It’s almost January 6th, and with Donald Trump still constantly teasing that he will run for president in 2024, I feel like it’s a great time to make some predictions about what a future presidency of his would be like.
Traditionally I don’t write much about politics in my blog. In fact, I’d rather keep my politics out of the workplace. But politics, as we’ve recently seen with the pandemic, can disrupt an economy and destroy businesses, and we people in business rely on that economy to function — as well as all the attendant functions of government to maintain our defense, stability, and prosperity. So making some predictions about the economic impact of a political change seems within the purview of a business-oriented blog.
Plus, we now know so much about Trump that it seems like we’re doing ourselves a grave disservice by not imagining the possibilities. After all, Trump turned previously unimaginable cruelty, mendacity, and incompetence (an out-of-control pandemic! A right-wing insurrection and attempted coup d’état!) into our everyday reality. We should be clear-eyed about what is in store for us and the economy should we have to endure another term.
So this would be my best guess of what would happen:
- Trump will not win the popular vote. Trump has never won the popular vote, and he won’t this time either. If he wins, it will be via the electoral college, likely with the assistance of one or more states overturning their local results or electoral shenanigans in the House of Representatives. Incidentally, as of November 2021, I give Trump a 30% odds of nominally winning the electoral vote, including wins achieved via the use of these fraudulent tactics.
- The second Trump administration will be a constant circus of ideological wars and bomb-throwing. Trump appears to be in a state of cognitive decline, and another presidency will only exacerbate his well-known tendencies to easy anger, desperate attention-seeking, and paranoia. With his only focus being “maintaining the base” (that is, currying favor with low-information, high-racial prejudice older white voters), Trump will constantly seek ways to engage in culture war disputes to maintain daily attention and relevance.
- Government will be led by his believers: low-competence, high-loyalty ideological warriors. In 2016, experienced, mainstream Republicans could hold their nose and join up with the Trump administration, hoping it would settle down and turn into a conventional GOP presidency. In 2024, it will no longer be tenable for Republicans with integrity to join the administration. Only loyal, loud-mouthed charlatans will be attracted into ranks of senior management, knowing that they will be allowed free reign in any area that Trump has no interest in. (Update 1/21/24: The Heritage Foundation is screening who these people will be.)
- The Republican party will become the Trumpist party. Careerist Republicans and conservatives will have no choice but to conform to Trumpism, a peculiar mix of crony capitalism and anti-immigrant policies. Those who, for ideological reasons, cannot pay fealty to Trump will be purged or marginalized. The Republican party will no longer attempt to make serious efforts to address education, health, or welfare issues — they will be the part of red-meat culture wars for whites that result in tax cuts for the rich.
- The Republican war on democracy will accelerate. Aggressive gerrymandering, unchallenged by the federal government or courts, will sustain structural Republican advantages for 10 to 15 years. In some states Republicans will overturn elections that they lose, or even change electoral college votes to support Trump. Republicans will never again win the popular vote for president, but will overturn elections by fiat to take the presidency in 2028 using the electoral college.
- Trump will nominate Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner to a Cabinet-level role. Encouraged by their survival in the first term, Trump will nominate one of them to a very senior administrative position. The department they manage will likely be managed poorly, and drive out most competent professional leaders. Despite their inexperience and poor results, they will be removed only upon the removal or untimely death of their political benefactor.
- We will have much more political violence at the state and national level. Trump now realizes that presidential pardon power effectively gives him and his followers total impunity from prosecution. Radicalized conservatives will commit undemocratic and inhumane acts in his name and be eventually pardoned. This will include soldiers who commit war crimes, police who kill minorities in the name of “order,” and of course insurrectionists who invade government buildings to impede and destroy the functioning of our democracy. Right-wing terrorism will be tolerated if not actively encouraged. This will lead to an authoritarian government “lite,” its dictatorial aspects only tempered by its corruption and incompetence.
- Abortion will become illegal in most Red States. With Republicans firmly protected by gerrymandering and voter suppression, as well as a conservative Supreme Court, abortion will become illegal or nearly in so in most Red States. Family planning support will diminish to nearly nothing in these states. (Edit 7/6/2022: This is already coming true.)
- Trump will find ways to enrich himself by directing government spending toward his businesses. This will simply be an extension of his activities in the first term, which he exercised in unprecedented and unpunished corruption. (Edit 7/6/2022: The January 6 commission has now shown that he has directed a large amount of political donations to benefit himself personally.)
- The US will unilaterally withdraw from multinational institutions and agreements. US foreign policy will no longer support NATO, the World Bank, the UN, and other major international organizations and defense structures. America will cease to support democratic movements or human rights abroad. Faced with the unreliability of US political and military leadership support, Japan and the EU will form standing military forces. China and Russia will consolidate power and promote dictatorships in their local spheres of influence. China may seize the moment to isolate and take over Taiwan, knowing Trump’s commitment to its independence is weak.
