2024 elections are a threat to democracy

There's a 10% chance everything will go well. [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an unthinkable longshot of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. On Sundays, we look at the major theme of the week that was, and what it bodes for the week to come. Sign up for the daily newsletter [here](. Programming note: My name is Toby Harshaw, and welcome to the revenge of Gen X. On weekdays, I assist the wonderful Jessica Karl as she takes the best of Bloomberg Opinion’s daily content and turns it into her Gen Z prose poems, which send me into both peals of laughter and the dark recesses of Urban Dictionary to figure out what in god’s name she’s talking about. On the plus side, everyone was amazed when, doing the Sunday New York Times [crossword](, I came up with the answer “STAN” (clue: “Die-hard fan”). So on Sundays, you can forget fast fashion and close out TikTok; just pop the collar on your Izod and flip on MTV Classic. I promise to keep the dad jokes to a minimum. [Time Bomb]( What year did everything in the world change? Again, I suppose it comes down to your generation. Baby boomers could pick 1969: the moon landing, Woodstock, Tiny Tim’s [wedding]( on The Tonight Show. People my age might say 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, Tim Berners-Lee [invented]( the World Wide Web and [Hole]( formed. Millennials could narrow it down to a single day: Sept. 11, 2001. For Gen Z, how about 2016? John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge say that year was [a hinge of history](: “Back in 2016, the world was a remarkably peaceful place, with the war against terrorism winding down and China largely seen as a trading partner,” they write. Then came the havoc: Donald Trump’s victory, Russia’s election meddling, Brexit, [a new cold war]( — along with less-noticed calamities such as Bashar al-Assad crushing the Syrian rebellion and strongman Rodrigo Duterte taking power in the Philippines. Early that year, John published a column positing that we lived in a “[20% world](.” Let’s check his math (bearing in mind [he’s my boss](): “Bookmakers were offering punters a 1-in-5 chance of Donald Trump winning the US presidency that November. There were similar odds on three other ‘unthinkables’: Britain voting to leave the European Union; the extreme left-winger Jeremy Corbyn being elected Britain’s prime minister; and Marine Le Pen ascending to the French presidency.” Unfortunately, John beat the spread: Two of the unthinkables became more than thinkable — and don’t count Le Pen out quite yet. So where does that leave us today? “Look at the world in 2024 and it is almost a mirror image of 2016,” John and Adrian write. “The long-shot unthinkables from eight years ago are now the firm favorites, or even just the accepted status quo.” [Oddsmakers]( put Trump’s reelection chances at close to 40%, with Joe Biden nearly 10 percentage points back. (In his [speech]( at Valley Forge on Friday, Biden warned that “Democracy is on the ballot.” Someone on the campaign staff might remind him that he’s [literally]( the one on the ballot, and it’s time to get crackin’.) A solid majority of Britons thinks Brexit was a mistake, but the odds of the nation rejoining Europe are [slim to none](. And there’s a [prop bet](: Taiwan votes for a new president in less than a week, and another victory by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party may bring the territory closer to a Chinese invasion. But it’s not just Taipei on the line: 41% of the world’s population is having major elections this year. Yay democracy! Right? Not really, what with extremist populist parties — mostly right-wing — on the rise everywhere from the European Union to the Pacific rim. Karishma Vaswani is especially [worried]( about the latter: “Asia-Pacific is seeing a significant increase in populism and authoritarianism, harking back to an era when strongmen presidents ruled with an iron fist. Hundreds of millions of votes won’t necessarily mean more democracy.” As for Europe, John and Adrian warn that “in a terrifying number of cases, candidates who would have been seen as extremist wild cards in 2016 look the strongest ... with likely advances in the European Parliament, Austria, Portugal and Germany.” Niall Ferguson, fresh from a pointy-heads [parley]( in Italy, [throws]( Europe’s largest war since 1945 into the mix: “It has long been a talking point in Ukraine that, if Donald Trump is elected US president in November, their country will be in trouble. It turns out their country is already in trouble, 11 months before the American election.” It’s a mistake to think the Ukraine War is contained to Eastern Europe — it is part of a global struggle pitting the liberal world against an “axis of authoritarianism,” [according]( to Andreas Kluth. “Iran, Russia, China and North Korea aren’t an axis in the sense of coordinating