Ryan Grim's election predictions

What will realistically happen if Harris or Trump wins

Just like Jeff Bezos, I would never tell you who to vote for. You don’t need that from me anyway. What I can do though is offer a few thoughts on what might happen if either candidate is elected, which I haven’t seen anybody try to do with any seriousness.

According to Elon Musk, if Kamala Harris wins, there’ll never be another election, and according to lots of Democrats, if Trump wins, he’ll turn into a dictator. Both are wrong. The truth is more complicated but not necessarily less frightening. In tonight’s newsletter, I’ll game out what that might look like. (Scroll down for that.)

Fallout from the election will be felt in the Mideast immediately, and we’re perfectly positioned to cover those fast-moving dynamics. And no matter who wins, a new administration will be coming to power, and that means a scramble for key personnel positions.

On that point, a few exciting announcements. 

First, we’re thrilled to report that we’ve hired Jessica Burbank as a correspondent focused on the economy. She’ll also help us up our game on social media. If you’re under 40, you probably know who she is from Instagram, TikTok, or Hill TV’s Rising. The one percent works very hard to mystify the story of the economy, but she has built up a huge audience on social media for her rare ability to talk about it in a way that lets people understand how they’re being screwed, why, and by whom. When it comes to covering antitrust and the tax policy fight, that’ll be an indispensable skill. 

Relatedly, we’ve set aside some budget to ramp up our coverage of the transition, regardless of who wins. If it’s Trump, who he picks to run his national security and foreign policy will dictate whether the isolationist/antiwar faction prevails, or whether the John Bolton/Mike Pompeo militaristic wing gains ground. (Mike Pompeo, disconcertingly, was at Trump’s Reading, Pennsylvania rally this afternoon.)

On economic policy, Trump (and particularly his running mate J.D. Vance) have talked a big game about standing up for workers. Vance has repeatedly said warm things about Lina Khan and her approach to antitrust policy at the FTC. Elon Musk, meanwhile, has vowed Khan will be fired.

The direction of a Harris administration will similarly be determined in the first several months as Wall Street and Big Tech try to wrestle the populist elements out of their positions, and the Liz Cheneys of the coalition fight to get war hawks into national security positions.

These personnel fights are crucial, and we have resources set aside for the next six months to investigate the backgrounds of those floated for key jobs. 

And here’s the ask: We can’t do all this without reader support. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to a paid subscription but just haven’t gotten around to it, please do that now. Our articles will always be free for everybody, but paid subscribers get access to events and Q&As and such.

Tomorrow afternoon at 6 p.m. we’ll be hosting a live chat where I’ll be answering questions from paid subscribers, for instance. Look out for an email tomorrow morning with details on how to join. I’m on my way back now from the (fairly low-energy) Trump rally in Reading, so you can ask me about that. It’ll be a good way to kill time while we wait for election results. Starting at 7:30 p.m., I’ll be live with my co-hosts on Breaking Points. We’ll go till about 3 a.m.

If you’re already a subscriber, remember that contributions to Drop Site are tax deductible. If you’re planning your year-end gifts, please put us in that mix. 

Alright, with that in mind, here are some educated guesses about the next few years. 

If Kamala wins:

Congress goes

If Harris wins, the chance she also takes Congress relies on a number of miraculous upsets. Joe Manchin is leaving the Senate, and his Senate seat is leaving the Democratic caucus for the rest of all of our lives. That takes Dems from 51 down to 50 seats. Jon Tester won extremely narrow races in Montana in 2006, 2012, and 2018, and he’s about as good a rural politician as you’re going to find, but Montana’s rightward drift might be too much for him to overcome. Polls have him down. If they’re right, he’s toast, and that brings Democrats down to 49 seats. 

To get back to 50 – which would let Tim Walz break ties – they’d need to hold on to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin (all doable, even likely) but also win in either Florida or Texas – or Nebraska. 

If you’ve been following our coverage of the Nebraska Senate race, you know independent populist Dan Osborn has a genuine shot at upsetting the incumbent Republican. Internal polls I’ve heard about from both sides, however, suggest Trump’s ads tagging him as a “Democrat in disguise” may have done enough damage to blunt his momentum. If he wins though, I’m confident he’d caucus with Democrats, and that would make a majority. But he’s still a longshot.

Colin Allred, the former NFL linebacker and member of Congress, has a credible chance of beating Ted Cruz. The question will be whether pollsters missed an influx of Democratic donors to the Lone Star state. If they did and the polls are slightly off, he could win. But he’s also a longshot.

Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell could theoretically pull off an upset in Florida, but man is that hard to see. So Democrats would need one of those four longshots—Montana, Nebraska, Texas, or Florida—to come through.

