OPINION:
Everyone makes predictions, but only a few of us are foolish enough to write them down. So here goes.
Former President Donald Trump will win the 2024 presidential election. In response, there will, of course, be protests and riots in places like Washington, New York and Portland, Oregon.
The various legal efforts to put Mr. Trump in jail will remain unresolved as of Election Day.
The Democrats will regain control of the House of Representatives. The Republicans will regain the right to preside over the Senate and may choose a new majority leader.
Congressional Republicans will continue to do nothing with respect to the threat posed by China. Use of the communist regime’s most effective psy-ops — TikTok — will continue to expand in the United States.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average will close 2024 above 40,000.
Congress will still be working on appropriations for fiscal 2025 at the end of 2024 (which will be three months after the start of fiscal 2025).
The bad news is that the Buffalo Bills will win the Super Bowl in 2024. The good news is that coverage of Taylor Swift during football games will, accordingly, be reduced.
Most of the shooting in Ukraine will be over, and there will be a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas conflict. So the military-industrial complex will have to find some other wars.
The United States will still not have a southern border by the end of 2024. Illegal immigration will surge in the last half of the year in anticipation or fear of a victory by Mr. Trump.
The Supreme Court will unanimously strike down efforts to disqualify Mr. Trump from ballots on the basis of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
There will be more than 1 million electric vehicles sold in the United States in 2024, or about the same number as were sold in 2023. That’s going to be a problem for those who imagine that all new cars will be electric by the middle of 2034.
Despite not having enough time to steal Washington’s signals in the regular season, the University of Michigan will win the national championship in 2024.
Las Vegas will get an NBA expansion franchise in 2024. In a related development, legal gambling will continue to pervade and finance sports at all levels.
The New York Yankees will continue to not win anything of any importance. Their fans, not being terribly bright, will continue to pay confiscatory ticket prices and imagine that the midseason addition of one more career journeyman will make the difference. It’s the general manager, folks; he’s never won and can’t win anything.
The New York Mets will, again, finish out of the playoffs, despite having Major League Baseball’s largest payroll. Again, Mets fans will be inexplicably surprised.
Shohei Ohtani will, unfortunately, not lead the Los Angeles Dodgers to a World Series victory, in large measure because he will spend much of the season on the disabled list.
The world will use more oil, natural gas and coal in 2024 than it did in 2023. Greenhouse gas emissions will be higher in 2024 than they were in 2023, and concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase.
Despite all this, no one will question the International Energy Agency’s projections or the regime created by the Kyoto Protocol, which has been a failure by any metric, including its own.
Oil prices will close the year below $80 per barrel.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” will win best picture at the Oscars. No one notices or really even cares.
Finally, some of these predictions will be wrong.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times and a co-host of the podcast “The Unregulated.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.