Election Prediction That I Might Regret

Trigger Warning

Okay, so I’m going to make a prediction: Kamala Harris is going to win.

She will likely win six out of the seven swing states, possibly North Carolina too. Due to mail-in ballots, the election will be called for her at some point on November 6th. Probably around 3:20 PM PST. I will be at the gym. CNN blaring as I jog to nowhere on the treadmill. Some of my fellow workout comrades will howl in ecstasy. I will celebrate with squats.

I understand that there are a lot of jitters, 2016 PTSD, and a general fear that if you’re overconfident, it will come back to bite you. Fine.

But I am going to unpack some vibes and predictions. Hear me out!

Prediction 1: Logan Paul Fans Might Not Know How To Fill Out A Voter Registration Form (Or Will Forget To)

According to POLITICO, Trump is leaning heavily on low-propensity white straight cisgender males in their early 20s/30s to vote for him. This is likely because especially after January 6th, he’s absolutely toxic to suburban folks who yearn for the days where the president was just some boring person in the background, triangulating between Wall Street and Main Street and pardoning turkeys and kissing babies. No matter how many of Trump’s grandchildren testify to his alleged coziness, or how high inflation is or whatever foreign policy fiasco is unfolding, a significant segment of the population, which reliably votes, loathes him.

The 45th president has a lot of online fans on Twitch, X, Reddit, YouTube, and an array of podcasts, but it’s unclear how that will actually translate to votes. He could probably sell them NFTs and meme coins and e-books, but actually getting them to vote? That’s a different story.

Voting in my beautiful home state of California is pretty straightforward. But in many states, especially the battlegrounds that decide the future of our democracy, it’s difficult. I really can’t envision a swarm of first-time voters coming out of the woodwork to cast their lot with Trump. They will likely say “hahaha he’s so funny lmaooo.” But they don’t have the same devotion to voting as MSNBC viewers who believe that the USA is about to turn into a fascist hellhole.

Of course, I could be wrong here. But I feel fairly confident in this. Why? Well, let’s not look to the right, let’s look to the left: Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign. The premise of Bernie’s second attempt at winning the presidency was that through his anti-establishment rhetoric and socially democratic policies, he’d bring a new group of voters to the polls. He didn’t have to conform to the desires of the average Democrat because he could remake the party altogether. Though he did well in the first few primaries, he didn’t increase turnout at all. Ultimately, he lost because the party’s core demographics just weren’t vibing with the “far-left.” The concern in 2020 wasn’t revolution, it was doing anything to beat Trump. And amongst core demographics, Biden seemed like a safer bet in accomplishing that.

Trump will likely suffer the same fate as Bernie. He will improve with some demographics and there will surely be a crop of think-pieces proclaiming that the GOP now aligns with the working class. I am sure some political scientist has a book proposal in the can for this moment. Fine.

However, the suburban normies will show up and vote for Kamala because of abortion, democracy, and a general vibe that Orange Cheeto Man is toxic. Logan Paul fans, meanwhile, will come in handy in spreading disinformation about a “rigged election.”

Which leads me to my next prediction.

Prediction 2: We Aren’t Prepared For The Shit Show

I unfortunately use X (formerly known as Twitter). I don’t think Bluesky or Threads or Mastodon will ever replace X. The bird app is now a cesspool of racism, anti-semitism, transphobia, conspiracies, and AI garbage. Though a lot of journalists have been ringing the alarm over what Elon Musk has done to the self-proclaimed “global town square,” this horrendous energy has largely been confined to the website itself. We really haven’t had a moment that’s brought to the attention of how bad it’s gotten. In other words, if you’re not hyper-online, you probably haven’t noticed X’s deterioration.

Enter the 2024 election!

Prediction: on November 5th, Musk, who has heavily invested in Trump’s campaign and right-wing groups, will start promoting conspiracies as to why his chosen horse has lost the race. It will likely come in the form of him quote-tweeting accounts from the bowels of conservative Twitter. For legal reasons, he will just write something vague along the lines of “interesting” or “concerning” as he boosts garbage about voter fraud, sketchy ballots, and so on. Fox News won’t join the party because they got sued to near-oblivion last time around.

X, which is now a flailing private company, will unleash total anarchy.

Though Musk recently lost a battle with Brazil over misinformation, I don’t foresee anyone in the American government stepping in to stop Musk. If anything, we will see Republican politicians amplifying the garbage. In the words of Steve Bannon, they shall “flood the zone with shit.”

The media industry is in shambles. So, unfortunately, reporters or fact-checkers can’t do much to stop this. I guess we have three weeks to explain to millions of people the dangers of AI disinformation and that just because an account has a blue-check doesn’t mean they are some trusted-expert. Now is the time to post some “facts are facts” PSA on Facebook.

Good luck!

Prediction 3: Yassss Queen! Liz Cheney Will Have Her Moment.

I’m anxious and have insomnia so I’ve read up on all of Kamala’s recent media blitz. One thing that’s clear is that despite her word-salad tendencies, she’s obviously more coherent than her opponent. But anyone who isn’t literally employed by the DNC can also tell you that the California Democrat seems DESPERATE to appeal to moderate Republicans.

