My Crystal Ball for Politics in 2024

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Monika Bauerlein,
CEO

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December is make-or-break for Mother Jones’ fundraising, and in "No Cute Headlines or Manipulative BS," we hope that giving it to you as matter-of-fact as we can will work to raise the $350,000 we need to raise this month. Donations make up 74 percent of our budget this year, and all online gifts will be matched and go twice as far until we hit our goal.

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The journal Democracy has put together a package of short essays for its latest issue about the likely face of American politics in 2024. Most of the contributors focused on one or two big trends and how they’re likely to play out over the next dozen years, but I took a different tack. Instead I identified six big trends:

America will keep getting older.
If Obamacare survives the Supreme Court, the social welfare state of FDR and LBJ will be more or less complete.
Economic growth is going to be slow.
The fact of climate change will become undeniable.
The Republican Party will continue getting whiter and the Democratic Party will continue getting browner.
Computational horsepower will continue growing.

What does all this mean? Probably nothing good, but a bleak outcome isn’t inevitable. Click the link to read my guesses.