Dr John C Hulsman is the Founder and Managing Partner of John C Hulsman Enterprises, a global political risk firm. His latest book, The Last Best Hope: A History of American Realism, can now be ordered at Amazon.
In early October 2023, in our usual City AM column, my political risk firm made a fateful call; Donald Trump would become the first president since Grover Cleveland to regain the presidency after relinquishing it. As ever, when one is bold and swimming against the tide of conventional wisdom, our prediction (despite the fact that our political risk call record is the best in the business) was belittled by the almost-always-wrong mainstream media.
“Too early”, “Highly unlikely”, “Controversial for its own sake” were among the nicer things said by a group of commentators who seem habitually unable to separate what they would like to happen in the world from what actually will happen in the world.
It is no secret to Americans that the British mainstream media is entirely in the tank for Biden – not understanding how Americans can countenance the return of Trump the barbarian, when the alternative of the Joe Biden and his nice Wilsonian foreign policy is ever so much better. To put it mildly, I’d argue this extreme form of wishcasting has dulled the critical senses of the lion’s share of the British establishment.
But no one is laughing now.
And then there was one
Putting this as dispassionately as possible, nothing has politically happened since last October to change the theory of my firm’s case for Trump’s coming victory. Rather, recent events have made us ever more confident of our derided political risk call.
Here are the facts. I am writing this article in the immediate aftermath of the New Hampshire primary. Real Clear Politics, the pre-eminent site for understanding the nuts and bolts of US politics, has Trump decisively ahead of Nikki Haley, his flailing challenger (and darling of the mainstream media) 55-43 per cent, with 88 percent of the vote counted.
Even more telling, it will never get better than New Hampshire for Haley, where almost all the idiosyncratic conditions of the state work in her favour: it is more moderate than the national Republican base; it has an open primary (so independent voters and even Democrats can easily cast ballots in the GOP primary, which, at first glance, amounts to a staggering 45 percent of Haley’s total vote count); and its popular, anti-Trump Republican Governor, Chris Sununu, worked hard for Haley.
While all of these unique advantages in New Hampshire went Haley’s way, she still decisively lost – following on from Trump’s tidal-wave triumph in the Iowa caucus by a staggering 30 points.
The next primary contest, South Carolina, will not be so kind to her. It is a closed primary (only long-time Republicans can vote), the state’s GOP establishment is firmly behind the ex-president, and the political culture of the state skews more conservative than the Republican national average.
In other words, despite Haley being its ex-governor, South Carolina is a Trumpist stronghold. Presently, polling has the ex-president miles ahead there, up by an average of a whopping 30 points. The inconvenient truth is that Haley has simply run out of road. However much the mainstream media may wish it were not so, the 2024 Republican presidential primary is over, almost before it began.
The sinking ship that is Biden
Further, Trump’s lead over the flailing Joe Biden grows larger by the day. Real Clear Politics has Trump ahead of the president nationally by three points, just at the edge of the margin of error. But the real political risk truth is far clearer. The dirty secret of American political analysis is that national races are not that difficult to call: fully 40 of the 50 states predictably vote for one party or the other.
For example, California, New York, and Massachusetts are safe Democratic states, just as now Florida, Texas, and the much of the deep South reliably vote Republican. In practice, less than ten swing states are actually in play for both parties.
As in the 2020 election, the six key swing states to watch are Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia. I would go so far as to say it is almost a certainty that whichever candidate wins a majority of the six will almost certainly claim the presidency.
Presently, the swing state contest is not even close. According to Real Clear Politics’s aggregate of polls, Trump is besting Biden by seven points in Georgia, and five points in Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada, with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin too close to call. As we vote by state for president, the national polling averages mean little. Drilling down to the swing states, it is crystal clear that if the election were held today, Trump would win a clear victory over Biden, whatever the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the BBC.
Peak Biden
So, the analytics of the 2024 race are clear. The key question, as ever, in political risk terms is ‘why?’ and ‘will these trends continue?’ I would go so far as to say that not only is it highly probable that they will, but that we likely have already reached Peak Biden.
For the President’s problems are likely to either stay the same or get worse. It has been amusing for me to watch Democratic cheerleaders (that is, most of the media) seem angrily puzzled as to why the White House seems to get no credit for ‘Bidenomics’ – characterised by its massive spending binge – or for the fact that formerly rampant inflation has slowed.
In a clear–eyed manner, I can explain this phenomenon in one word: ‘prices’ – the aggregate rate of inflation. Everyone in America remembers pre-Covid prices, when the inflation genie was still in the bottle that Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker corked two generations ago.
Every American knows that, to placate his leftist progressive base, Biden went on a spending spree that would do a drunken sailor proud. And everyone knows that the result – the inflation genie escaping the bottle – has led to a cost-of-living crisis. In other words, even if inflation’s rise has slowed, you do not reward an arsonist for putting out the fire he started.