She claimed she owns a “glock.” She’s triangulated on immigration. She co-hosted a Wisconsin rally with Liz Cheney. It’s unclear whether she would extend Biden’s progressive antitrust policies. And, notably, on The View, when asked how she’d be different than her current boss if she got elected to commander-in-chief, she promised to select a Republican to her cabinet.

Was this San Francisco liberal a closet-Republican this whole time? No.

So, what’s happening?

Well, I have two theories.

Theory 1: Since Kamala was basically coronated out of post-Biden-debate-fiasco desperation, she never had to go through a primary process and articulate a platform. Without this process, the left has absolutely no leverage in crafting her policies (which, by the way, only appeared on her website a couple days before her September debate with Trump).

In 2020, Biden and Bernie personified opposing visions for the Democrats’ future. After Bernie fell short, the Biden team strategically worked with Bernie world to formulate a vision. If Bernie didn’t run a second time, Biden, who stems from one of the more corporate-friendly states in the nation, probably wouldn’t have “moved left” at all. He also didn’t want to repeat Hillary’s 2016 mistakes of antagonizing the left. Winning is an alluring incentive to listen to other people.

But now, Kamala can just cater to an elite group of donors because no one is really keeping her in check. Those donors, obviously, are proud centrists.

Theory 2: Team Kamala likely has data that young voters aren’t that enthusiastic about her. It could be due to Biden’s disastrous foreign policy, or, maybe after eight years of nonstop anti-Trump alarmism, Gen Z and Millennials are a little desensitized and jaded. Whatever it is, I don’t think she’s banking on an Obama 2008 moment.

Her campaign knows she just needs to win by a hair in seven battleground states, and to make up for any losses with the youth, which historically vote for Democrats, she needs to cater to a group that’s still up-for-grabs: Nikki Haley supporters. Although Nikki Haley sold her soul to Trump and endorsed him even after he literally called her birdbrain and his campaign sent her a bird cage, her 2024 GOP primary voters aren’t going to jump off a cliff because their Dear Leader said so.

She doesn’t have a personality cult. Rather, during the 2024 GOP primaries, she stood for a “sane” version of the GOP for pro-corporate types who feel nostalgic for the glorious days of Mitt Romney. Sure, she only won Vermont and Washington D.C., but throughout the whole primary, she gained a devoted following because enough people yearned for the elephant of the past. Trump, who is the closet thing America has had to Berlusconi, will never appeal to those people because he’s an absolute freak.

Sure, some Haley supporters are just garden-variety Republicans who will “vote red no matter who.” But according to some recent polling data, a significant swath of these voters are still undecided or planning to back Kamala. That will be enough in the Blue Wall states, North Carolina, Nevada, and Georgia. Arizona, due to border policy sensationalism, is more of a wildcard.

Haley has noted that though she has offered to join the campaign trail with Trump, she has yet to receive a call from Mar-A-Lago. The 45th president is possibly making a similar mistake as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, when she didn’t smoothen out lingering tensions with Bernie world. We all know how that ended up.

Kamala’s pivot to the right will probably work. She won’t do spectacularly well, but it will be enough, and you-betcha there will be some Wall Street Journal op-eds castigating Trump for not paying enough attention to Nikki Haley voters flirting with the coconut tree.

But he is who he is.

Therapy Time!

In Cognitive-Behavioral-Therapy, you learn that there’s a certain balance to the human psyche. A quality that manifests as a positive can equally manifest itself as a negative. I don’t see anything “positive” about Trump, so I will swap that concept out for success. Trump’s braggadocio, chutzpah, and egotism undoubtedly helped him transform the entire political landscape. But it will also lead to his downfall.

Instead of campaigning with Haley in the suburbs of Philadelphia, he’s assembled a clown-car of anti-vaxxers and grifters who kiss his ass. But he doesn’t need any help with internet-addict weirdos; what he desperately needs are the normies. And those normies are going to chug a glass of Pinot Grigio, check off Kamala, and go about their day.

L’chaim!

Prediction 4: The Second Worst Outcome

So, this will be the second worst outcome. Of course, the worst outcome is Trump winning again. But the second worst outcome is a version of Harris administration that stands for absolutely nothing and doesn’t address the myriad of problems facing the world. I mean, speaking personally, it wasn’t really reassuring to emerge from a six day heatwave to tune into the debate to hear Trump and Kamala both wax poetic about how much they fucking love fracking.

Kamala will probably win. She will make for a fantastic SNL guest. But in terms of policy, we just have to resign ourselves to ambiguity. This could go either way! She could be a fantastic president.

However, I’m a pessimist.

Within this vacuum, conservative agendas will likely triumph because unlike the left, they have more “experts” and “insiders” lobbying for their deranged vision. Access is everything. Kamala’s first term could mean anything from four years of Clinton-esque triangulation with big business or, more ominously, the United States sleepwalking into a disastrous regional war.

Is Kamala better than Trump? Of course!

But at some point in the next years, the Democrats will have to start to plan for an opponent who isn’t so scandal-ridden and polarizing and take a look at themselves in the mirror and ask: What do I stand for?

And if the answer is fracking, neoconservative foreign policy, and crypto, I don’t know how long they can solely rely on suburban normies to compensate for the youth’s glaring apathy.

Alright, that’s all!