Haley faces tough questions from voters — and a kid — in New Hampshire after Civil War comments controversy - CNN

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CNN  — 

The honeymoon period of Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign is over.

After enjoying weeks as a rising star, the former South Carolina governor is facing a heightened level of scrutiny not just from her GOP rivals, but from voters.

That new dynamic was on display during a swing through New Hampshire where Haley stumbled over a question on the cause of the Civil War by failing to mention slavery and was accused of being a flip flopper by a nine-year-old child over her unwillingness to criticize former President Donald Trump.

Haley has shown an ability to appeal to independents and moderates by eschewing culture war fights, calling for consensus on issues such as abortion and attempting to avoid controversy. While those qualities have made her an appealing general election candidate, they have led to unforced errors, embarrassing clarifications and tense exchanges with voters ahead of the official start of the primary next month.

It has also undercut one of the central arguments of her campaign, that she’s someone who is willing to give voice to things others are afraid to say.

“There’s no flip flopping,” she told reporters during a gaggle Thursday after she clarified that “of course” she believed the Civil War was about slavery. “I’ve never been a flip flopper. What I do is I speak hard truths, whether people like it or not, and I let the chips fall where they may.”

During one exchange in Lebanon, New Hampshire, a voter said she was “coming up short” on “moral clarity” compared to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

“This is a chance to redeem yourself after last night’s slavery thing,” the voter said. “Would you be able to say categorically that you won’t accept being Trump’s vice president? The reason, I got this ballot here and I’m trying to figure out if I’m going to mark you or Chris Christie.”

Haley stopped short of saying she would never accept the vice presidential slot from Trump, but repeated her stance that she “doesn’t play for second.”

The difficult voter questions Haley has faced this week appear to be drawn from either her own history or criticisms from opponents. She’s also facing more questions about whether she would pardon Trump or be his vice president, spurred by comments from Christie, DeSantis and others.

“When you try to be everything to everyone, you’re nothing to anyone,” biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has faced his own criticisms for shifting policy stances, wrote in a social media post Thursday. “A perfect puppet for the corrupt establishment.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described Haley’s initial remarks on the root causes of the Civil War as an “incomprehensible word salad” and said it showed his opponent isn’t “ready for primetime.”

“The minute that she faces any kind of scrutiny, she tends to cave,” he told reporters Thursday.

Democrats have also seized on Haley’s comments. President Joe Biden wrote in a succinct social media post that the Civil War was about slavery. Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison, the former chair of the South Carolina Democratic party, said he was “disgusted” but the comments, adding that “this is what Black South Carolinians have come to expect from Nikki Haley, and now the rest of the country is getting to see her for who she is.”

The Haley campaign has attributed the extra scrutiny – from Republicans and allies of Joe Biden – as a natural result of rising in the polls.

“Everyone from Joe Biden to Donald Trump is attacking Nikki for one reason: she’s the only candidate with momentum,” Haley campaign spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement. “For months, Nikki has been talking to every voter and taking every question, and she’ll continue to do that.”

A recent CBS/YouGov poll found that 44% of likely New Hampshire primary voters support Trump, followed by 29% who back Haley, 11% who back DeSantis and 10% who would vote for former Christie. Last week, MAGA Inc., the super PAC supporting Trump, rolled out its first ad against Haley, focused on her stance on her state’s gas tax as governor.

A Wall Street Journal national poll from earlier this month found Haley running ahead of Biden by 17 points, 51% to 34%, while Trump narrowly edged Biden by just 4 points.

It’s not clear how Republican primary voters will react, if at all. Teresa Frey, a voter who saw Haley in Plymouth, New Hampshire, Thursday said she thought the Civil War question was “random.”

“I heard that and I thought why was that question even asked,” she said. “Was it somebody trying to get her off her game? I know she … I feel like she wasn’t obviously prepared for that.”

Christie, who has faced calls to drop out to consolidate the non-Trump vote, dedicated several minutes of his Epping, New Hampshire, town hall Thursday to Haley’s stumbles.

Christie said Haley is “unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth,” pointing to her responses to questions of whether Trump is fit to be president.

Christie argued if Haley is unwilling to say slavery caused the Civil War “because she’s afraid of offending constituents in some other parts of the country” and unwilling to say Trump is unfit for office because she “harbors in the back of her mind being Vice President or being Secretary of State,” then she will not be able to stand up to foreign adversaries, members of the other party or “forces in our own party, who want to drag this country deeper and deeper into anger and division and exhaustion.”

The Civil War debacle is the latest example of her rivals pouncing on one of her stumbles. DeSantis and others piled on Haley last month after she called for ID verification on social media platforms, which would have eliminated anonymous accounts. Haley soon walked the policy back.

On abortion, Haley has said throughout the campaign that Republicans must reach a “consensus” policy, and warned that her party must be honest with voters about how difficult it would be to get 60 Senate votes to pass a federal ban. But during an event in Iowa last month she said she would have signed a six-week abortion ban in South Carolina if she were still governor. Christie accused her of saying one thing in Iowa and another to Granite State voters.

The question on the Civil War, to which Haley initially responded by saying the war was about “freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do” highlighted her record defending the Confederate flag and states’ right to secede from the US while campaigning for governor in 2010. In the past she has called the Civil War a battle between “change” and “tradition.”

On race specifically, Haley has tried to find the middle ground between acknowledging racism in her state – and, as her profile grew, the country — and painting America as having moved past its dark history. On the campaign trail she emphasizes that America “isn’t racist” but is “blessed.”

Haley, who served as South Carolina governor from 2011-2017, is well known for her role in calling for the Confederate flag to be removed from the statehouse grounds in the days after a white supremacist killed nine worshippers at a church in Charleston in 2015. But that decision came after she defended the flag during her 2014 gubernatorial bid.

