The Quest for a Non-Trump Republican
The Establishment is desperate for an alternative that's not coming.
Surprisingly, the first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign will take place next week. Not surprisingly, the most likely Republican nominee is skipping the event.
NYT (“Trump Plans to Skip G.O.P. Debate for Interview With Tucker Carlson“):
Former President Donald J. Trump plans to upstage the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday by sitting for an online interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, according to multiple people briefed on the matter.
In the past 24 hours, Mr. Trump has told people close to him that he has made up his mind and will skip the debate in Milwaukee, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.
Mr. Trump is notoriously mercurial, and left himself something of an out to change his mind with an ambiguous post on his website, Truth Social, on Thursday. He wrote that he’s polling well ahead of his rivals and added, “Reagan didn’t do it, and neither did others. People know my Record, one of the BEST EVER, so why would I Debate?”
For weeks, the former president has been quizzing aides, associates and rally crowds about what he should do. Until earlier this week, Mr. Trump had been giving people the impression he was considering a last-minute surprise appearance on Wednesday.
Still, people close to him had said for months that he was unlikely to take part in the first two Republican debates, both of which are sponsored by the Republican National Committee. And Mr. Trump’s apparent decision to skip the first debate of the presidential nominating contest is a major affront to both the R.N.C. and Fox News, which is hosting the event.
The WSJ Editorial Board (“Culling the Republican Presidential Herd“) is hoping this helps the party find an alternative:
The first Republican presidential debate hits the stage in Milwaukee next week, and perhaps the moment will help one or more of the candidates break from the pack. It often does. But before the brawling begins, it’s not too soon to think about how to narrow the GOP field to give former President Trump a challenge that the party and the country deserve.
[…]
The man from Mar-a-Lago wants a divided field with a half dozen candidates splitting single- or low double-digit support.
That’s what happened in 2016 when Mr. Trump rode pluralities to the GOP nomination. In Iowa he came in second, with 24% of the vote. Then he won New Hampshire with 35% and South Carolina with 33%. Too many nonviable candidates stayed in too long, many believing Mr. Trump would eventually blow up and hoping to be the lone contender against him.
[…]
The Milwaukee debate should be the first culling line. The candidates who say they’ve qualified so far are Messrs. Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Scott and Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, Ms. Haley and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
Any announced candidate who hasn’t qualified for the debate based on the Republican National Committee’s criteria isn’t likely to strike political lightning from the sidelines. Staying in longer is essentially a vanity project, or an audition to be a talk-show host.
The debate and its aftermath will also be a sorting opportunity. A bad performance could mean that support flat-lines and fund raising evaporates. No candidate who has been sleeping in Holiday Inns for months will want to drop out, but a failure to break out by the second debate on Sept. 27 means there’s little chance of doing so. By the start of autumn, anyone who’s polling in the single digits should be asking what it would accomplish to come in fourth in Iowa or New Hampshire.
[…]
The Milwaukee debate should be the first culling line. The candidates who say they’ve qualified so far are Messrs. Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Scott and Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, Ms. Haley and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
Any announced candidate who hasn’t qualified for the debate based on the Republican National Committee’s criteria isn’t likely to strike political lightning from the sidelines. Staying in longer is essentially a vanity project, or an audition to be a talk-show host.
The debate and its aftermath will also be a sorting opportunity. A bad performance could mean that support flat-lines and fund raising evaporates. No candidate who has been sleeping in Holiday Inns for months will want to drop out, but a failure to break out by the second debate on Sept. 27 means there’s little chance of doing so. By the start of autumn, anyone who’s polling in the single digits should be asking what it would accomplish to come in fourth in Iowa or New Hampshire.
Meanwhile, as always, there’s pining for a candidate not yet in the race to come in and save us.
WaPo (“Rupert Murdoch encouraged Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin to seek presidency“):
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has repeatedly encouraged Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) to run for president in 2024, according to two people familiar with entreaties made in at least two face-to-face meetings.
The previously unreported meetings took place months ago, but Murdoch’s ask has taken on fresh relevance as Youngkin continues to lay the groundwork for a potential last-minute White House bid and as Murdoch outlets hyped his presidential prospects this month with a mix of sober Wall Street Journal analysis and buzzy Page Six blurbs.
