With confusion about when and where the next Presidential debate will be held – or even if it will be held, the best Vegas political betting sites have almost totally abandoned the idea of the lighthearted prop as we go into the 2020 election’s home stretch.
This is, after all, serious stuff.
Of course, the whole purpose of election betting is to make it less serious.
So while you can finally get all the usual lines again – Presidential election odds, state electoral odds, and the like – there are hardly any truly creative odds on offer.
That may or may not change between now and November 3, but in the meantime, there’s only one line of genuine interest for the forward-thinking bettor. And as is proving a theme, MyBookie is the operator offering the action.
2024 US Presidential Election Winner
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez +300
- Joe Biden +300
- Kamala Harris +350
- Elizabeth Warren +800
- Bernie Sanders +1000
- Michelle Obama +1000
- Andrew Cuomo +1200
- Ted Cruz +1200
- Josh Hawley +1200
- Tom Cotton +1500
- Pete Buttigieg +1500
- Michael Bennet +2000
- Cory Booker +2000
- Ivanka Trump +3000
- Mike Bloomberg +3000
- Kanye West +5000
- Mark Cuban +5000
- Elon Musk +7500
Obviously, there is absolutely no telling what’s going to happen 25 days from now, much less 48 months from now.
But to get away from the standard boring lines (Joe Biden’s up on Trump, the Democrats are favored to take the Senate, blah, blah, blah), the above poses an amusing Friday thought exercise.
So let’s work it out.
First up: AOC.
We’d actually feel good about picking AOC at +300, but only if that stood for “Any Other Candidate.” Instead, it stands for freshman NY congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Now, if you look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ betting odds to win reelection to the US House of Representatives, you’ll see that she’s a lock. And she’ll be a lock in 2022, as well.
However, while she’ll be eligible to be President by 2024, it’s not a lock that she’ll want to leave her cushy, more-or-less permanent congressional job and the local celebrity that comes with it. Not every popular politician has Presidential aspirations. Plus, she’s pretty extreme for the mainstream.
With AOC out of the way, let’s look at some of the actual laffers on the list.
First of all, Joe Biden – even if he wins the 2020 Presidential election – is not going to be a two-termer. He probably isn’t even going to be a one-termer.
If Kamala Harris replaces Biden during his first term, she’ll have a hard campaign as the incumbent, and if she doesn’t, the country might be sick of her by the time she’s up for the post.
Vice Presidents don’t get elected to succeed their superiors all that often in the modern era.
Moving on, Elizabeth Warren will be 75 by November 2024, and it’s safe to say that regardless of the outcome this year, America won’t give another certifiable geriatric a run at the Oval Office.
Ditto for Bernie Sanders, who will be 83 in 2024, and Mike Bloomberg, who will be 82 in 2024.
While many voters seem to like Michelle Obama and wish she’d become President one day, the former First Lady has already done eight years in the White House and seems much more at home as a celebrity citizen.
Obama’s got a nine-figure Netflix contract, a bunch of book deals, infinite big-money speaking gigs, and can be Oprah 2.0 whenever she wants to make a phone call. Why bother with the headache of running a country?
Now for the current popular GOP pols: Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton.
Cruz was disinterested in being a Supreme Court Justice when that idea was recently floated by Trump, and though he’d probably be more interested in being President, his popularity – even in Texas – has waned.
Hawley is a former Missouri AG and a current US Senator, and while he’s extremely popular on the right, he’s harder right than a typical GOP POTUS candidate can afford to be. Ditto for Cotton, and then some.
On the Democrat side, Cory Booker, the NJ Senator, is not popular nationally, as demonstrated by his completely ineffectual run in the 2020 Democratic Presidential primary. Likewise for Michael Bennet. I mean, nobody even knows who Michael Bennet is.
Seriously, who the heck is Michael Bennet?
Then, there’s the celebrities.
Mark Cuban has flirted with the idea for running for President, but he’s a reality TV show star and a popular sportsball owner. In short, his political trajectory is basically that of Trump’s, and Trump is reviled not for his politics but for his DC outsider status. Cuban would get the same pushback, without the spine – or the charisma – to withstand it.
Kanye West, who is running for President on the Birthday Party ticket, will probably be a candidate in perpetuity, but he’s never getting elected.
Tech billionaire and millennial icon Elon Musk, by 2024, will be President of Mars. There is, of course, no precedent for being both President of Mars and President of the United States at the same time, and it’s questionably constitutional that anyone could hold executive office in two governments simultaneously.
Also, Musk isn’t a natural born American citizen or child of citizen parents at the time of his birth, so he’s not even eligible to be President. Nevertheless, his presence on the odds boards indicates that at least some bettors are ignorant of this small hurdle.
Credibly, that just leaves Andrew Cuomo, Pete Buttigieg, and Ivanka Trump.
Cuomo won’t be able to answer for his 2020 COVID nursing home scandal or his state’s catastrophic efforts to defund police, so cross him off the boards. These wouldn’t necessarily be the biggest skeletons for a Presidential hopeful, but folks probably aren’t going to forget about either of them any time soon.
Buttigieg is allegedly popular with Wall Street types, and he fared well in the first primaries for the 2020 cycle, but his token minority status might not be worth as much in four years, and he may not hold any public office – and thus may not command much of the limelight – between now and then.
Plus, the guy’s a freaking cartoon character.
Ivanka Trump, then, is the last person standing. At +3000, she’d easily earn our pick of the options as presented.
The Trumps – like it or not – are not going anywhere. The family will be a relevant political and media force for years to come. They’re basically the New Kennedys™. Again, from the list provided, we’d choose Ivanka.
But none of that matters, because Donald Trump will be President in 2024.
Like father, like son.
Just ask Twitter.