An Update on Knowns and Unknowns about the 2024 Presidential Election

Trials and scheduling. Trials and scheduling.

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 check in on the presidential election… the way a futurist does.

Things are going to start happening quickly now. And very shortly — probably in the next few weeks — we’ll have a far better understanding of how the rest of this year may go… and the next few years after that.

• Note: For those of you just joining us, I wrote a set of scenarios for futures of American democracy — not this year’s elections — American democracy. For the next decade or two. They’re here.

• This newsletter is a partial update to my newsletter from a month ago on knowns and unknowns ahead about this presidential election.

One of the main determinants of the near-to-medium term future of the United States — the one that’s going to manifest this year and next year — is who (or which party) wins the presidency this year and how each of the political parties handle the aftermath of their win or loss.

I’ve been watching for the drivers (trends) and variables ahead in the campaign with an eye toward forecasting who could win, what would happen in the window between the election and the inauguration, and thus what might happen in the first six months of next year. The latter I’ll talk about in future newsletters. As for the former…

Biden’s political calendar remains what any normal candidate’s is: primaries, convention, and his levels of support going into the election based on job performance, what’s going on in the economy, world affairs, gaffes, etc. Right now there’s not a lot to forecast against: the major variables are Biden’s health and whether/to what degree Americans connect improved economic numbers with their own lives (ie. grocery prices, etc.)

Trump’s way ahead is, of course, more complicated.

A few weeks ago I laid out what we could know about Trump’s trials calendar and how that overlaps with his political calendar and to what degree his court cases would impinge on his levels of support. That calendar has been upended somewhat but here’s what’s going on now:

Two days ago the three federal judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the lower court’s ruling that Trump is not immune to prosecution for crimes he may or may not have committed while president. The appeals court ruling was so thoroughly argued that they left Trump with no legal leg to stand on if/when he files for a stay to the Supreme Court by Monday. It also left the Supreme Court no legal leg to stand on to consider hearing Trump’s case. Several complications:

1. Trump’s legal team will have to devise a new basis for appeal given that all their arguments were just shredded, burned, had their ashes stirred, burned again, and then handed back to him in a plastic baggie. No first-rate legal mind in the country can imagine a way forward for Trump on this immunity thing now — and Trump’s legal team seems to be made up of people who are, uh, not first-rate legal minds.. This means that whatever Trump’s legal team’s argument for appeal will be it will be bonkers. So have your popcorn on standby between now and Monday, the deadline to file for a stay.

2. The Supreme Court won’t have a legal reason to consider hearing Trump’s case — unless out of hubris they decide they need to refute Trump on this authoritatively — and for posterity — but (a) hearing the case, given the amount of time it would take, could push all his criminal cases back past the election. At which point it wouldn’t matter what SCOTUS ultimately decided: everyone in the world — the United States, the United Kingdom, and the somehow-still-governing United Colors of Benetton — expects Trump would dismiss all charges and cases against himself if he were reelected. (b) Chief Justice Roberts, who has been hyper-sensitive to allowing SCOTUS’ credibility from being shredded by rulings that appear too politically-motivated — he has been failing at this — probably now fears that if SCOTUS hears the case then SCOTUS may inadvertently decide the election for the American people out of the Court’s own foot-dragging, hubris, and having fallen for Trump’s efforts to delay the resolutions of his court cases until he can kill them. So Roberts may start roaming the Supreme Court chambers armed with a bicycle chain and harsh language. In Latin.

So I expect Trump’s legal team to file something bonkers by Monday, then maybe 1-3 weeks later for SCOTUS will announce they’ve refused to hear the case, let the appeals court ruling stand, and for Judge Chutkan to immediately turn to prosecutor Jack Smith and Trump’s legal defense team, put a trial date back on the calendar for as soon as possible, and say Gentlemen… start your engines.

That trial, once it starts, would last about two months with a verdict soon after. Before the election.

The scheduling of this trial may scramble the scheduling of Trump’s hush money trial and his classified documents trial. Which may or may not be resolved by the election.

Nonetheless, what this will mean is that Trump — if any of his trials conclude before the election — is apt to be convicted for some significant number of the 91 criminal indictments he faces. And given that most Americans still believe in the integrity of jury trials, 45% of Republicans nationwide have told pollsters recently they would not vote for Trump if he were convicted of a crime and 53% of Americans in swing states would not, criminal convictions may kneecap his chances at winning the election.

BUT ALSO

Today SCOTUS will begin hearing whether or not Trump can be removed from Colorado’s ballot this November because, as Colorado asserts, he engaged in insurrection and thus is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I don’t know which way this is going to go but — looking at this as a futurist — this one is a bit of a wash. Whether he’s removed from the ballot or not, since Colorado is a blue state Electoral-College-wise there won’t be much of an impact on the election (though there will be arguments for the abolishment of the Electoral College coming in from a whole new vector).

• As a futurist I’m not paying much attention to this one yet unless it winds up driving us moreso toward my Patchwork Democracy scenario. But I may change my mind after news out of SCOTUS later today and tomorrow.

AND THEN

By probably the end of this month the verdict will be in on how much Trump will have to pay in damages following his being found liable in his New York civil fraud case. Prosecutors have asked for $370 million in damages plus revocation of his business licenses in the state of New York and a few other things. Combined with the $83.3 million he’s been ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll for defaming her and the $76 million he’s paid in legal fees over the past two years, by the end of this month Trump may be on the hook for a half billion dollars, may be out of business in New York, and there’s a good chance he may lose Trump Tower and Mar-A-Lago plus more. And we may get a good understanding of his actual wealth, his (remaining) campaign war chest, and his remaining coping mechanisms as soon as next month.

• Side note: Somewhere along the way I saw someone argue that revocation of business licenses for civil fraud against a state would be rare-and-unfair because business licenses typically only get revoked when there’s a discrete and distinct list of victims with fairly precise amounts of money defrauded made plain — which this person said hasn’t been done in Trump’s case and thus his business licenses shouldn’t be revoked. This person also claimed that a business license tends not to be revoked unless the business owners/managers repeatedly defraud people and would reasonably be expected to continue to defraud others in the future if they could. (These were the reasons why Trump University and the Trump Foundation had their licenses yanked, actually.) Let me cut this line of reasoning off right here: the victims in Trump’s civil fraud case are all of the people of the state of New York. The precise amounts of money are the estimates of the amount he avoided paying in taxes. And the Trump Organization already was found in this case to have committed fraud repeatedly over a series of years. So those criteria have already been met. But flip this on its head for a minute: How many (inexpensive) school lunches could have been provided to the disadvantaged children in the state of New York if those schools had had $370 million? Those children could have eaten like kings, had their little brains fueled to learn whereas otherwise they were not. And taken food home for dinner to fuel their little brains even more. For years. And years. And years. While wearing solid gold underpants. Now you get the picture. Some fraud may be a civil matter, but it’s not a victimless crime.

But to recap: a lot is going to start happening very quickly now. Four, six, eight weeks from now the election is going to be a completely different ballgame. And we may begin to have a glimpse not just of November but over the horizon beyond that.

The next real threshold — or in futures terms, the next variable — to be decided is whether SCOTUS hears the Trump immunity case.

• If SCOTUS refuses, the trials begin and one of the two candidates in this election starts taking hits in the polls due to his own actions and their consequences a few weeks later.

• If SCOTUS decides to hear the case, then buckle up; the future of American democracy is gonna get bumpy.

More next week.