Merry Christmas 2023!

[Extended] Holiday Break

Beginning this week, I will be taking a four-week break from writing and publishing blog topics which are specific to politics or other content (such as the recent weeks’s worth of “Flashbacks” to past historical events).

Two of these weeks—December 25, 2023 and January 1, 2024—are holidays which fall on a Monday. So, those topic threads will simply acknowledge each holiday—Christmas and New Year’s Day—and they have been scheduled to publish with the arrival of each date at 12:00 a.m. ET. (Other blog topics will publish, as regularly scheduled, at 06:00 a.m. ET.)

The weeks applicable for this “[Extended] Holiday Break” are [Mondays,] December 18 and 25, 2023 as well as January 1 and 8, 2024. (The last week’s blog topic will be titled “Winter Break.”)

Progressives Chat will return with a new blog topic on Monday, January 15, 2024.

In the meantime: As usual, I encourage readers to post whatever one will in Comments. (I will.)

… A 2024 Red Wave?

We are a point in which, for several months, Democratic incumbent U.S. president Joe Biden has a low job-approval suggestive of him not getting re-elected to a second term in 2024.

Recent general-election matchup polls with Biden and his predecessor, Republican Donald Trump, have the 45th president in good shape to unseat the current and 46th president.

Biden’s job-approval numbers have recently fallen below 40 percent. 

The most obvious issue is Inflation. But there is more to consider.

Key groups in the Democratic Party’s voting coalition are expressing disapproval of Biden on numerous counts. There are those who want him to bow out and not seek re-nomination for a possible second term. There are 18–29 voters—typically the first voting-age group to carry for Democrats—conspicuously dropping their +24 percentage points margin, as experienced by a 2020 Biden, down to a single-digit margin. (In Elections 2012, 2016, and 2020, the 18–29 voters gave Democrats nearly +20 percentage points above their percentage-points margins in the U.S. Popular Vote.) There are Arab-Americans, particularly in my home state Michigan, a leading bellwether state, who are now against Biden—due to his handling of the Israel–Hamas conflict—getting a second term. (Biden carried Michigan, in 2020, by roughly +154k raw votes. The state’s Arab-Americans number roughly 210k in population.)

In the November 6, 2023 Progressives Chat, the blog topic was “… Tossups and Trifecta.”

This was timed with 52 weeks from the scheduled general election of the November 5, 2024 United States presidential election.

My conclusion was with not predicting who will win U.S. President but to state that one of the two major parties will likely end up with all three of U.S. President, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House. This is due to their current strength. Each level is, based on results from previous applicable election cycles, at 51 percent. Democrats have U.S. President, based in part on their Election 2020 U.S. Popular Vote, at 51.26 percent. Democrats, with the midterm elections of 2022, have U.S. Senate with 51.00 percent (of the seats). Republicans, with a 2022 midterm elections pickup of U.S. House, have 51.03 percent (of the seats). Given their numbers, at all three levels, each incumbent party is in a position of vulnerability.

A 2016 Donald Trump and a 2020 Joe Biden had this in common: When elected, they were party switches for the presidency; they both had the same original electoral-vote score of 306; they both carried just two states beyond their tipping-point state…which, for both, was pickups of Wisconsin. The Badger State, for Trump, was his No. 28 best state (he carried 30) for his 270th electoral vote. His additional pickups of Nos. 29 and 30, which were Pennsylvania and Michigan, delivered him to 290 and 306 electoral votes. For Biden, Wisconsin was his No. 23 best state (he carried 25) for his 279th electoral vote. His additional pickups of Nos. 24 and 25, Arizona and Georgia, brought him to 290 and 306 electoral votes.

What turned out to be the position of a 2020 Trump and a 2024 Biden—assuming re-nomination (otherwise, insert other Democratic nominee)—is that they (incumbent party) cannot lose anything that was carried on their winning maps. Lose a state—lose re-election. A 2020 Trump needed to gain. (He lost five states and his bid for re-election.) A 2024 Biden (or other party nominee) will also need to gain. 

To illustrate this point, I will present two scenario electoral maps for Election 2024 which will speak to the maximum potential for either a Democratic hold or a Republican pickup for U.S. President.

🔵 ELECTION 2024: DEMOCRATIC HOLD 🔵 All states carried in 2020 would end up party holds in 2024. (Reallocation of electoral votes, from the U.S. Census Bureau’s report from 2020, has the 2024 Democratic Party’s starting point at 303.) Following a 2020 U.S. Popular Vote of +4.45 percentage points (outcome was Joe Biden 51.26% vs. Donald Trump 46.80%), winning the 2024 U.S. Popular Vote by a percentage-points margin of +5 will deliver a pickup of North Carolina; a percentage-points margin of +6 will bring in another pickup with Texas. (Those two states appear in yellow.)