She referenced that moment as she cleaned up her answer on the cause of the Civil War.

“Of course the first thing I should have said was slavery. I completely agree with that. When you grow up in the South, slavery’s a given,” Haley told Fox News on Saturday.

“When you think of the Civil War, you know it was about slavery. That’s never been in question, and, you know, you look at the fact that I’m a Southern governor who actually asked and got the Confederate flag to come down in front of the statehouse.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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Why Donald Trump should be hoping for high voter turnout - CNN

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CNN  — 

Republican Donald Trump is in a better position against Democrat Joe Biden now than at any point during the entire 2020 campaign. The former president leads the current president in more than his fair share of polls of registered voters, including in a number of key swing states.

But it seems plausible that these initial polls may be underestimating Biden’s position. In a change from the usual expected dynamic in which Democrats are supposed to do better with higher turnout, Biden may benefit when pollsters look at likely voters instead of all registered voters.

Put another way, Trump may do better in an election in which turnout is higher.

Take a look at a New York Times/Siena College poll released earlier this month. Trump had a 2 point advantage among registered voters. Biden was up 2 points among likely voters. Both of those are within the margin of error, but it’s a notable 4 point shift towards Biden when comparing likely and registered voters.

Now, I don’t want to make too much of a deal out of one poll, but another pollster found something analogous. An average of the last two Marquette University Law School surveys showed the former president up by 4 points among registered voters, while Biden and Trump were tied among likely voters. As with the Times data, this is a 4 point shift toward Biden when going from registered to likely voters.

An October Grinnell College poll conducted by Ann Selzer similarly found that 2020 Biden voters were 4 points more likely to say they would definitely vote than 2020 Trump voters.

This would be quite the shift from what had historically been seen. Normally, Republicans gain about 2 points when going from registered to likely voters.

It is possible, of course, that the recent poll data is just statistical noise.

The 2024 polling does make sense, though, in the context of both recent elections as well as the coalitions being put together by Biden and Trump ahead of a potential rematch.

Democrats have liked to point out that they’ve done really well in special elections over the last year. Indeed, Democratic candidates are running about 4 points better in special state legislative and federal elections in 2023 than Biden did in those same districts in 2020.

Those special elections, however, usually have lower turnout. Contrast those special elections with the regularly scheduled Virginia state legislature elections held earlier in November. Control of both the state’s lower (House of Delegates) and upper house (state senate) was at stake. And while Democrats won control of both, Virginia is also a state Biden won by 10 points in 2020.

Democrats beat Republicans by less than 2 points in the popular vote for both houses. That’s more than 8 points worse than Biden did in Virginia in 2020.

Likewise, Republicans won the House popular vote by about 3 points in the 2022 midterms. A 6 point shift from the House popular vote in 2020, when Democrats won it by about 3 points. Midterms have much higher turnout than special elections.

So why are Republicans doing better when turnout is higher?

From an issues standpoint, a lot of Democrats are still very upset about the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. It’s from that point forward that we really saw Democrats outperforming in special elections.

This could be why there’s evidence to suggest that Biden voters are more likely to turn out than Trump voters in today’s era, even when you take into account demographics.

Speaking of demographics, we’ve seen major changes in political alliances over the last few years.

The most obvious is the Democratic base is more reliant on college educated voters than ever before. Turnout and education are highly correlated in that more educated voters are more likely to turn out.

When analysts talk about education being a dividing line in the electorate, we’re usually focusing specifically on White voters. Something that may be happening this cycle is making the education gap even larger.

First, Trump is polling better among Black and Hispanic voters than he did four years ago. As a group, these voters are less likely to have a college degree than White voters.

Second, Trump is doing better among voters of color without a college degree than those with a college degree. Biden, meanwhile, is maintaining his strength among White voters with a college degree.

These factors combined are widening the education gap and causing Trump to do better among voters who are less likely to turn out as a group.

The other demographic switch at play is that there have been a number of polls in which Trump is doing disproportionately better among young voters than he did four years ago. Younger voters are less likely to turn out than older voters across demographic groups, so Biden may be better off trading younger voters for older voters from a turnout standpoint.

The bottom line is that there’s still a lot we don’t know about how 2024 will play out. But if what we’re seeing now in the polling is true by next November, then a lot of traditional theories about how turnout could impact the election may be wrong.

It’s just another thing to keep an eye out on as we enter what is sure to be a turbulent 2024.

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The Guardian view on the crisis in politics: better politicians need better standards - The Guardian

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As the year turns, the next general election looms ever larger. One thing can, however, be said about the election already. Whenever it finally comes and whatever the result, the turnover of MPs in the House of Commons looks likely to be unusually large. At least 83 MPs have announced that they will be retiring. More are certain to follow. Others will lose their seats. If the swing between the parties is dramatic, the turnover may approach the level reached in 1997, when 249 retired or defeated MPs did not return to Westminster, and a similar number of new MPs arrived.

So get ready for the faces of politics to change. But what about the face of British politics itself? This question matters. The current parliament will certainly not be missed. It has been studded with financial misconduct, lobbying abuses, lockdown parties, sexual harassment, bullying allegations, absenteeism and misleading ministerial statements. Many of the byelections since 2019 have been triggered by scandals. Another MP, Scott Benton, faces a 35-day suspension for reportedly offering his lobbying services to a bogus company in return for up to £48,000 a year on the side.

The origins of the standards problem go back a long time. The impact of the MPs’ expenses scandal, for instance, is still being felt 14 years on. The question in 2024 will be whether the next generation of leaders and MPs will actually look, sound and behave differently, and whether trust in politics can be rebuilt more enduringly if they do. We must fervently hope so. But it will not happen merely by electing a Labour government and a new generation of professional politicians.

