Hello friends, welcome back to our little corner of the airwaves for the thirty seventh iteration of Conflicts With Interest.
Some housekeeping to start, while this episode will be on the shorter side, I am actually going to try to do longer, less frequent episodes in future. I can’t really compete on speed with news networks but I think I can compete on analysis and reflection. So if you have ever listened to Hardcore History, that’s more the target I’m setting for myself. If you haven’t listened to Hardcore History, hit pause right now and go listen.
Predictions
In this episode I'm donning my soothsayer's hat, because a friend, let's call them the Oracle of Optimism, has thrown down the gauntlet and asked me to peek into the crystal ball for the year 2024.
Predictions are one of those things that seem to be only downside. If you get them right, you’re just doing your job. People think you’re an expert so of course you’re supposed to know what’s going to happen. But when you lose, you look like a chump. So there’s an element of heads I win, tails you lose.
The Oracle’s wish is my command so here I am with predictions for 2024.
Before I rattle off my predictions for this year I want to give you some background on how to think about this. The definitive work on forecasting comes from two academics named Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. Based on their academic work they wrote a book entitled “Superforecasting”.
I’m not going to go into all the details of their methodology and findings, but you should absolutely read it. Great book with fascinating insights.
The one element I do want to draw out, however, is the concept of calibration. Calibration in forecasting is about how well a forecaster’s confidence levels line up with reality. So, if you say there’s a 70% chance of things happening, those things should happen about 70% of the time. It’s not just about getting things right or wrong but reflecting your ability to think in probabilities.
So with that in mind, my predictions are below along with a percentage which reflects my confidence in them. At the end of 2024, we will go back and compare the performance of predictions in the different confidence interval buckets.
US Election
I was going to do some sort of big introduction to the US election predictions but really all that needs to be said is this. People just bloody love this contest? It happens every four years, so it’s like the Olympics, soccer and rugby world cups in that way. The losers are generally not remembered. How many casual observers remember that Michael Dukakis lost in 1988? And even though it happens every four years, every election is depicted as a titanic life or death, good vs. evil struggle.
So that’s why we care and here are my predictions along with my reasoning.
Joe Biden wins re-election (60%)
First reason, incumbency. Since the Second World War only three presidents have lost re-election: Jimmy Carter in 1980, George H.W. Bush in 1992, and Donald Trump in 2020
Second reason, the economy is in a strong place and rate cuts appear to be on the way. Inflation turns out to be even more poisonous politically than people thought. Perhaps that’s especially true after a decade of very low inflation such as the US experienced between the GFC and the aftermath of COVID-19. But inflation has slowed, the country is at full employment and low wage earners are gaining the most in the US, add cheaper mortgages to that and it’s a pretty compelling narrative.
Third, Democrats can still push the abortion button. Something I think about is how direct the line is between Donald Trump and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade which provided a constitutional right to an abortion. Trump appointed justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett to the bench making the court 6-3 in favor of conservatives. There’s absolutely no ambiguity about how or why abortion is no longer a protected right in the US so that’ll be something Democrats can hammer over and over again.
Donald Trump is elected (30%)
First reason I think Trump has a real shot is his base is incredibly energized. Because of non-compulsory voting, having a highly motivated core of support is pretty powerful in American politics.
He definitely has some issues he can hit Biden on. The border is probably the most powerful of these. Border agents are arresting tens of thousands of illegal migrants a week right now. Border states, especially Texas, are putting thousands of them on buses and sending them to big liberal cities, especially New York and that’s bringing the border crisis home to places that don’t normally experience it.
Something I haven’t mentioned is Biden’s embrace of Israel. A lot of leftwing activists have vowed to abandon the Democratic party over his stance because they see Biden as having enabled Netanyahu’s bombardment of Gaza which has killed over 20,000 Palestinians. I am not sure how much this is going to matter as far left activists are mostly concentrated in places like New York and California which will vote for Biden anyway. But I raise it because cracks in the Democratic coalition are a tailwind worth noting for Trump.
The election is disputed in either a Bush vs. Gore fashion (10%)
Maybe this probability should be higher given what happened in 2020?
Here’s my thinking, either Trump wins in which case we can expect a gracious transfer of power just like Trump got when he took over from Obama.
If he loses and contests the election, it’s true that he has a better understanding of what to do this time around, but it’s also true that his opponents have a better idea of how to stop him, too. And if Trump loses the popular vote again, I think that will finally prompt recriminations in the Republican party.