[…]
A political newcomer and former Carlyle Group executive who plowed $20 million of his own money to fund his 2021 gubernatorial campaign, Youngkin swiftly vaulted from national obscurity to lists of potential Republican presidential contenders the moment he flipped seemingly blue Virginia red.
A recent Virginia Commonwealth University survey found Virginians favor Youngkin over President Biden for president 44 percent to 37 percent in a hypothetical head-to-head contest, but Youngkin barely registers in national Republican primary polls. Nevertheless, White House buzz around him has persisted.
Some political insiders see a path for Youngkin based on his ties to the donor class and a personal fortune that Forbes estimated at $470 million at the time of his election; appeal to evangelicals as someone who started a church in his basement; and ability to wage MAGA culture wars in the style of the friendly dad next door.
Yet Youngkin would face tremendous logistical hurdles if he sticks with his plan to stay out of the race until after the Virginia General Assembly races on Nov. 7 that have the potential to boost or dim his national prospects. The candidate filing deadlines for presidential primaries or caucuses will have passed by that date in some key states, including Nevada (Oct. 15) and South Carolina (Oct. 31). Deadlines in a host of other states fall soon after that.
Youngkin has two missions, winning the statehouse and the White House, which are intertwined. Virginia Republicans must hold the House and flip the Senate to preserve the very thing that launched Youngkin to national prominence: his reputation for energizing MAGA voters without alienating suburban moderates.
Given that there’s a very high chance (at least 30%, if not 40%) that the Republican nominee wins the presidency in 2024, I join Murdoch and the WSJ Editorial Board in pining for that person not to be Donald J. Trump. Alas, this is almost certainly a pipe dream. Trump continues to have very strong appeal with the folks likely to show up to vote in Republican primaries.
The myth that Trump only won the 2016 nomination because the moderates split that vote among themselves persists despite having no real basis. As I detailed in my March 2020 post “Why 2020 Democrats Were Able to Consolidate the Moderates and 2016 Republicans Weren’t,” Trump took the lead almost immediately after entering the race and never relinquished it. Further, a whopping 13 candidates, including early frontrunner Jeb Bush, dropped out before Super Tuesday on March 1. It just didn’t matter.
There’s just nobody in the field or sitting on the sidelines that has the appeal to Republican voters than Trump has. If he’s not sitting in jail when the primaries kick off with the Iowa caucus on January 15, Trump is likely to come pretty close to running the table. He’ll likely have the nomination wrapped up by the end of Super Tuesday on March 5.
I just don’t see any other possible outcome if Trump remains in the race as a candidate. And, honestly, I have no idea at this point how the race would shake out if Trump is sidelined.
Have you considered this?
https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1692311328009199696
Been showing symptoms of neurological issues for a long time, now seem to be progressing.
ETA: BTW, the RNC /state party revisions to delegate allocation rules make it effectively impossible to deny Trump the nomination – even more slanted than in 2016 to annointing the early plurality leader.
Perhaps you have noticed the other thread, where Trump calls himself “the apple of Putin’s eye?”
The brain worms are eating away at his filters on what he can say, another reason for his lawyers to worry what he might blurt out.
The prosecutors are effectively in a race against time to get him tried while he is still competent to stand trial.
Winnowing the field works differently for Democrats than Republicans because the delegate allocation rules are so vastly different.
“Alas, this is almost certainly a pipe dream. Trump continues to have very strong appeal with the folks likely to show up to vote in Republican primaries.”
To put it plainer, they aren’t willing to listen to anything unfavorable about Trump. From The New Yorker:
“Even before its [the DeSantis campaign’s] official launch, the campaign and its allies were conducting polls and focus groups to test various anti-Trump messages. Across several months, the source familiar with the campaign said that it consistently struggled to find a message critical of Trump that resonated with rank-and-file Republican voters. Even attaching Trump’s name to an otherwise effective message had a tendency to invert the results, this source said. If a moderator said that the covid lockdowns destroyed small businesses and facilitated the largest upward wealth transfer in modern American history, seventy per cent of the Republicans surveyed would agree. But, if the moderator said that Trump’s covid lockdowns destroyed small businesses and facilitated the largest upward wealth transfer in modern American history, the source said, seventy per cent would disagree.” (emphasis added)
Support for the cult explanation of a very large portion of the Republican primary votership continues to grow.