- Trump will likely provoke a small war that goes badly. Trump is not above manufacturing a foreign policy crisis with a poorly planned use of our bombing capabilities. (He was close to doing this with Iran in the closing years of his administration.) He will likely do this in the second year of his administration, to encourage Americans’ to “rally round the flag.” The incompetence of his team will fail to anticipate the blowback of this military action, and the effort will look like a failure within a few months after the attack.
- The economy will suffer a major, long-lasting recession. The US economy performs worse under Republican administrations. Typically this was because deregulation allowed the financial system to become riven with fraud and speculation, precipitating a collapse. In a bit of innovation, we also saw Trump destroy the economy by incompetently managing a major pandemic. A second Trump administration will likely appoint a truly incompetent Fed Chair, resulting in an inadequate, disordered response to bursting financial bubbles. The stock market will enter a long period of stagnation and poor performance.
- Trump’s vice president will likely become president. Trump is obese, suffers from high cholesterol and blood pressure, has poor emotional self-regulation, works in a high-stress job, and readily eschews medical advice. All of these make him a likely candidate for a heart attack or stroke that could kill or substantially debilitate him. The VP who succeeds him — who likely will be a weak toady — will lead a listless, rudderless caretaker administration that accomplishes little until it is voted out.
- Media, culture, and religion will become unprecedentedly polarized. There will be no non-combatants in the war for culture and information: everybody will be forced to pick a side as “Trumpist” or “Anti-Trumpist.” Large portions of society will permanently abandon Christianity as it becomes a supporting ideology and apology for Trumpism. Youth will become atheist and abandon their beliefs in traditional authority figures, including in the mainstream media.
- We will be unable to respond to a major national crisis. The deprofessionalization of our federal government, as well the country’s polarization, will make us unable to respond adequately to a major national crisis, which could include terrorism, massive cyber attacks, or another pandemic.
- Youth will give up on America. Younger generations, stymied by an inability to make their positions known through the democratic process, will lose faith in the legitimacy of our government and of American democracy itself. More young, educated people — women especially — will cluster and “shelter in place” in high-productivity, pro-choice Blue States; some will move abroad permanently. Some youth, radicalized by their loss of representation, will engage in direct violence against Trumpist politicians and supporters. I don’t believe we’ll see any left-wing violence on the scale of the late 1960s-1970s: I don’t see any dehumanizing ideology on the left to motivate that.
- Climate change will accelerate. Trump will take no domestic or international action on climate change and will encourage the continued use of domestic coal and natural gas for electricity generation. Climate-related natural disasters will continue as usual — and at this point, we’re too far gone to prevent them in the present — but Trump’s innovation will be to provide most climate-related disaster assistance to states based on their perceived loyalty to his cause. Average temperatures will increase annually around the globe; droughts and fires in the Western US and hurricanes and flooding in the Eastern US will become commonplace. The effects of climate change will be irreversible; we will not return to current climate levels for a century. Trump will also undermine environmental regulations and encourage the effective privatization of US owned natural resources.
- American life expectancy will decline, particularly among people of color. Trump will again attempt to dismantle Obamacare, replacing it with a privatized system and perfunctory drug price reductions. The poor will lose guaranteed coverage in Red States; Blue States will attempt to provide state-run programs. Fertility rates will continue to decline.
- Protections for women, people of color and LGBTQ people will be rolled back. The federal government will make no effort to protect the rights of these groups, and indeed they will be the focus and victims of various random “culture wars” that will pop up in conservative media.
- “Trumpism” will become a hollow ideology that captivates Republicans for a generation. Like right-wing populism elsewhere in the world, Trumpism will be a nominally nationalistic political movement that acts as a catchall ideology for political dinosaurs, cranks, opportunists, and the corrupt. Its uniting force will be a distrust of democracy and of people of color, and a callback to a mythical America which reigned supreme under the tutelage of old white Christian men.
- America will become an empire in decline. While demographics — the death of Baby Boomers and the rise of a majority minority America — will eventually restore balance to American politics, it will be too late for many of these changes to be reversed. Polarization will create a feckless, divided country unable to unite to meet major challenges. Pessimism will reign on the international stage; individuals will retreat into like-minded state or urban political enclaves to protect themselves from the selfishness, cruelty, and incompetence of our federal government.
Well, that’s quite a lot of unpleasantness! If you’re like me, I think you’d agree that the most important thing we can do to forestall this fate is to make sure Trump never becomes president again.
Perhaps another sad implication is that there are a number of would-be Republican presidential candidates who would also result in the same outcomes. (Ron DeSantis, I’m looking at you.)
Not sure where to leave this sad set of predictions, but feel free to comment if you agree or disagree, or want to amplify some points.