What can be done to improve our politics, our standards in public life, our democracy and our trust in government? There is no single answer. Some things that need to change are structural. Reforming the electoral system is definitely one of them. But countries with fairer electoral systems than Britain’s first past the post have political scandals too. Parliaments with fewer antique conventions than Westminster are not automatically temples of rationality either. These are not reasons for keeping the current systems, but they are reasons for not having exaggerated expectations.

The trust problem
Changing the culture and behaviour of politics matters at least as much. Too often we have the wrong sort of MPs with the wrong values. One glaring example is the former Tory leader Liz Truss, who managed 49 days as prime minister. On Friday it was confirmed that she shamelessly asked for – and gained – peerages and gongs for those involved in her catastrophic time in No 10. Each scandal damages the whole. The wide-ranging nature of the political trust problem is widely sensed. Many books have been written on the subject. The 2023 Reith lectures by Prof Ben Ansell have touched on the problem. Academic and thinktank surveys abound, including key work by University College London’s Constitution Unit.

But the trust problem has been inadequately addressed by politics itself. Politicians themselves are often keenly aware of this. At the end of 2023, Britain was a country in which only 9% of the people said that they “generally” trusted political leaders. This is the lowest figure since records began 40 years ago. A “lack of faith” in politics and politicians is now seen by voters as one of the top five problems facing the country. Think about that. British people put their lack of faith in politics above inequality, the environment, education and crime as national problems. The issue goes deeper than mere cynicism. Cynicism about politics has existed since well before the time HL Mencken said that a good politician was as unthinkable as an honest burglar. Today, though, indignation is morphing – some believe it has already morphed – into a more general despair over the ability of democratic politics and parliamentary government to solve problems.

Pessimism has deepened. Two events have had particularly negative impacts. One was Brexit, causing divides deepened by parliamentary chaos, leading to political demoralisation on both sides. The other was Downing Street’s partying culture during Covid lockdowns. Both blows were intimately connected with Boris Johnson. He bears a heavy personal responsibility. But Mr Johnson is not the sole reason for the political trust crisis.

Nor is the problem confined to Britain. In 2022, the Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual international survey, found that 66% of people across 27 nations, including France, Germany, Italy and the US, agreed that “my country’s government leaders are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations”. A similar 67% said the same about journalists and reporters. These findings should have been a wake-up call. They were not.

Vicious circle
It can sometimes feel as if we live in a country where people can see perfectly well that there are problems, but where a majority simply do not believe the media, and don’t think politicians can do much about solving them either. Fewer than half of British adults think the state is run for the benefit of all. At the height of the Brexit rows, more than half said they wanted a strong leader who would break the rules. Among the under-35s, more than 60% still do. Only a quarter are satisfied with the way British democracy is working.

Politicians have often treated institutional and political change as second-order issues. Real voters, they claim, are more concerned with bread and butter matters. Politicians are wrong to think this way. First, because it is possible to think more than one thing at the same time. Second, because the polls show that public concern about politics is now substantial, not marginal. And last, because a lack of faith in politics feeds into a vicious circle of low expectations.

It may seem naive to call for better qualified politicians, a stronger public service ethos, tighter standards in public life, stronger rules about lobbying, restrictions on honours, more intellectual honesty in debate, greater independence among MPs and better media coverage. All the same, these are all morally desirable changes. Allowing things to stay as they are because they are difficult to change, or because human beings are frail, is a collective cringe. We can do better. Our politicians must do better.

The death of Alistair Darling at the end of November was a reminder of one of the things that politics needs to regain. Not many politicians in Britain are respected across the spectrum of opinion. The former chancellor was an exception. He was informed, calm, sympathetic and truthful. He put the country first. When he said something, it made sense. But there are not enough politicians like him. Too many are the very opposite. They have to change, however difficult that may be.

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Opinion | The Best, Worst and Weirdest Political Stories of 2023 - The New York Times

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It has been such a special political year, brimming with extraordinary, even historic moments. From an ex-president indicted to a Senate staffer busted for making porn at work, each fresh development made you proud to be an American.

Singling out the exceptional events and players was tougher than ever. I mean, when Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t even merit a mention …. But making hard calls is part of my job, and the true standouts deserve a shout-out.

Most Likely to Be Picked Last in Gym Class: Matt Gaetz

Many Americans fantasize about taking up their pitchforks and storming the boss’s office. But in the history of Congress, only this Florida Man has succeeded — metaphorically, of course — leading a coup against his own party’s speaker. The ouster of Kevin McCarthy, followed by the chaotic scramble for his replacement, became a slow-rolling, breathtaking fiasco that ground the House to a halt and made the entire Republican conference look like a pack of petty, pouty, incompetent preschoolers. Way to build the brand, guys!

Most Fabulous Fabulist: George Santos

Many politicians lie, but this recently ousted congressman from New York approached the task with a baroque panache of which few could even conceive. Falsely asserting that the Sept. 11 attacks “claimed” his mother’s life? That he was a college volleyball star? That he was a producer of the Broadway atrocity “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”? So macabre. So pointless. So bizarre. Cannot wait to see his next act.

Slowest Learner: Robert Menendez

Let’s say you got yourself indicted on federal corruption charges that, luckily for you, ultimately resulted in a hung jury. What lesson would you learn from the experience? The senior senator from New Jersey seems to have taken his 2017 near miss as a license to go all in on the sketchy behavior. He was indicted again and accused of a yearslong bribery scheme in which he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for serving the interests of three New Jersey businessmen — and of the government of Egypt. Mr. Menendez insists he has done nothing wrong and that the government is engaged in “primitive hunting.” Anything’s possible. But the gold bars and envelopes fat with cash stashed around his house are not a good look.

