1/18/24
Two days ago, I wrote an instantly seminal piece on the Iowa
caucuses (WHAT
IOWA HAS TAUGHT US: MAYBE NOT ENOUGH…IN
ANY NUMBER OF WAYS, 1/16/24), in which I expounded extensively on the magnitude,
and, more importantly, the breadth of Donald Trump’s victory in my
beloved Hawkeye state. However, I
concluded that piece cryptically by writing
“The GOP…is in a whole heap of trouble regardless of what
happens in the next month or so.”
How could I conclude my ruminations on Mr. Trump’s
victory with such an apparently contradictory statement? How could the GOP be in such trouble in the
wake of its apparent standard-bearer’s broad-based and impressive victory?
My conclusion goes beyond my long-held contention that
Mr. Trump is highly unlikely to (I use the words “is highly unlikely to”
rather than “can’t” only because of the topic discussed in the final, and most
important, paragraphs of this missive.) win in a general election. That contention still holds. Despite his doing so well among members of such
groups who participated in the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Trump won’t be carrying
the moderate, suburban vote that any presidential candidate, and especially any
Republican candidate, needs to win a general election. These are the types of people, largely
apolitical and very susceptible to media and other types of manipulation, who
didn’t extensively participate in the caucuses but whose votes are as valid as
those who did. Maybe one has to live in
a county that went from deep red to purplish blue to realize the impact Mr.
Trump has had on the “traditional” GOP electorate, but Mr. Trump’s antics have
been devastating to Republican organizations, Republican ground troops, and
Republican voters in areas that the GOP needs to win.
Also bear in mind that Mr. Trump may be a convicted felon by election day. While this is not the type of thing that will discourage his supporters, including some of his not so ardent supporters, from voting for him, it is not the type of distinction that will win Mr. Trump votes where he needs them, i.e., among largely, but not entirely, suburban voters who not only dislike the idea of having a convict as their leader on the world stage but who also do not relish the drama electing such person would entail.
By the way, it looks to this observer, and doubtless to
many others, that the indictments and other legal actions against Mr. Trump
are working two-fold in the Democrats’ favor. First, they are helping Mr. Trump secure the
GOP nomination by inspiring those who think that such legal actions are the treacherous
and duplicitous employment of the legal system as a political tool against Mr.
Trump. Second, such legal moves harm
Mr. Trump’s chances in the general election.
Such an observation lends credence to those aforementioned who argue
that the indictments and such are nothing more than a political vendetta by a
deeply politicized justice system against Mr. Trump. But I digress.
I realize, from personal experience, that if one watches Fox
News long enough (By long enough, I mean about a half hour or so.), one starts
to think that 2024 is a slam dunk for Trump.
And if the general election vote
were limited to Fox News watchers, or cruise ship vacationers (Perhaps more on
that later if I get inspired to write another of my travelogues, long-time
favorites among some of my more devoted readers, in the wake of the terrific
cruise my wife and I recently enjoyed.
But I digress.), Mr. Trump would win with 99% of the vote. And if the vote were limited to CNN and
MSNBC watchers, Mr. Trump would be steamrolled with 1% of the vote. However, the election is decided by voters
from across the spectrum, and the wider the spectrum gets, the worse both Mr.
Trump and the Democratic candidate do.
Why did yours truly write “the Democratic candidate” and
not “President Biden”? Therein lies
another reason the GOP is in trouble.
One can reasonably argue that Mr. Biden is so eminently beatable that
even Donald Trump could beat him, and the polls currently seem to indicate
that. Such an outcome is not as likely
as it looks at this stage for the reasons outlined above. More importantly, my conviction that one of
the parties is going to dump its front-runner (See the seminal 2024
WILL NOT BE A BIDEN VS. TRUMP RACE, 11/18/23) grows by the day. Rumblings among media types, and, more importantly,
reported dissatisfaction of the Obamas with Mr. Biden’s chances of defeating
Mr. Trump, make me more convinced that ever that the Democrats will somehow
convince Mr. Biden to step aside and “secure his place in history,”
enabling them to replace Mr. Biden with a candidate more palatable to the broad
American public.
How can the Democrats pull off such a maneuver? It is apparent that, despite the irony
embodied in its name, the Democratic party is the less democratic of the two
parties. The 2008, 2016, and 2020
nominations have all the earmarks of having been decided by a relative handful
of party stalwarts rather than the general Democratic electorate. Given that, it’s not at all hard to imagine a
similar political engineering marvel in 2024.
Yes, there is the Kamala problem, but the people who run the Democratic
Party are smart and Ms. Harris, to put it politely, isn’t. They will figure out a way to get Vice-President
Harris to take one for the home team.
