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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerica Is Not Ready for Trump's Second Term
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/trump-winning-2024-real-election-nightmare/620368/The United States was unprepared for the scope of President Donald Trumps attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election. 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. But when the president stepped to a lectern in the White House late on Election Night and insisted hed won, many Americans were taken aback. Much worse was still to come: Trump calling Georgias secretary of state, asking him to find 11,000 votes; attempting to weaponize the Justice Department; and instigating the failed January 6 insurrection. Americans are ready now. If anything, theyre overprepared. 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. This is not without justification; many of Trumps henchmen, meanwhile, are frantically focused on stealing it. But these watchdogs risk missing the graver danger: Trump could win this fair and square. Trump winning in 2016 was a serious wound to the American experiment. His clinging to power in 2020 poured salt in that wound. Trump losing in 2024 and trying to steal the election would be even more catastrophic. But a straightforward victorya very real possibilitycould be a mortal injury.
A Trump candidacy in 2024 is almost certain, and a nomination is probable. He has already done everything except declare his candidacy officially, flirting (unusually demurely for him) with an announcement in public statements. Some skeptics still think its a feint, but why wouldnt 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. If anything, hell head into 2024 with the party far more unified around him, even though polling suggests more ambivalence among GOP voters. A large group of Republicans are eyeing the 2024 race, but several have said they wont run if Trump runs. Others, like Chris Christie, say they wont defer to Trump, but Christie proved to be not even a speed bump for Trump in 2016. Theres no reason to think that has changed. On Saturday, Trump held a rally in Iowa featuring Senator Charles Grassley, an old-school Republican in both temperament and chronologya symbol of Trumps takeover of the party. Many Senate Republicans privately hope that Trump doesnt run, but the more telling fact is that they wont say so publicly. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who sharply castigated Trump after January 6, has since said he would absolutely back Trump if hes the Republican nominee. Could he win? Of course he could. It is unlikelythough not impossible!that the current air of chaos and free fall around the Biden administration will continue for the next three years. (To see another example of a four-year train wreck, youve got to go all the way back to the last president.)
Biden also retains certain structural advantages. Incumbents have a built-in edge, and although the future course of the pandemic is unpredictable, the economy seems likely to improve, if slowly. But the presidents approval rating has slipped definitively underwater, and the intensely polarized environment makes it hard for him to claw back favor once lost. Most worryingly for Democrats, Biden has lost favor with independent voters. Incumbency doesnt 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. Besides, given the tight margins in several states, Trump wouldnt need to gain much on Biden to beat him in a rematch. This adds up to a decent shot at Trump winning in 2024at least an Electoral College win, as in 2016, and perhaps even the popular-vote win that has twice eluded him. 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. 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 cant execute. Again and again his most alarmist critics have accurately analyzed his ruthless amorality but then overestimated his capacity to impose his will on subordinates and allies, let alone the country as a whole, Douthat wrote recently.
But Douthat underestimates the changed institutional landscape that would greet Trump upon reentering office on January 20, 2025. Trump would likely have unified Republican control of the House and Senate. He would have a conservative majority on the Supreme Courtand the real possibility of naming Justice Stephen Breyers replacement. Trump did have a Republican Congress for the first two years of his term, but he didnt know how to use it, and both chambers were led by Republicans who were deeply skeptical of Trump and his goals. Then-Speaker Paul Ryan didnt do much to stop Trump, but he slowed him down, as did McConnell. Now Ryan is gone, and McConnell has demonstrated his flexibility. The internal Republican resistance to Trump has been winnowed away, leaving little more than Mitt Romney in the Senate and a handful of representatives in the House. Trump is in the midst of a quest to purge them, too, targeting Republicans who voted to impeach him. Hes already forced Ohios Anthony Gonzalez to drop his reelection bid, and hes doing his best to take down Liz Cheney of Wyoming. More pliable legislative and judicial branches would help Trump, but he would also have better control of the executive branch. He assembled his first administration from misfit toys and castoffs, staffers who would never have gotten such jobs in another presidency because they were too inexperienced, too incompetent, too abrasive, or too extreme. On his return, hed do better. Those staffers are now seasoned and more able, and fewer veteran Republicans would remove themselves from consideration next time.
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America Is Not Ready for Trump's Second Term (Original Post)
Celerity
Oct 2021
OP
Were we ready for the 1st term? Sane people weren't and that hasn't changed. nt
OAITW r.2.0
Oct 2021
#1
"the current air of chaos and free fall around the Biden administration"?
Gidney N Cloyd
Oct 2021
#2
He's urging Republicans not to vote. If they follow his advice, he can't win. nt
Binkie The Clown
Oct 2021
#5
OAITW r.2.0
(24,467 posts)1. Were we ready for the 1st term? Sane people weren't and that hasn't changed. nt
Gidney N Cloyd
(19,834 posts)2. "the current air of chaos and free fall around the Biden administration"?
Boomerproud
(7,952 posts)7. You don't have to turn on Fox to hear that.
CNN and the New York Times have been doing their share for the last couple months.
msongs
(67,403 posts)3. why is congress not acting on its election protection bills? nt
Tomconroy
(7,611 posts)4. Very depressing.
Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)5. He's urging Republicans not to vote. If they follow his advice, he can't win. nt
Straw Man
(6,623 posts)9. I'm not sure he's doing that.
What he said was this:
If we dont solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in 22 or 24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do."
The statement is ambiguous. I could be read as an exhortation to the base to threaten to withhold their support of Republican candidates who are insufficiently committed to the Big Lie, or it could be a warning to those candidates that they have to go all in on the Big Lie if they want to keep the base voting for them.
In any case, his strategy now doesn't really depend on votes. He could be whipped like a rented mule in the next election, and he'll still claim that he won and will fight tooth and nail to try to get in. It didn't work last time when he had his hands on the levers of power; why he thinks it will work this time is anyone's guess.
blm
(113,052 posts)6. Independent voters respect action and loathe dithering.
Im not asking for warp speed, but, a little increase in speed by Dems in Congress would make all the difference in perception and approval.
PJMcK
(22,035 posts)8. And at the DOJ (n/t)
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)10. This absolutely cannot happen.
Never. No way. I swear, I will give my life to prevent this.
OhioChick
(23,218 posts)11. No More of the "Make America Grieve Again" n/t
Fullduplexxx
(7,860 posts)12. Who says he'll get one ... why are talking like this
Irish_Dem
(47,014 posts)13. The US is definitely in third world banana republic territory.
The fact that he is able to continue to contest a legitimate election result, cause insurrection and may run again points to a destabilized democracy.