Worst Date Night: Lauren Boebert

Props to the Colorado congresswoman for putting the thrill back into taking your kids to the theater: Hey, honey, are you sure our “Beetlejuice” seats are in the no-groping section?

Least Likely to Succeed: The Republican-led House

Let’s give it up for one of the most dysfunctional, unproductive Congresses of modern times!

Least Surprising Downfall: Kevin McCarthy

At this point, what is left for me to say about this tragically hollow figure? He sold his soul and betrayed American democracy for nine lousy months in the speaker’s chair. Once dethroned, he wasted no time packing up his toys and slinking out of the House — which may have been his first smart move in years.

Most Boring Reboot: Impeachment, the Joe Biden version

Also known as Donald Trump’s revenge.

Worst Catchphrase: Bidenomics

No, no, no. The administration geniuses who embraced this sad portmanteau should be tried for political malpractice. And even if you can’t stop the spread, people, don’t let the president tweet about it!

Biggest Comeback: John Fetterman

The early months of 2023 were rough for the Pennsylvania senator, who was struggling with the lingering effects of a stroke and wound up hospitalized for depression. Even many of his fans were wondering: Was he up to the job? But at some point he found his mojo and began calling out political BS wherever he perceived it, often to the dismay of progressives. He has come out swinging for Israel, called out fellow Democrats who fail to grasp that “it isn’t xenophobic to be concerned about the border” and dinged Gavin Newsom, the attention-thirsty governor of California. He denounced the planned acquisition of U.S. Steel by a Japanese company. And he went hard at his colleague Mr. Menendez for allegedly being a corrupt sleazeball, including paying Mr. Santos to record a troll-y video advising “Bobby from New Jersey” on how to ride out a scandal. Agree with him or not, the guy is en fuego.

Best Poison Pen: Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney

We have a tie! First came “Romney: A Reckoning,” McKay Coppins’s book in which the retiring Republican senator and erstwhile presidential nominee laments the sad devolution of his political party. Then, just in time for the holiday giving season, Ms. Cheney topped the best-seller list with “Oath and Honor” — which isn’t, as its subtitle proclaims, “A Memoir and a Warning” so much as an evisceration of Mr. McCarthy and other Trump toadies. So festive!

Biggest Masochist: Mike Johnson

At this point, what sensible person would want to be speaker of the House?

Best Breakout Performance: Nikki Haley

As the lone woman in the Republican presidential primary debates, she repeatedly outshone the other candidates, giving a big boost to her campaign for top Trump understudy.

Biggest Flop: Ron DeSantis

After all the hype, it turns out that “Trump without the crazy” is just an awkward, aggrieved, opportunistic, anti-charismatic, aspiring autocrat with a mile-wide cruel streak and the people skills of Mark Zuckerberg crossed with Richard Nixon.

Most Likely to Be Given an Atomic Wedgie: Vivek Ramaswamy

If Ms. Haley doesn’t get him, Chris Christie will.

Most Pathetic Nepo Baby: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Seriously, man: Put your shirt back on, spare us the anti-vax lunacy and stop pretending you are some courageous anti-establishment rebel outsider. Your last name is Kennedy, for God’s sake.

Most Problematic Nepo Baby: Hunter Biden

A lot of families have their own version of Hunter. And the president’s unconditional love for his troubled child is heartwarming. That said, with an impeachment investigation and his re-election campaign heating up, Biden père needs to finally figure out how to handle questions and accusations about his younger son without losing his cool or sounding defensive. Also, standing by Hunter is one thing. Letting him slouch around at a state dinner is quite another.

Biggest Loser: Fox News

The network agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems. But even without a messy trial, the case revealed plenty about the conservative outlet’s willingness to lie to viewers. Plus, in the process, the Murdochs felt compelled to cut loose their biggest, most unhinged MAGA star, Tucker Carlson — much to the disappointment of his “postmenopausal fans.” And oh, yeah, there is another defamation suit, this one from Smartmatic, still grinding on. So much winning.

Runner-Up: Rudy Giuliani

This month, a federal jury ordered the man previously known as America’s mayor to pay two former Georgia election workers $148 million in damages for defaming them in the course of spreading election fraud lies. Immediately after the ruling, Mr. Giuliani re-upped his lies about the women, prompting them to sue him again. A couple of days later, he filed for bankruptcy protection. It’s all a bold strategy. Let’s see if it pays off for him.

Biggest Legal Curveball: The Colorado Supreme Court

On Dec. 19, the Colorado Supreme Court found that Mr. Trump had participated in an insurrection and is thus barred from holding office again under the 14th Amendment. The stunner of a ruling disqualifies the Republican front-runner from appearing on the state’s presidential primary ballot. Similar suits in other states have fallen flat, and the Trump campaign said it is appealing this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court — which, it should be noted, includes three justices appointed by Mr. Trump. Just when you thought the 2024 election couldn’t get any weirder.

Speaking of the MAGA king: As usual, he was ineligible for our regular awards, seeing as how he operates in a political class all his own. That said, it seems appropriate to recognize his historic status as the first former president to be criminally indicted. Big time. We’re talking 91 felony counts, state and federal, ranging from obstruction of justice to racketeering. Is this achievement more or less notable than his being the only president to earn two impeachments? Hard to say. But at this rate, to distinguish himself in 2024, Mr. Trump will need to go really big — perhaps by running for president from prison?

