Some of the smartest arguments for not panicking about the future Trump threat have come from Ross Douthat, a conservative Trump critic, who argues that although Trump may indeed be an aspiring dictator, that matters little if he can’t execute. I wrote on the eve of the 2020 election that a second Trump term would be more dangerous than the first, but a second Trump term beginning in 2024 would go beyond that. This adds up to a decent shot at Trump winning in 2024-at least an Electoral College win, as in 2016, and perhaps even the popular-vote win that has twice eluded him. Besides, given the tight margins in several states, Trump wouldn’t need to gain much on Biden to beat him in a rematch.Īdam Serwer: Trump’s plans for a coup are now public Incumbency doesn’t seem to be quite the boost it once was both Trump and Barack Obama saw their vote share slip as they ran for second terms. Most worryingly for Democrats, Biden has lost favor with independent voters. Incumbents have a built-in edge, and although the future course of the pandemic is unpredictable, the economy seems likely to improve, if slowly.īut the president’s approval rating has slipped definitively underwater, and the intensely polarized environment makes it hard for him to claw back favor once lost. (To see another example of a four-year train wreck, you’ve got to go all the way back to … the last president.) Biden also retains certain structural advantages. It is unlikely-though not impossible!-that the current air of chaos and free fall around the Biden administration will continue for the next three years. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who sharply castigated Trump after January 6, has since said he would “ absolutely” back Trump if he’s the Republican nominee.Ĭould he win? Of course he could. Many Senate Republicans privately hope that Trump doesn’t run, but the more telling fact is that they won’t say so publicly. On Saturday, Trump held a rally in Iowa featuring Senator Charles Grassley, an old-school Republican in both temperament and chronology-a symbol of Trump’s takeover of the party. There’s no reason to think that has changed. Others, like Chris Christie, say they won’t defer to Trump, but Christie proved to be not even a speed bump for Trump in 2016. If anything, he’ll head into 2024 with the party far more unified around him, even though polling suggests more ambivalence among GOP voters.Ī large group of Republicans are eyeing the 2024 race, but several have said they won’t run if Trump runs. Some skeptics still think it’s a feint, but why wouldn’t he run if he can win? In 2016, Trump won only a plurality of GOP-primary voters, and faced nearly unanimous opposition within the Republican establishment. He has already done everything except declare his candidacy officially, flirting ( unusually demurely for him) with an announcement in public statements. But a straightforward victory-a very real possibility-could be a mortal injury.Ī Trump candidacy in 2024 is almost certain, and a nomination is probable. Trump losing in 2024 and trying to steal the election would be even more catastrophic. His clinging to power in 2020 poured salt in that wound. Trump winning in 2016 was a serious wound to the American experiment. Graham: Trump’s second term will be nothing like his first But these watchdogs risk missing the graver danger: Trump could win this fair and square.ĭavid A. This is not without justification many of Trump’s henchmen, meanwhile, are frantically focused on stealing it. Many members of the uneasy coalition of Democrats and former Republicans who oppose Trump are frantically focused on the danger of Trump and his GOP allies trying to steal the 2022 and especially 2024 elections. Much worse was still to come: Trump calling Georgia’s secretary of state, asking him to find 11,000 votes attempting to weaponize the Justice Department and instigating the failed January 6 insurrection.Īmericans are ready now. But when the president stepped to a lectern in the White House late on Election Night and insisted he’d won, many Americans were taken aback. By Election Day, Trump had spent months calling the election “rigged,” and historians and democracy experts warned of the damage that these false claims could make. The United States was unprepared for the scope of President Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election.
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