Election anticipation

So, only a week into the new year, and already one of my 2024 predictions has turned out wrong, as Rishi Sunak seems set to delay the general election until the autumn, rather then gambling on a spring poll as I forecast. His strategy to avoid certain defeat seems to be limited to hoping that something will turn up, though for good measure he is evidently planning another round of harsh austerity, presumably calculating that reducing potential Labour voters to a state of immiserated despair will sap their motivation to turn up and vote the Tories out.

At least the US presidential election is hotting up, with just over a week to go until the Iowa caucuses. The broad outlines of the campaign are fairly clear already – Trump will double down on 2020 election denialism and associated conspiracy theories, while Biden will run partly on his record, but mostly as a defender of democracy. (If I was in charge of the Democratic media strategy, every ad would simply feature a picture of Trump, with ominous music in the background, and the caption “Seriously – this fucking guy?”) Of course everything could be upended if the Supreme Court follows the Constitution and bars Trump from the ballot, but that seems like an unlikely outcome, since the Justices are presumably reluctant to be held responsible for the mayhem that would follow.

I’m still optimistic, perhaps delusionally so, that the end result of the electoral process in both countries will be relatively sensible centrist government, which may not solve any long-term problems, but will at least be a break from the immediate madness.