We are now nine months away from the first 2024 primary and 19 months until the vote for the next president. For the moment, Donald Trump is the Republican front runner by a wide margin, but there have been few candidates with so much baggage.
Many Republicans may still be prepared to forgive a growing number of felony indictments: hush money to a porn star, illegal handling of classified documents, attempts to rig an election in Georgia, and inciting an insurrection to prevent the transfer of power to the winner of the 2022 presidential race.
But Republicans aren’t the only voters. In both the 2016 and 2020 elections, Trump lost the popular vote to Democratic candidates. He only won the presidency in 2016 by a narrow electoral college margin, and lost both the popular vote and the electoral college in 2020.
In the aftermath of the attempted coup, only 9% of Republicans thought he should be removed from office, presumably having fallen for his stolen election lies. But 84% of Democrats supported removing Trump from office and 40% of independents. You’d think Republicans would conclude that Trump has become more trouble than he’s worth. But no, he retains the backing of the increasingly extreme base that he has catered to.
Trump’s appeal is to the angry and aggrieved who seek someone to blame for their troubles and what they regard as an America changed for the worse. It is no surprise that his support comes from blue-collar workers, especially in sections of the country that have experienced unwelcome changes, like the South and the Rust Belt. Often jobs have vanished overseas and there’s a feeling that history has left them behind. They regard the present as a betrayal.
The villains in this story include uppity technocrats, racial minorities, immigrants, woke liberals, atheists, politicians who pamper these people and who and neglect ‘real’ Americans. Trump is their hero, not because he has any plans to improve their lot but because he articulates their contempt for these imagined enemies and promises he’ll help his fans to get even.
This is a far cry from the optimism of earlier Republican presidents like an Eisenhower or Reagan, but not unlike the dark, suspicious, embittered Nixon with his enemies list. You’d think there would be room on the Republican side for a happier warrior as an alternative to a dishonest crime boss facing numerous prosecutions who peddles only grievance and hatred. He may wow the few, but he alienates a large percentage of the electorate.
The party would seem ripe for an alternative, but Trump’s slash and burn disregard for facts has made cowards of his rivals. Few of those likely to contest the 2024 nomination are willing to repudiate him. Their hopes seem to hinge either on his fading away or winding up in prison. They include several thuggish mini-me Trumps’s: Florida Gov. Ron Desantis and Koch family lackey Mike Pompeo. Some try to avoid condemning Trump without approving him like the sad toady ex-Vice President Mike Pence, a pariah for having failed to help Trump corruptly steal an election, and the waffling Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
A few old style Republicans may give it a try, but are unlikely to win favor with the red meat Trumpist wing — New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu,, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison, and a brace of South Carolinas, Sen.Tim Scott and former Gov. Nikki Haley. None of them has so far seemed willing to stand up to Trump.
As his first rendezvous with justice in the porn star case neared, Trump denounced evil Democrats for weaponizing the legal system and using false accusations against him to interfere with the next election. Rather than set himself apart from a man soon to be charged with 34 felony counts, Ron DeSantis, Trump’s nearest rival for the nomination in 2024, joined other lemmings, including George Santos, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, and Elise Stefanik, in echoing Trump’s talking points.
Such pandering to the base may seem prudent, but can anyone too timid to admit that Trump is too tainted to win a majority of the popular vote or the electoral college in 2024 expect to do so? It’s hard to see how. If Republicans keep carrying water for a man facing convictions in New York, Georgia, and Federal courts they will become a Zombie Party.
For example, Trump tells the absurd antisemitic lie that George Soros is the evil Jewish billionaire behind his indictment, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Senators Rick Scott and Ron Johnson rush to agree. Trump has so thoroughly occupied the heads of his party that they are left without an alternative idea. He calls the tune, they sing it, and the Republican base falls for it.
Recent polls show that only 20% of Republicans believe the investigations of Trump’s crimes are fair, only !0% believe he has done something illegal. As a result, 75% want him to be president again. But over 80% of Democrats and a majority of Independents do not.
That math doesn’t add up to Republican victory, but it is unlikely to deter Trump from carrying on since, by boohooing that prosecuting him for his crimes is a witch hunt, he has already pocketed $7 million from sympathetic donors.
In 1920, Eugene Debs ran for president from behind bars. Given the plethora of court case raining down on Trump, he may become the second American to find himself running for president from a jail cell. No doubt he will find a way to make it pay. His campaign slogan ought to be: “there’s a sucker born every minute.”