Kristi Noem seems to be in the running to assume the Trump mantle, should Trump not run again.
She may not come out and say that the election was stolen, but she sure as heck implies that it was in a Just Asking Questions sort of way.
@Martin_Hyde: Good points overall.
Another issue, at least in states with closed primaries, is tactical registration. Where people deliberately register in their disfavored party specifically to screw with the primary.
LSLGuy - I’m not looking for an argument but I’ve never seen any research showing this is actually a thing. I’ve heard a bunch of anecdotal stuff but not anything showing this actually happens in large enough numbers to have an impact on primary outcomes. Any chance you could suggest where one can find evidence of this being a widespread activity?
That’s a darn good question. I may be guilty of repeating an “everyone knows” FOAF tale that’s much larger in the telling than in the doing.
I personally have lived in both open and closed primary states. In closed states I’ve always registered as my real party and voted my real preference. In the open states once or twice when my party’s primary was a shoo-in I voted for the dork in the other side’s primary. To no apparent effect beyond bragging rights at the bar.
I’ve done this here in Kansas forever. Thus far, my vote has had no noticeable impact on the outcome of any election. That, however, will not stop me from continuing this practice.
Something Tucker Carlson has perfected as an art. “I’m not saying Biden fucks dead boys in the ass but wouldn’t it be awful if he is? And how about ‘Doctor’ Jill Biden” [air quotes] standing by and letting it happen without saying a word to anyone in public or private? Doesn’t that – in a way – make her worse?"
If Trump doesn’t run:
It’s an interesting (and stupid) line they have to walk. Trumpists can’t come out and say that they are running for president until Trump indicates what he’s doing. And of course Trump will probably change his mind multiple times and release ambiguous statements. Hopefully this will impede their presidential runs.
Trump will run unless at the last moment he finds a way to sell his support to the highest bidder. For a truly ginourmous amount of money coming from gosh knows which fount of evil.
I can’t see this happening. In order to sell his supporters, he’d have to go out and campaign for the person he sold them to. Just annoucing he’s now supporting so-and-so wouldn’t cut it; his supporters would stay home in droves. But I can’t see Trump ever truly campaigning for someone else. He always makes things about him no matter if he’s supposed to be campaigning for another person.
I’d bet Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton (along with about 15 other Republican 2024 presidential hopefuls) are rooting for Letitia James, Cy Vance and Fani Willis to do their dirty work for them.
Any one of the Republicans would be happy to stab Trump in the back as long as their fingerprints aren’t on the knife. If Trump gets taken out of the presidential race by some kind of swampy, liberal prosecutor, so much the better.
When you strike a king, kill him.
That goes for personality cult leaders as well, so long as their supply of sycophants holds out.
All Biden’s really got to do is not be WORSE than Trump in the eyes of the swing voters. Which may or may not be difficult; Biden’s swing to the progressive side of things is a bit more extreme than a lot of people expected, I suspect. Which may end up hurting the Democrats by setting up a situation of “Is Trump really worse than Biden, now that we’ve seen Biden’s true colors?” type situation.
For some swing voters, it may well be worse, and for others, it’s not a strike against him, because they were voting against Trump and his cult of personality specifically, not conservatism in general, and they’re not going to vote for Trump regardless of how far left the Democratic party swings.
Right I mean, I was a lifelong Republican–and am still a conservative, who left the party in 2016 specifically because of Trump. Both parties have long been big tent, coalition parties. Since my very first election decades ago, there’s been elements of the Republican party I’ve not been thrilled with. But I had usually been okay with the party’s primary power brokers and most of its higher tier elected officials, who were often a few steps removed from the more dangerous and idiotic parts of the Republican base.
I started to see this rapidly change actually during the 90s, but even then it was too a degree that I didn’t think the party itself was in peril. When the party rejected W. Bush’s fairly reasonable immigration package, to me that was a watershed where I started to feel like the elites were losing control of the base, and by the 2010 emergence of the Tea Party I actively viewed the party as being in a state of war with an extremely dangerous faction. I naively assumed with the victory of Romney in the 2012 nomination battle that some degree of sane Republicanism and the brand of conservatism I support was ultimately going to prevail. But I ended up being quite wrong about that, the period 2012-2020 has largely seen the complete and probably permanent death of my wing of the party, with almost the complete gutting of high level Republicans on this side of things.
With Trump, who was clearly an anti-democratic figure in 2016 long before the Capitol Insurrection/Coup attempt, I viewed that as a red line. To me political positions stop mattering if one candidate rejects democracy as a concept, because in democracy we preserve our right to express our differences of opinion about policies, by voting against the concept of democracy we imperil the ability to do that, meaning it is the most important position of all, one that is historically baked in to every candidate of both parties. But now a huge percentage of Republican politicians and candidates have openly rejected democracy.
I didn’t spend much time considering whether I was going to vote for Trump or not in 2016–he was anti-democratic, so I was never going to vote for him, regardless of any policy positions. Same in 2020. Same in 2024 if he runs again there is no one the Democrats could nominate whom I would not vote for–and there are figures in the Democratic party that are anathema to virtually every major policy preference I have.
I disagree. I think they believe the best outcome is for Trump to stay out but endorse one of them, so they will continue to kiss his ass and hint that they’ll run if Trump doesn’t.
Trump being prosecuted would be a disaster for other potential Republican presidential candidates. It would give him an enormous stage on which to strut and rage against his being politically persecuted by the liberal deep state. He would raise an ungodly amount of money – money that might have gone to other candidates. And even if convicted, he could run from prison ala Eugene Debs. In fact he’d be MORE likely to run for President, if only so he could pardon himself (the Constitutionality of that maneuver aside).
And every other potential Republican contender would have to support him in all of it. They would have to agree that the case is a liberal persecution, that his conviction is illegitimate, and that he should be President again. For Republicans, there’s simply no turning the corner from Trump. No matter what he does, no matter the consequences, they cannot say “enough.” His supporters literally ransacked the Capitol and almost every Republican legislator now holds him blameless.
@flurb nailed it. The rest of the R party will first begin to back gingerly away from Trump only when he’s safely dead. And only if he hasn’t already anointed a successor that his base is willing to latch onto.
I disagree. Biden needs to also worry about liberals staying home. Liberals are great at turning out in droves to vote against a Republican, but not so good at turning out to help support a moderate Democrat that’s running for re-election. 1994 and 2010 are great examples. 2012 also showed that, with Obama underperforming compared to his 2008 victory. If I had to guess, I’d say that the odds of Biden beating his own popular vote total are less than 1%, regardless of who he’s running against.
It is interesting that even as the general public moves on and away from Trump, the GOP is clinging ever more tightly to him.