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What this week’s vote and GOP debate mean for 2024
In a world obsessed with reading polls like prophecies, many are looking at Tuesday’s election results for evidence of where Americans really stand.
Despite Joe Biden’s lagging popularity, Democrats scored key victories on Election Day. They maintained control of the governorship in predominantly red Kentucky, made an impressive showing in Mississippi, and enshrined a constitutional right to abortion in Ohio. The abortion issue also helped Dems flip the House of Delegates and maintain control of the State Senate in Virginia.
So was Tuesday a harbinger of 2024?
Not if the five Republicans who took to the debate stage in Florida last night – former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott – have any say. With Donald Trump, who is 48 points ahead of second place DeSantis, refusing to take part, the debates are more of a pep rally for the Republican base than a competition at this point. But they reveal what the GOP thinks are winning and losing issues for the party.
Support for Israel was the biggest topic of debate, with candidates competing to display more support for American Jews domestically and Israel’s military abroad. National security followed close behind, and there was plenty of squabbling over who would be toughest on China. Meanwhile, the abortion issue got buried – it didn’t get mentioned until an hour and a half in.
But beyond the issues, Tuesday’s election results highlighted emerging threats to the GOP …
The power of the moderate Democrat: With the Republican Party reeling from the PR nightmare of taking three weeks to appoint a House speaker and the hard-right’s growing influence, many moderate Republicans and traditional conservatives are showing more of a willingness to shop around on the ballot.
Incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear’s win in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race and Democrat Brandon Presley’s narrow loss in his bid for the governor’s mansion in Mississippi are testaments to the power of the moderate Dem in suburbs, swing states, and even predominantly red ones like the Magnolia State, where Presley earned 47% of the vote.
Both candidates are being lauded as emerging political leaders because they can build coalitions, a strategy Democratic candidates running in inhospitable districts – and national elections – should heed. Beshear is one of the most popular governors in the country, despite running a state that voted for Trump by 26 points. His campaign leaned into the abortion issue and Medicaid access, rejected partisanship, and focused on jobs and the economy, gaining him cross-party appeal.
Abortion could help Biden’s popularity problem: We have seen what happened in Ohio before, and we're not talking about last August when Issue 1 – which concerned adding the right to abortion to the constitution – doubled turnout. Back in 2004, former President George W. Bush looked weak in the polls, so the GOP proposed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in 11 key states, increasing socially conservative turnout in tight races among voters who might have otherwise stayed home.
Now, Democrats are taking a leaf from Bush’s playbook. At least 11 states are on track to have abortion-related measures on their ballots in 2024, including swing states like Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania. The election will almost certainly be close, and getting abortion on the ballot could overcome Biden’s lukewarm popularity and get Democratic and moderate voters to the polls in the states where he needs them the most.
In Ohio, 18 counties that voted for Trump in 2020 voted in favor of Issue 1. The same goes for 67 other Trump-won counties in the six states where abortion has been on the ballot since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
In previous debates, only former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley recognized that abortion restriction was a liability for the GOP. But following Tuesday’s election, DeSantis softened his stance, while Haley continued calling for compromise, and Vivek Ramaswamy said “male responsibility” and paternity tests were the answer.
The moral of the story: Even with Biden’s approval rating in the tank, this week's election showed how making a few key counties a little less red can be decisive – a strategy Democrats will no doubt be hoping to repeat in November 2024. Meanwhile, Republican candidates will prepare for the next debate on Dec. 6 in the hopes of wooing voters ahead of the first primary in Iowa on Jan. 15.Ian Explains: The media's trust problem
It’s getting harder and harder to tell fact from fiction. Trust in media is at an all-time low. At the same time, partisanship is skyrocketing, and generative AI is challenging the very idea of truth.
This week on Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down how the media landscape has changed since the early days of live TV and why the 2024 US presidential election will be a major test of our ability to detect and prevent misinformation from spreading online.
Cable news has come a long way from the 1960 presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, where Nixon famously showed up sweaty and pale, while John F. Kennedy showed up tanned and camera-ready. People who listened on the radio thought Nixon won the debate. But on TV, the advantage went to Kennedy and the polls quickly turned in his favor. It was the first-ever live TV debate and forever changed how media and politics interact with each other.
In the 60-plus years since, it’s only gotten harder to separate the message from the medium. A 24/7 cable cycle has turned the idea of news into mass entertainment. And hyper-partisan talk radio shows, thousands of political podcasts, and social media’s endless doom-scroll have created a perfect incubator for information––and disinformation––overload.
2024 will be the first US presidential election in the age of generative AI. The risk of spreading false or misleading information to voters is enormous. Despite calls from industry watchdogs and tech experts, US lawmakers have yet to pass any real guardrails for AI technology. And given the rapid pace of development, by the time the election rolls around next year, it will be even harder to tell an AI-generated video or image from the real thing.
Whether regulators and lawmakers can come up with an effective way to identify and combat AI misinformation is anyone’s guess, but one thing is clear: the stakes are incredibly high. And the future of US democracy may depend on it.
Watch Ian Explains for the full breakdown, and for more on the US, watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
The pandemic presidential debate we deserve
Finally, someone who can actually control Trump and Biden on the debate stage.
Watch more PUPPET REGIME!
