We have Yglesias' intern and Martin Longman both take a look at what sort of Republican can beat Trump. Maya Bodnick's take is that Vivek Ramaswamy is taking the optimal approach of presenting Trumpist policies in traditional political language. As we've seen with DeSantis, the bullying approach really only works for Trump, a fact that Longman's analysis explains. For Longman, any credible challenger needs to be fundamentally different than Trump in some important ways.
I don't think that the replacement for Trump stands much of a chance in 2024. Obviously, Trump could die; he's old and looks like a boiled sheep's stomach. Even more likely, he could be in jail before the convention. I suppose that there is a chance that if he's in jail, it makes sense to be DeSantis and offer your Dollar General version of Trumpism.
Of course, there's the most likely outcome, which is that Trump moves heaven and earth to delay the 1/6 trial and somehow pulls it off. in which case he's the nominee.
The truly interesting scenario is the one where he's in jail and decides to run anyway. Obviously a pardon would be his only hope, so would he try and continue his quixotic quest to return to the presidency and pardon himself? Or would he throw his weight behind a Republican who promised to pardon him, if he won?
The Republican caterwauling about this, of course, obscures a fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats, that I think goes back to Reagan. Look, I think Joe Biden is a decent human being and remarkably effective president for this moment in our history. But, if Biden wasn't running I could quite easily throw my support behind a Buttigieg or a Whitmer or a Pritzker or a Booker or so on and so on. What matters, fundamentally, is that the Democratic Party stands for a set of principles and policies that I agree with. I want Dobbs overturned; I want meaningful action on climate change; I want meaningful restrictions on gun ownership; I want more progressive taxation and more efforts to reduce poverty.
Republicans want a strong man. Policies? Who gives a fuck? We want the strong man who will make the Democratic boogeyman angry and go away. The nature of the authoritarianism that has always been present in the American Right naturally adheres to singular individuals. What's interesting about Trump is that when the Bushes left office, they were unpopular for different specific reasons. Bush pere was unpopular because he raised taxes; Bush fils was unpopular because Iraq and the economy melted down. In other words, they betrayed the "ideas" of the GOP. The GOP has no more real "ideas" that you can really point to.
Trump was beaten soundly in 2020, but that's no longer disqualifying. This is profoundly worrying, because it means that the GOP will struggle to correct its course back to being a center-right party. You have to learn from your defeats, and the Trumpist GOP refuses to admit it lost.
So who will be the 2024 nominee if it isn't Trump? If he's dead or in prison? Maybe it will be Ramaswamy, but do we really think that the Trumpenproletariat are going to to vote for a guy named Ramaswamy?
Finally, let's take the internal arguments of the Trumpists at face value: Trump actually won in 2020. The biggest predictor of an incumbent losing re-election is a stiff primary challenge. (Roosevelt in 1912; Kennedy in 1980; Buchanan in 1992) Trump doesn't exactly have a "stiff" primary challenge, but he does face a fractured party. However, what allowed him to win in 2016 was a divided field, which is what he faces again.
Bernie Sanders rose to prominence in 2016 because he was the Not Hillary candidate. There isn't a singular Not Trump candidate on the GOP side (Hutchinson and Christie are dividing that role, and the others just mimic him.). If one emerges? That's the person who will take the mantle from Trump if he cannot run. If he can, it's him.
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