Trump won't be the Republican party nominee in 2024

Politics & Elections
61

Fear. Republican Congresspeople were running and hiding just as much as Democrats, and the insurgents were specifically looking and calling out for Mike Pence, who had been a loyal lickspittle up until the day that Trump told him to do something in direct violation of the Constitution. The Republican party is trapped between fear of the MAGA movement, and fear of losing an election and being out of power, such as it is; even when they have ostensible control they can’t get out of their own way because their only remaining policy positions are obstruction and manufactured crisis.

Stranger

62

And now is different how? What impels my thesis is the GOP fears Trump even now.

63

Huh. Quote changes the numbers to bullet points. Pretend they’re numbers because that’s what I’m using.

  1. Trump loses his shit more to the trials. He lost his shit about DeSantis until DeSantis endorsed him. Haley is just a way to rant.

  2. Trump’s base is the majority of the party. How much of a majority doesn’t matter, especially if the majority is insanely enthusiastic and loyal.

  3. Legal troubles are bad; convictions would be worse. Because of his sometimes successful delays, expect no convictions before July.

  4. Like the 33,000+ mistakes the Washington Post counted during his presidency, Trump’s base cares not a whit about his flubs. Only the rest of us need to be scared.

  5. Health is bad now, but he can rest after winning South Carolina and watching Haley drop out of the race.

  6. There is no line. None. That’s only a comforting delusion. The money coming from Christian Nationalists who want a theocracy will keep flowing to the end. The GOP is both stupid and too self-absorbed to care about norms, legalities, rationality, or reality. They will keep running even off a cliff. That Trump could disrupt agreed-upon bills in the House shows the power he has. The rational wing of the party can pull hard enough to keep the government running, but that means working with Democrats, which won’t happen in the election.

That Trump will be the nominee is certain to the extent that he will be the only one running soon. Lightning could strike before the convention, in the form of health problems, but that’s true of Biden as well. Trump only has to be alive and upright to get a majority of Republican delegates.

What happens in November is murkier. Polls now are mostly meaningless. Turnout trumps everything. A few percentage points showing up or not will decide the outcome, exactly as occurred in 2016. In the next nine months anything can happen. Expect the unexpected.

64

You and me both!

65

Thanks for your thoughts! I will make a general response to your entirely reasonable points and objections.

I was an early and correct contrarian about DeSantis because I perceived his qualities (and the lack thereof) more clearly than some others. In the case of Trump, we agree on the qualities; I am merely perceiving the overall situation in a different (and I believe correct) manner.

In a word, there is just too much coming down the pike for Trump to get the nomination. Any one of the factors I cited can be objected to very reasonably, but it is the totality of the situation that is the issue.

By way of metaphor, there are loose lug nuts on the wheels of the bus, it has a substantial crack in the rear axle, all of the tires have metal showing through the rubber, and it’s speeding with a cop on its tail. It ain’t making it to its destination, folks!

Let me answer some objections:

Trump’s base will support him no matter what.

I agree. They will also probably worship him as a god after he dies. But his results in Iowa and New Hampshire show that, while the dead-enders will support him forever, there are many who will not. Biden got a higher percentage of the vote in NH with a write-in campaign!

The party will support him no matter what.

Yes, they are cowards who are afraid of the MAGAs. Execrable spineless chumps. Nevertheless, if we agree that the GOP is ultimately puppeted by the billionaires and other such power brokers, we have to give those brokers credit. They took the L in 2018, 2020, and 2022–do they really want another round? When Haley might actually beat Biden while helping to renormalize the GOP and grant them a chance at longer-term political success and economic control? If we suppose them to have the power to pull strings, then now would be the time for them to “Pull the string!” /Bela Lugosi.

There is no line that Trump can cross that can cost him the nomination.

I disagree. Whereas so much, it would seem infinitely much, Trumpian misbehavior has been grandfathered in at this stage as permissible, there is a breaking point, and Trump is about to cross it. Keep in mind that the man is a mobster who has been very skilled at going as far as he can without going too far while peppering his rhetoric with plausible deniability. Trump has lost his discipline and his mind, and he’s going to go there–mark my words.

Plus, guys, I think his health alone is going to cause him to drop out or be dropped. It’s just too much, all of it–way too much. This is what I perceive.

66

Yeah, I’m sad the OP won’t be right about this one.

By this point Trump probably has >99% odds of the nomination.

67

I’d put the number lower, only because the chance of him dropping dead first due to age, health, etc is probably at LEAST 1% But, no I don’t see any -other- candidate getting the nod unless he were hilariously demented or dead, no.

68

I see @ParallelLines has beat me to the “death” angle, but there is also the “convicted of a felony” angle which is probably another 2% or so.

But still, the OP is way off I’m afraid. There is at least a 95% chance Trump will be the nominee. And then a 50% chance he will win, if the nominee. So 47.5% chance he’s the next President.

