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Chris J. Karr's avatar

I think you're making a mistake by making "the majority of the country" the population from which you're sampling from. For one thing, Trump won in 2016 WITHOUT a majority of the country.

However the immediate relevant population here isn't the pool of registered American voters, but rather the likely 2024 GOP primary voters. The country writ large may (currently) be rejecting the return to Trumpism versus the Generic and Unspecified Democratic presidential candidate, but the state-level GOP members (who run the local elections) and current motivated GOP base still think that the election was stolen and Trump didn't lose. They're fired up, and we have yet to see ANY significant new GOP figure making a run at higher office that's running as the GOP's anti-Trump. Until we start to see Trumpism fade among the GOP voters and state-level officials (who are currently tripping over themselves to demonstrate their Trumpiness, witness the self-immolation of J.D. Vance), the 2024 match-up between Trump vs. a Democrat remains the most likely scenario at the moment.*

On the Democratic side, they aren't doing themselves any favors by shooting themselves in the foot trying to replay the New Deal and sacrificing smaller wins (such as the smaller 1.5 TRILLION DOLLAR infrastructure bill) to chase more improbable bigger wins. Where we can at least point to figures like DeSantis as likely heirs-apparent to Trump, the Democratic field to replace Biden is EVEN weaker[1], when that party should be grooming the next-generation Democrat to run in 2024. (And Kamala Harris demonstrating an active disinterest in tackling hard problems disqualifies her - even among Democrats - as being Biden's successor.)

Given the weakness of the Democratic field - especially as Biden thinks he can be a new FDR - absent one of the two men dropping dead from their advanced ages - the clearest possible scenario at this point is Old Man Bum Fight 2.0 in 2024. Of course, someone may emerge to save us from the Grumpy Old Men (and they're taking their sweet time doing so), or Events may change the equation, but I don't see any more likely plausible scenarios at this point.

In 2016, I made a similar bet that there's no way America would elect Donald Trump to the office of the Presidency, and Events made a fool of me then. I'm not willing to make a similar claim this go-around, and as we covered in prior threads, I'm very disturbed that Democrats are also discounting that likelihood again and are too busy raiding the policy liquor cabinet instead of taking the common-sense actions to codify broken norms into law to mitigate the damage of a Trump 2.0.

* The Unchewed Big Mac may ultimately be what breaks us out of this dystopian scenario.

[1] https://focusgroup.thebulwark.com/malaise-2-0-democrats-grade-biden-with-jonathan-v-last

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Miguelito's avatar

In theory, what you are saying makes sense. But tell me that if it comes down to an election between Trump and someone like Kamala Harris, most republicans will hold their nose and vote for Trump to keep Kamala from the White House. It’ll be another Flight 93 election.

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