🔴 ELECTION 2024: REPUBLICAN PICKUP 🔴 Everything carried by the losing party in 2020 holds. Starting point of 235 electoral votes. All states in yellow are potential pickups. They are worth a combined 99 electoral votes. It doesn’t necessarily mean everything would flip. There are ten states, plus a congressional district, which should be “Considered.” My estimate (with most to least in certainty) begins with the nation’s leading bellwether states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (at this point, a cumulative 279 electoral votes) plus the following: Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico, Maine (statewide), and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.

Which, from the above scenario maps, is more likely to happen? (To however much extent? Please note: No past U.S. presidential election’s electoral map has ever been duplicated. Something, from 2020, will change color in 2024.)

Can Joe Biden come back from a job-approval rating, going on for a few months, having recently lowered to 37 percent?

My sense of this is that the Democrats are, as Joe Rogan recently stated, playing with “no cards and…they are depending on party loyalty.”

Team Blue is, again, likely all in with Biden.

Perhaps people will change their minds. That future job-approval and polling will report Biden’s numbers are heading north, as we move deeply in 2024, to an area suggestive of re-election (party hold) for the presidency.

If that does not happen…anticipate and expect a likely re-nominated Donald Trump to pull his 2016 and 2024 version of a 1884 and 1892 Grover Cleveland and, with that, a Red Wave for Election 2024.

◼️ Update 12.12.2023 @ 01:00 p.m. ET: I have reached the point of having enough confidence to predict Election 2024 will result in a Republican pickup for U.S. President (and, at this point, more likely than not with a re-elected-to-a-second non-consecutive term for Donald Trump). That the Democratic incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden will not get a second term. That the 2024 Republicans will also win a majority-control pickup for U.S. Senate and a party hold for controlling the U.S. House. A Red Wave.

🟣 A NOTICE FOR READERS 🟣

This week will be the last politics blog topic here in 2023. As we approach the year’s end, and will usher in a new year, I will give myself a gift that will be in the form of rest from writing and publishing specific blog topics. Beginning next week, Progressives Chat will go on an “[Extended] Holiday Break.” Weekly publishing will continue during this period. The comments section, as normal, will also be available.

Flashback 1978: ‘Killer Clown’ Captured

Now that December 2023 has arrived, it was 45 years ago this month that the serial murderer who was also known to some as “The Killer Clown” was revealed and apprehended.

John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942–May 10, 1994) became, at that time, the U.S.’s most notorious serial murderer. His crimes—his known victims (which numbered over 30)—ran a six-year span, but also seven consecutive years, between January 1972 to December 1978.

This occurred in an area of Chicago, Illinois—his house was in the suburb of Norwood Park Township—and his targets were teenage and young-adult males. Not all but most of the bodies were buried by Gacy under his house in its crawlspace. (That ranch-style house was demolished.)

Gacy was a non-typical serial murderer given that he blended into society and was considered, by those fellow citizens in his community, respectful and considerate. He was trusted. He was also involved in Democratic Party politics and, in a widely seen photograph, posed for a 1976 picture with a soon-to-be First Lady Rosalynn Carter (August 18, 1927–November 19, 2023).

Next year will mark 30 full years since the execution of John Wayne Gacy.

The above video is from ABC News’s archives and on the channel of Hezakya Newz & Films. The beginning minutes are incorporated with the 1971 song “Diana” by British progressive folk band Comus. That group’s violinist member, Colin Pearlson, wrote the music. It gives an eerie feeling to this video. 

The last four weeks—Mondays, November 13, 20, 27 and December 4, 2023—of blog topics have covered “Flashback” anniversaries to crimes of murder. They consisted of multiple murders, mass murders, assassinations, and serial murders. This will be the last such kind of topic here in 2023. I initially intended to schedule this week’s blog topic for Monday, December 18, 2023. The discovery of the bodies, in the crawl space of Gacy’s house, occurred just days before Christmas. They were uncovered Thursday, December 21, 1978. Calendar was the same in 1978 as it is here in 2023. So, I chose to not schedule this topic timed with Christmas, or Christmas Eve on Sunday, December 24, 2023, so this week will do. Next week’s blog topic will be the last on politics for this year. I will close out the remaining two weeks—Mondays, December 18 and 25, 2023—with general, well wishes for everyone for the holidays. A new year, the year 2024, is just around the corner. It will bring us the 60th quadrennial presidential election in the history of the United States. So, I do try to time some of this appropriately.