The supporters of former President Trump are absolutely correct about one thing. If every single Republican pledged their allegiance to him and fell in line he’d win the nomination easily. But he’d also lose the general election, again. He does not receive enough support from outside the traditional Republican and MAGA base to win in 2024.
Hillary Clinton beat Trump by roughly 3 million in the popular vote in 2016. While Trump indeed did win the election by taking the required 270 electoral votes, just a few thousand votes in each of the key swing states would have changed that outcome into a Hillary Clinton landslide victory in 2016. The Democrats ‘ground game’ in the important swing states has been a huge emphasis for their party ever since, so that a repeat Republican victory based solely on the Electoral College likely won’t happen again.
In the 2020 election a good percentage of Biden’s votes were from people voting ‘against Trump’, not ‘for Biden’. Many of those are the same voters that Trump or any Republican candidate would need to try to attract, and get to come over to the Republican side, in order to win in the general election.
Our country is equally divided politically. A recent Gallup Poll revealed that 49 percent of voters describe themselves as “politically independent,” roughly equal to the two major parties combined. These ‘Independents’ are the people who determine our elections.
When they are offered what appears to be a reasonable alternative to Trump they will vote for that candidate. The Democrats are already preparing to package and sell (with the help of their news media allies and Hollywood), a candidate (other than Joe Biden), who will be presented as a ‘moderate, and a reasonable alternative.’ Just like the closet Marxist Barack Obama was packaged and sold to Americans back in 2008.
Whomever the Republicans nominate will certainly be attacked by the Democrats and the biased news media, but the visceral hatred of Trump is unparalleled. Trump will be viciously attacked in TV campaign ads 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With very unflattering video clips, carefully edited in some cases, but many provided to them free of charge courtesy of former President Trump himself.
Trump also does not have the ‘coattails’ he likes to claim that he has. Not that many voters like to split their ballot anyway, call it confusion, uncertainty, or just plain laziness. But they are more likely than not to just vote a straight ticket, with their favored presidential candidate at the top of the ballot. All of the other candidates for political office benefit from having a strong candidate leading the ticket.
There’s a large percentage that simply cannot stand Trump and will refuse to vote for him. They will likely vote a straight Democrat ticket when Democrats offer their reasonable alternative at the top of the ballot, very likely costing Republicans the Congress and denying them control of the Senate.
Unfortunately, former President Trump doesn’t even make any effort to try to reach out to these potential ‘independent’ voters. He simply can’t moderate his behavior in order to attract them, so his default is to focus his efforts solely on keeping his MAGA die hard supporters in the fold. They accept him no matter how outrageous his antics. But there simply aren’t enough of them to carry Trump to victory.
I predict right now (hoping I’m wrong), that if former President Trump does not legitimately win the Republican nomination, he’s going to claim that “it was all rigged against him because he was leading everyone by 60 percent in the polls, there’s no way he could have lost.”
He’ll see himself as similar to former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as the ‘Bull Moose Party’ candidate back in 1912 (an election Roosevelt lost by the way). If no candidate gets the required number of electoral votes, Congress will decide the president. Trump will not be selected, regardless of whether Republicans control Congress, and especially if Democrats take control.
Trump’s loyalties are to Trump, he’s really a lone wolf when you come right down to it. He never could learn how to work and play well with others. So my guess is that he will indeed decide to try to run as a third party candidate. Enough of his blind followers will support him, guaranteeing a Democrat elected president in 2024.
Just like H. Ross Perot, who gave us Bill Clinton twice. (Bill and Hillary Clinton would both have been nothing more than minor footnotes in the history books if Perot had not run and split the Republican vote. Think of how better off our country would be right now had both Clintons disappeared from our political landscape after the 1992 election.)
Our country is standing on the edge of an abyss. We cannot afford four, more likely eight more years of Democrat rule. To do so would complete the “fundamental transformation” Barack Obama promised us when he first ran for office. A fundamental transformation into an America that no one but our enemies wants to see.