

The only changes among really competitive states are that MI and PA each lost one and NC gained one. 

Even starting with the dreadful 2016 result as a baseline, the Dems path remains unchanged. They start with 230 and need PA (19) Michigan (15) to get them to 264. They then need one more state to win- Wisconsin, Arizona or Georgia being most likely. 

I favor the Dems because incumbency is helpful and I think the Donald Trump shtick will have worn pretty thing on the average independent/moderate voter by the time that circus gets geared up again.

But nothing is in the bag.

Let's have some fun with specific head to head match-up.

VI. Head to Head Match-ups.

a. Biden vs. Trump. There is about an 85% of this being the match-up.

Biden's polling has been solid but not spectacular. The new wave of COVID cases is not helping, even though this wave is largely caused by people refusing to get vaccinated.  I am an optimistic person, so I think the vaccines will beat the new variants and by 2024 COVID-19 will be a marginal problem. But that's not guaranteed. Biden is also vulnerable if inflation stays high (most economists don't think it will), if the homicide rate climbs (it might) or if we enter 2024 in a recession. (Too soon to tell.)

That said, I favor Biden over Trump, comfortably. The result won't be radically different than 2020 but I think the margin will be a little wider as Biden benefits from being the incumbent and Trump's shtick wears thin on the marginal voters. 

Probability:  Biden wins 67% of the time.

Official, way to early prediction: Biden wins 319-209.  He picks up NC but loses WI, in part because Trump has replaced Pence with Scott Walker.

b. Biden vs. DeSantis.  

This is an interesting possibility. DeSantis being the nominee means that he was re-elected governor of Florida in 2022 and he probably won by a clear margin.  That might make the Democrats skip Florida all together. So both parties would be free to spend a lot more money in the places that can actually decide the election. DeSantis will also have the advantage of not being in his eighties. 

This would be a very close election, assuming that Donald Trump is either dead or has given DeSantis his full-throated endorsement. 

Probability:  Biden wins 55% of the time.

Official, way to early prediction: Biden wins 267-262. DeSantis claws back GA and AZ, but the northern wall holds for the Democrats. Trump begins saying "They should have nominated Ivanka."

c. Biden vs. Generic Republican.

Generic Republican might seem formidable now but any Republican who isn't Trump or DeSantis is probably a relative newcomer to the scene.  Cruz would get crushed. Rubio isn't up for it. The Haley or Tim Scott scenarios are far-fetched to me.

Probability:  Biden wins 60% of the time.

Official, way to early prediction: Biden wins 319-219. North Carolina goes blue.

The Harris scenarios are hard to handicap. Her being the nominee either means that she is the president or that Joe Biden has decided not to run for a second term. For today's purposes, we will assume she is running as an incumbent, because I thin that is more likely than Biden deciding not to run.

d. Harris vs. Trump:

Kamala Harris ran a bad campaign in 2020. She raised a lot of money and didn't even make it to Iowa. Nothing about her performance as vice-president has particularly helped or hurt her chances. 

But I think Trump would, for the 2nd time, benefit from the sexism that exists among a frightening percentage of voters. And he will not be shy about using her racial identity against her either. He could over play that, but sadly, he seems to know how to play those games better than most. I fear this scenario.

Probability:  Trump wins 55% of the time.

Official, way to early prediction: Trump wins 291-247.  Trump reassembles his 2016 map, save Michigan. President Trump then announce plans to sell Detroit to Canada.

e. Harris vs. Desantis.

DeSantis on paper is a better candidate than Trump. But we don't yet know if he will motivate the casual Trump voter to turn out on election day. I am guessing he would get enough of them out to win, but this would also be a close race.

Probability:  DeSantis wins 58% of the time.

Official, way to early prediction: DeSantis wins 312-226. DeSantis reconstitutes the Trump map and adds Nevada for good measure.

f. Harris vs. Generic Republican.

Well, a lot has to go wrong for this scenario to play out. But I think this means the GOP had to go with their 3rd choice, and that's not good.

Probability:  Harris wins 57% of the time.

Official, way to early prediction: Harris wins 292-246.

g.  The Field.

Something terrible will have to happen for the Democrats to nominate someone other than Biden or Harris. That sort of means that Biden dies in the next year or so and then Harris has such a bad run as president that some shit head like Andrew Cuomo comes in and beats her in a primary.  

This is too remote to think about now. So I won't put numbers on it yet.

 

El Camino (The Road to 306, Take One)

Writing about the 2020 presidential election feels as timely as writing about the Treaty of Ghent. So much has happened since then-a 5 day delay to find out the official winner, a two month long period of denial and attempted theft by the loser, a literal riot that almost derailed the certification process and did cause an impeachment trial. But accountability is a part what we do here, so let's take one final look back at my predictions.