Nor is he going to get any younger. Biden’s increasingly painful public performances are familiar to anyone who has dealt with aging parents. They have good days and bad days, but the steady countenance and speed of mind of their younger days simply does not return. This is not ageism; it is merely the way of the world.
And the present world is far too dangerous to have at the head of its most powerful country a man who is tightly scripted within an inch of his life, and sometimes does not seem to know what he is doing. A New York Times poll last November made the country’s feelings clear. A decisive 71 percent of voters, including even 54 percent of Democrats, feel Biden is ‘too old’ to be president. This state of affairs will either stay the same or it may get worse.
Finally, it is beyond doubt that the world situation itself works against the White House. It is not a coincidence that the President’s fall from grace in the polls coincided with the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the basic competence of his Wilsonian foreign policy was called into question.
A stalemated war in Ukraine, which Kyiv is increasingly losing, the real fear that a regional war could erupt in the Middle East with the explosion of the present Gaza conflict, and the low-level but momentous threat Beijing poses to Taiwan have unnerved Americans, who give the President poor marks for a foreign policy which seems reactive, slow, and, worst of all, signaling weakness to America’s competitors in the guise of Russia, Iran, and China. While the laundry list of intractable foreign problems grows, the White House seems hapless in the face of the shifting tide of history.
Crucially, none of these basic political problems will dramatically improve over the coming year, while all three could become a great deal worse. America’s heretofore miraculous economic recovery from Covid could still morph into a mild recession, and the prices fiasco will simply not be erased from Americans’ minds. Biden will not grow any younger or sprightlier in the coming days, and a damning public ‘senior moment’ could still sink him. Nor are the crises in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Taiwan Strait about to be solved. No, the dire political performance of the moment is ‘peak Biden.’ Things could well get worse.
‘But what of Trump?’ you ask. What of the coming intemperate outbursts, late night tweets, all the drama to come, as well as the 91 indictments to be weathered?
Frankly, after almost a decade of the man, all of this is old news. This time around, his campaign team has run a remarkably disciplined race. his Jacksonian base loves his intransigence, and every one of those 91 indictments was signed off by a Democratic-leaning prosecutor. The political persecution of Trump is an article of faith for the GOP base (including me), and the Democrats’ lawfare has made even independent voters question their motivations, so blatant has their bias (and yes, hatred) become.
The simple fact is that while Biden’s weaknesses are likely to get worse, Trump’s detriments have already been baked into the cake. For these many reasons, look for Trump to regain the presidency.
Dr John C Hulsman is the Founder and Managing Partner of John C Hulsman Enterprises, a global political risk firm. His latest book, The Last Best Hope: A History of American Realism, can now be ordered at Amazon.
In early October 2023, in our usual City AM column, my political risk firm made a fateful call; Donald Trump would become the first president since Grover Cleveland to regain the presidency after relinquishing it. As ever, when one is bold and swimming against the tide of conventional wisdom, our prediction (despite the fact that our political risk call record is the best in the business) was belittled by the almost-always-wrong mainstream media.
“Too early”, “Highly unlikely”, “Controversial for its own sake” were among the nicer things said by a group of commentators who seem habitually unable to separate what they would like to happen in the world from what actually will happen in the world.
It is no secret to Americans that the British mainstream media is entirely in the tank for Biden – not understanding how Americans can countenance the return of Trump the barbarian, when the alternative of the Joe Biden and his nice Wilsonian foreign policy is ever so much better. To put it mildly, I’d argue this extreme form of wishcasting has dulled the critical senses of the lion’s share of the British establishment.
But no one is laughing now.
And then there was one
Putting this as dispassionately as possible, nothing has politically happened since last October to change the theory of my firm’s case for Trump’s coming victory. Rather, recent events have made us ever more confident of our derided political risk call.
Here are the facts. I am writing this article in the immediate aftermath of the New Hampshire primary. Real Clear Politics, the pre-eminent site for understanding the nuts and bolts of US politics, has Trump decisively ahead of Nikki Haley, his flailing challenger (and darling of the mainstream media) 55-43 per cent, with 88 percent of the vote counted.
Even more telling, it will never get better than New Hampshire for Haley, where almost all the idiosyncratic conditions of the state work in her favour: it is more moderate than the national Republican base; it has an open primary (so independent voters and even Democrats can easily cast ballots in the GOP primary, which, at first glance, amounts to a staggering 45 percent of Haley’s total vote count); and its popular, anti-Trump Republican Governor, Chris Sununu, worked hard for Haley.
While all of these unique advantages in New Hampshire went Haley’s way, she still decisively lost – following on from Trump’s tidal-wave triumph in the Iowa caucus by a staggering 30 points.
The next primary contest, South Carolina, will not be so kind to her. It is a closed primary (only long-time Republicans can vote), the state’s GOP establishment is firmly behind the ex-president, and the political culture of the state skews more conservative than the Republican national average.
