The Country May Lurch Leftward in Surprising Ways in 2024

Today's politics seem ripe for some shocking moves that most won't expect

Politics are never static, regardless of what polls and pundits say. Usually, the historically expected outcome is promoted by the media, with few exceptions, and then Wham! —we get clobbered upside the head with a shocking outcome which moves the needle in a different direction. This new reality then is just the accepted new political climate, and all new analysis is based on this backdrop, and so on and so on with few people realizing that we’re in an ever-changing environment, full of surprises and unpredictable outcomes.

Most things are obvious with perfect hindsight, and I feel like we could be in for one of those shifts that will shock us, and that we’ll look back on with agreeable feelings of inevitability. I previously wrote that ideological eras in the U.S. seem to shift in rough cycles, about 40-50 years (see “The Stages of Political Drunkenness”), and that we are coming out of a Conservative era and into a Liberal era. The MAGA movement is the heavy drunkenness portion of this theory; the idea being that eras end because the movement flames out due to people being drunk on their perceived power and behaving as though they are the inevitable perpetual thought leaders.

In much the same way as Reagan’s rise in the 1970s and 1980s and the 1994 Republican Revolution lurched the country into the Conservative direction in surprising ways during the previous era, there is bound to be similar lurches in the Liberal direction in this new era. It will be hard to define the moments that bring in the new era until after they occur, but I think there are signs that the Liberal era has begun and some shocking movement in that direction are to be expected.

When did the Liberal start? In my mind it’s overlapping now with the flaming out of the Conservative era, which has been occurring for about a decade. Perhaps the new era started with the passage of the ACA, perhaps with the 2020 elections; it’s hard to pinpoint at this time, but so far there has been no jarring movement. 2024 could be the election that defines the Liberal era.

If this is true, then the question is how this will look. I expect it to show up in 3 ways.

Democrats will win an overwhelming House majority

This is the most comfortable prediction. There will be the coattail effect, with Biden winning again on high Democrat turnout and House Democrats getting those votes in the more competitive districts. House Republicans have just looked ugly this term, and have shown themselves to be incompetent and untrustworthy stewards of the federal government. Plus, many of them will be easily tied to Trumpism and Speaker Mike Johnson, who has a past of very ultra-right-wing rhetoric, despite being a mild-mannered person.

The current narrative is that the country is so evenly divided, just look at the last two House elections and the split Senate. But this could be the year where things lurch to the Democrats’ favor. I expect a Democrat majority in the 230-240 range. As a result, the new narrative will be how the country is now a center-left country, and the expectation will be that Dems hold the House for some time.

Joe Biden will win all the states he did in 2020 and pick up a few more

2020 was notable in that Biden surprisingly won a couple of unexpected states, namely Arizona and Georgia. That alone was an impressive feat for a Democrat and signaled a shift was underway, but to me, this is not quite the shocking shift that would be characteristic of the transitions of era I’m speaking of. Although the number of votes that could have changed the outcome was relatively small, due to the competitive “battleground” states, Biden won the electoral college comfortably, if not in blowout fashion. I think that Biden could get to blowout territory in 2024.

There are four states that Trump won in 2020 that are ripe for shifting: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas, representing a total of 100 Electoral votes. You might say that NC seems reasonable, but it’s crazy to consider the others. Well, sure, but that’s kind of the point, it’s not supposed to seem reasonable, because we’re still stuck in the 2020 election's narrative. It’s hard to think about anything being so different. No one was predicting Biden would win Arizona or Georgia last time, but he did. If I’m right about the new Liberal Era kicking in, it stands to reason that a few more will fall into place this time around.

I don’t think it’s out of the question that all four of those will shift, that would be very poetic for my thesis. But I can see at least two of them, and possibly three, flipping. The most obvious candidate for a flip is North Carolina. Trump won there by barely over a point in 2020, so just a bit more energy and turnout for Democrats should do the trick, combined with Republican despondency and muted turnout due to hearing constantly that the election is rigged and being stolen, and seeing their party’s leader deteriorate before our eyes throughout the year.