The story about Trump is that he’s electoral magic because he beat Hilary in 2016. But she was an especially weak Democratic candidate for various reasons. Since then, Trump lost in 2020 and also probably cost Republicans the chance to retake the Senate in 2022. Their House majority was also thinner than it likely would otherwise have been leading to the debacle of Kevin McCarthy being ousted by his own caucus.
So if Trump loses, I actually can imagine him just not getting as much institutional support from within the Republican party a second time around.
Three or more members of the squad lose primary races (70%)
For context, the squad are a group of progressive Democrats.
Given the reaction of far left activists to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, some of them are being targeted by the pro-Israel lobby in primaries. And if they can find credible candidates to put against them, I think some will lose.
The ones that are most vulnerable in my mind are: Omar, Tlaib, Bowman, Bush, Lee
They are all in districts that show relatively little sign of gerrymandering, which means they’re more competitive. Ocasio-Cortez is also in a mostly non-gerrymandered district but her condemnation of Hamas was swift and she has a national profile much greater than anybody else in the squad.
The other squad members are in heavily gerrymandered districts. (E.g., Casar)
Gaza
Netanyahu will not be Prime Minister of Israel by the end of the year (70%)
Eventually, the intensity of the war in Gaza will have to ease. When that happens, Israelis more and more are going to focus on how the attack on October 7 could have taken place given the vaunted capabilities of the Israeli security apparatus.
We’ve talked before about Netanyahu’s fixation on the West Bank and I think as attention sharpens on that fact, his political future will come undone.
One or both of Sinwar or Deif are alive at the end of 2024 (50%)
These are two of the leaders of Hamas’ military wing.
If Israel can’t root them out after all this, I don’t think they ever will. In fact, I take the killing of senior Hamas commanders in Lebanon as a sign of how frustrated Israeli is at its lack of success against these very top Hamas leaders in Gaza.
I even wonder whether Sinwar and Deif are using the IDF to clean house, leaking operational intel on rivals so that they can be targeted. Arouri was Sinwar’s political rival.
Ukraine
Russia ends 2024 with more Ukrainian territory than it went into the year with: 16% (60%)
This year, Russia has a lot of material advantages over Ukraine, especially in artillery ammunition, electronic warfare capabilities and drone manufacturing.
In this war, I think that will be enough for them to eke out some gains against the Ukrainians, though likely not enough to achieve any decisive or large scale maneuvers.
Ukraine and Russia reach a peace deal (20%)
This will be a very tough year for Ukraine. As I said above, they will face material deficits against Russia. They are already experiencing the withdrawal of American support. All of that is going to have to factor into their perception of their negotiating position.
The biggest obstacle will be Russia’s maximalist aims. Clearly the current government in Kyiv is not going anywhere and the long-term trajectory of Ukraine as a member of the EU and ultimately NATO seems set. So even though Russia will gain the upper hand in the war, there are going to be a number of factors preventing each side from doing a deal.
China
China invades Taiwan (10%)
You may have noticed Xi continuing to ramp up his rhetoric around Taiwan. That’s because Taiwan has an election this year and Xi is trying to pressure Taiwanese to vote for the Kuomintang, a political party he sees as less likely to pursue Taiwanese independence.
I continue to think Xi’s rhetoric is mostly bluster though and so regardless of the vote the chances of war are remote. Xi has been busy purging various generals in China’s armed forces because it turns out they have failed to modernize China’s military the way Xi wanted them to.
I suspect after the failure of the Russian army in Ukraine, Xi has taken a closer look at what he’s been getting for his investment in the Chinese military and he hasn’t liked what he’s found, hence he’s realized he actually can’t invade Taiwan because the Chinese military isn’t up to it.
Iran
Iranian regime collapses or confronts widescale civil war this year (10%)
Again another remote one but I raise it because of the risk factors.
Iran was seriously rocked last year by huge protests over the murder of a woman who didn’t properly cover her hair. Now Iran is faced with the prospect of how to support its proxy fighters in the Middle East like Hamas and Hezbollah which are under attack by Israel.
Dissidents in Iran sense the weakness: hence the dual suicide bombings at the anniversary of a senior Iranian general’s death. Iran still has a pretty fearsome internal security apparatus though so I rate this a low probability event.
Obesity
The US obesity rate is flat for the first time in decades (30%)
GLP-1 prescriptions have exploded. We now have semaglutide from Novo Nordisk and tirzapitide from Eli Lilly on the market. That’s going to force down prices.
Also as both of these firms figure out their supply chains, that will increase the supply and we will be in business.
I saw a good tweet on this which was it never seemed likely that America’s number one health concern would never run up against it’s incredibly productive pharmaceutical research prowess - that’s what we’re seeing now.
CWI #37 - 2024 Predictions