Source photographs: Haley: Madeleine Hordinski for The New York Times; Kennedy: Mark Makela/Reuters; Giuliani: Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Matt Wuerker's Best of 2023 - POLITICO - POLITICO

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A Cartoon Chronicle

I like to think cartoons are a valuable and unique vehicle for political opinion, but of course I do — I'm a cartoonist. The idea that grown-ups like me get to lob their opinions around in the form of silly drawings does seem surprising. It's really a bit infantile if you think about it.  It’s the kind of misbehavior you might expect from crayon-wielding first-graders, nonetheless, we cartoonists get to, too.  In fact, it's something we’ve been doing for centuries — thank you Mr. Hogarth, Mssr. Daumier, Mr. Herblock and others. It remains a potent way to express one’s opinion, even in the era of memes and TikTok. I am very fortunate to get to post mine here on POLITICO. Cartoons provide a snapshot of the march of folly that more serious types refer to as “politics." Ideally, they capture the absurdity of a moment, illuminate some low-hanging hypocrisy, or call out some head-slapping stupidity. Taken together they can serve as an amusing chronicle of our kooky times. In that spirit I offer up a selection of my own cartoon efforts from 2023.

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The Absolute Worst Political Predictions of 2023 - POLITICO - POLITICO

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There is, I’ve found, no single word for it — a person who is loudly, consistently wrong in their political predictions.

You can probably think of someone who fits that description. Perhaps it’s your uncle. Maybe it’s a talking head on cable news or sports radio, an overcaffeinated member of the International Brotherhood of Hot Take-Havers. Maybe it’s “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams, who has managed to appear on this annual roundup of the worst predictions in politics more than any other person on the planet.

And yet, even as language fails us, what I’m describing is endemic. The closest thing there is to a surefire prediction about American politics in 2023 is this: Today, inevitably, somebody on the internet will be loudly wrong about something that will happen in the future.

What’s compiled here is a collection of people and statements that were very, very wrong about politics this year. Sometimes, it was the result of hubris. Sometimes, wishcasting. In a few instances, it was an honest-to-God misread of the situation.

What they have in common, though, is that they were wrong. Which means that they were something for which there is a single word: human.

Here, POLITICO Magazine’s annual roundup of some of the worst predictions of 2023 (and a couple from the tail end of 2022).

Civil war will break out in the U.S., and Elon Musk will be elected president

Predicted by: Dmitry Medvedev, Dec. 26, 2022

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ended 2022 by unfurling a Twitter thread predicting, among other outlandish forecasts on world affairs, that in 2023, the UK would rejoin the EU and “war will break out between France and the Fourth Reich.” 

It was shitposting masquerading as statecraft. Then he turned his piercing insights to American shores, reminding us all that the wisest course of action is usually to never tweet. 

“Civil war will break out in the U.S.,” Medvedev wrote. California and Texas will become “independent states as a result. Texas and Mexico will form an allied state. Elon Musk’ll win the presidential election in a number of states which, after the new Civil War’s end, will have been given to the GOP.”

Barring something truly cataclysmic in the next few days, none of this happened in 2023. There was no American civil war; California and Texas have not seceded; Texas and Mexico, far from being an allied state, are still at odds; Elon Musk has not only not been elected president (seeing as there isn’t a presidential election until 2024), but is ineligible for the office, seeing as he is not a natural-born citizen.

It was a Matryoshka doll of a bad prediction: One bad prediction nested inside of another inside of another inside of yet another.

Donald Trump will not be indicted in Manhattan

Predicted by: Larry Kudlow, March 30, 2023

On March 30, as speculation abounded over the potential legal jeopardy surrounding former President Donald Trump, Larry Kudlow believed he knew what was coming — or wasn’t, as the case may be.

“It looks like Trump will not be indicted,” he told viewers of the Fox Business channel. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “cannot indict a ham sandwich,” Kudlow said — implying that a case against Trump was extraordinarily thin, given the supposed workaday ease with which prosecutors can issue indictments.

Within an hour of Kudlow’s proclamation, reports broke that a grand jury had indeed voted to indict the former president. On April 4, Bragg’s office announced that the indictment consisted of 34 counts stemming from Trump allegedly “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”

There will be a recession in 2023

Predicted by: A whole lot of people …

• CNBC, Oct. 10, 2022: “JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon warns U.S. likely to tip into recession in 6 to 9 months”
• Bloomberg, Oct. 17, 2022: “Forecast for US Recession Within Year Hits 100% in Blow to Biden”
• The Economist, Nov. 18, 2022: “Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023”
• Bloomberg, Dec. 6, 2022: “Wall Street Chorus Grows Louder Warning That 2023 Will Be Ugly”
• Wall Street Journal, Jan. 2, 2023: “Big Banks Predict Recession, Fed Pivot in 2023”
• Fox Business, Feb. 6, 2023: “Bank of America ‘still forecasting’ 2023 recession”
• POLITICO, April 4, 2023: “Jamie Dimon warns of new economic storms ahead”
• CNBC on April 12, 2023: “Fed expects banking crisis to cause a recession this year, minutes show”

And so on …

This one sits in a special category: predictions that totally made sense with the information available at the time, but which, in retrospect, were incorrect. 

There was no recession in 2023. Far from it, the economy is booming by many measures (third quarter GDP growth was above 5 percent); the Federal Reserve has seemingly engineered a soft landing (the inflation rate has dropped by roughly 6 percentage points since June 2022); and job growth continues to be robust (the unemployment rate was, at its most recent measure, 3.7 percent).

Joe Biden will face a serious primary challenger

Predicted by: Karl Rove, Jan. 4, 2023

Among pundits who are reflexively critical of President Joe Biden, one consistent meme abounds: that he’s the new Jimmy Carter.

That he’s feckless in the face of rampant inflation. That he’s overmatched on the international stage. That his presidency will end after one term; it’s malaise forever.

In this line of thought, Biden, hampered by lagging poll numbers and a base that is ambivalent at best about his renomination, would inevitably face a serious primary — which is exactly what Karl Rove predicted as 2023 began.

“Mr. Biden declares that he’s running for reelection,” Rove imagined. “A significant Democrat realizes the danger this represents and, à la Ted Kennedy 1980, runs.” 

