(cont) In the 'what can go wrong' category, some obvious possibilities include the economy, geopolitics / war, organized opposition to a Biden victory, and unexpected black swan events. The 'Rumsfeld categories' would include -- known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.
1) Economic / Financial - this seems to be under control, at least for the next 6 months leading up to the election. A few years after that could be a different story, but the next 6 months look OK. A return of regional bank failures is a possibility, but the Fed's lowering of QT reduces that risk.
2) Geopolitics / War - plenty of landmines here, but the US has made it clear that a US / Iran war is off the table. Ukraine looks like the bigger risk - they now have additional funding, longer range US missiles, and unstable leadership who actually bombed the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
3) Opposition to Biden - while the Rep side includes some avid Trump followers, I figure a lot of the casual Trump supporters from past elections have cooled on the Donald, and just want the country to return to some semblance of normalcy. These people don't like Biden, but may just stay home on election day. Imo, a significant risk to Biden comes from extreme factions within the broader 'neocon' camp, who see the Rep administration as the only hope of stopping Iran's nuclear program.
4) Black Swan Events - here's where things get complicated, and there are many scenarios. Since both candidates are elderly, a serious age related health problem could crop up out of the blue (real or induced), so this is a possibility. Rickards says that the Establishment / Deep State will stop at nothing to keep Trump out of office, they simply will not allow it. So there are many possible permutations, but I figure what they want to see happen is a close election that Biden wins, or can win via relatively minor 'tweaking' of the vote count.
Here's a potential plot for a novel or movie --> a neocon extremist takes out Biden, believing that only the Rep Party can stop Iran's nuclear program. Since this makes a 'fixed' US election impossible, the Deep State is forced to also remove Trump. So both Biden and Trump are out of the picture, and the candidates end up being backups or the VP candidates. But this restores plausibility to the ability to fix the vote count, and the Dem replacement wins.
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