The 2024 Presidential Election is starting to shape up like no other in our lifetime. From week to week, we learn new facts that question what we thought we knew just a few days ago. As of this week (no guarantees going forward), three serious contenders will be left on the campaign trail, and they are different from the three we would have guessed just days or weeks ago.
Republican Possibilities
As of the week of January 11, the Republican primaries seem to boil down to President Trump, and only if he falters in some significant way will he not be the candidate. Nikki Haley is waiting in the wings to see what happens with the Supreme Court review of the Colorado action to bar President Trump from their ballot. Few believe this will stand and that he will be on the ballot, but how this plays out in other states will be critical. If he must fight state by state, this could be protracted and run past ballot printing deadlines. Haley will make an excellent Vice-Presidential candidate if Trump prevails, but I see it as unlikely that she or he could tolerate the other.
Maybe giving lip service only, no Democratic candidate is endorsing Colorado’s actions, fearing reprisals in this or future elections. If President Trump can be blocked from running without a trial, then Joe Biden can be blocked for believed misdoings with his son Hunter.
Chris Cristie, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis have faded. With the latest dropout being Ron DeSantis. Even DeSantis endorsed Trump, not Haley, showing just how brutal politics can be these days. With just some of DeSantis’s voters, Trump won New Hampshire with more than half the vote.
As always, President Trump’s biggest asset and liability is himself and his brash style. Many believe he will get a second term if he prevails in the courts and is on all the state ballots. Like RFK, Jr. he is an outsider, but the ultimate outsider. We will now see if the “never Trump” or the “always Trump” camps win. For sure, the more he is persecuted and prosecuted, the stronger his campaign becomes.
Democrat Possibilities
While it might seem that the Democrats have an upper hand in selecting a candidate, that has become their Achilles’ heel. Many voters question President Biden’s age and capacity to serve another term. The Party avoided a confrontation by skipping primaries, effectively shutting the door to other potential candidates.
But President Biden is polling so poorly that it seems unlikely the party bosses will let either Biden or Harris stay on the ticket. The only person who polls lower than Biden with voters is Harris. From failed foreign policy, lack of border control, a horrible economy, a failed withdrawal from Afghanistan, and getting us involved with financial and military armament support for Ukraine and Israel, what else could go wrong?
Just this week, Michelle Obama started giving hints that she might run out of fear that Biden would not be able to win. She pulled the old trick of Trump killing the democracy, but that is wearing thin with voters. Her natural appeal is President Obama on the campaign trail and getting abortions on state ballots. She has zero experience with management, military, economics, or foreign policy and may be just testing the waters.
The Democrats pulled a trick and moved their first primary to South Carolina and angered New Hampshire voters. This could anger voters enough to vote for another candidate in New Hampshire since President Biden will have to be a write-in candidate.
Independent Possibilities
I am old enough to have lived through the Ross Perot Presidential bid and remember how difficult it is to gain traction as a third-party candidate. Not even Teddy Roosevelt could pull off a third-party bid despite his popularity with voters.
But Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has something going for him that Perot and Roosevelt lacked. Many polls show that 45% to 60% of voters now identify as independents. This may differ from how they would vote, but the trend in identification with neither party is rising. They seem very dissatisfied with both parties and ready for new leadership in or outside the Democrats and Republicans.
This statistic is exceptionally high with Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X. Younger voters typically talk a good game but stay away from the polls, so this data is complicated to digest. There is another twist to an RFK, Jr. bid for the White House that has not been discussed. The Baby Boomers, who do vote, were the right age to be impressed by JFK and RFK, Sr. Every Baby Boomer knows where they were the moment they found out President Kennedy had been shot. But the pollsters for the major networks only focus on a Trump/Biden rematch and downplay any challenge from others. For RFK Jr to win, he must climb mountains that have never been scaled successfully.
Then, on the night of January 9, there was a report that some think RFK, Jr. will team up with Tulsi Gabbard on a ticket. This might be just the wrinkle that draws voters from both sides. The two have opposing opinions on some issues so that a platform would be a challenge. However, we have only seen this from one source so far. Then, in an interview aired on January 11, RFK, Jr. said he would balance the budget by cutting our military budget in half. While we wish that were possible, it is not our world today. RFK, Jr. also takes some odd stances and wants to legalize drugs, which will play to a small 60’s audience and turn others off. He still seems like a very long shot.
