Steve Corbin is Professor Emeritus of Marketing, University of Northern Iowa
Here we are – one year before the Nov. 5, 2024 election – and a recent Pew Research Center poll reveals 65% of Americans say they always or often feel exhausted when thinking about politics. Fifty-five percent feel angry, let alone disgusted.
Furthermore, 63% of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the candidates who have emerged so far. Most Americans are critical of the role of money in politics and the inter- and intra-party campaign fighting that starts way too early in the election cycle.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had the same pre-election campaign starting date as Canada (11 weeks), Mexico (90 days) or France (2 weeks)? Tradition held that people seeking any office didn’t start their campaign until the year of the election. Jimmy Carter (D-GA) broke the accepted protocol when he announced his 1976 presidential candidacy on Dec. 12, 1974.
Pundits are already making predictions about the presidential, Senate and House outcome. Let’s preview their pre-election analysis.
Presidential Election
The non-partisan and independent `Road to 270’ 2024 presidential election map claims the Democratic Party has already sewed up 241 electoral college votes, needing only 29 more to reach the 270 magical number. The GOP is touted to have 235 votes in their pocket, 35 electoral votes short of winning the presidency.
The Democrats can remain in the White House if states in just one of these six different scenarios `vote blue’: 1) Pennsylvania and Georgia, 2) Pennsylvania and Arizona, 3) Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, 4) Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, 5) Georgia, Arizona and Nevada and 6) Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada.
For the Republican Party, they only have five `vote red’ winning combinations to flip the presidency back to GOP-controlled: 1) Pennsylvania and Georgia, 2) Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin, 3) Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada, 4) Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada and 5) Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.
Registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will be inundated with the D and R presidential candidates’ time, money and respective disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, door-to-door persuasion, media saturation and political campaign energy. But, voters in the other 45 states are not off-the-hook.
Senate Election
Currently the Democrats’ Senate caucus is composed of 51 members (48 Democrats and three independents). Forty-nine members make up the GOP’s Senate. Of the 33 Senate races in 2024, 20 Democrats, ten Republicans and three independents are seeking re-election.
The independent and non-partisan Cook Political Report (CPR) feels there are three major “toss-up” elections: 1) Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema (independent), 2) Ohio’s Sherrod Brown (D) and 3) West Virginia’s Joe Manchin (D). Legal issues may endanger Bob Menendez (D-NJ) returning to D.C. for his fourth term-of-office.
Don’t be surprised by the Democrats losing control of the Senate.
House of Representatives Election
Of the 435 House elections in 2024, CPR thinks the Democrats and Republicans will each win over 200 seats, but there are 24 races classified as deadlocked.
Ten currently-controlled Democrat seats in the nail-biter category include: Colorado’s Yadira Caraveo; Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin; North Carolina’s Kathy Manning, Wiley Nickel and Jeff Jackson; New Mexico’s Gabe Vasquez; Ohio’s Emilia Sykes; Pennsylvania’s Susan Wild and Matt Cartwright; and Washington’s Marie Perez.
Fourteen Republicans are in cliff-hanger races: Arizona’s David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani; California’s John Duarte, Mike Garcia and Ken Calvert; Colorado’s Lauren Boebert; Florida’s John Rutherford; Louisiana’s Julia Letlow; New Jersey’s Thomas Kean; New York’s Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler, Marcus Molinaro and Brandon Williams; and Oregon’s Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
Legal woes may affect George Santos’ (R-NY) congressional longevity. Also, Alabama’s new congressional map puts Barry Moore (R) and Jerry Carl’s (R) re-election in jeopardy.
Don’t be shocked if the Republicans lose control of the House.
If we’re already exhausted, disgusted, angry and dissatisfied, imagine how we’ll feel come Nov. 5, 2024, especially if there’s a claim of a rigged election – despite multitude of evidence otherwise -- that we’ll continue to hear about until 2028?
Voters may well be in need of a psycho-therapeutic program to regain control of their lives; check local listings for an anger management class nearby.
Sources
- (270 To Win news release) 2024 presidential election interactive map, https://www.270towin.com, Oct. 3, 2023
- (Pew Research Center news release) Americans’ dismal view of the nation’s politics, Pew Research Center, Sept. 19, 2023
- Amy Walter, 2024 CPR Senate race ratings, The Cook Political Report, Sept. 26, 2023
- Amy Walter, 2024 CPR House race ratings, The Cook Political Report, Sept. 27, 2023
- Amy Walter, 2024 CPR Electoral College ratings, The Cook Political Report, July 27, 2023
- Danielle Kurtzleben, Why are U.S. elections so much longer than other countries?, National Public Radio, Oct. 21, 2015
- Joe Lieberman, No Labels won’t help Trump, The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 13, 2023
- Alexander Willis and Mary Sell, Supreme Court ruling means special session on new map, potential shake-up in 2024, Alabama Daily News, June 8, 2023
- Fredreka Schouten, Redistricting fights in these 10 states could determine which party controls the US House, CNN Politics, Oct. 25, 2023
Disclosure: Steve is a non-paid freelance opinion editor and guest columnist contributor (circa 2013) to 172 newspapers in 32 states who receives no remuneration, funding or endorsement from any for-profit business, not-for-profit organization, political action committee or political party.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.