Florida is the next-best candidate to flip back to Democrats. Obama won here twice in a row and there’s no reason to think it can’t flip right back there with the strong Dem motivation this time around. The margin in 2020 for Trump was just over 3 points, not insurmountable by any means. Also, a voter-led effort to place an abortion rights referendum on the fall ballot has just won, and this is likely to increase energy and turnout on the Democrats’ side.

Texas and Ohio seem more like long shots, and they are….but they are both winnable. Ohio has appeared to be going further and further towards Republicans, and its population has been going lower, to the point that it’s been losing Electoral votes, which is not a good trend for Dems. But again, Obama won Ohio in both his elections, and with the recent abortion rights referendum that just got overwhelmingly passed in the state, and the Republicans bad-faith behavior to try and prevent it, along with the overall infamous corruption scandals they have perpetrated in the state, it may be due for a major voter backlash.

Texas appears to be an impossibly red state at the moment, but people have been predicting a shift to Democrats soon for no other reason than demographics. The population is continuously growing in general, as is the minority portion of it. So it does seem inevitable at some point that it will go for a Democratic president soon. Combine this with an increasingly corrupt and deplorably behaving State Legislature and Governor’s administration, and the strict cruel abortion policies that have taken effect, and this state also seems ripe for a backlash. That said, this shift has been anticipated for about 20 years and never comes to fruition. Therefore, isn’t this the perfect candidate for a shocking lurch to the left?

The Senate will become more solidly Democrat

This could be the most shocking shift of all, as the Democrats have one of the toughest Senate maps in recent memory. They have 8 Senate seats to defend in states that Trump either won handily or was highly competitive in (AZ, MI, MT, NV, OH, PA, WI, and WV). And the only way for them to increase their numbers is by picking off other states that are solidly red and that Trump won comfortably.

But again, wouldn’t this be the definition of a shocking lurch to the left? In much the same way that Republicans shocked the world in 1994, this could be the Democratic Revolution of 2024. Let’s examine why this may be possible.

First, let’s assume that Democrats will lose West Virginia. That does seem like too much of a stretch to think that a Democrat other than Joe Manchin will win there. This would put the Senate at 50-50. In keeping with my theory that we are entering a Liberal Era and Dems will perform well in 2024, I’m going to assume that all 7 of the others win. They all include popular Democratic candidates, 5 of which are incumbents. In the two toughest races for Democrats, Montana and Ohio, the incumbents are highly popular and have defied the odds already previously. In the two states without Democratic incumbents, Arizona and Michigan, both incumbents are already Dems that are not running again (Kirsten Sinema in AZ is technically running, but as an Independent). In a world where Republicans have momentum, I can see several of these seats shifting. In a world of Democratic momentum, which we are currently in, these all stay Democratic.

So then where do the other Democratic seats come from? This is where the shock comes in: Texas and Florida. Both Republican incumbents are unpopular and unlikeable and since both states are ripe for a backlash, as explained above, I can see both falling to more likeable Democratic candidates. This would put Dems at a 52-48 advantage.

Yes, this is only an increase of one single seat. But with the map that the Democrats have, this would be the equivalent of a miraculous outcome. The reality is even if the Democrats lose the WV seat, but win all the other seats they currently hold, they will maintain control of the Senate at 50-50 with a Joe Biden victory, and this alone would be a highly impressive outcome. Also, winning just one of TX or FL would also be a shocking lurch to the left, much less winning both of them.

If it is the case that my theory of ideological era cycles is right, and we are moving into a new Liberal Era, these are the kind of results we should see in an upcoming election cycle. There would be a “shock the world” element to them, something that often accompanies these ideological shifts. If it doesn’t happen in 2024, then perhaps 2028 is the year. But something powerful is coming down the electoral pipeline, and the one certain thing is that no one will be expecting it.