Projecting 2024 presidential race
You probably missed the news that New York City Mayor Andrew Yang has suddenly pulled close to Vice President Kamala Harris in polls for several early primaries. Yang is actually a few points ahead of Harris in New Hampshire, according to a Marist poll, and tied with her in South Carolina, according to Quinnipiac.
The reason you missed this news is because you do not take the undergraduate political science course I am currently teaching, where it is currently January of 2024.
President Joe Biden has abruptly announced (on Halloween, 2023) that he will not seek a second term after a series of transient ischemia attacks. Harris seemed to have a commanding lead. The only other big names in the field are AOC and “Jeopardy!” host Aaron Rodgers.
Over on the Republican side, the two clear leaders are former UN ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former First Daughter Ivanka Trump. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been actively campaigning for three years and has amassed three points in the polls because it turns out nobody likes him.
Former Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had to drop out after his botched response to a series of hurricanes, especially the ferocious Hurricane Wanda which shut down Miami for months. Former Vice President Mike Pence had undiagnosed PTSD from the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection which led to clinical depression.
U.S. Sen Josh Hawley is hanging on to the Trump voters who just aren’t buying Ivanka. What happened to U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton? I’m genuinely asking because I forgot to write a scenario for him. If you have any ideas about what happens to Tom Cotton in between now and early 2024, email me immediately.
The economy has never fully recovered, especially on the jobs front, where employers shifted to AI models during the pandemic and never shifted back. The hurricanes and wildfires have made climate change more of a mainstream issue and fueled a new environmentalist strain among young Republican voters.
Oh, the Republicans took over the House in 2022 but went even deeper in the hole in the Senate. The Democrats grabbed the open seats in Pennsylvania and South Carolina, lost the Georgia seat (with Herschel Walker beating Raphael Warnock) and picked up a surprise win in Wisconsin, where Ron Johnson decided not to retire and then lost to state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, who is now considered a rising national star, thanks largely to a dazzling 2023 performance on “The View,” arranged by her canny communications director Nick Famularo, who was one of my students back in 2021.
The Plain People of Connecticut: “Who decided all this?”
I did.
The Plain People of Connecticut: “Seems like somebody likes playing God.”
It is not accurate to say that I like playing God. It is accurate to say that I love playing God.
The Plain People of Connecticut: “And what manner of class exercise is this? A lot of hooey made up by you! No wonder them kids isn’t learning.”
You may be right.
The students have been divided into two teams.
I’ve done this kind of thing before with other classes. I try, when possible, to force students to work for candidates of the opposite political persuasion. One year I had a group of liberal students working on a Chris Christie campaign, and they kind of turned into Chris Christie.
One of them is crafting a message and communication strategy for Haley. The other is doing the same for Ivanka Trump.
The students have also been given access to political professionals and veteran campaigners. I can’t say who any of them are because they were promised total anonymity and off the record status. Most of them are Republicans.
I’ve done this kind of thing before with other classes. I try, when possible, to force students to work for candidates of the opposite political persuasion. One year I had a group of liberal students working on a Chris Christie campaign, and they kind of turned into Chris Christie, which is to say they were pugnacious and borderline rude during their presentation on his behalf.
If anyone in this year’s class leans Republican, that person has been artful in concealing it. So I decided to make everybody work on a Republican primary.
As one of the pros who agreed to help them said, “I look forward to showing them we don’t have horns.” Well, exactly.
We’re all too siloed, right? Everybody knows that, and everybody agrees that the only things silos are good for are missiles and food for ungulates. And if you’ve watched the movie “Witness,” you know how dangerous it can be to stand inside them.
I like the idea that my students, who would rather be working for Harris or Yang, are instead thinking hard right now about, for example, how can Ivanka hold on to the Trump ethos in a way that makes her credible and dangerous during the primaries but also leave herself room to track toward the center during the general election?
Or how can Haley make the case that she is the best Republican to run against Harris — Two Desi-American women contending for the White House in the same year? Could that happen? — or Yang.
They’ll figure it out. Quite a few of them are smarter than I.
But, as God, I outrank them. Which reminds me. I haven’t thrown them a curveball in the last 12 hours. Maybe I’ll tell them Caitlyn Jenner just jumped into the race as a third party candidate.