If all this were not strange enough, in an article on January 14, 2024, the Daily Express US gave some thought to a Trump/Kennedy ticket. Their article quoted John Ellis, a political analyst, who believes that Kennedy pulls more votes away from Trump than Biden and that uniting the two gives you a complete outsider ticket. This seems like a Libertarian pair to me. Kennedy would help Trump in specific demographics where Trump was weak. But there are more than enough articles with enough speculation to make up hundreds of tickets.
But President Trump is always looking for air time, and this may be nothing more than that. It could also be a trial balloon to see what opinion polls reveal. Both are shunned by Washington and have grievances against the deep state.
No Labels Movement
The No Labels Movement has repeatedly said they would enter the race with an alternative if we were faced with a Trump/Biden rematch. Now that we seem to be there watching to see if they actually enter the field of battle will be interesting. Joe Manchin may be their best candidate but there is no firm commitment that he will run.
Foreign Interference
We also have foreign interference to worry about if all the domestic issues are insufficient. My observation is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are particularly tech-savvy. States and Political Parties that cannot build a simple website have little chance against hackers from China or Russia. They are stuck in a past world of robocalls, mass mailings, and door-knocking when our foreign adversaries focus on hacking, electronic disruption, and social media influencers.
A great deal of this is age and the lack of willingness of either party to let younger people take the reins. This is all about power, money, and a desire to hang on as long as possible. Fortunately, this is a shared issue, and all parties are burdened with the same challenges. Unfortunately, Russia and China are not.
Election Interference
Maintaining election integrity will be more challenging than in any election in our history. This is the one area where our decentralized government becomes challenged to respond. There has always been voter fraud in any election, but never where electronic voting was so dominant and where the audit trail over ballots was electronic.
We do not want to devolve into a nation where we are governed by those with the best programmers or AI bots. But keeping the election in the hands of the voters is becoming progressively more challenging. In this election, the outcome is unknown with the two primary candidates in a race to the bottom and the third-party candidate fighting an uphill battle. This may be the race where the candidate with the fewest mistakes wins, even if not the most qualified.
Hang On For More
In this 2024 election cycle, it seems like there is much more to come. Our recent elections have taken on this strange carnival atmosphere, and we will likely see some real sideshows as we approach November. We will write about this topic often over the year because of its importance and constant developments.
Resources Used in This Article
How RFK Jr. could change the outcome of the 2024 election, by Harry Enten, CNN Politics, cnn.com, November 11, 2023.
Political expert predicts who Donald Trump will choose as his VP – and it’s surprising, by Isabelle Durso, Daily Express US, the-express.com, January 13, 2024.
RFK Jr. Leads All Presidential Contenders in Favorability: Gallup Poll, GVWIRE, gvwire.com, January 15, 2024.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Tries Creating Own Party to Get on Ballot in 6 States, by Maggie Astor, The New York Times, nytimes.com, January 17, 2024.
Ron DeSantis drops out of White House race and endorses Donald Trump, Lauren Fedor and Alex Rogers, Financial Times, ft.com, January 11, 2024.
‘She’s a killer’: Trump eyes Rep. Elise Stefanik as a potential VP pick, by Brian Schwartz, CNBC, NBCnews.com, January 17, 2024.
Spoiler alert? Poll has RFK Jr. grabbing 22 percent against Biden and Trump, by Andrew Zhang, Politico, politico.com, November 1, 2023.
Trump says he’s already picked his VP and ‘can’t tell you,’ but his campaign backtracks, by Lalee Ibssa and Soo Rin Kim, ABC News, ABCnews.com, January 11, 2024.
Who Donald Trump Should — and Shouldn’t — Pick for Vice President, by Rich Lowry, Politico, politico.com, January 19, 2024.
Who would Trump choose as vice president? Here’s a list of potential candidates, by Sudiksha Kochi and David Jackson, USA Today, usatoday,com, December 23, 2023.