Quick Take: Trump has COVID
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody, Ian Bremmer here. And it's completely insane. I think we can say that now. The news cycle is well beyond anything that we've ever experienced in our lives. I mean, let's face it just in the last week we had a massive New York Times data dump showing that President Trump had paid no taxes for 10 years and $750 in 2016 and 2017, which is a weird number, $750. Where do you come up with $750. Kind of just kind of arbitrary, right? It's like, it's less than a puppy, but more than if you were buying it rescue, I don't know. We'll dig into that. And then of course the worst debate, presidential debate of our life times without any question, some 71 times that President Trump actually interrupted the moderator, another 30 by Biden, all in all over one interruption per minute, it was useless. There was no information.
My view is we shouldn't bother to have any more presidential debates in this cycle. And you know what? I might get that wish because today we can throw out all of that other news, who's paying attention to it. President Trump and the First Lady, Melania Trump have tested positive for coronavirus. My God, who wanted to wake up to that, some people were still awake apparently, 1:00 AM this morning, finding that out on the East coast, you folks on the West coast, I just feel bad. And the rest of the world, I'm sorry that we continue to be airing our dirty linens all over the place, but this is a mess. And it's a mess because of course the election is coming up in just over a month. And that means we're going to have this coronavirus story around the President and everyone in his inner circle getting tested and all the rest.
That's just going to dominate the news for the coming weeks. What's the implications of that? Well, first of all, beyond the election, I think it is important to recognize that the three leaders of the G20 who have taken coronavirus the least seriously, who have been least willing to lead with science and expertise, are now the three leaders of the G20 that have also come down with coronavirus themselves. I am talking about British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. I'm talking about Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. And of course I'm talking about my own President, Donald Trump. That tells you something. It tells you that coronavirus is a very serious disease and it should be taken as such. Jair Bolsonaro had only mild symptoms, came back pretty quickly. His popularity did not really take much of a dump at all. Especially as coronavirus numbers are now going down in Brazil.
In the United Kingdom, Johnson, Prime Minister Johnson could have died. He was in the ICU, it was much more serious. There was a rally around him and greater support as people were concerned about his own health and safety. Since then, the UK has done worse in terms of coronavirus, some of the worst response in all of Europe still, and his approval ratings have gone down. In the United States, I suspect it'll be in between. In between, in part because President Trump's approval ratings are low, but incredibly sticky. He's got his base. They don't oppose him for any reason. And I don't think they're going to now. Also, I mean, I certainly don't believe, I certainly hope that Trump is going to recover and recover quickly. Keep in mind, he's 74 years old. He is obese. That is a preexisting condition, but otherwise doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, has the best healthcare in the world. The percentages will tell you, he's unlikely to need to be hospitalized.
He's very unlikely to need to go to the ICU, but it's a real possibility. And it's something we have to take very seriously indeed. Perhaps more importantly for the country, we are now going to be talking about coronavirus as the top issue for the next four weeks. That's a big deal because President Trump hasn't wanted to talk about coronavirus. He doesn't do as well talking about it. He's not seen to have handled it very well. He was well behind Biden in coronavirus. He's considerably better than Biden in who handles the US economy better. So if he's able to focus on the economy and to a degree on law and order issues, that benefits Trump. If we're talking about coronavirus and particularly we're talking about his coronavirus and Melania's coronavirus. And people around him who have coronavirus, well, that's obviously going to do worse for him.
So I had believed that Trump's approval, likelihood of winning the presidency was about a 35%, Biden, 65%. And I thought it would get closer as we got closer to the election because the economy was picking up and because coronavirus numbers going down. I don't believe that's going to get closer now because of this massive piece of news in Trump and the First Lady having coronavirus. Even if he gets better quickly and only has mild symptoms, we're still talking about a President that is going to be in isolation for 10 days to 14 days minimum. Someone who will not be able to go on the campaign trail the way he was, and it could be worse than that. So you'd certainly be handicapping the race more strongly in Biden's favor. At this point, maybe 70%, maybe a little bit better.
Having said that, Trump's willingness to contest the outcome continues to be a hundred percent. That means the Trump army watching the polls. It means trying to throw out ballots. It means only one polling place per County for drop-off ballots in Texas, which is astonishing and makes it harder for people to physically vote. I mean, just lots of efforts to ensure that the balloting process is in favor of Trump and the Republicans, and can be contested in favor of Trump and the Republicans. Given that, Biden is going to be contesting as well, if it turns out they're behind. I still think that it may well be that the election itself is more of a landslide. It's possible. I'm not sure I would say it's likely, but I still think after election day, the most likely outcome is it's contested. It goes legal. And this is a really ugly process for quite some time, weeks, maybe months.
So, we're heading into the thick of it. At the very least, I can say at least the next presidential debate, probably not going to happen. And given the fact that we learned absolutely nothing and on balance, it just damaged the country, I guess I'm fine with that. But it's going to be a lot of coronavirus all the time. Final thing I would say is it is by far the biggest story of the year, not the US economy, certainly not issues of social instability in individual cities. It's not Antifa. It's not the proud boys. It's not any of that. It is the worst crisis of our lifetimes, a pandemic and the economic impact of that pandemic, the health impact of the pandemic. That's what we should be talking about globally. It's what we should be talking about in the United States, in the US election. And that's what we will be talking about. And that regard, it's something that we should be grateful for. That's it for me. I'll talk to you all very soon.