I. I Was (Mostly) Right.

"Well, I was wrong and I was wrong loud. I'm the Dick Morris of 2016."

Your correspondent, the day after the 2016 election.

I did better this time. I got 48 states right, all but Florida and North Carolina.   I predicted the popular vote to be 52.6% to 45.2%.  It wound up being 51.3% to 46.9%. 

The night I posted my final prediction, a Twitter follower who really knows the numbers said that if I was right, Biden might get 80 million votes. Well, he got over 81 million, despite underperforming my estimated percentage by about a point and a half.  So the real surprise of the 2020 election was not the winner or the margin but the turn out. A LOT of people voted this time around. 

November 3rd and 4th, 2020 may be the first time that being an uber-election nerd actually improved my life. Yes, I was concerned when I saw the terrible numbers in Florida. But I didn't panic. And I have the screen shots to prove it:

That was in response to my text chain freaking out about the early returns. By the next morning, (coincidentally my birthday), most of them had  moved on to lamenting the size of Biden's win.

It wound up being 306. And it wound up being seven million. Ten million would have been nice. But seven million votes is a pretty clear message to the loser-we don't like you.

Of course, Trump did turn out his people. That's what kept the race closer than it should have been. There are a few conclusions we can draw from his performance in November.

II. The Biggest Lessons Learned.

1. Jared figured out Florida. 

For the 2nd straight election, Donald Trump performed better than the polls and pundits expected. For all his cartoonish behavior and general incompetence, he twice pulled off campaigns that held together and functioned as well as could be expected. His clown show did not come off the rails enough to earn him the humiliation that he deserved to suffer.

Trump won Florida in 2016 by just over one point with 4.61 million votes. The early voting data seems to suggest a very close race and a lot of prognosticators thought it pointed toward a Democratic victory. Indeed, a lot of Democrats did turn out in 2020. Joe Biden got 5.297 million votes, almost 800K more than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. But Biden lost by almost three points.

Jared Kushner figured out how to keep the Cuban-American voters in the Trump camp. The moment Miami-Dade numbers came in was the only time that I seriously wondered if Trump was going to win again.  But Trump also did well among Venezuelan and Puerto Rican voters in other parts of the state. Their ground game for early voting was excellent. Governor DeSantis probably deserves some of the credit for this, but the simple fact is that Florida moved from a true toss-up state to leans-Republican for the next cycle. 

2. Trump made advances with non-white voters.

Trump won white men by 23 points and with women by 11. Joe Biden won black and latin voters of both genders by tremendous margins. This is not surprising, but the trend between 2016 and 2020 migh surprise you. 

Joe Biden made a significant advance among white men. He lost them by 23 points, four years after Hillary Clinton lost them by 31 points. Trump made gains among every other gender/ethnicity group.

Demographic	Hillary Clinton	Joe Biden	Shift
White Men	-31	-23	8
White Women	-9	-11	-2
Black Women	90	69	-21
Black Men	69	60	-9
Latina Women	44	39	-5
Latino Men	31	23	-8

Trump's gains among minority voters probably reflect the normal boost that an incumbent gets when running for a second term. Among Latino votes, the gains can be attributed to his track record. In 2016 Trump ran as the guy who was going to build a wall on the Mexican border and end NAFTA. Four years later he was the guy who did not build that wall and who merely renamed NAFTA. (His gains in southern Texas are largely explained by this.)

Trump also benefitted electorally by at least making a play for black votes.  Most recent Republican nominees have assumed they were going to get very few black votes but Trump made a genuine effort to get some black votes. He bragged about his modest attempts at prison reform and he used the pardon power to show that he was willing to take some baby steps towards ending mass incarceration. He also chose not to follow the anti-drug zeal of his first Attorney General.  I hope that Republicans see these numbers and continue to pursue at least some time of criminal justice reform.

Trump also did better among Asian voters. They are a smaller demographic, so exit poll date is less reliable but the few places where he made relative gains from 2016 tended to be states with large Asian populations. His best performance relative to 2016 was Hawaii, where narrowed the gap by almost three points. His anti-Chinese rhetoric seems to have helped, especially among Japanese-Americans. 

3. Trump Did Worse Almost Everywhere. 

Incumbents usually win, and by a wider margin than their first election. Barack Obama was a recent exception because his win in 2008 happened at the exact nadir of the Republican brand. By 2012, the party had regrouped rallied enough to staunch the bleeding.

