I stumbled on a piece at the Never-Trump site The Bulwark, and it stunned me enough to write it up at New York.
You may have heard about the 45th president’s reported rant at a Republican donor conference near his Florida home over the weekend. Trump is apparently still furious at Brian Kemp for impeding his election coup, and Mike Pence for failing to steal a second term for him anyway, and at Mitch McConnell for refusing to back his electoral vote challenge and then criticizing him for inciting a riot.
To Republicans who aren’t deep in the fever swamps of MAGA-land, this is just Trump continuing his narcissistic and destructive post-election behavior. Just as he blew up those crucial Georgia Senate runoffs in January because he couldn’t let go of his own lies about the presidential election, he’s blowing up the party at a time when the GOP needs to stay unified in the fight against Biden.
And to those of us without a betting interest in Republican success, Trump’s intra-party vendetta and purge threats are bizarre and laughable, and only understandable as a way for him to keep his thumb on the party he conquered in 2016 with no concern for its future.
But what if Trump’s attacks on those who “betrayed” him in 2020 aren’t just narcissistic or backward-looking? What if it’s part of a forward-looking plan to rerun 2020 and get it right this time?
That’s the question Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark appears to have asked himself, and he’s answered it with a hair-raising hypothesis that is as plausible as the assumption that Trump is just throwing temper tantrums. He presents his theory as the likely product of an implicit Republican 2020 “autopsy” that has turned defeat into a near-victory:
“It is likely Republicans will have majorities in the congressional delegations of at least 26 states for the foreseeable future. They have a >50 percent chance of winning the House in 2022 and a pretty good shot at flipping the Senate.
“So the first two preconditions for winning the presidency while losing the election are very much on the table.
“Which leaves just one project: Mustering the political will to move past both the popular vote and the Electoral College.”
If you begin not with the assumption that Trump’s entire effort to steal the election was absurd, but regard it as an audacious plan that wasn’t executed with the necessary precision, then reverse engineering it to fix the broken parts makes sense:
“[T]he key parts of the Republican autopsy have been (1) building the political will to use raw power next time and (2) removing the Republican officials who were not willing to comply last time.
“That’s why Republican state parties have censured nearly every Republican who did not participate in Trump’s attempted coup.”
And the really heady thing for Trump is knowing how easy it was to convince the GOP rank-and-file base that his lies were the gospel truth:
“The Big Lie is actually the biggest insight to come from the Republican autopsy. Republicans and their enablers discovered that if they make false, evidence-free claims often and loudly enough, then the vast majority of their voters will believe them.
“And then, once Republican voters were onboard, they found that the rest of the party elites would either join them or stay silent. Only a handful of Republicans dared to object. And those figures are in the process of being either defeated or coopted.”
So why not play it again with a prepared and united party that won’t hesitate to seize on bogus “voter fraud” claims and either steal electoral votes before they can be certified by the states, or refuse to certify a Democratic victory and throw the election into Congress?
“[E]ven though the success of such a gambit is a longshot given all of the various failure points, since political power is derived from their voters, many Republicans politicians will be incentivized to embrace the challenge anyway, since they will gain power within the party from the voters who have been primed to demand such a fight.”
But it’s not any more implausible than the election coup hypothesis sounded when some of us began predicting it in the spring of 2020. And in retrospect, it was spot-on except for a few crucial mistakes Team Trump made after Election Night.
From Last’s perspective, in ranting about disloyal Republicans Trump isn’t engaged in hindsight or vengeance, but is following an ambitious schedule for success in 2024 by getting rid of potential troublemakers within his party. And here’s the thing: it’s a strategy that doesn’t necessarily depend on Trump running for president again. It’s available to anyone determined to do whatever it takes to reconquer Washington at a time when Republicans look to be a minority of the electorate for the foreseeable future. Trump has prepared the way with a dress rehearsal.
It’s a chilling thought, and one to revisit if Trump’s Republican enemies go down to primary challenges next year.
Marcus, I hate to throw cold water on anyone’s hopes, but don’t get too excited about SUSA polls. They have often shown results well out of line with other surveys–in both directions; conversely, don’t get depressed when they show us doing worse than other polls.
In my home state, which gave Gore a 17% margin in 2000, SUSA showed a tie in mid-September and Republicans were exuberant. Two weeks later they showed Kerry leading by 15 points. I don’t think there was that great a swing here, because Maryland was never tied in the first place.
But I agree with your broader point about the states. Virginia and North Carolina are, I think, closer than most people think through probably not enough for Kerry to win them. And I think the press is overestimating Bush’s strength in NJ.
More good news from Mickey Kaus, leader of the “Kerry haters voting for Kerry” group of bloggers —
“Those dueling Ohio polls are reconciled here. They’re actually ‘amazingly consistent,’ says the now-famous Mystery Pollster .
His quite convincing explanation is not an auspicious one for President Bush. … Meanwhile, look at these results of the Survey USA robo-poll. Isn’t Kerry shockingly close in presumed Bush states like Virginia (50-46) and North Carolina (50-47)? That’s much closer than Kerry’s lead in allegedly in-play states like Pennsylvania (51-45) and New Jersey (51-43) … [You’re starting to sound like Ruy Teixeira.–ed I’ll lie down until it goes away.]”
MARCU$
According to NPR last night, Bush has not been to Ohio since early Oct., and his latest travel plans do not include it. Most certainly this is not because it is in the bag. Has he in fact written it off?
Very glad to hear about favorable battlegrounds, indies, and internals, but I have a question for the pros here.
I have now read several times in high-profile blogs that (in essence) “the incumbent needs to be 3-4 points ahead on election day because undecideds traditionally break for the challenger.”
