All opinions expressed in this article are solely the opinions of the contributors.
While the future is inherently unpredictable, a thorough examination of history, recent events, and available data can inform predictions about emerging trends. The political sphere is ripe for speculation.
Straight Arrow News contributor Ruben Navarrette reflects on recent events and offers his top three political forecasts for the year ahead. Navarrette outlines the key trends and events he believes will come to define 2024.
Prediction number one: U.S. aid to Ukraine will collapse, not because of Republican opposition or because Democrats wouldn’t give into the legislative blackmail of passing a border security bill to get Republican votes for more aid. Rather, it will collapse as the Russian invasion becomes yesterday’s news. So the American people — who have famously short attention spans — we’ll get impatient and conclude that we’ve already spent an obscene amount of money on funding to Ukraine — to date, more than $75 billion and counting. And the two warring parties, Ukraine and Russia, have fought their way into a stalemate that could last for years. We’ll decide that we want to cut our losses, and this will please Russian President Vladimir Putin. But Putin’s grin will fade quickly when the next shoe drops, and NATO puts its arms around Ukraine and welcomes it into the international fraternity – the very thing that Putin has been trying to avoid.
Prediction number two: The long-standing and mutually beneficial relationship between Israel and the United States will continue to be strained until the unthinkable happens. It finally breaks, with President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm of the respective nations. Biden is going to get more and more fed up with Netanyahu’s hardline and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, as the number of civilian casualties soars past 30,000. But Biden is not the only one itching for divorce. Netanyahu is going to get more and more resentful of the Biden administration’s condescending attempts to babysit him from the safety of the Potomac, which is far away from the everyday life and death concerns of Israeli civilians. The good news is that this relationship will blossom again in years to come under new leadership in both countries.
Prediction number three: Despite desperate last-ditch efforts by panicked Democrats in late spring and early summer to nudge Biden out of the race and replace him with a younger, stronger, more appealing alternative candidate, who they believe will be more electable, Biden will fend off the coup attempt, and he’ll limp into the general election in November, where he will face off with Trump in the rematch that no one wants. This will literally be the matchup that’s being demanded by, well, no American in his or her right mind. Third parties will become all the rage. But still, the election will indeed come down to the five battleground states that political observers are spotlighting now: Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin. Turnout will be low among Latinos, African Americans and voters under 30, all of which will hurt Biden, so much so that our 45th president will indeed become our 47th. Heaven help us! Like I said, I’ve been wrong a lot lately. Just ask my wife. I’m wrong on the regular. Let’s hope for the sake of the country that my streak of wrong continues.