It wasn’t a bad prediction, per se. Just a wrong one. 

It’s the end of 2023, and even as Biden’s poll numbers are anemic, and Democrats fret about his chances in 2024, no significant Democrat has emerged to challenge him. (Apologies, Dean Phillips.) He isn’t going to face anything like Carter did in 1980, when the youngest Kennedy brother captured nearly 40 percent of the primary vote. (Whether or not that’s a good thing is for others to decide.)

Chris Licht “ain’t even close to done yet”

Predicted by: Michael LaRosa, June 5, 2023

Two days later, the embattled CNN chairman and CEO — and subject of an internet-conquering Tim Alberta profile in The Atlantic — was fired.

Kevin McCarthy won’t be elected speaker; he’ll drop out

Predicted by: Donna Edwards, Jan. 4, 2023

It took a while (15 rounds of voting), but the Bakersfield Republican persisted and was elected speaker of the House in January.

McCarthy’s speakership will last a full two-year term

Predicted by: Kevin McCarthy, Jan. 7, 2023

After being elected, McCarthy was asked how confident he was that he’d have the job for a full two-year term. He exuded optimism. “A thousand percent,” he said.

On Oct. 3, he was ousted as speaker after less than 10 months on the job. He’s resigning from Congress at the end of the year — less than one year after he promised he’d be speaker for two years.

Firing Tucker Carlson will be the end of Fox News

Predicted by: Glenn Beck, April 24, 2023

Reports of Fox News’ death were widely exaggerated. The network continues to thrive even after Tucker Carlson’s firing this spring and the $787 million payout to Dominion. Are primetime ratings down? Yes, somewhat. But they’ve bounced back, and among cable channels, it trails only ESPN in primetime viewership. Carlson’s successor, Jesse Watters, hosts the top two top-rated shows in cable news (“The Five” and “Jesse Watters Primetime”); while he may lack Carlson’s rhetorical firepower, and his show isn’t appointment TV for some Beltway media types the way Tucker’s was, he shares his quasi-hypnotic grip on his Fox viewers. 

DeSantis’ campaign launch on Twitter Spaces is ‘genius’

Predicted by: Mick Mulvaney, May 23, 2023

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at long last announced his presidential bid in May, the goal was to make a splash. To drop several political journalism cliches in a row: You only get one chance to make a first impression, the press attention surrounding a campaign announcement is usually a high-water mark for what a campaign can expect to get in terms of positive coverage, and so on.

It stands to reason, then, that Team DeSantis thought they’d engineered a home run of a debut on the national stage: Rather than a staid, boring announcement speech in front of adoring supporters, how about underlining the ostensible future-vs-past argument of his campaign by launching it on Twitter, in a “Space” hosted by the site’s owner (and emerging conservative hero) Elon Musk?

But of course, the danger of moving the launch out of a controlled environment is that the unpredictable is more likely to happen. Though I suppose what did happen was, in another sense, wholly predictable. The launch was beset by technical glitches, which delayed the main event for nearly a half hour as the would-be viewership sank. When it did begin, the audio routinely cut out, and Musk peppered DeSantis’ remarks with asides about, for instance, Dogecoin.

Far from an act of genius, as Mick Mulvaney suggested we might witness, it undercut one of the core rationales of DeSantis’ campaign from the very get go: The notion that he was a no-nonsense leader capable of flawlessly executing his plans.

Nikki Haley’s presidential candidacy will be less viable than Mike Pence’s

Predicted by: Ross Douthat, Feb. 15, 2023

At the start of the year, there was little reason to think that Nikki Haley would be able to outpace the rest of the non-Trump candidates in the Republican herd. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had culture war bona fides, a super PAC capable of raising and spending $200 million and a keen sense of how to excite the online right. Former Vice President Mike Pence had Trumpian policy credentials, sincere and deep-seated conservative Christian beliefs and a low-key Midwestern demeanor. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) had a “happy warrior” bearing and, as the Senate’s sole Black Republican, the promise of being able to appeal to voters who were not traditionally in the GOP coalition. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie married a decidedly Trumpy punchiness with a decidedly anti-Trump message, an “in” with the vanishingly small number of #NeverTrump Republicans. 

Then there was Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, whose constituency wasn’t particularly clear. Yes, she was Trump-adjacent, having served as his ambassador to the United Nations, but she was also Trump-critical, having rebuked him immediately after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. And then, of course, she walked back that post-J6 criticism a bit. She was, the thinking went, not Trumpy enough for the MAGA-curious, and too Trump-curious for the #NeverTrumpers.

And yet.

Pence has dropped out of the presidential race. So has Scott. Christie is in fourth place in New Hampshire, and an afterthought most elsewhere. DeSantis’ campaign has been defined by outsized expectations, bizarrely public infighting and a candidate whose personal appeal is often deemed to be lacking. Haley is a strong second place in New Hampshire. More than any non-Trump candidate, she has momentum on her side and the clearest shot of emerging in a one-on-one race against the former president. 

Housing and rental prices are going to come down

Predicted by: Joe Biden, March 1, 2023

In a closed-press meeting in March, Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.) asked President Joe Biden about the nation’s ongoing problems with inflation. Biden’s response included a prediction of good news on the horizon: rent and housing costs could go down soon.

Though inflation has come down substantially from its peak and talk of a feather bed-soft landing for the economy abounds, housing costs show no signs of going down. Indeed, its persistence is driving the overall inflation rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics wrote in a Dec. 12 release that housing costs were the “largest factor in the monthly increase in the [consumer price] index,” excepting food and energy prices.

Wishcasting by Biden? Almost certainly.