In other words, despite Haley being its ex-governor, South Carolina is a Trumpist stronghold. Presently, polling has the ex-president miles ahead there, up by an average of a whopping 30 points. The inconvenient truth is that Haley has simply run out of road. However much the mainstream media may wish it were not so, the 2024 Republican presidential primary is over, almost before it began.
The sinking ship that is Biden
Further, Trump’s lead over the flailing Joe Biden grows larger by the day. Real Clear Politics has Trump ahead of the president nationally by three points, just at the edge of the margin of error. But the real political risk truth is far clearer. The dirty secret of American political analysis is that national races are not that difficult to call: fully 40 of the 50 states predictably vote for one party or the other.
For example, California, New York, and Massachusetts are safe Democratic states, just as now Florida, Texas, and the much of the deep South reliably vote Republican. In practice, less than ten swing states are actually in play for both parties.
As in the 2020 election, the six key swing states to watch are Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia. I would go so far as to say it is almost a certainty that whichever candidate wins a majority of the six will almost certainly claim the presidency.
Presently, the swing state contest is not even close. According to Real Clear Politics’s aggregate of polls, Trump is besting Biden by seven points in Georgia, and five points in Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada, with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin too close to call. As we vote by state for president, the national polling averages mean little. Drilling down to the swing states, it is crystal clear that if the election were held today, Trump would win a clear victory over Biden, whatever the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the BBC.
Peak Biden
So, the analytics of the 2024 race are clear. The key question, as ever, in political risk terms is ‘why?’ and ‘will these trends continue?’ I would go so far as to say that not only is it highly probable that they will, but that we likely have already reached Peak Biden.
For the President’s problems are likely to either stay the same or get worse. It has been amusing for me to watch Democratic cheerleaders (that is, most of the media) seem angrily puzzled as to why the White House seems to get no credit for ‘Bidenomics’ – characterised by its massive spending binge – or for the fact that formerly rampant inflation has slowed.
In a clear–eyed manner, I can explain this phenomenon in one word: ‘prices’ – the aggregate rate of inflation. Everyone in America remembers pre-Covid prices, when the inflation genie was still in the bottle that Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker corked two generations ago.
Every American knows that, to placate his leftist progressive base, Biden went on a spending spree that would do a drunken sailor proud. And everyone knows that the result – the inflation genie escaping the bottle – has led to a cost-of-living crisis. In other words, even if inflation’s rise has slowed, you do not reward an arsonist for putting out the fire he started.
Nor is he going to get any younger. Biden’s increasingly painful public performances are familiar to anyone who has dealt with aging parents. They have good days and bad days, but the steady countenance and speed of mind of their younger days simply does not return. This is not ageism; it is merely the way of the world.
And the present world is far too dangerous to have at the head of its most powerful country a man who is tightly scripted within an inch of his life, and sometimes does not seem to know what he is doing. A New York Times poll last November made the country’s feelings clear. A decisive 71 percent of voters, including even 54 percent of Democrats, feel Biden is ‘too old’ to be president. This state of affairs will either stay the same or it may get worse.
Finally, it is beyond doubt that the world situation itself works against the White House. It is not a coincidence that the President’s fall from grace in the polls coincided with the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the basic competence of his Wilsonian foreign policy was called into question.
A stalemated war in Ukraine, which Kyiv is increasingly losing, the real fear that a regional war could erupt in the Middle East with the explosion of the present Gaza conflict, and the low-level but momentous threat Beijing poses to Taiwan have unnerved Americans, who give the President poor marks for a foreign policy which seems reactive, slow, and, worst of all, signaling weakness to America’s competitors in the guise of Russia, Iran, and China. While the laundry list of intractable foreign problems grows, the White House seems hapless in the face of the shifting tide of history.
Crucially, none of these basic political problems will dramatically improve over the coming year, while all three could become a great deal worse. America’s heretofore miraculous economic recovery from Covid could still morph into a mild recession, and the prices fiasco will simply not be erased from Americans’ minds. Biden will not grow any younger or sprightlier in the coming days, and a damning public ‘senior moment’ could still sink him. Nor are the crises in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Taiwan Strait about to be solved. No, the dire political performance of the moment is ‘peak Biden.’ Things could well get worse.
‘But what of Trump?’ you ask. What of the coming intemperate outbursts, late night tweets, all the drama to come, as well as the 91 indictments to be weathered?
Frankly, after almost a decade of the man, all of this is old news. This time around, his campaign team has run a remarkably disciplined race. his Jacksonian base loves his intransigence, and every one of those 91 indictments was signed off by a Democratic-leaning prosecutor. The political persecution of Trump is an article of faith for the GOP base (including me), and the Democrats’ lawfare has made even independent voters question their motivations, so blatant has their bias (and yes, hatred) become.
The simple fact is that while Biden’s weaknesses are likely to get worse, Trump’s detriments have already been baked into the cake. For these many reasons, look for Trump to regain the presidency.