Predictions for 2024

Writing on this site allows me to be a pretend pundit, which is a fun and diverting activity that makes me envious of the few who get to do it for a living. Pundits often make asses of themselves when they make predictions, but they are just too much fun for me to resist. With the understanding that I am mostly talking out of my butt, here are a few predictions of my own for 2024.

More Space For Non-Blockbuster Filmmaking

It’s telling that Barbie was the number one box office grosser in 2023, and that Oppenheimer came in third, with almost a billion dollars. Not only did these films become a linked phenomenon, they were both works by auteurs, not faceless corporate product (although some of that grossed a lot of money, too.) As Marvel films have been running out of gas and the DC universe puttered out, Hollywood will be inclined to be more adventurous in its decisions. Audiences have certainly been craving more variety and rewarding it. The slate of new films is going to be smaller due to the strikes, which might give room for some more left-of-center stuff to find a wider audience. I’m less pessimistic than others about film-going in 2024.

Lower Voter Turnout

Voter turnout has gone up in the 21st century, with the 2018 midterm election drawing over 50% of eligible voters, a first since the 1910s. This has been one of the few bright spots of our more contentious and divided political culture. I think that trend will go into decline in the coming presidential election. The 2022 midterm saw a drop in turnout over 2018, so this is hardly a bold prediction.

After the intense engagement of the Trump years and disruptions of the pandemic a lot of people just “want to get back to normal.” For them “normal” includes not needing to care all that much about politics. I have also been sensing a lot of the broad discontent I witnessed in the 90s, when people couldn’t be bothered to vote because they didn’t feel it would make any difference. Polling shows Biden behind among registered voters but ahead among likely voters. I think a lot of people who are unhappy with Biden will be staying home instead of pulling the lever for Trump. In general, he has become so familiar that he does not excite the same passions, for or against, that he used to.

Decentralized Social Media Discourse

The internet before the rise of mass social media sites was a notably decentralized place. Twitter promised one platform where all the discoursers could discourse with each other, and for awhile, it was. The world hung on what Trump would say with his tweets, and his use of that platform was absolutely essential to his rise to power. He was (rightly) exiled from Twitter after the insurrection, then went over to TruthSocial. Musk’s changes to Twitter caused a lot of people (including me) to flee. Other platforms, like Substack, are also doing things to antagonize their users. (I myself am still deciding what to do about all of it.) Overall, there is a discursive fragmentation afoot. I am not sure how much of a good thing this is. Anything that gets people away from social media is probably a good thing, but a fragmented online discourse in a time of even more fragmented news sources might also make it harder for people to live in the same reality. Time will tell.

Worsened Constitutional Crisis

We have been in a Constitutional Crisis for some time now. You could date it to the 2000 election, I will be more limited and say our current crisis dates from Mitch McConnell’s refusal to seat Merrick Garland in 2016. After that Trump won the presidency via the electoral college while losing by almost three million votes. That allowed him to pack the courts with extremists, despite not having a mandate from the people. That action in turn led to things like the Dobbs decision, which has roiled state-level politics like little else.

Trump did all kinds of things of questionable legality, culminating in an outright attempt at insurrection on January 6, 2021. The fact that he was not removed from office via impeachment was bad enough, but now he is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. This has engendered attempts to block or disqualify him via Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. For the first time, a man is seeking the presidency after trying to overthrow the government, and has a 50-50 shot of doing so. This year we will find out if the 14th Amendment actually applies or not.

Even if Biden wins in a landslide against Trump (which will not happen), the outcome of this election is going to be challenged. If Biden wins narrowly in the electoral college (about a fifty percent chance) there will be attempts by state legislatures and Republicans in Congress to invalidate some of the results. Beyond that, voter suppression, third-party candidates, and the electoral college could align again as in 2016 to make Trump president. I think there’s a very low chance that a plurality or majority will ever vote for Trump, but under our system, he does not need that. If he does win the electoral college while losing the popular vote (about a fifty percent chance) I think that will engender another kind of crisis, since it will expose the Constitution as a suicide pact.

Possible Signs of New Consensus

Despite the frightening prospects of another Trump presidency dedicated to being a more effective fascist or an unsolvable Constitutional crisis, I have seen signs of a simmering down in our politics. Contrary to what you hear in the mainstream media, our current polarization is less about “both sides” than it is of Democrats becoming slightly more progressive and Republicans becoming a LOT more extreme and unwilling to compromise. The polarization is lopsided, but not eternal.

The “red state” votes to preserve abortion rights after Dobbs are a sign that some issues are less divided than we long assumed. There have been some missed opportunities for consensus. In the immediate aftermath of January 6th there was a true collective revulsion over the insurrection. Some Republicans spoke out against Trump, and major league baseball players (not a liberal lot) demanded that the All-Star Game be moved from Georgia due to its voter suppression laws. Moms For Liberty is imploding and while the “anti-woke” attacks on schools are hurting people, they aren’t all that popular either.

Part of me thinks there’s a new consensus emerging where we will see fewer mandatory DEI trainings and online cancellations but also a live and let live approach to trans kids and teachers. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. While some freaks still want to ban gay marriage, it has become generally accepted. The “culture wars” will never end, but there are signs they will simmer down soon.

Of course, the culture wars could still simmer down while a Constitutional crisis amps up. I am not as pessimistic about 2024 as a lot of other people, but I am hardly hopeful, either. International events are especially grim, and I am not bothering to even try to make predictions about them. No matter what happens, it will be one of those years that “sticks” in historical memory. That’s a prediction I feel pretty comfortable about.