And then they’d have to win the House, too. 

Without the Senate, Harris will have a hard time confirming a dog catcher, let along a judge or a cabinet nominee. With the Senate but without the House, she won’t be able to get any of her agenda through. Worse, the debt ceiling will be hit in January, before she’s even inaugurated. 

Bankruptcy?

With control of Congress, Republicans will play economic-armageddon brinksmanship, take a chunk out of the global economy, get our credit-ratings downgraded, and probably extract a chunk of fiscal flesh in exchange for simply agreeing to pay the bills that are due. The other possibility, that we actually go over the cliff and get a mini or major financial crisis can’t be ruled out. 

Antitrust

Harris will then be left to govern strictly from the executive branch. She’d probably have to keep Lina Khan, whether she wants her as chair of the FTC or not, since Republicans wouldn’t confirm a replacement anyway. Her victory would be meaningful for climate action, as she’d continue to disperse and execute the clean energy policy and subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act, while Trump would smother it (or send it all to Elon Musk?).

Taxes

Trump’s tax cuts also expire during Harris’s first two years in office, meaning she’ll negotiate their extension. There, she has the advantage, because if she does nothing, the old tax policy snaps back into place. Her ability to do anything at all her first two years would be limited to this tax realm and, potentially, immigration. She’s likely to sign a tough border and immigration bill into law. 

It’s hard to see how she emerges from this two years with anything higher than an approval rating in the low-30s. Given she has no organic base of support—support for Kamala is more accurately described as opposition to Trump and support for Democratic policies generally—it’s impossible to say how low her floor is. We might find out. 

Ukraine

Russia is making major advances in Ukraine and the U.S. public is no longer interested in the war. Harris will probably have to end it with some sort of ceasefire/non-deal that leaves Ukraine in a wildly worse off position than they’d have been in if they’d made a deal in early 2022—a deal the U.S. scuttled at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Or she could prove she’s a tough commander-in-chief—leader of the “most lethal military” ever, as she puts it—by escalating the conflict and striking deeper inside Russia, risking nuclear war. Let’s hope it’s not that. The same dynamic could be at play with China, with much of her party leadership egging on confrontation.

The Mideast

I interviewed Israeli journalist Amir Tibon recently, who said that Netanyahu made a bet sometime around December that Trump would be elected president and therefore he was willing to take whatever minor grief he suffered from Biden for ignoring all the U.S. entreaties to protect civilians, allow in humanitarian aid, and negotiate in good faith toward a ceasefire. There was little grief. But, said Tibon, if Harris wins, Netanyahu will be exposed politically, and he predicted his government would collapse “within months.” A Harris win would signal to Netanyahu’s coalition partners that two of their big dreams will be at least put on hold for four years. Those two major ambitions, Tibon said, are reform of the Israeli courts in order to subsume them to the judiciary, and the Israeli settlement of Gaza. With those ambitions stymied, Netanyahu’s coalition becomes untenable.

Foiling Netanyahu’s bet on Trump is the most persuasive case I’ve heard for a vote for Harris. The problem, though, is what comes next. Tibon is confident a candidate from a coalition that does not includes the ultra-orthodox or settler movements would triumph and that any new government that replaced Netanyahu would be similarly supportive of the various Israeli war efforts, but more willing to cut a ceasefire-for-hostages deal. But I checked Tibon’s theory with people in Israel to the right of Tibon, and they agreed that the Netanyahu government would indeed fall and new elections would be called—but that Netanyahu would win those new elections. 

Abortion Rights

Harris wouldn’t be able to get anything through Congress, but having Democrats control the Justice Department and Health and Human Services would put some of the brakes on right-wing states pushing ahead with increasingly aggressive abortion restrictions, including laws that make it a crime to “traffick” a minor across state lines to get an abortion. Such laws are plainly unconstitutional, but Trump’s DoJ would do nothing to stop them, whereas a Harris administration would.

Midterms

Every president faces brutal headwinds in their first midterm, and Republican gains are the most likely result of the 2026 midterms. The only pickup opportunities in the Senate would be in Maine and North Carolina, and both would be unwinnable in a Republican reaction year. The good news for Dems is they don’t have to defend many seats – Georgia and Michigan – but they’d still fall that much further behind in the House. 

2028

Republicans would be the heavy favorites in 2028. Democrats seem to hate primaries, so maybe Harris doesn’t face one even if she’s in the low 30s, with Democratic rivals holding their fire for 2032. The most likely outcome, then, of a Harris victory in 2024 is a Republican sweep in 2029, giving them a trifecta and the opportunity to lock in Supreme Court control for several generations. That court could issue abortion-related rulings that would make Dobbs look downright liberal.

