Jan.17

electoral-vote.com

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GOP 53

Worst Predictions about 2024

It is (finally) time for us to start reviewing the predictions that we, the readers, and outsiders made for 2024, and to present some new predictions for 2025. To start, let's look at some spectacularly wrong pundit predictions from 2024:

• Derek Thompson: 2024 will be boring. In one 8-day period in July, these things happened: Donald Trump was shot and almost killed, then he appeared at the Republican National Convention with a bandage the size of a toaster strudel, then Joe Biden euthanized his own reelection campaign and Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee. Boring? We think not.
  
  
• John Harwood: Joe Biden won't pardon Hunter. When ABC's David Muir asked Joe Biden on June 6 if he had ruled out a pardon, Biden said yes. When White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the pardon, over and over, the answer was always: "No, he will not do it." Until he did it.
  
  
• Rob Reiner: Harris will win. In a widely circulated tweet on Nov. 4, Rob Reiner wrote: "A woman gave birth to each and every one of us. Tomorrow a woman will give birth to a renewal of our democracy." Of course, filmmaker Reiner wasn't the only one who predicted that Harris would win. Many pundits did and they were all wrong.
  
  
• Scott Galloway: Elon Musk will either lose control of Twitter or sell it. Galloway thought Musk would get rid of eX-Twitter because it was too expensive: Even the world's wealthiest man can have cash-flow problems. Needless to say, Musk has held onto his shiny toy, no matter how much money it costs him.
  
  
• Scott Adams: The 2024 election will see a landslide of election-rigging claims. MAGAworld believes that the election system is rigged. How else could Joe Biden gotten into the White House in 2020? But somehow, the claims of a rigged election melted away this year, like a light snowfall in late April. We wonder why? After all, the Democrats managed to rig the 2020 election, when Trump was in the White House, but not the 2024 election, when Biden was in the White House. Odd.
  
  
• Michael McKenna: If Trump wins, there will be riots in Washington and New York. We seemed to have missed the riots this time. Maybe they were smaller than the one on Jan. 6, 2021.
  
  
• George Conway: Trump will lose his immunity case, go on trial March 4, and spend the rest of his life in prison. Actually, Trump did lose at the district-court level and at the appeals-court level. But the Supreme Court ruled: Nope, the president is like a king and the king can do no wrong.
  
  
• James Carville: Trump will no-show his debate with Biden. The early debate was unusual. Biden wanted to stop Trump in his tracks early. Trump showed up, but it didn't go well for Biden. His line "We finally beat Medicare" will go down in history.
  
  
• Howard Lutnick: RFK Jr. won't be picked to lead HHS. On Oct. 30, the co-chair of Trump's transition team told CNN's Kaitlan Collins that Robert Kennedy Jr. would not be getting a job at HHS. He might end up being right, but not in the way he meant it.
  
  
• Nikole Killion: Trump will pick a female running mate. It might have made sense, what with the Dobbs decision potentially a big problem for Trump. But, he marches to his own drummer and picked a guy with a beard, the first one of those on a presidential ticket in 90 years.
  
  
• Ari Fleischer: Nikki Haley will be the No Labels candidate for president. Remember when Democrats were buying worry beads by the gross because No Labels was going to run some moderate and Democrats would swoon over that person and pull votes from Joe Biden, thus allowing Donald Trump to win? Well, the Manchin/Haley or Haley/Manchin ticket didn't quite make it.
  

Note that this is NOT the list of pundit predictions that we put together last year. That list, which we will revisit next week, is here.

Anyhow, we would again like to solicit predictions from readers, in any/all of the following seven categories: Joe Biden and the Democrats, Donald Trump and the Republicans, Elections and Officeholders, Economy and Finance, Congress, Foreign Affairs and Wildcard. Please send them to comments@electoral-vote.com, preferably with subject line "Prediction" (or "Predictions"). Please note that predictions should be things where it can be clearly declared "that happened" or "that did not happen" by the end of 2025.

Also, we are once again going to ask a pair of questions we asked last year:

1. What item that we produced this year was, in your view, the weakest? (And why?). Send a link to the item, or a description, along with your feedback to comments@electoral-vote.com with the subject line "Bad Job."
   
   
2. What item that we produced this year was, in your view, the strongest? (And why?). Send a link to the item, or a description, along with your feedback to comments@electoral-vote.com with the subject line "Good Job."

If you would like to see the results those questions generated last year, here is the "Bad Job" rundown, and here is the "Good Job" rundown. As you will see, if you look back, some of the comments were general, as opposed to being about a specific item. That's fine, of course.

We look forward to your responses. Please do remember to include your initials and city. (V & Z)