What I'm Watching for This Fall

And why we may need to strategically deploy Samuel L. Jackson

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 contextualize the present day because HOLY CRAP…

I’m watching three things right now (plus a few more I’ll mention in another newsletter):

(1) Who will be the next Speaker of the House…?

Whenever I look at these GOP nominees all I hear in my head is Dan Hedaya in Joe Versus the Volcano shouting into the phone “I know he can get the job, but can he do the job?”

Being able to wear down frustrated, livid, and tired Members of Congress (and/or their spouses) is not the same as governing. Jim Jordan probably promised GOP moderates he’s aggressive enough to wrestle the hardliners into submission and the Democrats into concessions on the budget and he almost certainly can’t do either. He also probably told GOP moderates that if they don’t elect him then the Democrats are going to peel off a few GOPers in the House to elect Hakeem Jeffries whether they can or not.

• CARVE OUT #1: The likelihood of Jeffries being elected Speaker is very low, but this brings up a serious rule of thumb for futurists. Never forecast based on the will and whims of an individual or a very small group of people. It’s too small a sample size and it’s too subject to the vagaries of everything. There’s a story famous among futurists that a group of futurists once forecast futures for a particular country based on the tendencies of its president. They sent the forecast on a Friday and on a Monday the guy was assassinated. In the almost two decades I’ve taught forecasting at a seminary I allowed ONE student to make forecasts on ONE guy ONCE and six weeks later the guy was fired. This is why I’m not forecasting who specifically will become Speaker. At all.

• CARVE OUT #2: If Jim Jordan holds steady at losing votes again today in the third round I expect someone in the GOP will move for Patrick McHenry’s powers be expanded enough to allow votes on appropriations bills, aid for Israel and Ukraine, and a handful of other things. The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus has some suggestions. McHenry has already said he doesn’t want to do that — and he can actually prevent anyone from getting the floor to make that motion and the mere idea of that is deeeeeeeply controversial with Republicans in the House — but the Democrats and enough moderate Republicans may be willing to do it anyway and poof, we get a new Speaker anyway who has few powers but is a functioning adult who isn’t actively trying to set the building on fire. That ersatz coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans in the House might be able to keep the government funded, the lights on, and help on the way to people who really need it.

(2) Will we have a federal government shutdown?

Without those CARVE OUTs, let’s walk this forward a bit.

• Reminder: three weeks ago a set of GOP hardliners was driving hard for a shutdown. McCarthy made a last minute deal to avoid one. That’s why he got fired in the first place and why we’re in this pickle today.

About 10 minutes after we get a new Speaker (of whatever sort) that Speaker is going to have to come up with a plan to avert a shutdown of the federal government in less than a month. In dog years, thirty days in Congress time means about nine days. Or four. That means the House has four options, each of which they’d have to enact at legislative lightspeed: (1) pass all 12 appropriations bills, (2) pass all 12 but in groups of three or four — what are called “minibuses,” (3) pass them all at once in one big “omnibus” bill, or (4) decide to try to blackmail the Democrats and Biden Administration into massively cutting the federal budget in manners those GOP hardliners are calling for but doing so via means of a threat or in deed (shutdown) that’s never generated a single meaningful policy change any time it’s ever been tried but By God, it will work this time and won’t end up punishing the Republican Party but this time it won’t!

So as forecasters, even though (again) forecasting based on the whims of a small group of people is subject to the vagaries of everything, we can still hew toward a baseline forecast based on the tendencies and ideological and structural constraints of that small group and ask:

With Jim Jordan or any hardliner as Speaker — or any moderate Speaker who doesn’t have full partnership with the Democrats in the House — which one do you think the GOP in the House will choose? You do the math. I’ll wait.

Welcome back.

What will this mean for a shutdown starting… and ending?

First, minus those CARVE OUTs, unless the GOP in the House gets hit in the head by lightning, finds actual Jesus, and the world flips upside down and floods, and despite the entire world shouting at the GOP like:

We charge into a shutdown like:

And then — in shutdown — the Democrats in the House let Republicans twist in the wind like, knowing they’re self-immolating, but saying Guys, you have two options:

And the United States and the world watches the GOP wander around like:

And God as my witness I cannot figure out how, if we go into a shutdown, we get out of one. Thank God no one would be materially affected by one. Ever. Never mind the economy at Christmas. Or food for some people for Christmas.

If there’s no federal government, well, American churches: start your engines. And your kitchens. Because who do you think this is gonna hit? Bezos? Nope. Your mama and your cousins in Missouri and Texas? At Christmas? Yep.

(3) Which party will have the best showing in Virginia’s elections in November?

Before a shutdown, in the meantime, if you want an immediate look at the future, don’t interview diners in the Heartland with its amber waves of grain, go to Northern Virginia.

Virginia will hold its off-off-year elections in early November. And because the Commonwealth is about as evenly-divided and as purple a state as you can find, Virginia’s elections will provide the best look at whether Democrats’ overperformance in those 30 special elections last month is apt to survive to the 2024 elections for, well, everything in every office in many places all at once.

• CARVE OUT: Governor Youngkin may have found a new political way to thread a camel through the eye of a needle on abortion and the rest of everything. And if Virginia’s elections go well for Republicans he and his messaging strategy may become political darlings for the GOP. If he fails, however…

Why does Virginia matter in this case? Because half of Virginia lives in Northern Virginia, Northern Virginia is two minutes across the river from Washington, DC (90 minutes with traffic), and — this is incredibly true — almost no one who lives in DC is from DC and almost no one who lives in Northern Virginia is from Northern Virginia: they’re from everywhere. They’re not just from America, they’re from ‘Murica. And they have been paying attention. Closely.

And they are pissed. Not just at this and Dobbs and Trump. Not just at Biden. At all of this.

And they are going to vote in three weeks.

If we want to see how the 2024 elections are apt to lean, we might be about to see. In three weeks.

And so will every Member of the House of Representatives while they’re considering a shutdown. And if Virginia’s elections don’t go well for Republicans — really well — then they’ll realize that their majority in the House is at risk. Really at risk. Badly at risk. And that a shutdown, if it’s longer than about 12 minutes, well… it’s not like a shutdown of any duration might affect anyone at all that you care about. Ever. Like ever.

So maybe they’ll keep the car on the road.

But in the meantime (1) America, (2) ‘Murica, once they realize Mama’s gonna suffer, and (3) Saint National Treasure Samuel L. Jackson will be looking at the GOP in the House like:

and they’ll be saying… Samuel L. Jackson things.

Or maybe the House will kick the can down the road until January and we’ll be in this same pickle then.

Forecasting is hard, especially for things like this, but I do know one thing, Lord willing and Betty White sending power: Samuel L. Jackson will still be with us. And he will be pissed.

Buckle up.