Sorry it’s been a few days. I spent three days at the State Track Championships, officiated three exciting pole vault competitions, and had three days of ninety degree heat with some lightning and even hail added in. It was fun, but it’s good to be writing again.
Covid World
First, let’s get this out. It feels way, way, way too soon to be talking about Presidential elections. It seems like just a few months ago that President Biden won the 2020 election, in the haze of the Covid pandemic. We strive to forget the shutdowns, the masks, and the “drive-in” rallies; somehow those memories seems to have a different time dimensional warp. Looking back, I think some of them may be erased from my memory in a “Covid fog”, along with my sense of smell.
But here we are in 2023, “only” eighteen months before the election. Barring disaster, Joe Biden will be the Democratic candidate for President. But there is an open race for the Republican nomination. For Republicans, it’s a simple question; choose the past, or choose the future.
Past or Future
We all know what the past is: Donald Trump. And Trump still has a firm grip on the Republican Primary voters: 53% of them support him, far more than he had in 2016 (CNN) and 20% more than any other candidate. Like it or not, he still has a stranglehold on the base.
Most of the other candidates are trying to “parse” the Trump base: DeSantis and Scott, Haley and Hutchinson, former Vice President Pence and business entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (kind of a harder edged Andrew Yang). As DeSantis says over and over again, they all have Trump’s MAGA ideology, without Trump’s legal baggage. And there sure is a lot of baggage, likely to get even heavier as more indictments come down this summer.
The indictments are the “elephant in the Republican room”, just as Biden’s age stresses Democrats. Sure the MAGA base will make the argument that the New York indictment is a “political hit job”, an issue already “adjudicated” in the Federal Courts. But the Georgia indictment(s), and the Federal classified documents indictments soon to come, will create a heavier load. And, should the Department of Justice actually move ahead with an Insurrection indictment, the Nation will be just as polarized as we were that day in 2021.
Slice and Dice
It might be that “the politics” of indictment actually works in favor of Trump. MAGA ideology is one of “victimhood”, and there’s nothing more victim-like than having multiple charges in multiple courts for multiple crimes. His base may respond by “having his back”, and try to give him (and some of themselves) the “protection” of the Presidency.
The political risk that all of those “Trump-like (lite)” candidates take is that they can keep MAGA, without keeping Trump. As long as Trump remains in the field though, that seems unlikely. Trump’s 2016 “slice and dice” strategy was to divide the field by winning a third of the votes, and leave the multiple other candidates to slice the remainder up. It worked: Trump didn’t receive a majority vote win until April, after the nomination was already won in the March primaries. It’s the setup that Trump’s strategists would like to see again.
And then there is the “full” alternative to Trump. Chris Christie, former Republican Governor of “blue” New Jersey, is preparing to jump in. Christie is no “moderate”, but he definitely takes a more traditional conservative business-Republican view. Christie will need to make the argument to the Republican primary voters that winning a general election against Biden is more important than either strict adherence to MAGA ideology; or having the confidence of the former President himself.
No Labels
And lurking behind all of that is the “No Labels” movement. “No Labels” is a center-right movement who are considering a third party run for President. Think of them as old fashioned: “Blue Dog Democrats” meet “Rockefeller Republicans”. They portray the existing political parties as extreme, and promise a middle ground like the “good old days”. John Kasich (R), Liz Cheney (R), Joe Manchin (D), former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman (D), and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) are all possible choices for the “No Labels” ticket.
Democrats argue that “No Labels” (unintentionally?) will create a general election version of the Trump 2016 “slice and dice” strategy. Our National elections are tilted towards Republicans in the first place, with the structure of both the Electoral College process and the Congressional tie-breaking procedures slanted to gerrymandered Republican states. While “No Labels” is highly unlikely to have a winning candidate, they are very likely to split the “moderate” vote, leaving a Trump candidacy with a winning path through our institutions. Think of the impact of Ralph Nader on the 2000 election, where his minimal vote was enough to put George W Bush in office.
Doubt
For those who wonder if a re-match of 2020 is inevitable there is one small shining speck of doubt. In the New York civil trial where EJ Carroll sued Trump for sexual impropriety, one of the jurors noted that he got almost all his “news” from a right-wing podcaster. Despite getting a Trump-slanted view of politics and the world, the juror still joined in the unanimous five million dollar verdict against Trump. Perhaps the MAGA “monolith” for Trump has more cracks than we know.
Or that might just be another Covid induced brain fog. Either way, welcome to 2024. Or, here we go again.