I’ve been looking to this (and other trends) for reassurance, but I keep wondering: What if this year isn’t like any other year?
What if the “one-dimensional patriot” vote looks past everything else and buys W’s tough guy act? What if we’re still early enough into this war that cognitive dissonance is too weak to sway the electorate? (Nixon won, after all, and we’d been in Vietnam for years and years.) What if, in our first post-9/11 presidential election, the nation hears only Bush’s bullhorn in the voting booth?
That’s a lot of conjecture, but my question is this: How confident are you that this trend — late-deciders breaking for the challenger — will hold? Are other trends particularly vulnerable this year? I know it’s probably like casting the bones, but is anyone doing any analysis that might give us a clue?
Thanks very much, and thanks for all the hard work.
Ruy,
I was a bit surprised to see in the WaoPo article on voter registration, that the GOP bested the Dems by a slight margin in Florida. However, the ACT coordinator bragged that they spanked the Republicans in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Iowa, in particular.
No way, am I conceding Florida, knowing we have a very real chance there, while I know the Bush supporters are in real denial, in the face of such success by the Soros groups.
But, is the Kerry camp factoring in these registration numbers with their internal polling?
George Bush is not leading in a single state that Al Gore carried in the 2000 election.
One presumes we’re taking Gore actually having likely won FL out of this equation, for wholly academic discussion purposes.
The one caveat with that statement, then, is that the electoral votes for the 2000 Bush states have increased overall by 7, with a corresponding loss in Gore states. This means an electoral deficit that increases from 4 (271-267) to 18 (278-260). This means Kerry absolutely MUST win at least one state that went for Bush in 2000, and it better have 10 or more EVs.
Either OH or FL will do nicely, of course, but even MO would do the trick.
I’ve been pointing out, though, that to make this election stick, we need to have an unassailable majority — we can’t have it hinge on one close state, the way it did in 2000. My hunch is that we may well have anywhere from 4 to 8 “Floridas” this year; even if there isn’t another EC debacle (and I do not expect a constitutional process to be followed if there is), we’ll have several state-level results challenged between election day and electoral college day.
Not to get too far off topic.
Any information on the latest ABC poll or WSJ/NBC
poll. There must be something funny with the internals in the ABC poll to show Bush leading by
5.
I sure hope you all are right and my expectations of a machine agenda of putting in Bush one way or another are wrong.
If Kerry can effectively neutralize the flipflop issue (halve the harm it does now), and the “nuisance/soft on terrorism” thing, he should have it. In the latter case, a major speech and going on the offensive intelligently would do it.
The incumbent needs to be up by 4 pts overall with which category of voter? Likely or registered?
I am concerned that the (unfounded) belief held by many, esp. the so-called security moms, that only Bush can keep them safe will override all other concerns once in the voting booth and could invalidate the conventional wisdom that undecided voters break overwhelmingly for the challenger on election day. I certainly hope this is not the case.
Slightly off-topic, but does anybody find it odd that the NY Times poll showed Bush’s approval rating as 44% while the Washington Post poll from the exact same day showed a much higher 53%?
I guess it could be a difference is the actual question the poll asks. But I find the Post poll a bit odd, considering it’s the only one where a majority approves of the president’s job performance.
Anyone have info on that poll?
Zogby Battleground
by Chris Bowers Oct 19
Maybe the wingers won’t be complaining about the new Zogby numbers after all:
Kerry Bush
OR 55.7 42.6
MN 54.2 43.1
WA 54.3 43.9
NM 53.6 44.1
MI 52.6 45.9
PA 51.8 46.1
NH 51.1 46.0
WI 51.3 47.5
IA 51.1 47.9
WV 45.8 48.6
AR 48.4 49.7
NV 45.9 49.8
FL 48.9 50.1
TN 47.8 50.3
OH 47.6 50.6
MO 47.6 50.7 Kerry looks very comfortable in OR, MN, WA, NM, MI, PA and NH, all of which show Bush, as the incumbent, completely out of contention barring a major October surprise. WI and IA are also very good, especially for a challenger (challengers over 51 always win). However, These numbers would lead to a 269-269 tie, as the undecided break in WV, but nowhere else, would push Kerry over the top.
On the plus side, if this is accurate, Kerry has all of the Gore states plus New Hampshire shored up, and can spend the significant majority of his resources trying to flipjust one other 2000 Bush state, all of which are very close. On the negative side, if this is accurate, Kerry comfortably wins the popular vote, but the electoral vote is tied and Bush wins in the House.
I’ll see you on the barricades if that happens.
If Kerry/Edwards win two of the “big three” (Penn, Fla, and Ohio), they’ll probably take the cake.
[and if they win all three, forget about it!]
But;
Maybe I’m looking at old polls, but Bush seems to be ahead in New Mexico. Also, recent polls have shown him with leads in Wisconsin. He’s tied with Kerry in Iowa and Minnesota.
I worry very much about these northern states breaking for Bush.
If Bush is ahead an average of 4 points in national polls is it possible that Kerry could still be leading in electoral college. Could he actually win electoral college and lose by 4 points on 11/2
regester as a Republican so you can get to vote and then vote Kerry.
.
Off the immediate topic of this posting, but…
I hope you’ll soon be discussing the internals of the current Gallup poll, which (surprise) turns out to have a sample that skews way to the right. Steve Soto at the Left Coaster has the goods.
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/003054.html
It’s really out of the candidate’s hands now. Barring a major gaffe, it will be events on the ground that decide this election. The dynamic is currently working against Bush. He can’t do anything to significantly shift the numbers, nor can Kerry. Events in Iraq, news on jobs and the economy, terrorist attacks, and gas prices will probably decide the outcome.