Donald J ain't going away!!
Be clear-eyed about Donald Trump's prospects, which remain strong
(No apologies to Charlie Daniels for my title.)
Democrats and anti-Trump campaigners may be getting complacent about Donald Trump. The end of a November 20 Washington Post story paraphrases Barry Goodman, “who served on Biden’s national finance committee for his 2020 presidential campaign”, as saying that “many donors” are “praying that Trump runs” in 2024 since any Democrat who runs would beat Trump: “people are not going to put that despot in office one more time”. Election Twitter seems to reckon that the Republican Party has a better chance of winning in 2024 with a non-Trump candidate than Trump. And Rick Wilson, co-founder of the hitherto anti-Trump Lincoln Project, disclosed to CNN that the Project now wants “Trump to kill his own babies” — that is, drum his rivals out of the contest for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. “We believe if we narrow the field and it's only Trump in 2024, it's an easy choice for Americans to say 'no.'”. After some pushback, Wilson took to Twitter to defend his stance:
By contrast, Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen reckons Trump simply won’t run as his ego wouldn’t take it, and Politico’s founding editor John Harris, under the headline “Relax, A Trump Comeback In 2024 Is Not Going To Happen”, predicted a year ago that Trump’s domination of the Republican Party wouldn’t last to 2024.
In short, people who should know better think Trump’s becoming a lot more defeasible than he was in 2016 and in 2020. Some reality checks are due.
Losing the popular vote in 2016 didn’t dent Trump’s ego enough to stop him running in 2020; if Trump isn’t incapacitated in 2024 he is very likely to run for the presidency again. Incapacitation would almost certainly have to mean death or prison. In the US, billionaires seldom go to prison, and no one’s ever gone to prison after having been President. Trump could be the first billionaire ex-President to go to prison, but it would be a real aberration. And even if the gears of justice grind that fine, they grind curiously slow. Were Trump finally found guilty of something in a major way, would it happen early enough to obstruct a 2024 run?
That leaves death as the other event that could plausibly block Trump from running in 2024. Trump is 75 years old and has to survive about 3 more years to make it past Election Day 2024. US men aged 75, 76, and 77 have annual chances of dying of 3.46%, 3.82%, and 4.22% respectively, according to the Social Security Administration’s 2019 period life table. Inverting those numbers, they’re annual chances of survival of 96.54%, 96.18%, and 95.78%; multiplying the survival chances together gives Trump a 3-year survival probability of 88.93%, or an 11.1% chance of dying before Election Day 2024. That’s one in 9, not a minute chance — Trump could stroke out or choke on a mouthful of wellest-done steak tomorrow — but hardly overwhelming.
One could argue for a higher chance by highlighting that Trump faces a special occupational risk: assassination. But a helpful report on “Direct Assaults Against Presidents, Presidents-Elect, and Candidates” from the Congressional Research Service pumps the brakes on that line of argument: while a significant proportion of Presidents have been assassinated (4 out of 46), the relevant statistic here is the proportion of candidates killed before inauguration, and the report mentions just one (RFK) out of scores. Non-fatal attacks that sink a candidate’s campaign are also rare: there’s only one of those, too (George Wallace in 1972). Assassination risk might raise my 11% estimate to 12% or 13%, but not enough to alter the point that death’s unlikely to stop Trump.
That’s the supply side covered: Trump’s liable to be willing and able to run in ‘24. What about the demand side?
Since losing the 2020 election, Trump’s come first in every national Republican-primary poll. He consistently averages half of the polling responses in a fractured field, even including “Other” and “Undecided” responses, and none of his rivals (not Pence, not Ron DeSantis, not Trump Jr.) can claim so much as a solid second place. In the summer Trump’s “three principal fundraising operations” had over $100 million in cash, and Trump continues to raise millions of dollars a month, enough to keep his political machinery lit up. Trump is the obvious favorite in the 2024 Republican primary (which itself virtually guarantees that Trump would enter the Republican primary before running as a third-party candidate).
Beyond the Republican Party, polling for the next general election has Trump winning the popular vote against Kamala Harris in 8 out of 9 polls, and winning the popular vote against Joe Biden in 10 out of 29 polls. Given that Trump got the presidency in 2016 despite losing the popular vote, and outperformed the polls in both 2016 and 2020, opponents of Trump have serious cause for worry.
It’s odd that Rick Wilson and Democratic donors apparently foresee a less formidable Trump in 2024. Trump has wrapped the Republican Party around his finger in the last 6 years, and it shows in the election returns. In 2016 Trump won 63 million votes, and in 2020 he won 74 million. Of course the Democrats also made gains, but Trump nonetheless improved his vote share, inching up from 46% to 47%. Time and experience of Trump consolidated and expanded his voting base, and I see little sign of that going into reverse. Trump’s favorability has increased since February, while the approval ratings of Harris and Biden have worsened a lot.
Too many people seem complacent in ways reminiscent of 2015 and 2016, when
Hillary Clinton’s campaign underestimated Trump as a “Pied Piper candidate” to be actively cultivated;
an “Ex-Republican” pundit voted for Trump in a primary;
the media gave Trump not only $5 billion worth of free coverage but unusually early and positive coverage before the primary elections proper (alongside unusually negative coverage of Hillary Clinton), to Trump’s disproportionate benefit;
CBS CEO Les Moonves declared in February 2016 the “terrible thing to say” that Trump should “bring it on”, “go ahead”, “keep going”;1
talking heads on ABC’s This Week smirked and laughed at Keith Ellison’s warning, back in mid-2015, that Democrats should prepare for Donald Trump to potentially lead the Republican ticket;
the Huffington Post wrote off Trump announcing his candidacy as a “sideshow”, “bait” they wouldn’t take;
Bill Maher’s Real Time audience cracked up and whooped at Ann Coulter for saying that Donald Trump was the Republican candidate with the best chance of winning the general election;2
NBC sat indefinitely on the Access Hollywood recording to try to maximize its impact; and
Jonathan Chait put out an article headlined “Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination”.
However much one dislikes the idea of Trump winning in 2024, one should approach it with eyes open, not complacently looking away. More likely than not, Donald J Trump ain’t going away, and he could regain unstoppable momentum when the primary campaigns begin in just a year and a half. It would be infuriating to see the opposition to Trump (if it deserves the name “opposition”) make the same needless, self-satisfied mistakes in 2024 as in 2016, and crash the same kind of campaign in the same way into the same man.
8 months later Moonves would clarify(?) that his remarks were a “joke” taken out of context, although in 2015 he had cheered on Trump in an investor presentation and would, in 2017, express appreciation of Trump-driven media deregulation. In the dying weeks of 2017, Moonves backed the #MeToo movement and co-founded a commission to fight sexual harassment; the year after that he resigned from CBS when a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment, intimidation, and assault. Walking away with his $700 million of wealth, Moonves set up a new Hollywood media-distribution company, Moon Rise Unlimited.
The Real Time audience received Ann Coulter’s further prediction, that Bernie Sanders would be a stronger candidate than Hillary Clinton, more warmly.