We’re just a few months into calendar year 2023 and, already, the drumbeats are sounding for the upcoming 2024 Presidential election… nineteen months down the road!
I can’t remember when our Nation got to this point, that it’s citizens would be immersed in politics 24/7/365. Already, at least three Republicans have announced their intention to seek the G.O.P. nomination, and there appear to be several others waiting in the wings to toss their hats into the ring. As far as I know, zero Democrats have formally announced, although President Biden seems to be indicating that he’ll run again if Donald Trump is the Republican candidate.
I don’t blame him, as he kicked Trump’s ass in 2020, and that was before the ex-President exhorted his M.A.G.A. cult crazies to assault the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, causing significant damage and the loss of two lives. Trump has now lost two popular votes for President, by three million votes in 2016 and seven million votes in 2020. And, ironically, those were years when Trump’s political stock was high.
The Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) is meeting this week, and it seems as if the leaders are trying to co-opt the 2024 nomination process by ignoring the growing anti-Trump murmuring within the G.O.P. and, instead, giving lots of podium time to crackpots, conspiracy theorists, Q-Anons, whackadoodles, anarchists, racists, and Christian born-again demogogues. This is the same “base” of support within the Republican Party that has embraced election denying, vote suppression schemes against Black Americans, the “woke” outrage, and hate campaigns against Jews, Chinese, Mexicans, Muslims, and anyone else who isn’t White and Christian.
It’s virtually the same formula that handed the Presidential election to Joe Biden in 2020.
There’s a big difference, though, between 2020 and now. A lot of the people who voted Republican in 2020 will not do so in 2024, at least in the Presidential contest. Trump is radioactive right now, thanks to his piss poor record as President, his lack of leadership, the cult of personality that he created, his incessant lying, the multitude of lawsuits that he now faces, and the responsibility that he bears for the Capitol Riot insurrection.
If Trump becomes the G.O.P. nominee for 2024, I predict that millions of long-time Republican voters will sit out the election, and virtually every Democrat and a large portion of Independents will vote for the Democratic nominees, no matter who he or she is.
I would suspect that Trump would lose the 2024 Presidential popular vote by 15 to 20 million votes.
Political realists in the Republican Party know this, but relatively few of them have had the courage to publicly mention it, knowing that there will be backlash from Trump and punishment for their “disloyalty”. If the 2022 midterms are any indication, Trump would finance their opponents in the G.O.P. state primaries… ending their careers. Ex-Senator Liz Cheney of Wyoming is the most obvious example of M.A.G.A. wrath.
There is no way that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida or ex-Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley will be the Republican nominee for President in 2024 unless Donald Trump drops out of the contest and endorses one of them. That also goes for ex-Secretary of State/windbag Mike Pompeo, who seems to be doing a lot of posturing lately.
The G.O.P., which now controls the House of Representatives, has embarked on a scorched earth campaign to discredit Joe Biden and everything Democratic in our Nation. Lots of hearings, lots of conspiracy theories and rants by wacko politicians, and crazy proposals from Southern/Bible Belt Congressmen. They are doing their part to further identify the Republican Party as a crew of nut jobs who are not in touch with most Americans, opting instead to pander to the Trump cult base.
This political theater is going to cost the G.O.P. votes when all Americans must decide who’s gong to run the show in 2024. Most voters in the United States don’t share the same hard-line Conservative values that many citizens do in the current Red states. They favor fewer guns, access to abortion services, no intrusion into government by religion, reasonable steps to deal with climate change, and unity over anarchy. They also respect Dr. Fauci and don’t give a crap about Joe Biden’s children’s business and financial activities over the past twenty years.
Some Red and Red-leaning states will become Blue in 2024 because of this.
Like I’ve said before, this upcoming Presidential election is ripe for a “third party” candidacy, although the hurdles that such an effort would encounter would be formidable.
Interestingly, Fox News, which is looking very bad because of the Dominion Voting Systems scandal, appears to be in Donald Trump’s doghouse right now. Both he and some of his big-time supporters have begun to bad mouth Fox and it’s owner Rupert Murdoch, as they are now perceived as “disloyal” to Trump’s political base. The network has earned that moniker because they don’t continue to push the bogus “stolen election” fable anymore… because they are being sued.
It is an absolute fact that Donald Trump could not have been elected in 2016 without the support of Fox News (and the Russians, to a lesser extent). And he would not have done as well in the 2020 campaign without the major Fox on-air personalities honking for him every evening on TV. Basically, Fox’s Sean Hannity was Trump’s de facto Chief of Staff in 2020, talking with him daily to develop disinformation campaigns on Covid, BLM protests, the integrity of the electoral system, the “invasion” of America by Latin Americans, and so forth.
Trump now favors (as his partner in crime) Newsmax over Fox because its coverage is more fawning toward him. However, Fox’s viewership ratings are four times that of Newsmax, while the latter is only pulling 316,000 around the clock. It is probably safe to say that those viewers are politically extremely right-wing… and they are going to vote for Trump anyway.
It’s just another sign that the M.A.G.A. world is shrinking.
Someone should tell the CPAC before it totally throws in the towel by supporting Donald Trump and destroying what’s left of the Party of Lincoln.