Among other machinations, the promise of a Supreme Court seat, though
rendered tentative by the likelihood of GOP control of the Senate after 2024,
might work with Ms. Harris, who, again, is many things, but brilliant, or even
sharp, isn’t one of them.
While I would postulate that the Democrats will have a new
standard-bearer before the summer, if things get complicated on the GOP side or
something else delays their decision-making process, the Democrats convene in
Chicago fully one month later than the Republicans convene up the road in
Milwaukee. Imagine the possibilities.
All that having been written, what if, by some miracle, Nikki
Haley, Ron DeSantis, or some white knight yet to emerge from the GOP
labyrinth, wins the GOP nomination? Aren’t
the GOP’s Trump problems thereby solved?
Ms. Haley, after all, makes much of the polls that show her demolishing Mr.
Biden in the general election.
The problems for a non-Trump GOP candidate are two-fold and
transcend the unlikelihood of such an outcome of the GOP primary season. First, while Ms. Haley, and probably even Mr.
DeSantis, could beat Mr. Biden in a general election, the nomination of
somebody other than Mr. Trump increases the likelihood of the Democrats’
dumping Mr. Biden to a virtual certainty.
Ms. Haley, or some other GOP nominee not named Donald J. Trump, would not
fare nearly so well against a generic Democrat as s/he would against Mr. Biden,
and, believe me, the Democratic replacement for Mr. Biden will be even more
generic than the Dems successfully portrayed Mr. Biden in 2020.
Second, if somebody other than Mr. Trump gets the GOP nod, the
Trump supporters will go absolutely ape and Mr. Trump will go full King Kong. Mr. Trump will probably launch a write-in or
third party effort and, even if he doesn’t, his most fervent supporters will
not support Ms. Haley or anybody else they consider an agent of the RINO,
corporatist, fellow-traveler, establishment, Trilateral Commission loving
GOP. What do they care if this means (at
least) another four years of the left wing of the Democratic Party imposing its
enlightenment on us benighted masses? This will make the 2024 general election a cakewalk
for whomever the Democrats nominate, even Joe Biden.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, why did I write in
my third paragraph that Mr. Trump is “highly unlikely to win” rather than that
he “can’t win”?
Yours truly sees a potential parallel to the 2022 election,
which I badly miscalled (FOUR
SEAT PICKUP IN THE SENATE FOR THE GOP?, 10/27/22) to be an overall big win
for the Republicans. While most prognosticators
did not share my intensity, they shared my overall assessment of the
outcome. But we were wrong; the Dems
held the Senate and the miserly majority the GOP won in the House has proven to
be more trouble than it was worth; can
you imagine how different things could be if the Republicans had picked
up, say, twenty more seats, which was eminently doable?
How
could so many observers, amateur and pro, be wrong on 2022? Because we missed the intensity of the
abortion issue. As it turned out, the
Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, for all its
substantive merits, turned into the greatest political gift the conservative
dominated Supreme Court could have given the Democrats. The deft political maneuvering that the Democrats
employed around the abortion issue overrode, or at least greatly mitigated, the
largely negative feelings the electorate had about President Biden and the
traditional loss of Congressional seats in the first off-year election after the
election of a new president. Most of us
knew the abortion issue was important, but we had no idea how important.
So
where is the parallel to 2024? The
parallel lies in what is broadly described as “the border.” The crisis at the border is now affecting
communities across the country. People
everywhere, and across the political spectrum, are demanding that the government
do something about it. They see the
Biden border policy, such as it is, as an abject failure and are nearly
desperately seeking an alternative. According
to polls in Iowa, and elsewhere, “the border” is the biggest issue of 2024,
transcending the economy, foreign policy, traditionally the two biggest issues
in any national election, and even abortion.
If “the border” becomes as big an issue as yours truly thinks it might,
it could put Mr. Trump in the White House regardless of who his Democratic
opponent might be. If this is the case,
and I’m not saying it is…yet, Mr. Trump would owe his unlikely victory to none
other than Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who made traditionally blue
bastions see the real consequences of their enthusiasm for largely open borders
and holding themselves out as “sanctuary cities.”
Should
the border ultimately win the White House for Mr. Trump, would he thank Mr.
Abbott? C’mon; this is Donald Trump we’re
talking about. In Mr. Trump’s mind, his victory will be solely
due to his brilliance and, in any case, thanking Mr. Abbott would be lending
aid to a potential rival.
Some
of his supporters, and opponents, describe Mr. Trump’s policies as “America
First.” They are, however, wrong in
this regard; with Mr. Trump, it is Trump first, last, and always.
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