Three great things that happened in 2023 that bode well for 2024

Amid all of the scary and anxiety-provoking news, looking back on the year there is reason to cheer.

There’s no question that 2023 was a year filled with dreadful realities, in the U.S. and around the world. And the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, is a Christian nationalist hellbent on theocracy, while Donald Trump is openly quoting Hitler and Mussolini.

But some good things happened in addition to Donald Trump’s four indictments, which include 91 felony charges!

And they’re things that will help Democrats defeat the MAGA GOP in 2024. Here are just three.

The anti-woke movement went to die.

Ron DeSantis infamously said that Florida is where woke goes to die, but in 2023, it looks like the “anti-woke” movement itself began to die. And Florida is no longer the model for the future that the GOP has held it up as.

All of the ugly legislation and policies that Florida spit out found resistance all across the country in states where the GOP latched on to DeSantis’s vile agenda. Anti-drag queen bills were overturned by the courts. School board members in states across the country backed by Moms For Liberty, founded in Florida, and anti-transgender Republicans in many states pushing DeSantis’s cruel attacks on gender-affirming care, suffered defeat at the ballot on Election Day.

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GOP voters turned away from the “anti-woke” rhetoric, so much so that Republican voters nationwide and in Iowa, the first voters in the GOP primary race, said they were sick of hearing it in the presidential primary race.

“Polls of Republican voters nationally and then in Iowa found that candidates were unlikely to win votes by narrowly focusing on rooting out left-wing ideology in schools, media, culture, and business,” The New York Times reported. Ron DeSantis, who couldn’t stop talking about the “woke mind virus,” suddenly dropped it—and had no campaign left since it was his only focus—as he continued to flounder.

Then we had the complete meltdown of Moms For Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, admitting to having consensual sex with another woman—after she’d railed against gays as “groomers”—and now a video has apparently surfaced of her having sex with a woman, and it’s not clear yet if it’s the same woman.

With the anti-woke agenda having been one of the key issues the Republicans were planning to run on in 2024, we’re now seeing the entire house of cards collapsing.

The economy is surging heading into 2024.

All year, the economic news was stupendous—for the country and for President Biden. Unemployment kept going down, wages kept going up, workers were able to make demands—and, via unions, they were able to successfully strike and get higher pay and better working conditions—and consumers continued buying.

Much of the media gave short shrift to all of this, refusing to give the president credit even though GDP surged. But as the jobs numbers continued to get better and better and as inflation came down, the media had to admit the previously unthinkable: There would be no recession.

As the Washington Post noted in a piece headlined, “Everyone expected a recession. The Fed and White House found a way out”:

The economy is ending the year in a remarkably better position than almost anyone on Wall Street or in mainstream economics had predicted, having bested just about all expectations time and again. Inflation has dropped to 3.1 percent, from a peak of 9.1. The unemployment rate is at a hot 3.7 percent, and the economy grew at a healthy clip in the most recent quarter.

The Fed is probably finished hiking interest rates and is eyeing cuts next year. Financial markets are at or near all-time highs, and the S&P 500 could hit a new record this week, too. Fresh data from the Conference Board also showed consumer confidence reaching a five-month high in December, thanks to growing optimism for incomes, the job market and overall business conditions.

That strength and stability—defying even many of the most optimistic predictions—represent a remarkable development after seemingly endless economic crises.

The Fed and the White House fought inflation on their own distinct tracks, using entirely different tools. But now, the central bankers, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, and President Biden’s economic brain trust are cautiously pointing out that they have been vindicated by data and developments dismissed as virtually impossible until quite recently. This month, Biden’s typically staid treasury secretary gave an unusually direct rebuke, telling reporters that economists who predicted that lower inflation would require widespread layoffs were now “eating their words.”

Call it the most polite revenge tour Washington has ever seen.

Yes, and it didn’t require austerity programs and cutting jobs and spending, but actually investing in America via the American Rescue Plan, the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Infrastructure Bill, among other investments that President Biden and Democrats secured amid a wall of opposition by the GOP.

And the Consumer Confidence Index is the big one because it defies the “vibes” argument—the claim that even though the economy is good, the public still is not getting good vibes from it—and shows it’s all been media theater. The index showed that “fears of recession are fading," as CNN put it.

The media can’t deny it now—though we may still see them try with polling—and the economic outlook will just be increasingly positive as President Biden heads into the 2024 election.

Democrats beat back the GOP in the 2023 elections.

No matter what the polls have said, the actual real-world results—which I’ve focused on over and over—have been great for Democrats when it comes to elections, and that was true throughout 2023. In Virginia, deep-red Kentucky, New Jersey, and elsewhere, Democrats defied the media and the claims about Joe Biden’s popularity. Two issues that will be front and center in 2024 brought victory to Democrats in 2023: abortion rights and threats to democracy.

I have to go back again to what Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg told the New York Times:

Our performance since Dobbs has remained remarkable and important. In 2022 we gained in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania over 2020, getting to 59 percent in Colorado, 57 percent in Pennsylvania, 55 percent in Michigan, 54 percent in New Hampshire in that “red wave” year. This year we’ve won and outperformed across the country in every kind of election, essentially leaving this a blue wave year.

We got to 56 percent in the Wisconsin SCOTUS race, 57 percent in Ohio, flipped Colorado Springs and Jacksonville, flipped the Virginia House. Kentucky governor, Andrew Beshear, grew his margin. We won mayoralties and school board races across the United States. Elections are about winning and losing, and we keep winning, and they keep losing.

Even as we keep seeing polls showing Biden down—though there’s now polling showing Biden surging with young voters, defying all the others—we have to look at how polling has failed in almost every election this year (and last), in which Democrats over-performed the polls. There’s no reason to believe that’s not going to happen with the self-described dictator on the ballot.

So, take a break and enjoy the holidays. And then get ready to gear up for 2024, knowing that the GOP is in a complete disaster—and pushing an unpopular impeachment on top of it—while Democrats have a proven record of success.