Now that the Red Wave has turned into a Pink Trickle (“you should really get that checked out” – S. Colbert) what does this portend for the 2024 presidential election cycle?
In my fondest dreams: the GOP (belatedly) pretends they never heard of Trump, and moves on to DeSantis. Trump does not go quietly, of course, and forms a 3rd party, and takes 50 million or so True Believers with him, ensuring a Democratic landslide.
That’s my hope as well. If Trump can form a 3rd party that fields candidates at the state and local level than the Democrats would easily win big majorities in the house and senate.
Actually Trump has been a Democratic mole all along. Having wormed his way into a position of prominence in the Rebuplican party he is positioned to destroy it from within by taking his supporters to a third party.
His actions in exposing and neutralizing the Fascist wing of the right will ensure that he goes down in history as a saviour of the republic. Now that’s some 3 dimensional chess.
Or maybe not.
By splitting off from the GOP, Trump would be admitting failure. A third-party candidate is unlikely to win a federal election, and he knows it, although there are a few Independents in Congress. Trump is an all-or-nothing kind of guy. Either he runs as a GOP candidate for president, or he picks up his marbles and goes home.
If Trump were smart, he would have someone write his autobiography, cash in on his continued fame, and enjoy the remainder of his life… but that’s not going to happen.
DeSantis will find new rivals in Gosar and Gohmert, the latter two eclipsing RD in party prominence by late '23, prompting Trump to move to Saudi Arabia.
One can only hope…
A genuine splinter party is probably a pipe dream, but I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to hope that Trump loses a primary bid to Desantis and focuses so much “stolen rigged fake argle bargle!” on it that he actively depresses voter turnout in 24.
Meanwhile, Mitch and the rest of the establishment won’t pivot at all. They’ll keep working on voter suppression and gerrymandering at the state levels.
I’m not so sure. He’s already broken the mold once, and his ego (and stupidity) are both large enough that he might convince himself he could be the first 3P to win the presidency. And plenty of others, seeing the grift potential, would be right there with him.
We can only hope, right?
Forming such a party in 2 years would be a feat of political success that is almost unimaginable for anyone. For Trump? No frickin’ way. He might declare a new party, and sell a lot of memberships, but as for doing the actual work needed to find candidates, and actually get them on the ballots everywhere? No way, no how. He’s just not that competent. And he’s too cheap to pay the price needed to hire such competence.
If there is a split, it will be like this. Trump all for himself, and screw every other election.
He’ll probably imagine for himself that he’s the one “shedding the baggage” of all those losers in the GOP, and that without that baggage, half the GOP and Democratic voters will flock to his “non-partisan” banner, giving him the biggest win in history.
Yes and yes. He’d make enough noise to undermine the GOP nominee, but blunder the mechanics of even getting himself on nationwide ballots, let alone anyone downticket. Imagine ~20 million MAGAts either sitting out the election entirely or writing in Trump. It’d be a bigger blue tsunami than 2008 – and this time we wouldn’t blow it.
He doesn’t need to make a whole new party. He can just join Kanye’s “Birthday Party” and run from there!
That’s a great point, but he wouldn’t have to have candidates in every race to sink the Republicans chances. Just the presidency plus a handful of key senate, state, and house races would be more than enough.
Maybe Trump made a deal with DeSantis not to run and instead be his Veep nominee right from the beginning. The barbs they’ve been flinging is to throw everyone off. Ron will only be 50 in 2028 when he runs for his own term. Not having him run a primary clears the way for Trumps nomination.
Of course, I don’t know who would be crazy enough to want to be Trumps running mate. Has that issue been discussed at all?
I could see the Constitution Party inviting him to run as their nominee. It would probably be the only shot they (or any 3rd party, really) ever get at reaching the magical 5% threshold for public funding in the following cycle.
They could always dig up the RNC “autopsy” they conducted after their disappointing showing in the 2012 election, which concluded that they needed to drastically improve their outreach to women, African American, Asian, Hispanic and gay voters.
That was my comment to my wife the other day- a hope that the GOP and Trump suffer some sort of schism and Trump runs as an independent, Ross Perot-style, with the consequent splitting of the conservative vote and Democratic victory.
Enough of this silly talk!
@flurb beat me to the autopsy reference, but with Trump firmly welding the Q / Racist / White nationalists to the Republican cause, they’re not going to be able to make major gains in those groups. Where they’ll probably pivot is to go even more aggressively towards ‘Religious Freedom’ (read X-tian) in order to hold onto their existing groups, plus very possibly lean into the whole machismo/men’s rights that appealed to a certain segment of the population that found Trump’s philandering a pro rather than a con.
If I was a sane (R) that wasn’t worried about losing to a MAGA-type, I’d actually return to the old school fiscal conservative, balance the budget, no reckless adventurism overseas type, and try to suck away all the new conservative democrats who aren’t super happy with the progressives in the party, but can’t stand the MAGA types, and be willing to lie low for a few election cycles before reclaiming the leadership of the party.
But with Mitch and crew expressing how all their previous loyal opposition was bunk, it’ll take at least a few cycles before anyone rational would buy the change. The biggest advantage would be to hold it together long enough for the big tent (D) to forget the lessons of the past and get to infighting.
So there you have it, revert to the past, or become the Christian Republican party are the two scenarios I see as likely.
Here’s my fantasy, which may not be so fantastical.
Trump runs for the nomination and loses to DeSantis. He then insists that he won, he’s actually the nominee, and solicits donations from people to help his presidential campaign as the Republican candidate. He goes ballistic on the Republican Party and calls anyone who opposes him corrupt and criminal, and claims he has evidence (but is cagey about saying what it is). The turmoil torpedos the Republican attempt to win the presidency.