The 2024 election and the geopolitics of oil
The 2024 presidential election will be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Of that we can be certain. We can also be certain that the vote will be very close, and there are geopolitical players who will put their thumbs on the scale.
“The Saudi Kingdom’s de facto rule Mohammad bin Salman’s coziness with the Trump family is notorious. Meanwhile, if Trump defeats Biden next year that would allow Vladimir Putin to escape the most monumental mistake of his two plus decades in power. We don’t even have to assume a new Trump administration would immediately switch sides or cut off support to Ukraine. Opposition from Congress would probably (maybe?) prevent anything quite so sudden and drastic. But both Ukraine and Russia would know that the clock was ticking on US support for Ukraine. That would greatly increase the odds of some stalemated, frozen conflict like the ones we see around the former Soviet periphery and indeed saw in Ukraine itself from 2014 to 2022.”
Saudi Arabia, Russia and the 2024 election
@Fred,
In 1980, we found ourselves in graduate school in North Carolina. I switched my voter registration to Republican to vote for John Anderson in the primary, then voted independent in the General election for Anderson as a protest vote, thinking Carter would win the state. In the event, Reagan won North Carolina and the 1980 election. What a disaster. I will never again piss away my vote on quixotic ventures and eleven-dimensional chess. I learned my lesson. YMMV.
I did the same here in MA, and soon regretted it.
And learned never to fall for the ‘third party’ gambit again.
In some ways, the problem then was that Dems insisted on nominating Southerners, figuring that would work with Southern voters, and ignored what had happened inside the GOP. Saluting the memory of LBJ as it were.
@ Fred,
And Jimmy Carter. And later, Bill Clinton.
With a pivot to Hillary Clinton, out of NY but having spent some time in Arkansas, though originally from Illinois, and finally success again with Barack Obama, also out of Illinois, though originally from Hawaii. Arkansas is definitely considered a Southern state.
And then on to Joe Biden, originally out of PA and later DE. Delaware is not a Southern state according to the US Cemsus Bureau.
Seems to me that John Kerry was in that mix also, alas.
If the Dems have their own updated Southern Strategy, it’s got to be very different from the previous one.
Not to mention Mike Dukakis. Fun fact: John Kerry won his first elective office as Lt Guv’nah under MD.
Independents (technically ‘unenrolled’ voters but still registered of course) can vote in either party’s primary. They are momentarily registering in the party whose ballot they choose, and then automatically unenrolling after voting, as I remember. This is the law in Massachusetts.
In such ‘semi-open primary’ states you must register as ‘unenrolled’ or whatever your state calls it, beforehand, to vote in a party primary of your choosing. Pretty inconvenient perhaps.