On Track: Trump '24
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My current view is that Donald Trump, indicted in Georgia or DC or not, is still on track to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024.
And/but professionally and intellectually (not, unfortunately, quite the same thing), it is incumbent upon me to constantly search for new data to test this proposition. I do that.
There are those in politics and the media who appear to think otherwise, in both respects.
Which is to say, they don’t believe Trump will be the nominee and/but they do not appear to be interested in any information that runs counter to their thesis.
There continues to be a cottage industry devoted to looking to make the case that Trump is doomed, propelled by journalists with Trump Derangement Syndrome; anti-Trump Republicans/former Republicans; skeptical past Trump donors who love being quoted; Team McConnell allies; left-leaning academics (never identified as such) offering up piquant quotes; and Democratic officials.
The news stories purportedly illustrating Trump’s decline to date (and foreshadowing more to come) mostly follow a similar pattern, including various combinations of
* suggesting some cultural and political impact from the 1/6 hearings on Republican and MAGA psyches that doesn’t appear to have actually occurred, while spinning the TV ratings as a sign of broad public influence and change
* hailing Liz Cheney (who seems on track to be creamed in her primary)
* quotes from Sarah Longwell, touting “stunning” focus groups in which former Trump voters express no future interest in him
* the elevation of all things DeSantis and all things Pence, touting the former as a polling and fundraising machine that is overtaking Trump and the latter as a potent teller of truths
* the brandishing of every criminal investigation that could target Trump as being on the verge of indictment, as in this New York Times story about a certain Peach State probe:
[E]ven as many Democrats lament that the Justice Department is moving too slowly in its inquiry, the local Georgia prosecutor has been pursuing a quickening case that could pose the most immediate legal peril for the former president and his associates.
Then there’s the subgenre of big foot columnists who acknowledge Trump’s long-running hold on the Republican Party, but say it is all about to come crashing down, that the crowd is evincing a dawning realization that the emperor has no clothes.
Here’s the latest example, from Ross Douthat:
There is more than one way, in other words, for Republican voters to decide that the former president is a loser. The stolen-election narrative has protected him from the simplest consequence of his defeat. But it doesn’t prevent the stench of failure from rising from his well-worn grievances, his whine of disappointment and complaint.
Rupert Murdoch’s empire reflects the implicit tentative judgment that only DeSantis (not Cotton, Cruz, Christie, Pompeo, Pence, Haley, or anyone but the Sunshine State Stallion) can topple The Don.
Here’s the “Hail, Ron” coverage of DeSantis’ Saturday night address from the New York Post:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted President Joe Biden in a fiery address to roughly 1,500 supporters Saturday night at a Republican fundraising event.
With former President Donald Trump holding simultaneous court at an event in Tampa, DeSantis trumpeted his stewardship of the Sunshine State while denouncing “woke” excesses and calling for a red wave in November.
The GOP firebrand and potential 2024 presidential candidate repeatedly mocked Biden by using his disparaging “Brandon” moniker, branding his presidency a wide-ranging “disaster” that has weakened the country.
“Democrats and Brandon, they deserve a big red wave crashing down on them,” DeSantis said as attendees rose from their surf and turf entrees to cheer. “If you look at what we’ve done in Florida, we have stood up to the media, we have stood up to people like Fauci, to Brandon himself….”
In keeping with his recent trend, DeSantis did not mention the former president’s name during his address.
Again, my posture is “Trump is on track to be the nominee, but let’s keep looking for REAL DATA suggesting that might not actually happen.”
The posture of too many other voices appears to be “Twist every available fact and opinion into a blob to support the thesis that it is only a matter of time before 2024 until Trump deflates into oblivion – and nothing to the contrary will be let into the discussion.”
The events of the last few news cycles – in which Trump had a meta faceoff with Pence in Arizona and one with DeSantis in Florida – have tested the capacity of the covey that too often substitutes its desires that Trump be taken down for rational analysis to argue that he is done and dusted.
Here’s Politico’s dispatch from Arizona:
It was billed as a split screen proxy war in the desert: Donald Trump versus Mike Pence in a midterm election skirmish that would provide an early indication about the future of the GOP.
It ended up more like a varsity-JV scrimmage.
The Republican Party landscape, in Arizona at least, remains tilted sharply towards Trump. And those who came to watch the former president speak seemed to know it.
And Politico from Florida:
A growing legion of conservatives see DeSantis as what’s next in the party. Yet Trump’s popularity was clear on Saturday night when he spoke to thousands of young conservatives in Tampa and suggested he’s running for president.
“If I announced I was not going to run for office, the persecution of Donald Trump would immediately stop,” Trump said at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit. “But that’s what they want me to do. And you know what? There’s no chance I do that….”
The Florida Republicans event in Hollywood, Fla. was much smaller than the Turning Point conference and was influenced heavily by DeSantis.
There are two chief ways in which I could turn out to be wrong and Trump ends up not being the Republicans’ presidential nominee – either he doesn’t run or he runs and somebody beats him.
I know plenty of smart people who think one or the other of those things will turn out to be true.
I just continue to believe that the folks saying these things are too often operating more on hope than facts – or, at least, on a selective reading of the facts.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Trump has gone from being an 1,100 pound gorilla to a 900 pound one, but he is still the biggest gorilla by far in the Republican jungle.
But as Scott Jennings likes to say: Only time will tell.
Important note: I’m not rooting for Trump to be the nominee, just warning that I think he will be.
Enjoy your steamy Sunday — and I will some of you shortly at a very air conditioned Lauriol Plaza, where the queso is hotter than the the Dupont Circle temperature.