Incumbents who lose, usually, to borrow a phrase, get schlonged. Jimmy Carter was trounced. George H..W. Bush managed just 38 percent of the vote.  Trump made it competitive, at least in terms of the Electoral College. If you slide the result one percent to the right, Trump probably wins after a 269-269 tie. Go another quarter point, and Trump wins clean by taking Pennsylvania. 

But he did not repeat the miracle of 2016. He lost every really close state except North Carolina. Nationally the vote margin moved to the left by two and a half points. Trump only improved his performance in a handful of states-the aforementioned Hawaii (2.7%) and Florida (2.2%) are the only places where he improved by more than one percent. California (0.9%) and Arkansas (0.7%) are the only other states where he improved by even half a point.  (Nice to know the Clinton name still means something in Arkansas.)

4. Americans Still Think Republicans Are Better for the Economy, Despite All Contrary Evidence.

Polling on issues showed that voters favored Democrats on almost every issue except for the Economy. These voters simply gave Trump a pass on the recession and job losses of 2020. They blamed COVID and ignored the fact that Trump's response to COVID made those economic losses so much worse.

The American economy has consistently done better during Democratic presidencies than Republican presidencies. This has been true for decades. There is nary a stitch of data on the other side. It's comical.

I'll just put up one data point to support this absurdly solid argument-job creation by every presidential term that started while I was alive:

Presidential Term	Jobs Created (in Millions)
Clinton	12.3
Clinton 2	11.3
Regan 2	10.8
Obama 2	10.4
Carter	10.3
Reagan	5.3
Bush 41	1.9
Obama	1.2
Bush 43 2	1.2
Bush 43 2	0.089
Trump	-3

Notice anything about the color distribution there? The only blue block in the lower half was Obama's first term, and that was because America was still losing massive amounts of jobs his first year in office because of the Great Bush Recession of 2007-8.

But the American faith in "business" and particularly of the acumen of "business men" is unshakable. Even putting one in charge and that leading to an economic disaster has not changed it. Hopefully Biden will put up good numbers and win re-election. But in 2028, the GOP will still run on the bullshit lie that their dumb, failed policies are just what the economy needs.

II. What Does This Tell Us About 2024.

1, Not Much.

2020's turnout is unlikely to be repeated in 2024. If COVID-19 is still raging, then Joe Biden will lose. If (as is more likely),  COVID-19 is gone or largely under control, the election will be fought on different terms.  A lot of states will rescind or limit access to early and absentee voting. (States will Republican legislatures are salivating to do this  already.)  

COVID's biggest impact on the 2020 election might be that one party unilaterally decided not to knock on doors. The Democrats completely skipped the most elemental part of voter turnout-going to talk to voters in person. Republicans did not. That monopoly of in-face interaction probably explains why Trump's turnout game exceeded expectations. That will not be repeated next time.

And the Democratic base may not be as united in 2024 as they were this time by animus toward Donald Trump. Biden may face a primary challenge from a leftist, which will distract and depress him in the same way that Jimmy Carter (Ted Kennedy) and George H. W. Bush (Pat Buchanan) were by challenges from candidates with committed followers further away from the political center.

2.  The Scoreboard is probably 302-236.

We don't know exactly what the Electoral Vote distribution will be for 2024, but the Republicans are likely to net a few votes. The best projection has the 2020 map shifting from 306-232 to 302-236.

Texas and Florida will probably gain 5 votes. California, New York and Illinois will each lose one. Most of the other changes cancel each other out- Colorado gains, but West Virginia loses. Oregon gains, but Alabama loses. Ohio and Iowa lose but Rhode Island and New Jersey do too.

Several traditional battlegrounds will lose a vote- Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Two others will gain-North Carolina and Arizona. The country is slowly moving south. If you look at the states that were very close in 2020, it's pretty much a wash. Biden gains a vote in AZ but loses one each in MI and PA. Trump gains one in NC.

Keep an eye also on Nebraska. The Republican legislature might try to make NE-2 a little more red, although their state law limits their options, because they have to used county boundaries when drawing the lines.

3. We're Going to Do This Again, People.

A lot of voters seem to assume that Joe Biden will not run for a second term. These voters must have not met many politicians. Politicians at this level are not normal people. They have tremendous ambition and a healthy ego, even relatively nice guys like Joe Biden.  Joe Biden is old. He's also fit and trim and healthy. His father lived to be 86 and his mother 92. Joe is not going anywhere. If he is alive in 2024, he will be the Democratic nominee. 

Donald Trump also ain't going anywhere. Tomorrow Donald Trump will close CPAC with a rousing speech that the crowd will lap up. He will tell them they were robbed in 2020. He will tell them that Joe Biden is already a disaster. He will tell them, implicitly or explicitly, that he is the only person who can defeat the man who just defeated him. They will roar with approval.