Trump will not run for president

Predicted by: Susan del Percio, Dec. 24, 2022

“This time next year, Donald Trump will not be a candidate for President,” the strategist and political analyst predicted during an MSNBC hit on Christmas Eve 2022. “[E]specially with his legal troubles, I think that there’s a potential that he could make a deal, that maybe he pleads down to some other charges … and it keeps him from running for office. It could also be that he knows he’s going to lose.”

He’s running. Not only that, Trump is on a glide path to the Republican presidential nomination, leading handily in every poll publicly available, national or statewide. And not only that, but he’s consistently leading Joe Biden in general election polls, legal troubles or not.

Trump will run … but drop out

Predicted by: Anthony Scaramucci, June 12, 2023

“I know President Trump’s personality reasonably well,” Scaramucci, the financier and (extremely briefly) Trump White House communications director, told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo three days after Trump was indicted on federal charges stemming from his alleged mishandling of classified documents. “He does not like this. He is stressed about it. And I am going to say something contrarian on your show: I think he ends up eventually dropping out of the race.”

While we cannot suggest any insight into Trump’s state of mind or stress level, this much is clear: Trump is still a candidate for president and shows no signs of dropping out.

Trump will run … but drop out for a plea deal

Predicted by: Scott Galloway, July 15, 2023

“I think President Trump is not going to run for president under the auspices of a plea deal,” Galloway told co-host Kara Swisher on their popular “Pivot” podcast in July. 

I’ll concede that it’s still possible that this will come true. But he hasn’t yet dropped out, and it seems unlikely that he will, considering that (1) there’s been a minimal political cost to the indictments thus far, (2) running for president is a way he could potentially avoid trial and cancel the federal charges against him, and (3) a plea deal would undercut both his image as a fighter (which is central to his political appeal) and his (false) contention that he’s facing a political prosecution orchestrated by the Biden administration.

Barbie will flop because it’s too woke

Predicted by: Ben Shapiro, July 23, 2023

In a YouTube video titled “Ben Shapiro DESTROYS Barbie for 43 minutes,” the boy king of the conservative podcasting world vented his spleen about the adapted-from-a-toy Warner Bros. film. “It was one of the most woke movies I have ever seen,” he tweeted, ostensibly referencing the film’s repeated and uneuphemized critiques of patriarchy.

That viewpoint, which the film wore on its sleeve, would doom it, he predicted.

Business for “Barbie” is “just absolutely going to fall off a cliff” after its first week in theaters, Shapiro predicted. “The repeat business on this movie is going to be nonexistent.”

Instead, it became the highest-grossing film of 2023, with $636 million in the domestic box office, and $1.4 billion worldwide. 

“Barbie” was a global phenomenon. Shapiro? He’s just Ben.

TikTok will be banned in the U.S. by June 2023

Predicted by: Scott Adams, Dec. 9, 2022

Though TikTok has remained a punching bag for politicians eager to take simultaneous aim at China and social media, and though it is banned in the state of Montana, it has not been banned in the U.S.

Jim Jordan will be elected speaker of the House

Predicted by: Adam Kinzinger, Oct. 4, 2023

After House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted in a far-right GOP mutiny, there was no clear path for a would-be successor. The acting speaker, Patrick McHenry, didn’t want the job. The ultimate winner, fourth-term Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson, was hardly a glimmer in anyone’s eye. And so speculation abounded about which party mandarin would end up with the gig.

Initially, eyes fell on two men: Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican lawmaker from Illinois, was confident how that fight would play out.

“I think if it was [elected by] secret ballot, Steve Scalise would win overwhelmingly, or anybody but Jim Jordan,” Kinzinger told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “But what you’re going to start seeing, Anderson, is — on the emails, on the fundraising, on other cable news networks — Jim is gonna be now the new litmus test of: Are you a true conservative or not? Steve Scalise won’t be. It’ll be Jim Jordan. And so, there will be a slow acquiescence of everybody to Jim Jordan. That’s my prediction.”

Jim Jordan lost to Steve Scalise the first time around. Then, after Scalise abandoned his bid and Jordan was the Republican nominee for speaker, he lost again.

Steve Scalise will be elected speaker of the House

Predicted by: Neil W. McCabe, Oct. 11, 2023 (“The next Speaker of the House will be Steve Scalise.”); Carmine Sabia, Oct. 3, 2023 and Alyssa Farah Griffin, Oct. 5, 2023

See above. 

When Scalise emerged from the wreckage of the motion to vacate Kevin McCarthy, it initially appeared that he might be able to muster enough votes to win the gavel. 

“The next Speaker of the House will be Steve Scalise,” said One America News correspondent Neil W. McCabe. “If Rep. Steve Scalise wants to be Speaker he will be,” said conservative online personality Carmine Sabia. Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former Trump White House aide and resident conservative commentator on “The View,” gamed it out: “This goes to conference next week, they realize nobody has the votes, and eventually Scalise and Jordan cut some kind of a deal where Scalise is Speaker, Jordan is majority leader.” Fortunately for Mike Johnson, that didn’t happen.

Prompted by DeSantis’ surge, Dems will dump Biden for Newsom

Predicted by: Tomi Lahren, April 24, 2023

The idea here was that Ron DeSantis had the momentum of a runaway freight train before he even officially joined the presidential race. “[O]nce DeSantis announces, the Dems will throw Biden out and pick Gavin Newsom,” predicted Tomi Lahren of Fox News and Outkick fame.

It’s two predictions in one, and neither came to be. DeSantis’ campaign was revealed to be something of a paper tiger, and never really caught on with voters. And Democrats coalesced (even if reluctantly) around Biden rather than passing the torch to one of the many comparatively young governors waiting in the wings.

A Biden impeachment inquiry will launch by the end of September … with Dem support

Predicted by: Darrell Issa, July 25, 2023

Another 0-2 prediction. The Republican-controlled House ultimately did authorize a Biden impeachment inquiry, but it came in December. And it did so without a single House Democrat supporting it. 