@charontwo:
Our collective malady: Donald Trump’s mental health crisis is America’s problem
But yes, it is becoming more noticeable, a good reason he should be on the debate stage.
Trump can’t stand on a stage with Chris Christies ready to take him on. He’d be hard-put to cope with Pence. And hardest of all would be dealing with the bootlicking by the rest since Trump will see it as losers trying to suck up to him for their own advantage.
We have here an out-of-shape, 77 year-old psychopath, incapable of empathy, incapable of self-discipline, incapable of engaging on policy, incapable of learning, able only to spout applause lines and hurl insults. @charontwo: has been on the mental health angle for quite some time and I’ve been intrigued by (his? her? their?) perspective, waiting to see the evidence present itself.
There are different ways senility plays out. It seems to magnify pre-existing character traits. Rather like alcohol in that I don’t believe a good man becomes a POS when drunk, I think rather it’s an excuse for assholes to behave like POS. My father has remained rather sweet as his faculties deteriorated. My father-in-law was a prick to the end.
There are a lot of different flavors of senile dementia. There are physical symptoms characteristic of frontotemporal dementia that Trump seems to show – stance, gait, speech slurring, tongue protrusions etc.
A characteristic mental issue he appears to show is perserveration, also tendency to substitute similar sounding words for the context word.
I have moments when it really hits hard that Trump was ever taken seriously as anything other than the self promoting narcissist and fraud he so obviously is. I never realized there were so many incredibly gullible and/or stupid Americans. I really thought we, as a nation, were better than this. I continue to believe his popularity is inflated, but when corrupt and ruthless people are willing to put us all on the line, one can’t help but worry.
I’m surprised Republicans are not advocating 2nd amendment solutions ot their Cheeto problem.
It’s all fetish and cosplay.
Personally, I’d give a generic Republican a 30-40% chance, largely depending on the economy 10 months from now. 538 gave Trump 28% in 2016. I don’t see how he can have better odds now. No one is in a mode of, “He’s a successful businessman, he’ll turn presidential if elected.” The rule is we elect a prez twice, then change parties. That’s how Trump won in ’16, denying Ds a third term. And no one triggers D turnout like Trump. Trump’s only chance is a crisis or health event affecting Biden.
And doesn’t it give you pause to find yourself in agreement with the WSJ Editorial Board and Rupert Murdoch?
@Kathy:
It’s the GOP establishment that wants Trump gone. Unlike the MAGA, they don’t throw around a lot of loose talk about violence. Although they might do it.
@gVOR10: We tend to re-elect our presidents, so Biden clearly has the edge. But there are two and only two choices in a given contest. Fifteen months out, it’s hard to go lower than higher than 70-30 and I think 60-40 is probably more realistic. Especially when the system is stacked the way it is: Trump came reasonably close to being re-elected despite a shortfall of 8 million votes. Trump barely lost Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania (all well under 1 point margins) and North Carolina was only 1.5 points. Just flipping Pennsylvania and Georgia would have given Trump the necessary 270 Electors to win.
What most pundits refuse to admit openly is that the reason why America has a dysfunctional political party is that it has a dysfunctional electorate.
MAGAs are about half of the American electorate and they place their commitment an ethno-religious identity above their commitment to liberal democracy.
They see elections and democracy and the law are merely tools to achieve dominance, and jettison them the moment they become inconvenient.
Trump understands this, the pundits so far refuse to. So they vainly search for some explanation which makes Trump into a mystifying aberration, a temporary lapse where after his removal, a sense of normalcy can be restored.
When we see tweets from MAGAs showing a rainbow flag at a store and saying that “Target/ Cracker Barrel/ Corporation x has fallen” we laugh and mock them but they are telling us plainly, that they see culture as a clash of identities and a zero sum game; Recognizing the equality of queer people, or nonwhite people represents an existential loss to them, and they simply cannot, will not accept it.
This phenomenon won’t disappear with Trump; It has existed in America since the founding, and has never been fully extinguished.
@James Joyner:
Completely this. Barring a major health crisis or some other unpredictable event, Trump will be the nominee and has a serious probability of winning. None of the trials will realistically move fast enough to reach a conviction (or possibly even the trial) stage.
