Playing The Election Odds
By Ed Kociela
When it comes to prognostication, I like to let the experts handle the heavy lifting.
Our personal preferences often are tainted by our emotions, our hopes, our dreams. None of that comes into play when the big boys who set the odds get down to business. They do the math dispassionately, removing their personal feelings from the process as they sift through piles and piles of information.
Already, the oddsmakers are shuffling the paper and taking a hard look at the 2024 presidential campaign.
No real surprises there. We’ve got incumbent Joe Biden and Donald Trump at the top of the heap. There are a couple of fresher faces in the mix with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California getting more than a passing glance from the bookmakers.
But, with more than two years to go, the only thing certain is that the hyperbole is bubbling.
The favorability polls do neither Biden nor Trump any favors, a position both deserve. I mean you would have to be severely in your cups to pour money, energy, or time into either one, particularly at this point. And, with so much yard in front of the 2024 election, it would be a fool’s bet to hitch to anybody’s wagon.
Although I would be remiss to not mention how Biden inherited a crashing economy, a devastating pandemic, and malaise created by a cardboard cutout president, he is the president and, unfortunately for him, the buck stops at his desk at this point despite his best intentions and efforts. Despite his protestations about Roe v. Wade, he has yet to unleash the talents of his female vice president, who seems on a rather tight leash. And, he has been a miserable failure with the Congress, whose halls he once stalked.
Make no mistake, I like Biden. He seems a warm, bright, likeable fellow whose turn at the wheel would have probably been better served about a dozen years ago. And, although he can legitimately be regarded as a victim of horrible circumstances, he did know what he was getting into when he jumped into the race. He will not take a seat alongside Abraham Lincoln in the history books, instead, he will most likely join Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford at the kids’ table.
On the other side of that coin we have the former president who, quite frankly, I had hoped would have faded into the background by this point. His braying got old early during his first campaign when he turned off anybody with a soul as a result of his lack of morality and ethics. He was a laughingstock of the world with a tragic lack of depth and context that knocked down the nation’s standing to new low levels. He is the embodiment of the Ugly American, the crooked politician, the guy who runs the three-card Monte game down on the corner. And, make no mistake, I am not a fan of this flim-flam man who is nothing more than a rube in a Walmart suit stained by greasy Big Mac drenched fingers and fries.
Like many, I am hopeful a third run for the Oval Office by this guy gets thwarted by the Department of Justice, that he is prevented from running for any office anywhere at any time. I really do not care if he wears prison orange. In fact, it would probably be best, in the interest of the nation, for him to receive a pardon so as not to dig a deeper chasm between voters and unleash the wannabe militia types ready to put a three-pound squeeze on a two-pound trigger.
Democracy, you see, is in critical condition in the ICU, hanging on with a weak pulse and failing respiration. We must do something before hospice care is called in to render palliative care to the great American experiment in democracy.
And, yes, it is that real.
I can’t, unfortunately, easily put together a decent list of qualified and good candidates from either side. They all seem to be rather pedestrian and we can be assured that by the time the presidential primaries roll around, in all their pedantic predictability, the field will have turned over at least once.
We might have a president who resigns before the end of his term.
We might have indictments against a former president.
We might have some wunderkind emerge from the shadows and engage us all in meaningful dialog.
Most likely, we will, alas, be under the influence of yet more old men with outdated ideas, narrow vision, and allegiance to special interests and lobbyists who do not have the nation’s best interests at heart.
There is time, of course, and with time there is hope, a hope that somehow, somebody will emerge with, what Tom Wolfe called “the right stuff.”
It is fitting, of course, to consider this all, particularly on the day following Independence Day when we are all Yankee Doodled out and stuffed with hot dogs and faux national pride.
But, it is pretty difficult to foster up even faux national pride with an ineffectual White House, diseased Congress, rogue Supreme Court, and a public growing more and more familiar with the smell of gunpowder. There is nobody on either side willing to stem those tides, which is why we wallow in hatred, racism, intolerance, and greed.
We need a hero and we need one now, a person of virtue and valor; a person of understanding and wisdom; a person unfettered.
Will this Diogenesian search be fruitful?
Only if we have the heart to undertake the task.
Until then?
I’ll have to go along with the bookies and hope that the whole damned thing doesn’t explode in our faces.
By the way, the touts are telling me that you can be pretty sure the odds are slipping more and more into that direction, so wager carefully.
There’s a reason why the oddsmakers have such full wallets.
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