Trump-Biden II Will Bulldoze the Doubters

I have, so far, avoided writing about the 2024 Presidential Election. I have avoided it because, for all the horse race stuff the media is trying to gin up, it’s fairly obvious to me that, barring a major health catastrophe for one of them, it will be Biden v. Trump, Round 2.

For all the talk of alternatives for the Democrats … there is no alternative. In 2020, the media tried to hype Bernie, Warren, Harris, Klobuchar, Buttigieg and even, God help us, Michael Bloomberg at one point. But, in the end, the field was so incredibly weak, the Democrats decided, correctly, that their least bad option was a 78-year-old Senator with a history of verbal gaffes. The bench hasn’t strengthened over the last two years and the last time an incumbent failed to run was 1968. The last time an incumbent was tossed by his party was 1884. And the only time in American history an elected President sought the nomination and failed to secure it was good old Franklin Pierce in 1856. Unless Biden finds a way to get as wrong on an issue as Pierce was with the Kansas-Nebraska act — a nonzero possibility, I grant you — he’ll be the nominee.

But what of Trump? A number of candidates have already declared on the Republican side with more expected to follow. The big dog — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — won’t declare until he can get the legislature to modify Florida’s resign to run law. He’s got a lot of attention in conservative media circles and is polling decently in early states. While I’ve been very disappointed with his authoritarian twitches of late, I would prefer him to Trump. This desire has only strengthened as the President’s behavior has become more and more erratic:

Since 2020, Trump has embraced Q-Anon, intoning speeches to its creepy background music and amplifying its insane theories on Truth Social. [In December] he invited a Pizzagate conspiracist and her cronies to Mar-A-Lago, telling the assembled throng: “You are incredible people, you are doing unbelievable work and we just appreciate you being here and we hope you’re going to be back.”

Two days before Thanksgiving, Trump hosted Kanye West for dinner at Mar-A-Lago, well after West’s descent into pathological Jew-hatred, alongside one of the most repellent far-right creatures ever to crawl from under a rock, Nick Fuentes. That same week, Trump trashed the Supreme Court Justices he and the Senate appointed.

We now know that Trump tried to target his enemies with tax investigations; claimed to have sent the FBI to “stop the election [of DeSantis] from being stolen”; considered bombing Mexico; declared that he will almost certainly pardon the goons of January 6; and demonized the appointment of a new special counsel. He declared that Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, “has a DEATH WISH. Must immediately seek help and advise from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!” He has routinely deployed anti-Semitic and anti-Asian tropes — even weirdly against Glenn Youngkin.

And, en passant, the former president has also called for the termination of the Constitution.

Sullivan wrote those words two months ago and the situation has not improved. Trump’s 2024 platform, such as it is, calls to execute drug dealers without trial, use the military to fight crime and replace career government employees with MAGA loyalists. This is such end-stage dictator stuff that conservative publications are, as they did in 2016, calling for someone, anyone else.

All this had lead to speculation that Trump may actually not win the GOP primary after all. The possibility is regarded as realistic enough that, this weekend, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, fresh off surviving her own challenge from the MAGA right, said that unless Donald Trump signs a pledge to support the eventual nominee, he will not be allowed on the debate stage.

That sounds serious, at least. But … I really have to wonder what McDaniel is smoking and whether a few pounds of it can be sent to my house immediately. Because my response to this news was laughter.

First of all, I don’t know where she gets the idea that her threats mean anything. Trump would happily skip all the debates — primary and general — which he has long claimed are unfair and biased. It wouldn’t damage him in the slightest, but it would tank the ratings, hobbling the other candidates’ ability to get any traction. Second, the GOP has no financial leverage over Trump. This is a man who can file a completely bogus lawsuit against conservative bette noirs and raise tens of millions from his supporters.

But third … even if Trump signed that pledge, what on God’s green Earth makes McDaniel think he’ll stick to it? There has never been a promise, pledge, business agreement, oath, marital vow, compact or covenant that Donald Trump has stuck to longer than was convenient to him.

Let’s try to imagine a situation where Trump runs and loses. We go into Iowa and DeSantis wins the caucuses. What happens next? That’s right. Donald Trump, as he did in 2016, starts screaming that the vote as rigged and stolen.

Let’s say DeSantis’ streak continues. With every primary loss, the screams from Donald Trump grow louder. Lawyers emerge to file lawsuits. Legislators try to over-ride results. At best, DeSantis goes into Milwaukee with a significant chunk of the party convinced he’s an illegitimate nominee. At worst, we get a 1968 Chicago-style meltdown.

Trump has neither the organizational skills nor the veteran personnel to organize an actual third-party run. And many states have “sore loser” laws that would ban him from the ballot (although I expect the MAGA loyalists might attempt to repeal those laws if he lost). But there’s nothing to stop him from telling people to write him in. Or just to stay home. He did precisely this in 2020 in Georgia, costing the GOP two senate seats.

That is the choice the Republican Party faces. Either they let Trump win the nomination or he tears the party apart. He has made it abundantly clear that he does not care what happens to the GOP as long it is loyal to him. Trump-backed candidate after Trump-backed candidate — Walker, Oz, Lake, Masters — went down in flames last year. But Donald Trump and his strongest MAGA supporters do not care. What matters is that they were his candidates. What matters, in particular, is that they embraced the lie that he won the 2020 election.

No pledge, no National Review editorials and no threats are going to bring him to heel. And, in their hearts, the GOP knows this. In the end, for all the sound and fury and all the fluffing of DeSantis, they will do what they have done for the last eight years: give the baby his bottle. One by one, they will throw their support to Trump. Publication by publication, the “Not Trump Again” side will cave. Because, in the end, the only principle is opposing Democrats. If the choice were between a Democrat and Satan himself, they’d start talking about how wonderful brimstone smells.

The Republican Party may have had a chance to rid themselves of Trump’s presence in 2016. But every decision they have made has allowed Trumpism to metastasize. It may not represent the majority of the GOP, but it doesn’t have to. All it has to do is represent a controlling minority.¹. And between gerry-mandering, Republican structural advantages in the Senate and the GOP’s weaponization of the Electoral College, the GOP could win control of both branches of government with as little as 45% of the vote.

Am I being hysterical? Well, if you’d told me in 2015 that Donald Trump would win, I’d have said that was hysterical. If you’d told me he’d send a violent mob to the Capitol to try to overturn his unelection, I would have said that was hysterical. If you’d told me that he would still control enough of the party to get lunatics nominated to critical offices, I would have said that was hysterical. I’ve learned the hard way that pollyannaism about Donald Trump is likely to end in disappointment.

I am, as always, prepared to be wrong. Maybe the GOP will turn the tide and finally put him out to pasture. But I would put long odds against it. Trump has led the GOP to four straight humiliations at the ballot box. The pre-Trump GOP would have dumped him like a 300 pound maggot. But the MAGA GOP is still convinced he’s a winner. He could lose every election until the day he dies (and several afterward) and they would still believe. Because this is not a political movement; it’s a cult. And, when you’re in a cult, feelings don’t care about facts.

No, the only thing that stops Donald Trump from being the 2024 nominee is if he decides he doesn’t want it. If Trump 2024 is just a way to grift more money out of the suckers — and I think there’s at least a 30% chance that’s the case — we won’t have to worry about any of this. But there is no clean break from MAGA where Trump signs a pledge and the meekly accepts defeat. That’s the kind of wishful thinking that … well … got us President Trump in the first place.

1. Take a look at Trump’s MAGA candidates for Senator and Governor and you’ll frequently find they won nominations with less than a majority. This is a pattern.