The sooner people (in particular the Democratic party) accept that he will need to be defeated at the ballot box first, the better we can prepare for that.
@Kathy: Republicans don’t have a Cheeto problem. America has a Cheeto problem.
@Chip Daniels:
I need to ask where you are getting that static. Because I think based on polls it is vastly overestimating the size of MAGA.
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/maga-movement-widely-unpopular-new-poll-finds-rcna81200
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/poll-us-republicans-reject-maga-label-rcna49749
At best MAGA represents a slim majority of the Republican Party. More likley they are minority. So that’s less than half of less than half of the electorate. Further evidence of this:
I think the major issues are two fold (at least):
1. MAGA, while a minority, is a highly motivated minority. And in our primary system that gives them a high degree of influence.
2. Most people tend to be straight party line voters regardless of the candidate. Most Democrats and Republicans believe that any member of their party is a better option than a member of the opposition party.
What gives me how about 2024 are the number of Republicans who split their tickets in 2020 and 2022. While still a minority, there were enough of them to help defeat many MAGA candidates.
I want to believe that will harm Trump in the general. That said I also want the margins to be so significant that the additional help isn’t necessary (though still very welcome).
@charontwo: People have been saying similar things since 2015, and yet here we are.
@gVOR10:
Ok, so it’s all fetish, cosplay, and lip service.
@Steven L. Taylor: And also are saying similar things about Biden. The remote diagnosis stuff is really tired and largely seems directed at a given party’s base (Trump for Dems, Biden for Reps). Both cases is wish casting (much like the wish that the Criminal Legal System moves fast enough to take care of Trump for the Democrats–seriously folks, don’t trust any media pundit–especially former prosecutors–who are promising this to you).
@James Joyner:
THIS.
Plus, the point about our tendency to re-elect presidents is at least in part why Trump is the front-runner for renomination.
@Chip Daniels:
More importantly, a dysfunctional electoral system. Trump does not have, and never has had, majority support in the country. Not even plurality support. Yet, he won the presidency once, came close a second time, as James notes, and is a threat to win it again.
And as I stress over and over again, if there are only two choices, a large number of people will rationalize the choices closest to them. Yes, R voters should understand what a threat Trump is, but at the end of the day a lot of Rs will see him as more likely to deliver the policies they want than Biden.
@mattbernius: Yup.
@Steven L. Taylor:
And, to this point, if the situation was reversed, the majority of Democrats would do the exact same thing. Obviously, no one that comments here of course would. But that’s because we are all the specialist of snowflakes.
@Steven L. Taylor: @mattbernius:
Whatever. I have decided to file away a link to this thread, just to see, in the future, how these very perceptive insights hold up.
@mattbernius:
I base the number on the raw votes from 2016 and 2020.
In each case Trump got around 46% of the electorate. And the control of Congress is around 50-50 in both houses.
After 2016 there were a few analyses which tried to make the case that much of Trump’s support was soft, a protest vote, something done by people who didn’t realize who he was.
But in 2020 he got the same 46% of the vote.
I know polls show him to be unpopular, but that isn’t translating into ballot box votes. I would love to be wrong and see 2024 be a 1984 landslide repudiation of MAGA, but that just doesn’t seem in the cards.
I fully expect that even if Trump loses in 2024, he will still pull around 45% of the vote total.
@Chip Daniels:
This … times 1000.
A couple of months ago Liz Cheney said, paraphrasing, ‘the problem we have is that we’re electing idiots.’ These people didn’t come from nowhere, so yeah, I blame the voters.
And Republicans have been working locally, in the grassroots – city councils, county and school boards – to get more idiots into the pipeline.
@Chip Daniels:
So, your position is that anyone who votes for Trump is MAGA?
@Chip Daniels:
So, your position is that anyone who votes for Trump is MAGA?
Did that mean everyone who voted for Clinton in 2016 was Ride or Die Hillary and supported her 100%?
@Chip Daniels:
If (when) Trump loses in 2024, I fear we’re going to see a re-run of 2020, with Trump still ceaselessy ranting about how 2024 was, like 2020, stolen, or “rigged and stolen,” to use his preferred phrasing. Only this time, it may be even worse.
@mattbernius:
It doesn’t make a difference if someone is or isn’t a MAGA.
