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.
One other comment in response to Doyle’s very good questions:
Using McDonald’s measure of the voting eligible population (at elections.gmu.edu), I find that turnout increased markedly in battleground states but not elsewhere. Turnout rose about 5 points in 11 battlegrounds but was essentially flat elsewhere. In the most hotly contested states such as OH and FL, turnout was up more like 7-8 points. But in lopsided states like CA turnout actually fell. This prevented the national turnout total from setting any records.
OK, here’s a question I hope someone can answer:
Let’s say voter turn-out actually WAS ~60%. Let’s say it was ~50% in 2000. That’s 20% more people – a good-sized increase, but not HUGE. So why were there ENORMOUS lines? I live in Ohio (sorry everyone – we tried) and I’ve never waited in line before, but this time it took almost 90 minutes, and I was one of the lucky ones. I’m sure everyone has seen or heard about the people (in mostly minority and/or college-age precincts) who were in line for 6 hours or more.
But I’m not really accusing anyone of anything (though I’m not letting them off the hook either); mostly I’m just looking for why 20% more people = 1000% more waiting in line.
There are some interesting analyses of data being performed on voting boxes in Florida. I hope you’ll be reading them before further concluding that the compass is properly calibrated towards true NORTH.
A compass isn’t much good if it is off, and while presuming the integrity of the electoral process is one approach, another is to look at the data and see what they say.
Well, one thing is absolutely clear from this election. Higher turnout in and of itself would have meant absolutely nothing.
Some experts predicted that turnout would reach 120 million. So far, with the latest figures it’s at 115.4 million. So, if there were an additional 4.6 million votes and if they broke 55-45 for Kerry (according to the conventional wisdom about new voters), Kerry would only have picked up an about an additional 2.5 million votes.
So Bush would STILL have won the popular vote by about 1 million votes.
Nothing could be clearer. Technical strategies to boost turnout simply won’t work.
There must be a new strategic campaign to give voters a reason to vote FOR democrats and not just against Republicans, starting now and culminating on election day, 2008.
Randi Roades (Air America Radio) has some very important
information on their web site, regarding e-machines and steps that are being taken to have the Black Boxes audited for possible irregularities, several of which have already been found in Georgia and Ohio.
http://www.airamericaradio.com (link The Randi Roades Show)
or
randiroadesshow.com
I certainly want to be careful with this story, but there seem to be some troubling numbers with regard to exit polls being way off in ‘E’states and way accurate in paper ballot states… is anyone watching this? My latest post provides some interesting numbers…
To compare “apples to apples” so to speak (turnout in ’68 vs. ’04), don’t you have to adjust for the larger number of inelligible voters in both years?
I’m sure in the contested swing states that the percentage was very high. In my county in Wisconsin, turnout was around 80% of the census estimate for adults 18 and older.
Was the national average dragged down because CA, NY, TX, and IL were not competitive for the presidential contest?
Shouldn’t we simply be talking about the voting eligible population?
Brookings has something:
http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/20040909mcdonald.htm
This was useful:http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm
And this was an valuable collection of state by state voter turnout against the number of eleigible voters….
http://elections.gmu.edu/Voter_Turnout_2004.htm
I wanted to see how being a “swing state” influenced voter turnout–e.g., Ohio was much higher than neighboring Indiana. I’d be interested to see a discussion of the entire 50 if someone is motivated and has time.
More than that, I was interested in how the averages would project. So, if we took the margin in California, and assumed it was representative of the real feelings of the state, and then calculated from the number of eligible voters how many would have supported each candidate, how does it spell out nationa wide? Is it enough to overcome the small-state bias?
Is the difference in turnout between swing states and safe states enough to explain the deviation between polls and the final electoral results?
Sorry, but for what possible reason would anyone quote turnout as a fraction of a population that includes ineligible voters? The only statistic that makes any sense is the fraction of voting-age American citizens, and I’m sure that’s what the Times meant when they wrote “voting-age population.” Perhaps they chould have been clearer, but I can’t interpret it any other way. And the fact that their number agrees with yours when interpreted that way seems to bolster that interpretation.
To be fair to the Center that put out the estimate, I’m pretty sure they first reported the 59% number as a percentage of “voting eligible population,” not voting age, and this was reflected in the first wire stories I saw on it. It may be that the later newspapers that wrote it up didn’t notice the distinction.
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/deanfordnc
Howard Dean for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee
By Jason Gooljar
It was a solemn day the crowd gathered around the stage where the candidate was to give his concession. Smiles were on the faces of some, while tears fell from the cheeks of others. Rhythmic applause could be heard erupting from the people all in unison. No, this was not the election night of November 2nd , 2004. This was Howard Dean back in the winter about to end his primary bid. For some this moment can now be looked back on as the day we really lost the presidency to our own party.
It has been said “When you trade your values for the hope of winning, you end up losing and having no values — so you keep losing.” The truth has never been more clear than it is now. We must strengthen the newly found spinal transplant of the Democratic Party. We must now take a stand with our democratic values in tow. First, I’ll tell you what we should not stand for anymore. We can no longer be a party who has to move to the center. The right has never had to do it and neither should we. We can no longer be a party who is beholden to special interests. No more of the big money donors, there is a better way. Raise the money from the grassroots.
We need real campaign finance reform. We need to be the party of inclusion and the party of the poor and the middle class. We need to go to middle America and talk to them about what we stand for. We need to show them that we truly have their interests at heart. We need to go to the evangelical Christians and have a real discussion about America. We need to have a real discussion of religion in America. We need to re frame the debate from our perspective and not reinforce the conservative frames already in place.
When Goldwater lost, his backers did not give up. Goldwater actually lost badly. We have not been greatly defeated like they were. It took them forty years to build the machine they have in place now. We let them do it while we snickered at them and laughed at them for being extremists who would never hold power. They continued to work and they continued to organize. They started winning locally at the state level throughout the middle states and then they went national. They threw the moderate republicans out in favor of the new conservatives. There is much to learn from our opponents indeed.
As we rebuild our party we must keep some things in mind. The neo conservatives do not have absolute power. There were millions of Americans who voted against this President. We still have the power, you still have the power. We as the progressive movement can no longer be afraid of losing. In order to win you must loose. As long as you keep your values when you loose you can continue to fight on. If you give them up you have nothing. Either we as the democratic party stand for something or we stand for nothing at all. After all why vote for a right wing lite party when you can vote for the real thing as middle America did.
Terry McAuliffe’s strategy had major flaws in my opinion. The tactic of a shorter primary in my opinion was not a good idea. We could have used the time to truly prepare our national agenda. We could have used that time to allow our democratic ideals to take forefront in the media. Chairman Mcauliffe is an incredible fund raiser this has been said but he lacks the vision to take this party in the direction it has to go. It has also been said that his agenda did not truly involve the south.
With all of this being said I’m asking the people who voted against this President to ask the DNC to elect former Governor Howard Dean as the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Howard Dean has a clear vision of where this party needs to be headed. We need his guidance to achieve our goals as a progressive movement. If we loose in the interim if we stay together as a movement we can shoulder the losses and eventually trumpet the wins. I’m asking for the people to write letters to the media and call elected officials in the democratic party to push for election of Howard Dean as the new chairman of the DNC.
If you care to know why we’ll lose again in 2008, read Thomas Frank’s essay in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05frank.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Frank is the author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
If you care to know why we’ll lose again in 2008, read Thomas Frank’s essay in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05frank.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Frank is the author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?