Donald Trump loves running for president more than anything except the adoration that comes with being president. If he is alive, he will run for the 2024 Republican nomination. There is no one in the Republican feed who can compete with him for that prize. Most of them have prostrated themselves before his altar, and they simply can't run against his record after having followed him so doggedly. Some, like Ted Cruz will try. They will be destroyed.  There will also be a Never Trump candidate or two, the too will be destroyed. Someone will emerge as a bridge between Trump world and the Republican establishment.  He or she (Nikki Haley) will also be destroyed.

The 2024 Republican primary will be another go-round of outrageous lies and insane circus-like appearances at minor league hockey arenas by the only man who that base really loves.  After he wins the nomination, he will face Joe Biden again.  And the race will be a referendum on whether Biden's boring, conventional style has done well enough to satisfy the American electorate.

In three years and eight months I will spend part of my 51st birthday telling you who I think will win the Electoral College the next day.  Right now I think it will be Joe Biden. My best guess is Biden 318, Trump 220.  God help us all.

Felina (The Road to 270, Take 16)

                                                            The final Spider Stumbled forecast.

Things are tense. About 2/3rd of the votes have been cast. But none have been counted. The experts favor Joe Biden heavily but the Trump base is making ample shows of support, ranging from obnoxious to really, very obnoxious. Even though Biden's national lead is comfortable the result is not quite certain. The race has not tightened much in the last month, but Trump has not completely collapsed either.  I can reasonably see Biden getting as few as 238 Electoral Votes or as many as 413.  This morning Dave Wasserman of Cook Political report Tweeted this morning that "the line between ~290 and ~400 EVs for Biden is astonishingly thin." 

There's not much you can do now, except to worry. Take comfort in the fact that Joe Biden's lead is roughly double the size of the lead Hillary Clinton had on election eve 2016. Tomorrow night, there will be news to watch and results to decipher.  I will try here to explain how the night might go and the implications of how specific state might affect the final outcome.

The night will start well for the Republicans. Trump will get Indiana and Kentucky early. Biden will get Vermont. People who do not follow this stuff closely will lament the score of 19-3. None of this matters though.  We probably won't get any meaningful state calls until later in the evening.  Truth is, there are only five states that will tell us anything about who is going to win the election

I. The Five States That Will Decide the Race.

Florida (29 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (20), Georgia (16), North Carolina (15), and Arizona (11) are all close and have enough electoral votes to put a candidate over the top. About 63% of the time, on of these five states will be the tipping point according to Nate Silver, but I suspect that number is even higher if we only look at scenarios with close outcomes.

For all of these scenarios, I used the fabulous tool on 538.com and assumed that Biden wins Wisconsin and Michigan.

If Trump sweeps all five states, he will almost certainly be re-elected. Even if you assume that Biden wins Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump wins 97% of the time. Conversely, if Biden sweeps, he is lock to be President.

The good news for Biden is that he doesn't need to sweep or even come close to a sweep. If Biden wins just one of the Big Five he has a good chance of winning.  If he wins PA or FL, he is a more than 90% chance to win.  And if he wins any two of the Big Five, he has at least a 95% of winning.  

I made this handy chart around noon today using the 538 tool to help you visualize what the various Big Five combinations mean for the election chances. 

FL	PA	GA	NC	AZ	BIDEN WIN %	BIDEN AVG EV
TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	2%	252
TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	34%	267
TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	55%	272
TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	33%	267
TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	94%	279
BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	90%	282
TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	BIDEN	99+%	314
TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	96%	294
TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	99+%	298
BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	99+%	299
TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	95%	290
TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	99+%	305
BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	98%	30
TRUMP	BIDEN	BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	99%	297
BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	98	298
BIDEN	BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	99+%	311
TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	95%	290
TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	BIDEN	99+%	325
BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	BIDEN	99+%	324
BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	99+%	327
BIDEN	BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	99+%	3347
BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	99+%	329
BIDEN	BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	99+%	333
BIDEN	BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	99+%	335
BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	TRUMP	99+%	371
BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	99+%	357
BIDEN	BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	BIDEN	99+%	361
BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	99+%	329
TRUMP	BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	99+%	350
BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	99+%	404

 

If Biden wins at least two of these fives states, he is probably well on his way to victory. But the size and significance of the margin can vary.

II. The Three States That Will Decide The Scale.

If you want to really simplify your viewing tomorrow night, keep an eye on three states: Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida.  If Trump sweeps them, he is favored to win.  But if he doesn't sweep them, Biden almost certainly wins and he might run up a big score.