their strategy,” he writes. “But they may yet behave like an axis if they think the US is distracted by the war in Gaza, paralyzed by domestic polarization, or exhausted from overstretch. For they all agree that Washington is the ultimate enemy. If the US fights any one of them, the others may be tempted to open additional fronts.” How many fronts could the US and its allies hold? Depressingly few. “History is littered with examples of seemingly untouchable empires that proved suddenly vulnerable, succumbing to some combination of domestic division, external overextension or the loss of relative economic and military dominance,” Marc Champion [warns](. “The threat of a multi-theater expansion of the wars the US is involved with — all based on missile technologies and stocks in which Washington’s once absolute dominance has faded — is growing.” So what are the chances everything turns out alright — somebody other than Trump wins the US presidency; the UK regains its senses; China is dissuaded from invading its “rogue province”; the Middle East finds peace; and dictatorships fall left and right? EEK! “If you allow yourself to dream a little, and an optimistic case emerges. Call it the 10% world,” note John and Adrian. In other words, the worst scenarios have increased from 20% chance of fruition four years ago to 90% today. As Jessica might say: [Big]( [Yikes](! Bonus [Armageddon]( Reading : - Will 2024 [Be the Year]( Fake News Destroys Democracy? — Mihir Sharma - US [Must Stop]( ‘Swatting’ From Becoming an Election Weapon — Dave Lee - 2024 Will [Mark the End]( of the Post-Pandemic Economy — Allison Schrager - [Apocalypse Now](? Only In Our Fevered Dreams — Paul J. Davies [Feedback Jam](: New Bloomberg columnist Nia Malika Henderson writes, “Barring him from ballots would also deprive Americans who see Trump as a threat to democracy, law and order, truth and stability from rejecting him again.” So, how many readers truly see the former president as a threat to democracy? Let me know at tharshaw@bloomberg.net. [Sound and Vision]( What’s Bad for Harvard Is Good for America The nation’s elite universities are an unaccountable oligopoly, and the signaling they convey is overvalued, Allison Schrager [says](. The resignation of Claudine Gay as president has brought Harvard unwanted attention for lacking both academic standards and moral clarity. She made mistakes — and [the odd claim]( that she fell into a “well-laid trap” — but in many ways Harvard [set her up]( to fail. [Think About It]( - US [Joins the Arctic Race]( to the Bottom (of the Sea) — Liam Denning - Failure to Control Immigration [Is Not an Option]( — Max Hastings - 2023’s Economy Will [Be Hard to Top](, But 2024’s Just Might — Matthew Yglesias - The 10 Most Intriguing [Science Breakthroughs]( of 2023 — F.D. Flam [What’s the World Got in Store](? - Jan. 8: EU Consumer Confidence - Europe’s New Fiscal Deal [Is a Triumph](. Now Fix It. — The Bloomberg editors - Jan. 11: US CPI - The People’s Inflation [Is Still a Big Problem](— Kathryn Anne Edwards - Jan. 13: Taiwan Election - Xi Jinping’s Year of [Living Dangerously](— Karishma Vaswani [True Democracy](? We’ve established that 2024 is the year the free world. Yet just as we thought democracy was holding its own against Putin, bots, trolls, Ye, [fake electors](, [Iranian Hackers](, [Tucker Carlson](, QAnon, [Do We Need This?](, deepfakes and [lizard people](, along comes Midjourney. This San Francisco-based AI startup, according to Parmy Olson, “in its 17-month existence has carried out no marketing, raised not a cent from venture capitalists, but is making $200 million in annual revenue and has become one of the most powerful tools for generating remarkably real AI ‘photos.’” Like this one! This fake photo of Leonardo DiCaprio as Lenin was generated on the latest version of Midjourney OK, plain silly, and we don’t need Leo-as-Lenin to tell us that politics are [all about expediency]([1](#footnote-1) — we have Trump for that. But Parmy says Midjourney’s doctored AI images, launched across social media by the zillions, don’t have to be believable to affect voters: “Their real impact will be more nuanced and harder to detect: A flood of fake images promoting certain ideas will act more like advertising campaigns that influence opinion rather than fool people.” Over the next 10 months, I fear that might prove to be a distinction without a difference. Notes: Please send fake Lenin quotes and feedback to Toby Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Threads](, [TikTok](, [Twitter](, [Instagram]( and [Facebook]( [1] Lenin is often quoted as having said, "There are no morals in politics, only expediency," as in the linked column by Alistair Cooke. As with many clever sayings attributed to Churchill, Mark Twain and Yogi Berra, I have my doubts Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? 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