If Trump wins:

Let’s take seriously what Trump will actually do, versus what his opponents claim he’ll do. Some of the more lurid warnings, I think, are wildly overblown. But not all of them. It’s extremely likely he will assign significant resources toward a roundup of immigrants, and will do so in a flamboyant fashion, deploying the military if he can get away with it. If he’s extra lucky, there’ll be mass resignations of military brass as a result, allowing him to elevate loyalists. 

Stephen Miller, a deeply dangerous and strategic man, will have immense power. Trans rights will be in the crosshairs and so will abortion rights. 

I’m less worried about his promise to add a 20 percent tariff to everything. He continues to speak highly of Robert Lighthizer as his top trade adviser, and Lighthizer is very good at what he does. Lighthizer was Trump’s United States Trade Representative and lefty trade hands and unions were generally supportive of his approach, even as they had some disagreements. If Lighthizer guides trade policy, it won’t be reckless. 

Trump’s tax cuts from his first term will also come up for renewal, and I’d expect he’ll successfully extend and deepen them, particularly for the rich and corporations. 

He will fire an enormous number of federal employees. Whether he can hire enough to replace them is a different question, but at minimum he’ll be able to break a lot of federal agencies. 

He’ll go after the American university system with a vengeance. Look at what Chris Rufo has managed to do in Florida under Ron DeSantis for a flavor of what Trump could do nationally. 

He will rescind or simply not deploy much of the climate spending included in the Inflation Reduction Act. He hates eclectic vehicles, though his alliance with Elon Musk may protect some of that. 

Supreme Court

Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas will retire, allowing Trump to appoint at least two more justices. 

Trump, however, will not have the capacity to become a dictator. Even with two new justices, the Supreme Court is not willing to turn power over to him. Trump is their tool to wield power, and they will be content to see him retire from the field. Trump also lacks the support of the military leadership. Without the court or the military, he has no path to hold on to power illegally. 

Voters will reject his displays of extremism at the polls in the 2026 midterms, likely delivering the House and Senate both to Democrats. They’ll impeach him immediately, just as Republicans will impeach Harris, but neither effort will have enough support in the Senate to go anywhere. In 2028, Republican voters will choose between J.D. Vance and opponents like Ted Cruz (unless he loses his Senate race, of course). 

The economy will probably take a cyclical downturn toward the end of Trump’s term, and he’ll be deeply unpopular. Democrats would be favored to win in 2028 and likely hold Congress, too. 

Mideast

It’s impossible to predict what Trump will do here. On the one hand, he calls himself “the candidate of peace”—on the other, he has said Biden’s biggest problem has been that he’s been too tough on Netanyahu and he should let him take the gloves off. Trump has been mad at Netanyahu for congratulating Biden on his win, but he knows Bibi has been rooting for him and doing what he can to help him win, and in Trump’s world alone, that means a lot to him. You know Trump as well as I do, I’ll let you guess on this one.

Ukraine

The conventional wisdom is that Putin will strike a deal to end the war if Trump wins, on favorable terms to Russia, given how much ground they’ve gained. On Ukraine, the CW is probably right.

China

Trump will do way more jawboning of China than Harris would, but he seems to have no appetite for a war. Let’s hope that prevails.

What It Means

So far, we’ve talked about the near-term future relying on historical precedent. That only gets us so far. We also have to look at the coalitional trends underway and ask how a victory by each candidate influences each. If Harris wins, Democrats will be rewarded for having skipped the nominating process and overseeing a genocide in Gaza. They will have done so while embracing the Cheneys and other neocons expelled from the MAGA coalition. They will now have to be understood as a faction of the Democratic coalition. With Democrats already becoming increasingly militaristic, that only pushes the party further toward a confrontational imperial foreign policy. 

Harris also ran detectably to Biden’s right when it came to labor, antitrust, and the economy. Winning on that message could convince Democrats that their dalliance with economic populism was unnecessary, which would speed up the class realignment already underway, with more working class voters of all races and genders feeling unrepresented by Democrats, who come to fully stand in for coastal elites. With Democrats representing an upper-middle-class center, that leaves a coalition of the working class and the super rich in the Republican party. That’s an extremely dangerous coalition, and while it will be hampered by Trump’s defeat, it would be structurally strengthened longterm by a Harris victory—unless Harris somehow finds populist Jesus like Biden did. There is still a strong faction of populist-progressives in the Democratic coalition, and Harris’s victory would not be the final word. But a Democrat who comes after Harris could be facing nearly insurmountable odds if Republicans are able to lock in generational power in 2028. 

The short version is that there’s reason to be optimistic that Harris may win. There’s reason to be scared if she does. Or doesn’t. Hope that helps.