Dems will somehow regain control of the House ahead of 2024

Predicted by: Michael Moore, Jan. 5, 2023

“We will not have to wait till 2024 for the Democrats to regain control of the United States House of Representatives,” lefty filmmaker and pundit Michael Moore predicted on MSNBC two days into the House’s new Republican majority.

Even the most charitable possible interpretation would have to concede that the chaos of Kevin McCarthy’s defenestration didn’t amount to Dems retaking control of the House so much as it meant McCarthy had lost control of the House. It was an odd call. And a wrong one: The Republican majority, however narrow, is stable enough to last into 2024.

“Elon Musk will buy Disney”

Predicted by: Tyrus Murdoch, Jan. 2, 2023

Luckily for Disney, it isn’t going the way of X (née Twitter), which has seen its value plummet since Musk purchased the company.

300 million Americans will rise up in protest if Trump is indicted

Predicted by: Kari Lake, June 12, 2023

Initially, Lake said that if prosecutors wanted to get to Donald Trump, they were “going to have to go through me, and 75 million Americans just like me. And most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA.”

It was an audacious enough claim, but one that could be read as simple hyperbolic rhetoric: that, in effect, roughly the number of people who voted for Trump in the 2020 election would object to criminal charges against the former president.

Then, Lake revised her statement during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” show.

“I made a mistake. I said 75 million others just like me. I think it’s more like 300 million others just like me,” Lake said.

For this to happen, you’d first have to assume that literally 90 percent of Americans — that’s 9 in 10 people, not just Republicans, not just adults, but also children — would be furious about the fact Trump was indicted. Then, you’d have to imagine them being so outraged that they are driven to rise up and block the justice system from holding the former president to account.

This year, Trump has been indicted in four separate criminal cases amounting to 91 felony counts — four in Washington, 13 in Georgia, 34 in New York and 40 in Florida. Aside from small and largely benign shows of support by cadres of the MAGA faithful, there has been nothing in the way of rising up en masse to break the wheels of justice.

“Putin will leave office, dead or alive, volitionally or otherwise, before the end of the year”

Predicted by: Michael McKenna, Dec. 31, 2022

There were a few days this year when something like this seemed plausible — that small window of time when Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the mercenary Wagner Group, was on the march and headed for Moscow. Then he stopped — and shortly thereafter was killed in a plane crash.

Though there are technically still a few days left before the end of 2023 for McKenna’s prediction to come true, Russian President/dictator Vladimir Putin remains firmly in control of power in Russia.

Biden will intervene to prevent a UAW strike

Predicted by: Don Beyer, Sept. 5, 2023

Biden’s close ties to General Motors (which include a friendship with CEO Mary Barra and a niece on GM’s staff) did not compel him to step in and stop the United Auto Workers from striking against the Detroit Three. Instead, they struck — and Biden eventually joined them on the picket lines in Michigan.

Karine Jean-Pierre will be out as press secretary ‘within the next couple of months’

Predicted by: Joe Concha, Jan. 20, 2023

Concha, a contributor to Fox News (and now media columnist for The Messenger), suggested in January that John Kirby was on the verge of replacing Karine Jean-Pierre as White House press secretary. 

Asked how much longer KJP had in the role, Concha replied: “I would think probably within the next couple of months, we’ll see a pivot to John Kirby as the White House press secretary, particularly if Joe Biden announces he’s running for president. If he does announce, then KJP, Karine Jean-Pierre, has an out.”

Eleven full months have passed since that prediction — during which time, Biden announced his reelection campaign — and Jean-Pierre continues to serve as White House press secretary.

There will be no federal prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried because he’s a Democratic donor

Predicted by: Elon Musk, Nov. 13, 2022

Admittedly, this one happened in the waning months of 2022. But it’s about events that happened in 2023. 

FTX, the crypto-trading empire that Sam Bankman-Fried ruled over, collapsed on Nov. 11, 2022, evaporating many users’ investments/savings/fortunes overnight. Naturally, Tom Fitton, chair of Judicial Watch, a far-right political organization, knew just who to blame: the Biden administration.

“While the Biden gang has been harassing and threatening @ElonMusk and his companies, one of the worst scams in modern finance was being perpetuated under their nose by a regular [White House]/Hill visitor and the second biggest Democratic donor,” Fitton tweeted, referring to SBF.

“SBF was a major Dem donor, so no investigation,” Musk replied.

Except that there was an investigation. And not only that, a prosecution. 

SBF was indicted in December 2022 on seven charges of fraud and conspiracy. In October 2023, United States v. Bankman-Fried went to trial in the Southern District of New York. On Nov. 2, the jury took about five hours to find SBF guilty on all seven counts.

Trump made a huge mistake by skipping the first GOP debate

Predicted by: Pedro L. Gonzalez, Aug. 24, 2023

Ahead of the first Republican presidential debate in August, the “will he or won’t he” speculation surrounding Trump reached something of a fever pitch. Would he really skip out on the chance at the free attention, the publicity, the chance to be at center stage? Many doubted that he had that level of restraint.

When Aug. 23 came, Trump was not onstage. And then came a new round of speculation: Will this hurt his campaign? 

“Trump skipping the debate was a complete disaster for him,” wrote Pedro L. Gonzalez, a young conservative writer. “Americans got a glimpse of a future without him. They got to see that there can be an alternative to the circus.”

Turns out Republican voters seem to like the circus. Donald Trump has paid no price for skipping the debate — in fact, his poll numbers have gone up, and his lead cemented. Absent Trump, the remaining contenders have largely aimed their fire at one another — further fracturing the field and delaying any chance that the non-Trump GOP electorate will coalesce around a single opponent.

As for the spotlight? Well, even when he’s not onstage, Trump has a way of making himself the center of attention. 

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