A Starter-Look-Ahead at 2024
Cassidy Steele Dale writes to equip you with the forecasts, foresight skills and perspectives, and tools you may need to create a better, kinder world.
And one of those ways is to show you how a futurist is thinking about what’s ahead over the next year.
Normally I’m an optimist. And I still am. But — because I have recurrent fits of integrity — I regularly test my optimism against time bombs and other real, serious reasons to doubt. For example, every couple of months I take a hard 360-degree look around to see if I need to revisit any part of my Scenarios for Futures of American Democracy. And that’s what I’ve been doing this week.
On that topic here’s a few things I’ll be keeping a close eye over the next year:
First, the originators of the “emerging Democratic majority” thesis (on which I based some of my drivers for my scenarios) have gone back and revisited their original theory in light of recent developments and suspect that majority may not be emerging after all. I’ve just gotten their new book Where Have All the Democrats Gone? and I’ll review that with a futurist’s eye very soon.
Quick note: I allowed for that theory to be invalid so right now I suspect my scenario set is still valid as a set of forecasts, but I’ll thoroughly explain how their findings and arguments work and what the longer-term implications of them may be.
Second, another government shutdown showdown fight is right around the corner in January. While Speaker Johnson has said he’s done with piecemeal solutions — meaning Continuing Resolutions — and is willing to try to blackmail the Democrats into large spending cuts none of the situational math has changed. So yet again a Republican House Speaker may have to make a deal with Democrats (and moderate Republicans) to keep the federal government open or else will torpedo everything and send the government into a shutdown… until he finally caves and makes a deal with Democrats and moderate Republicans. If the former happens then that will be the third time in quick succession that a Republican Speaker has caved… but it will also mean that the breakthrough formula for marginalizing GOP hardliners will have been found and implemented. For a long time. Nothing much may happen legislatively after that but it means that GOP hardliners will be thwarted from opening a hellmouth.
Third, this week the Koch brothers and their money-Godzilla endorsed Nikki Haley for the GOP nomination. This is no surprise since they loathe Trump and always have but they’re putting their money where their mouth is. This by itself won’t cinch her the nomination, of course, but when coupled with the notion that Joe Manchin might run as a No Labels candidate — and that a Manchin candidacy might be more appealing to disaffected Republicans moreso than disaffected Democrats — and that Trump almost certainly would run as an independent if he fails to get the GOP nomination cumulatively means that the GOP vote might be split between Trump, Haley, and Manchin while the Democratic vote might be split between Biden and how-old-is-Manchin-again-and-he’s-nobody’s-liberal. In which case the campaign will be less a competition between Trump and Biden and more a competition between Trump, Haley, and Manchin with Biden positioning himself as the wise grownup who’s more mature than the fray. Which. Is. What. Biden. Does. Well.
Fourth, it became apparent that the Biden campaign’s initial twin strategies will be (1) actually highlighting his accomplishments for once and (2) reminding Americans how chaotic Trump and his presidency were — and could yet still be — in an effort to make Trump virtually campaign for Biden. Again. Of course this undermines Biden’s unfavorability and adds to his support by weaponizing Trump’s.
Fifth, all of Trump’s court cases. Good God.
Sixth, there’s a time bomb out there before the Supreme Court that thank Jesus even the conservatives on the Court already appear to be balking at on literally Day One of the case (which was yesterday). Because the Fifth-Circuit’s-gonna-Fifth-Circuit, a bonkers case is being tried in front of the Supreme Court. The long and the short of it is that a guy clearly did wrong but is arguing that the legislative branch (Congress) unduly and overly afforded investigative and enforcement power to the executive branch (the SEC) to discover, try, and punish him for doing his blatant and obvious and spectacular wrongdoing. He’s arguing that the executive branch unduly executes the laws the legislative branch has been requiring the executive branch to perform since the dawn of the republic. (Hint: the executive branch is called the executive branch because it executes the laws the legislative branch passes.) And he’s attempting this argument because there’s conservatives on the bench that might-could-want to get rid of large swaths of the federal government but those conservatives are instead already signaling they find that argument to be kinda questionable due to the Founders, precedent, the Constitution, the past few hundred years and just what-the-holy-crap. But nevertheless if that argument succeeds and the Supreme Court rules in its favor WIDELY rather than narrowly then chunks of the executive branch begin to collapse over the next decade or two.
Note: much of the federal bureaucracy is dedicated to thwarting dangers to ordinary Americans from financial malfeasance and fraud, infringing upon their civil rights and ability to vote, ensuring our water and food and medications don’t kill us once we get home and, you know, making sure our homes, clothes, and blankets won’t catch fire.
Extra note: countries who don’t have the money to determine their own standards of cleanliness and health of, you know, homes, clothes, blankets, water, food, and blankets simply adopt American standards as the gold standards and by doing so save many, many lives every year. So undermining U.S. departments and agencies of the executive branch will have some consequences not just for Americans but for many, many other people in many, many other countries.
Seventh, Smartmatic is attempting a follow-on to Dominion’s ten-ton gut-punch to Fox News for knowingly lying upon lying that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats via those two companies’ voting machines. 2024 will tell us whether conservative media (and in the decades to come WHOEVER’S media) will be willing to deceive, especially regarding a presidential campaign. So in 2024 one of Trump’s main campaign vectors may be less available to him. And some of screaming media may become less scream-y in the future because there will be consequences for some of it.
Eighth, but a longer-term thing, conservatives are trying to wreck the Voting Rights Act. (The Voting Rights Act is what finally made the United States a full democracy.) Most recently they’re trying to thwart the ability of private plaintiffs from bringing cases to defend minorities’ voting rights by arguing that those cases should only be brought by the Justice Department itself. Which historically has only happened in 10% of such cases. So if their argument wins out the number of voting rights defense cases will drop by 90% immediately. And that would be bad for democracy. And, you know, morally. But it also means that, if this effort succeeds, a feature of America going forward will be that some American citizens’ voting rights may lurch into and out of existence according to which party holds the presidency and thus the Justice Department.
Ninth, the elections. All of them.
That’s just my starter list of what’s ahead for 2024 regarding what might steer the United States into one or another of my scenarios for futures of American democracy. So as a futurist in this case what I’m looking at isn’t about politics, it’s about futures of governance. About what the ramifications of those outcomes could be.
I’ll aim to review John Judis’ and Ruy Teixeira’s Where Have All the Democrats Gone? next week because there’s so much demographic trend information in there. But holy crap, it looks dense.
See you next week.