It’s New Year’s Day. Get ready for the shock and awe of record political spending in 2024.
That’s the only sure bet as the world of politics flips the calendar. But what’s New Year’s Day without some high wire predictions?
Here are your crystal ball forecasts, beginning with a look at the future for the political players who will define 2024.
RON DESANTIS: Sorry, Ron, it just didn’t work out.
Turn back the clock one year this week, and the 45-year-old Florida governor was holding the hottest hand in politics. He was being hailed as the future of the GOP and hauled in a boatload of money from big-dollar GOP donors opposed to former President Donald Trump.
But DeSantis tried to run as a Trump imitator. He bet big on culture wars, banning abortion in Florida after six weeks of pregnancy and approving new standards requiring that schools teach that slaves gained skills “for personal benefit.”
Recent history has shown that governors who fail to win their parties’ presidential nomination fade into obscurity. That looks to be DeSantis’ future. The lesson of his demise is that GOP voters want a showman more than a doer. And who wants a tribute band when the real band — Trump — is still touring?
NIKKI HALEY: A look into the 2024 crystal ball shows Haley about to defy forecasts of a year ago and finish in a tight race with DeSantis to become the leading GOP alternative to Trump.
A second-place finish in Iowa opens up the possibility of Haley beating Trump in New Hampshire. She remains unlikely to beat him for the nomination, but she will have delegates and some leverage at the GOP convention in Milwaukee this summer.
Haley has said she will support Trump if he is the nominee and has refused to agree with a New Hampshire voter who pressed her to call Trump a “grave danger to our country.” She is positioning herself as the post-Trump future of the party.
ABORTION: Every election and every poll leading into this year’s congressional and presidential races confirms that voters support abortion rights. Even Republicans opposed to abortion can read the 2023 tea leaves showing them getting clobbered on abortion rights, from Kansas to Ohio and Virginia.
Forget the crystal ball and just read the polls: By every metric, abortion is likely to lead Democrats back to control of the House Majority and even possibly increase their Senate majority.
Democrats have a long history as the pro-choice party. This year, they can point to their support for keeping abortion as a private matter and away from politics as one of their bedrock principles. All signs indicate the electoral rewards will be there.
KAMALA HARRIS: She is set to become the “Comeback Kid” of 2024.
After all the bad press, the first female Vice President is proving to be a campaign asset. She can fire up core liberal voters, beginning with women, people of color, young voters and college-educated voters.
Those are the voters that Democrats are targeting for high turnout in swing states from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, states they need to win in November.
Her standing as the first Black, first female, and first Indian American vice president, gives her unique traction as Democrats face a Republican Party dominated by white men and by Trump.
The former president has attacked New York’s Attorney General, a black woman, as a “racist.” He has called Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney an “animal.” And he speaks about immigrants of color as “poisoning the blood of our country.”
With polls showing Democrats facing the possibility of poor turnout from minority voters, the vice president could be a game-changing presidential running mate.
JOE BIDEN: Slow and steady wins the race.
Before the first vote in Iowa, Biden has a lock on the Democratic nomination.
Unlike Trump, Biden is not facing 91 felony charges and four court dates. He is not facing removal from state ballots over his role in the January 6 effort to stop certification of a presidential election.
Biden’s biggest challenge now looks to come from third party candidates who could drain his support among moderate swing voters. They are looking for someone new, some political energy beyond a re-run of the 2020 election.
Also, some voters are indifferent to Biden, according to polls. He is seen as a moderate figure who has not transformed a politically polarized country. That has contributed to his low approval numbers in 2023.
But those polls will be out the door in a one-on-one, 2024 rematch with Trump.
Trump is on the record calling for “termination” of parts of the constitution and replacing it with authoritarianism complete with jailing the press and “rooting out” his political opponents whom he calls “vermin.”
The Democrats have the power to make this year’s race into a referendum on Trump rather than Biden.
With the stock market up, unemployment down, wages rising, inflation slowing and the U.S. standing tall against Russia and China, Biden has a record to persuade swing voters.
There are no crystal balls. But based on last year’s political weather, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing for 2024.
Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.
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