They either vote from Trump or they don’t.
What we’ve seen in places like Florida or the towns documented here where democracy is dying, the characterization is entirely binary.
Voters either install someone who is willing to work within the confines of liberal democracy, or they don’t.
And there really isn’t any Republican at any level who is willing to do this.
So whether it is a school board in rural California, a town in Georgia, the state of Wisconsin, or the United States- Wherever Republicans win election, democracy is threatened because the Republican voters see democracy as optional but sharing power with liberals intolerable.
This is anecdotal, yet …
https://twitter.com/axios/status/1692903637469553110
My thought: Maybe they really do not expect an alternate , maybe they just see Trump as a loser not worth wasting money on.
@mattbernius: The “Trump is losing his mind” argument assumes two things:
1. It will be so visible in the very near future that even his fans will see the changes.
2. People who see the changes won’t like them.
I don’t think we can count on the first, and have very deep fears about that second assumption.
@Chip Daniels:
Exactly. If you land on Omaha Beach it won’t matter to you whether the Wehrmacht machine gunner on the bluff is a member of the Nazi party or not.
@Chip Daniels:
I realize that this sounds pedantic, but you started out by saying almost half the electorate is MAGA, which means one thing, and ended up at almost half the electorate will (or may) vote for Trump if he is the candidate.
I definitely agree on the latter and I am with you that is deeply disappointing.
And, channeling Steven, I believe that has far more to do with the binary nature of our political system (and pairs falling in line behind candidates) than it is a commitment to the MAGA platform.
Again the results may be the same in the end, but, as in 2020 and 2022, I think it’s important to realize that there are a important subset of Republican voters who can be convinced to split the ticket because, while generally Republicans, they are NOT MAGA.
That includes some people who voted for Trump in 2016 (and even possibly 2020).
@Gustopher:
3. he has a mind to lose in the first place.
@mattbernius:
Pedantry is the highest form of flattery.
I find this all deeply disturbing. There is a not-insignificant chance this human wrecking ball could get re-elected.
If there are any reasonable Republicans left, they should be working night and day to figure out a way to disqualify Trump from the nomination process. Instead, they’re all standing around looking at each other, shrugging. The only “work” I’ve seen has been coming from Americans for Prosperity, who are running a fair amount of advertising online and on social platforms, but it’s very meh.
@Michael Reynolds:
A bullet will solve the problem whether they are a true believer or not, but since we aren’t in a shooting war, we likely need different tools for MAGA and comfortable-enough-with-MAGA-that-they-will-vote-for-it.
Since throwing them all in re-education camps is apparently out off the table, we ultimately need to understand the differences and fracture their base along those differences.
Or hope they do that themselves, but that seems less likely to be pleasant. (Did we lose on abortion to end up winning on basic democracy? That would be an unfortunate trade-off…)
Republicans have been very effective at demonizing groups that will split the Democratic base — the anti-trans hate plays depressingly well.
I almost want to see the Democrats doing someone similar… perhaps an attack on Prosperity Gospel as a blasphemy too far? I don’t follow the Jesus fandom, and am basically unfamiliar with the Jesus Extended Universe, but I think there’s a populist edge in there somewhere.
@Jen:
Every Republican other than those who no longer have anything to lose, such as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, is terrified of Trump and the clout he wields with the most unhinged people. Oppose him, and a pack of psychotics will threaten your life. Plus, no matter how low one goes, Trump will gleefully go lower. There are depths to which no one but Trump will descend. And his crazed fans adore him for it.
@Chip Daniels:
Which is why, for once, it really is a good thing that it has been a cult of personality all along. No other speaker-to-the-deplorable has Trump’s appeal with them, or can motivate them the same way.
The editors of the WSJ are really saying “Not only have we lost the pretty mask in front of the grinning skull that is Republican policy, we’ve lost the Pied Piper who lured the marks to the polls to vote for wealth protection anyway. Where shall we find another candidate who can get millions to vote against their own interests and their children’s? Oh woe!”
@mattbernius:
Possibly! I hope so!
But to return and beat the dead horse, my point is that the anti-democratic turn of the Republicans predates Trump and is entirely independent of him.
As far back as 2010, in places like Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin, they were using the strategies of voter suppression, gerrymandering, and then when voters dare to elect a Democrat for governor, they stripped the office of jurisdiction.
