It's that time again! A new year! Breathe deep that new year smell. It's also when make a bunch of half-assed predictions, post them on the internet for everyone to see, so that later everyone can point and laugh abut how naive I was. As I say pretty much every year, these predictions are what I currently think will happen, not necessarily what I want to happen.
1. Trump will appear on both the primary ballot and the general election ballot of all 50 states and Washington D.C. in the 2024 elections.
2. The current war in Gaza will be "over" in the sense that the year will end with a long-term ceasefire in effect (whether formal or informal), but Hamas will still exist and the humanitarian disaster that is Gaza will still be a humanitarian disaster.
3. Netanyahu will not be Prime Minister of Israel at the end of 2024.
4. There will be no new peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, or any other Arab nation, in 2024.
5. Trump will not just be the GOP nominee for President in 2024, but no other candidate will win a single state, or come closer than being double digits (10%or more) behind him in the primaries or caucuses of every single state.
6. Biden will be reelected President in 2024.
7. None of Trump's criminal cases will go to trial in 2024.
8. There will be at least one more corruption allegation against Justice Thomas and/or Alito in 2024, but it will not result in any real reforms of the Court.
9. The Supreme Court will end 2024 with the same Justices that it began the year with.
10. The war in Ukraine will still be going on, with only minor changes in the territory that Russia and Ukraine control in Ukraine by the end of the year.
11. The Democrats will lose control of the Senate but gain control of the House in the 2024 elections.
12. Mike Johnson will not be speaker of the House at the end of 2024.
13. Trump will pick Vivek Ramaswamy as his running mate.
14. Trump will mangle the name "Ramaswamy" on camera at least once in 2024.
15. The UK will finally hold a general election in 2024 and the British Prime Minister at the end of the year will not be a Tory.
16. Ukraine will not hold a presidential election in 2024 because of their national emergency and Zelensky's approval will be lower at the end of 2024 than it was at the end of 2023.
17. The U.S. economy will not have a recession in 2024.
18. The Supreme Court will overrule the "Chevron deference rule" in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
19. The Supreme Court will rule that Trump has no immunity (not even a partial or qualified immunity) from prosecution for anything he did after he ceased being president.
20. The head of state in the five Central Asian stans will be the same at the end of 2024 as it today.
21. Biden's approval according to the 538 polling average will be higher at the end of 2024 than it is currently (as of 12/31/23 it is 39.3%), but his rating will still be underwater (meaning Biden's disapproval number will be higher than his approval number).
22. Trump will have some kind of health crisis in 2024, but he will not tell the public what it is. So he might just disappear from public view, or check into the hospital without any announcement of what happened (although it is possible some reporters will figure it out).
23. 2024 will be the hottest year ever recorded, beating the current hottest year, 2023.
So those are my predictions! Did I miss anything, absolutely! I don't pretend to be able to see the future. Feel free to add your own half-baked predictions in the comments.
