Is everyone scared of Trump?
For an open seat on the GOP side, it sure seems like the race is slow to develop.
Okay, let’s see how many I can piss off here.
Back in 2019, when our world was still somewhat “normal”, the month of April hosted a field of well over a dozen Democrat presidential hopefuls for the 2020 election. They began lining up for the opportunity to take on Trump before the holidays in 2018 were even over, with the longshot candidacy of former Maryland Congressman John Delaney setting some kind of record by commencing in mid-2017, a time when Donald Trump had barely broken in the Oval Office furniture. (Yes, I wrote about it.)
Now the shoe is on the other foot, and while there’s a somewhat “obvious” frontrunner in Donald Trump - whose sole purpose in this race seems to be that of rectifying the injustice done unto him by a corrupt, pandemic-addled system in 2020, which is why he was first to announce just days after the 2022 midterms concluded - one would think we would have had more challengers enter the race by now.
Instead, we have a group of politicians who aren’t exactly household names arrayed against Donald Trump, including one I’d never even heard of until I saw the Ballotpedia wrapup - a guy by the name of Corey Stapleton whose twin claims to fame are statewide office in Montana and albums as a country singer. He actually predated Trump in the race by a few days, with the obvious need to build name recognition.
Aside from Stapleton and Trump, the others who are in (or at least exploring) are, in order of entry, former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson (who I found was something of a throwback to Reagan), and, most recently, the announcement by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott that he’s “exploring” the race. They’re surely nice people and more or less competent leaders, but let’s face it - this ain’t exactly Murderer’s Row here if the idea is to not have a 2020 rematch.
But in looking deeper at the Ballotpedia article, I found a timeline of the 2016 and 2020 campaigns and found that, aside from Donald Trump, we’re more or less on a 2016 trajectory. You may recall that campaign 8 years ago didn’t even feature Trump until a dozen or so others had already announced for the GOP nomination. (A select few had jumped in on the Democrat side as well, but we all know that the skids were being greased for Hillary Clinton.) But the earliest aspirants didn’t come into the picture until the spring of 2015, which is about where we are at now on the Presidential campaign calendar.
While there is something to be said about “the more the merrier,” those who fear a repeat of the 2016 primary campaign and 2020 general election are hoping that a plethora of aspirants on the GOP side don’t split the anti-Trump vote like they did seven years ago. That’s essentially the reason Larry Hogan stood down, although I’m far from convinced his record of bending to Democrat will in Maryland would have played nationwide, anyway.
Regarding that 2016 campaign, you may recall that the debate stage was so crowded that they had to have “kiddie table” debates, with those below a certain polling point relegated to those not-ready-for-prime-time affairs. Donald Trump won’t be in a “kiddle table” debate, so there’s no need to have them. Ideally to me, we would have between 6 and 8 players by this fall, with maybe 4 to 6 remaining by the time the Iowa caucuses begin and no more than three when the “winner-take-all” primaries begin on/about March 15, 2024. If you look at the current polls it’s really a two-person race, but I’ve learned over time that there’s generally a rotation of “hot” candidates atop the leaderboard. Remember when people like Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rudy Giuliani, and Jeb! Bush were figured as shoo-ins for the nomination as they surged to the top of the polls? Yet if you’re at 1% by this fall, I don’t think you’re going to make it - so why take up the space?
I really haven’t gotten into the specifics of each candidate yet, but here’s what I believe: the reason we’re seeing so much about Donald Trump’s indictment and just generally Trump’s face in general is that we’re being set up like we were in 2016. The media believed in two things: people knew who Donald Trump was because he was a celebrity playing politics and thus would bring eyeballs to screens, and his braggadocios style would offend enough people as GOP nominee to hand the election to Hillary. Instead, the media misread the electorate - or at least the electorate in the Rust Belt where Trump burned down Hillary’s firewall. Hence, their efforts to “fortify” the 2020 election.
Unfortunately, the electorate in 2024 is going to be much different than it was in 2016. Enough of Trump’s 2016 base has either passed on or gone to nursing homes where they become automatic Democrat votes, and they’re being replaced by a younger, more left-wing generation. This is one liberal group’s perspective on it from 2020:
(O)ne common narrative about American voters is that they are liberal and Democratic leaning in their youth and grow more conservative and Republican leaning as they age. The most coherent version of this story is that certain types of life events like home ownership, marriage, and raising children lead people to become more conservative and Republican leaning as they age.
This idea has led some to dismiss the salience of generational cohorts in modern politics. At some level, they are assuming that the political leanings of America’s youngest generations will shift substantially as they age and simply recreate the current political equilibrium rather than changing the political landscape. However, this ignores a number of ways in which the trajectory of today’s youngest cohorts may be different than their predecessors.
First, not all generations start out equally liberal and Democratic leaning in their youth. Notably, Millennials and Generation Z appear to be far more Democratic leaning than their predecessors were at the same age. (You can thank our educational system for that. - M.S.) Even if today’s youngest generations do grow more conservative as they age, it’s not at all clear they would end up as conservative as older generations are today.
Second, it’s clear that younger generations are on a different trajectory than older generations when it comes to some of those conservatizing life events such as home ownership, marriage, and raising children. All of those milestones are, on average, occurring later in life for these cohorts—if they are occurring at all. Hypothetically, this means that the conservatizing effect of aging apparent in some earlier generations may be muted. To date, this is consistent with the data we have. For example, there has not been a significant shift among Millennials, the oldest of whom are now in their late 30s.
Third, America’s youngest generations are more racially and ethnically diverse than older generations. This is important because it would appear that nonwhite Americans are somewhat less affected by cohort effects than white Americans.
Remember, the 2020 election was truly decided by less than 25,000 voters deciding to vote for Biden in three states. (Margins were 20,682 in Wisconsin, 11,779 in Georgia, and 10,457 in Arizona. Divide that by two and that’s the difference.) The media doesn’t care that Trump carried Alabama by 25 points, Idaho by 30, North Dakota by 34, or West Virginia by 39 - all that does is even out what winning by one vote would give Joe Biden in Pennsylvania. Democrats already begin with a presumed 209 electoral votes in their pocket, so their margin only needs a handful of swing states to fall their way - close out New England with Maine and New Hampshire and maintain the Midwest firewall of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and it’s game over. Aside from one electoral vote in Maine, that’s simply the Democrats holding on to what they won in 2020, and the natural cycling of voters works in their favor for now.
Basically what the 2024 election comes down to is needing a Republican who hasn’t burned their bridge with independent voters. Right now I’m not convinced Donald Trump is that guy, so I’m open to alternatives.