This was all long before Trump arrived on the scene.
The rank and file Republicans, the party base, the foot soldiers, whatever you want to call them, absolutely refuse to accept the legitimacy of any order which doesn’t leave them in power.
@mattbernius:
Are you seriously arguing that voting for Trump is not a statement of what you want and what you are willing to accept that is many times stronger and more extreme than the statement made by a vote for Hillary, or Biden, or even George HW Bush or Richard Nixon?
At a certain point, we have to move beyond “R’s want R things and D’s want D things” as if there were a symmetry there, and look at what those R things and D things are these days. It’s not like the candidates are being coy about what they stand for.
@Michael Reynolds: Even as bad analogy – in fact bad impoverished analogy – that is wrong.
By the record facing committed Waffen SS versus conscripts in ordinary regular army, particularly conscripted, had quitey different potential outcomes in terms of surrender, withdrawal and retreat.
Lumping opposition into one undifferentiated whole is both impoverished analytics and staggerly dumb politics, when ample statistics (polling and vote returns) indicate non-unity within opposition and within that non-unity the opportunities to split off percentages, however small – meaningful in narrowly decided voting geographies. Treating the opposition as a unity with silly slogans denies yourself the opportunity to identify effective strategies of divide and conquer.*
If you desire to do something more effective the Tribal Sloganeering as if you are in some strange and pathetic sports match, you apply The Prince, not minor league football coach slogans.
(*: as does the empty headed “MAGA Cult sloganeering)
@DrDaveT: As Bernius and Tayor have pointed out there is quite clear tribal voting patterns of which denying the other tribe access. So indeed, a vote for Trump for a goodly percentage is not of any necessity a statement of active desire for Trump as Trump but a statement of opposition to a perceived Democrat-Tribe or variations on that.
Most voters are not egg-head political junky intellos.
@Lounsbury:
I wholeheartedly agree.
@charontwo:
1. Cool.
2. I would note that Matt and I would love to think you are correct, so if your prediction comes to fruition, I will be happy to acknowledge.
3. I think our position has lots of empirical evidence to back it up, unfortunately. Trump’s words and behavior have been off the chain since 2015 (indeed, before) and yet it has not produced the outcome you are suggesting.
For example, I watched the clip you linked and I have to admit: he doesn’t some especially worse than he has in the past. Coherence and studied diction have not been his hallmark and his supporters will not see that video as evidence it is time to abandon ship.
@Lounsbury:
So you think that “non-MAGA R-voters who are aware of what policies the side they voted for are likely to support” lies in the intersection of “R-Tribe” and “egg-head political junky intellos”? Or is that the empty set?
@Steven L. Taylor:
Not really a “prediction,” more like a significant likelihood.
People in the GOP infotainment bubble are totally indifferent to reality, but there are for example reachable R leaning “independents.” Meanwhile, enthusiasm, turnout, activism, donations are also relevant.
@DrDaveT:
I will respond to the question, and it will take more time than I have now. Just wanted to let you know that I saw it.
@DrDaveT: I’m not sure that there’s any upside to taking the word salad parts of Lounsbery’s blather seriously. He’s just stringing words together for the most part. Focus on the content and discard the flights of rhetoric if you’re seeking to make sense of what he’s trying to say. (And focusing on the content is, for the most part, a task unto itself; there’s not a lot of content to see in many cases.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I find it easier to understand Louseberry’s posts if I just don’t read them.
They all seem to be:
Ink blots, but with words.
@Chip Daniels:
Exactly. They may not be as crude or malevolent as the core MAGA base, but by voting for this they are certainly enabling all that comes with Trumpism.
It is also true that many on the Left contribute to the election of these idiots by insisting on a purity which often results in the election of the very people and forces that are inimical to most on the Left.
Somewhat related. I have people in my neighborhood here in Northern CA who, in 2016, voted for Jill Stein because … Hillary.
They had rationalizations:
(1) Hillary is not all that different from Republican politicians …
(2) The Democratic Party establishment cheated Bernie Sanders out of the Party nomination …
(3) Here in CA Hillary will win anyway, so …
Epilogue:
They, like many others, honestly did not believe Trump would win. They did not believe that Trump, even with ample evidence of the 2015-16 campaign, would be very different from a typical Republican politician. Oops.
