While chatting the other day with Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire co-founder of the Blackstone Group, I asked him about his thoughts on the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Should we be resigned to a repeat of the Biden–Trump race of 2020, or is it possible we might end up with a less predictable outcome? 

At 76 years old, Steve is a wise man on Wall Street. He is also quite politically astute and extremely well informed, even if he did serve for six months as the chairman of Trump’s bizarre 16-member Strategic and Policy Forum, prior to its dissolution in the wake of the Charlottesville riot. “I’ve learned that presidential elections are much more difficult to predict than people who are predicting them think they are,” Steve said. He reminded me that at the end of 2003, John Kerry was polling seventh in the Democratic primary race… and went on to become the nominee. At this point in the 2016 election cycle, he noted, it was Scott Walker leading the Republican field, followed by Jeb Bush, and “the soon-to-be indicted” Rudy Giuliani, in third.