TX	FL	PA	BIDEN WIN %	BIDEN AVG EV
TRUMP	TRUMP	TRUMP	23%	261
TRUMP	TRUMP	BIDEN	98%	299
TRUMP	BIDEN	TRUMP	98	303
BIDEN	TRUMP	TRUMP	99+%	321
BIDEN	TRUMP	BIDEN	99+%	361
TRUMP	BIDEN	BIDEN	99+%	348
BIDEN	BIDEN	TRUMP	99+%	360
BIDEN	BIDEN	BIDEN	95%	412

III. The Three Races That Will Be Close But Probably Won't Tip the Election. 

Texas is huge and the polling is close this time but if Biden wins there, he probably has states to spare. 

Most polling in Iowa have it close, but Trump did get one very good poll from the Des Moines register over the weekend. As I play with the math, I don't see Iowa putting either candidate over the top in a close race.  Maine's 2nd congressional district is also likely to be close but unless it happens to be EV number 269 for Trump or 270 for Biden, it won't matter.

If you see early calls in any of these races, it is a good sign that the winning candidate is on his way to a good night.

 IV. The Forecasts. 

1. FiveThirtyEight. Biden is at 89 percent, up two from a week ago. Biden gets 351 EV. In the closing weeks, Iowa, Texas and Georgia have flipped between red and blue multiple times. Right now they have TX being closer than IA.  

2. The Economist. Biden is at 96 percent, up from 95 percent a week ago. They have Biden winning 350 Electoral Votes- down from 355 last week.

3. Sabato Crystal Ball. Biden 321, Trump 217, up from Biden 290, Trump 248. They waited until today to make a call in every race. They pushed NC and GA to Biden, FL OH and IA to Trump. Their statement on FL was a little-wishy-washy but I respect that they made a call.

4. 270 to Win. Biden 290, Trump 163, Toss-up 85. Unchanged. They might make final calls over night, but they have been on this number for at least three weeks.

5. JHK Forecasts. Biden at 90.3%, Up from 88.3% last week. (I told you things were stable.)  They have Biden winning 351 votes. 

6. Plural Vote. . Biden at 65.5%. That's down 2.9% from last week. By average outcome of each competition, their map is Biden 319, Trump 219. But their most common outcome is Biden 312, Trump 232. I think that's the Sabato 290 plus GA and IA. 

Their methodology is a little different. They give weight to Internet search activity. If the race winds up being closer, this method will be validated. But even they have Biden as a roughly 2 to 1 favorite.

7. Betting Markets. Predictit has Biden up 59.3%-40.7%. That's down 0.7 percent from last week. The map is now 290-248, the old Sabato/270 map.

 The international markets listed on Real Clear Politics favor Biden 64.6% to 35.4%. That is virtually unchanged from a week ago.

 V. A Wish List. 

This is what I want to see happen, in order.

1. Defeat Donald Trump.

2. A Democratic Senate.

3. An orderly process without too many court battles or rat-fucking.

4. Biden wins at least one state that the Democrats have not won in this century.  (AZ and GA are our best chances.)

5. Defeat Lindsey Graham. (I wouldn't bet on it, but Jamie Harrison has a chance.)

6. Steve Bullock win the MT-Senate race.

A Few Long Shots worth rooting for:

1. A Blue Texas. It will change how we feel about the divisions in this country.

2. Doug Jones keeps his senate seat. He never once failed to take the tough important votes that the Dems needed for him. He's probably going to lose by 10, but if he does I hope he gets to be ambassador to Aruba.

3. Mike Espy wins in Mississippi.

4. Joe Biden wins Montana.  It's a reach, but I could see it happening on a great night.

5. The defeat of John Cornyn in Texas.

6.  Democrats win at least one of the GA senate seats without needing a run-off.

I'd love to put Mitch McConnell losing here but I think that ship has sailed. 

VI. My Final Map.

Last week I moved Biden back to 91%. I remain very confident, but I will note that Trump's base has not collapsed, which is something that seemed possible a few weeks ago.  Turnout will be massive. That favors Biden, but there is an element of uncertainty when unseen numbers of votes are in play.  I give Joe Biden an 88% chance of winning the election.

I'm keeping my map unchanged for the third straight week. Biden 351, Trump 187. As for the popular vote:

Candidate	Now	Now	10/26	10/19	10/12
Biden	52.62%	0.18	52.44%	52.36	52.55
Trump	45.21%	0.18	45.03%	45.02	45.19
Jorgensen	1.47%	-0.25	1.72%	1.76	1.66
Hawkins	0.62%	0	0.62%	0.65	0.65
Other	0.08	-0.11	0.19%	-0.2	0.19