A few weeks later, while getting a cappucchino (elitist, yes I know) I ran into a couple of them, and we caught up on things. Of course they were appalled by Trump. I took the liberty of being a brat so I asked them if they now wish that Hillary was the one making nominations to the Supreme Court. They were having none of it, they defended their vanity vote – after all, Hillary did win easily in CA.
@Gustopher:
Yes, that, too!
@charontwo: Perhaps I am missing your point. I thought you were suggesting some kind of flame out. If you are saying that independent-leaning Rs will abandon him, I would counter by noting they largely already have.
And yes, the odds that he will lose are higher than the odds he will win, but none of that is new.
So, what am I missing?
@Steven L. Taylor:
I wholeheartedly agree.
It’s actually good politics. Casting all Republicans as conscious supporters of a guy who tried to overthrow an election with a coup is good politics. Biden should be doing that 24/7. He should make every Republican a death cult creep weirdo. More importantly, your entire argument for why Trump voters are not all MAGA rests on the assumption that Trump benefits from a system which lumps voters into one undifferentiated whole. You are literally saying Trump can practice good politics by demonizing Democrats in a two-party system, but the other way around that’s too much. You are saying this is how politics work. Also, Democrats shouldn’t be operating under those assumptions.
@Modulo Myself: Color me skeptical about the degree to which negative politics impacts people who aren’t already converts, but belief in the power of negativity is probably an article of faith among highly politicized people. Maybe not as much with average voters deciding who to vote for the week before the election, but I have no data either way.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I’m still trying to figure out what a Bobo is. 😛 😛
@Jax:
Far as I know, a bobo is a well-off professional who espouses Bohemian values.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: “He’s just stringing words together for the most part. ”
And the other part is stringing together collections of syllables that look like words but actually aren’t. “Staggerly.”
@Modulo Myself:
I almost left off that part because I was less keen on that point as I was the analytical part.
I do wonder, though, as to the full wisdom of said politics. It is one thing to paint Trump as X, but painting all GOP voters as X can just further harden positions.
@Chip Daniels:
If categories don’t matter, then there is no point in analysis or deeper thinking. It is just “us v. them” and understanding is moot.
It is one thing to paint Trump as X, but painting all GOP voters as X can just further harden positions.
They’re the ones voting for Trump. They do it next year and they’re supporting a guy who tried to an overthrow an election. They did it in 2016 and they supported a guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women. If their defense is that they had to vote for a Republican because any Democrat is worse than Trump, then the position is already hardened beyond reason.
@Modulo Myself:
And, furthermore, it no longer matters at that point whether the thing that must be avoided at all costs by voting R is brown people, or abortion rights, or drag queens, or higher taxes, or taking climate change seriously, or alien abduction, or cooties. The effect is the same, and there is nothing any Democratic candidate can do about it.
From a strategy point of view, it’s important to figure out how many such people there are, and who is left when you set them to one side.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Understanding is useful for academics and historians, but not to the average citizen trying to decide how to vote.
If I were speaking to some other citizen who isn’t sure whether to vote, or for whom I wouldn’t give them a long winded and politically insightful analysis.
I would just give them the blunt truth, that one party is willing to work within our constitutional framework, and one isn’t.
No matter how deep or thoughtful an analysis is, it won’t arrive at a different conclusion. It will add useful depth and context and offer useful suggestions for action in some future era, but it won’t change which lever a citizen should want to pull come November 2024.
Honestly, I’m not bothered by the charge of “Us versus Them” because it is accurate.
I’m thinking now of Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech where he laid out the divisions in stark and uncompromising terms.
“
.”
The only thing we have in common as Americans is our allegiance to the Constitution. Once a party makes it clear they no longer value the Constitution over their naked self interest, then there really is no point in anything but an “Us versus Them” approach.
@Chip Daniels:
Well, two thoughts.
1. I thought that the purpose of the conversation here is, well, understanding.
2. If we decide that understanding is simply the realm of academics, then that sounds a bit of a problem.
@Chip Daniels:
On the eve of a bloody civil war. “Us v. Them” can have some pretty damn serious consequences–even if I understand that sometime it is the reality of it all.