Biden, Republicans and 2024: It's the 'unknowns' that will sink or save the incumbent

With 2022 midterms and control of the House and Senate decided (well, mostly!) campaign 2024 begins – with Republican hopefuls. 

Former President Donald Trump has already launched his campaign. Well-funded Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was just sworn in for a second term. Former Vice President Mike Pence, and a host of other well regarded Republican politicians are "visiting" Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and other key decisive states, lining up fund-raising, and building campaign teams.

On the Democratic side, all eyes are on President Biden. He and his team have given every indication that he’s not not-running, but whose indications nonetheless are prompting hopefuls to (quietly) determine what they might do in the event that the president decides not to run.

If two weeks is a lifetime in politics, two years is an eternity. But unlike in previous elections – when essentially a two-year forecast of the political environment was fully unpredictable, this time around, we kind of know what we’re going to be discussing two years from now – even though we can’t know how it will affect the race.

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As the late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, "there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns."

Typically, it’s the unknown unknowns that wreak havoc with forecasters. In 2002, Republican George W. Bush had won seats in both the House and Senate, the war in Iraq had not yet started, and no one could predict that the handling of that war would make his reelection bid far from certain. 

In 2010, Democrat Barack Obama was coming off a major defeat in the midterms, and no one could predict that he would be able to win reelection partially because of some support for ObamaCare, and that Super Storm Sandy in the last weeks of the 2012 campaign would enable Obama to blunt his opponent’s attacks. 

If two weeks is a lifetime in politics, two years is an eternity. But unlike in previous elections – when essentially a two-year forecast of the political environment was fully unpredictable, this time around, we kind of know what we’re going to be discussing two years from now – even though we can’t know how it will affect the race.

In 2014, Hillary Clinton was a popular former Secretary of State, who was widely expected to be the Democrat’s 2016 nominee – no one realized that she’d have real trouble getting the nomination over an unknown Vermont independent Senator (Bernie Sanders) and that her opponent would be a novice candidate, Donald Trump, who would be able to make effective use of a (then-) unknown email server, together with a government investigation, to wind up winning the White House. 

In 2018, people may have thought Trump was vulnerable, but no one anticipated a once-in-a-century pandemic would help the man Obama had prevented from running in 2016, to finally capture the White House after two campaigns that had, frankly, flopped. 

While there are undoubtedly unknown unknowns in store for American politics, but there are a large set of known unknowns that will fuel the debate. We don’t know how they’re likely to turn out – but we can be pretty sure that they will be driving the debate in 2024. 

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With the exception of our direct involvement in wars, foreign policy issues rarely affect US politics. Trump won in 2016 in large part because of his commitment to wind down "forever wars," and he ran his administration on the theme of "America First" – and pledged to reduce our commitment to foreign alliances.

Ironically it was Biden who willfully executed that commitment – pulling out of Afghanistan – in a SNAFU of a withdrawal that sent his job approval into a tailspin – and probably is one of the reasons he wasn’t able to get as much of his "Build Back Better" agenda passed as he had hoped. 

Since then, Biden's political focus has been primarily domestic: Passing the part of "Build Back Better." The Democratic electorate’s focus on abortion and the continued impact of Donald Trump helped him make the 2022 midterms fairly successful – and rekindled expectations that Biden is running in 2024.

But it’s the known unknowns overseas that will likely have a profound impact on the 2024 campaign: China, Ukraine/Russia, and the impact of those actions on oil-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela, inflation, and the U.S. economy.

They’ll determine whether voters believe that Democrats have made the country better – or think that instead, it’s time to return a Republican to the White House. 

For better or worse, the United States is clearly very involved in the Ukraine war. Russia attacked Ukraine but the U.S. has devoted substantial resources both to helping them fight that war – and to trying to ensure the Europeans help as well. 

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Right now the war looks like it’s not ending anytime soon. The Ukrainians have proven themselves more effective than anticipated – but it doesn’t seem as though the conflict has an end in sight. 

The world's major oil-producing nations are either close to Russia, or currently taking a wait-and-see attitude to the war. Rather than raising oil output to fight against rising prices, the Saudis have gone along with trying to keep prices high. 

The Iranians seem to have turned down Biden’s earlier offer to get back into the nuclear deal, and instead are selling weapons to the Russians. And the Venezuelans have sent some signals that they might be willing to play ball with the U.S. – in the event that the war continues to go south for the Russians

We don’t know how the war is going to turn out – (I certainly claim no expertise) but I know that we – and the Saudis, Venezuelans, and even the Iranians will know a great deal more in the next two years. 

IF the war turns out badly for the Russians, they are likely to want to figure out a way to be helpful to the U.S. – in the form of low oil prices.

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We also know that an outcome favorable to the Ukrainians will help return Ukrainian grain to the world market. Ukraine represents 8% of global grain sales and would help mitigate inflation.

But we also know that it could go the other way – a long-term stalemate between Russia and Ukraine, or worse, will likely mean continued high oil and grain prices – and either continued inflation or a serious recession. 

Similarly, we don’t know the outcome of the emerging tension with China. Basically, the Biden administration has doubled down on Trump’s approach with the Chinese. The U.S. – through the CHIPs act passed with support of several Republican senators – has essentially thrown the gauntlet down with the Chinese. This will likely have a major impact on U.S. manufacturing and the prices for computers, phones, cars, and other chip-dependent products.

We’ll know more about whether these steps are working by early 2024 than we know today. We’ll know if the approach is working to help the U.S. economy – and whether it’s fueling growth or failing. Even though the steps have been taken on a bipartisan basis – the voters will know whom to blame if it’s failing – and who can take credit if it works.

There are a host of other simmering conflicts in various parts of the world – protests in Iran… a Middle East that may (or may not) be embracing the "Abraham Accords"… and South East Asia – which is working hard to try to take up much of the manufacturing which the Biden administration is trying to move out of China.

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While each of these can be dismissed as foreign policy side shows that rarely affect American politcs – the outcome of any of them will have a dramatic impact on the U.S. economy and the 2024 voter.

We don’t know how they’ll turn out. That is unknowable…that they’ll have a dramatic impact on all of us is demonstrable.