Because what the OP hasn’t addressed is the plain fact that, accordion to the polls, he is winning. Both nationally and in the states where it will matter (NV, AZ, MI, WI).

69

I don’t agree with this at all.

70

Correct. Those power brokers lost all control in 2016. They have not come close to gaining it back. Some (most?) of them have tried to ride the tiger, to varying degrees of success. But they have absolutely no control over what will happen next in the GOP.

71

A poll just came out in which he is losing in PA. Can he win the country while losing PA? In theory, yes, but no.

Plus, the polls are meaningless at this stage, and he is only barely ahead anyway.

Finally, there are superseding arguments:

  1. He lost to Biden before.
  2. He only has more problems and weaknesses than he did in 2020.
  3. Democrats won in 2018, 2020, and 2022. If Biden is weak, then why was the big Red Wave that everyone feared and predicted completely crushed? Biden is not weaker than he was in 2022: the economy has improved, inflation is down, etc.
  4. Democrats have continued to do well recently in special elections, etc.
  5. Abortion has continued to be an issue that advantages us. A ballot initiative protecting abortion won in frickin’ Kansas!

I don’t see Democratic weakness anywhere.

72

Sure they do. They have money. That gives them at least some control.

73

The candidate, or Trump? :smile:

74

Here’s a question. Does the Republican Party leadership secretly want Trump to be ruled ineligible by SCOTUS?

75

You have a much healthier outlook than I do. I see danger around every bend, largely in two areas: violence in the ME and immigration.

I can easily see Biden’s support of Israel costing him key votes in Michigan (not that they will vote for Trump but that they won’t vote for Biden).

I can easily see Biden’s reluctance to take draconian measures at the border costing him AZ and possibly NV.

I absolutely hope you are right, but I still have PTSD about 2016 and how confident I was that there was no way he could beat Clinton. But since then he has consistently outperformed his polling, and now he’s actually polling ahead of Biden. I could very easily see the youth vote just not showing up and screwing us all.

What control? The Koch family hates Trump. It doesn’t matter. The new digital world makes these big-money dinosaurs meaningless. Trump reaches more folks on Truth Social or X/Twitter or Rumble than old-school TV ads ever would. The shit you can hear at a random rural McDonalds is mind-boggling (ask me how I know…). These folks just don’t get their “news” from the same place we used to, but somehow they know all of the latest talking points verbatim.

76

One of the most fundamental changes that Trump wrought was he broke the old social contract within the GOP. For decades, the political elites and their big money donors convinced the grassroots that they needed to be in charge and would make lots of noise about what the base wanted to hear. In return, the base would dutifully provide the manpower for campaigns and turn out to vote. But when it came time to for the elites to deliver, there would always be some excuse for why the base couldn’t get exactly what they wanted.

Trump demolished this and told the base what they knew in their hearts – they were being played for fools by powerful Republican elites. He showed them that the elites were paper tigers, and that the base were the ones with all the power. Now the dynamic is reversed – the base is in charge, and the billionaires and elites are only allowed to participate as long as they conform to the MAGA agenda.

77

Do the Arabs in MI tend to vote for Democrats? I don’t know anything about that demographic including for whom they have traditionally voted.

Biden seems to be playing the role of voice of reason at this stage. He hardly seems like a warmonger.

I would not call this Democratic weakness. The GOP also tends to support Israel.

If he did, it would cost him Hispanic votes. It is no doubt a tricky situation for anyone sitting in the POTUS seat. The Republicans are successfully using this as a cudgel–we’ll see how Dark Brandon fights back.

I think it’s fair enough to call this a weakness, as we own it right now.

That’s not what has happened in 2018, 2020, and 2022. Plus, Taylor Swift is in our corner. I think she will only get fiercer over the course of the year.

It is news to me that big donors are now meaningless. I’m not trying to be sassy–if it’s true, then that’s a good thing. But we can’t have it both ways. We can’t complain that the GOP is controlled by Big Money but then concede that Big Money will have no influence.

78

I’m basically with you on the destruction of the contract, but how does it all shake out in terms of dollars and cents? I need more data to convince me that the big donors are truly depowered at this stage.

79

Since about 2004, they’ve mostly voted Dem. They lost faith in the Republicans during Bush II and never looked back. Supported Dem candidates up and down the ticket in Michigan, including Kerry, Obama and Biden. But now they’re pissed at what they perceive is JRB turning his back on the Palestinians.

80

“Depowered?” No. There will always be a demand for money in politics and those with it will have influence. But the difference is that now the conversation occurs on MAGA’s terms – “You want your corporate tax breaks? All right, we’ll throw you some tax breaks. But you’re gonna cut off all your donations to Republicans we don’t like and you’re gonna shut your fucking mouth when we do things you don’t like. Cause we don’t need you but – for you – we’re the only game in town.”