Aug 11 , 2023
Trump Traps the Republicans
Former President Donald Trump finds his legals woes multiplying after recently being indicted for attempting to overthrow the government of the United States and have himself installed as President despite losing the 2020 election. This comes on top of civil cases in which he is being sued by E. Jean Carroll for defamation after having been found liable for rape earlier this year, and another civil case in New York against his company. He is also under criminal indictment by the state of New York for illegal hush money payments he made in 2016 before the election that year, and he has been indicted by the Federal government for illegally retaining classified documents at his home in Mar A Lago.
In the next week or two he will be indicted in Georgia by the Fulton County District Attorney for his attempts in December of 2020 to get the state officials to overturn his loss in Georgia by “finding” votes for him.
The evidence provided against Trump in the indictments that have been made public appear quite damning. His attorneys go on television and make fairly ridiculous arguments for his innocence. Prosecutors in general do not bring charges if they are not very certain to win at trial. For example, the Federal government wins over 95% of the time it brings felony charges against defendants. These statistics are daunting for Trump, and at some level him and his associates do realize he is in deep trouble.
Trump can sense that he really has only one way out of this mess. He has to run and win election for President in 2024. While there is the possibility that a rogue juror that is pro-Trump will simply not convict regardless of the evidence, that is unlikely to happen in all of these cases. The most recent case has been filed in Washington DC, where the jury pool is mostly Democratic voters, as is the case in New York and Atlanta if he is charged in the Georgia case. Jack Smith, the special prosecutor leading the federal investigations of Trump, can also bring charges regarding classified documents in New Jersey, where Trump took some documents to his resort in Bedminster. New Jersey is also not a Trump-friendly state.
What is astonishing is that Trump is actually leading by a wide margin his Republican rivals for the nomination. Despite mounting legal problems, and despite the widely available public evidence, Trump retains the allegiance and support of a large chunk of the Republican electorate.
Polling suggests that about 35% of Republican voters are hard core Trump supporters that will stick with him no matter what he does or what the evidence shows. He could be found guilty and sent to prison and they would still support him and see him as a victim of a political witch hunt. About 35% of Republican voters don’t like Trump and would prefer that he go away, and about the remaining 30% are persuadable either way. Right now, Trump is polling about 50% support with Republicans. Unfortunately for Republicans that don’t want to be stuck with Trump, all his rivals are polling dismally. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, was seen as a possibly strong rival, but he has been bleeding support and is now running out of cash over the last three months. He is now polling under 20% support. DeSantis has not figured out how to speak about Trump. He wants Trump’s supporters to switch to him, but he cannot articulate a reason why they should as he is not willing to attack Trump for any reason. He only grudgingly admitted that Trump did not in fact win the 2020 election.
The other Republican candidates are also-rans. A couple are willing to aggressively criticize Trump, they include Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson, and Will Hurd. Put together they are only attracting 5% support. There are former Trump supporters like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott. None of them has caught fire, and they are all trapped in a position of neither endorsing nor condemning Trump and his administration.
Finally, there is the odd candidacy of Vivek Ramaswamy, an Indian-American with a tech fortune. He speaks well of Trump but is trying to create a lane of support for him based on milder rhetoric despite policies that are basically the same as Trump’s. Ramaswamy is a slippery character who tries to avoid giving clear answers to difficult questions like whether he would pardon Trump, continue to aid Ukraine, or sign a federal ban on abortion.
As of now, it looks like Trump is impossible to beat by this rather weak gaggle of Republican candidates. But in the general election, all of his legal baggage is going to be poisonous. While he might beat Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis in a primary, he is going to have a huge problem against Biden in the general election.
Biden is going to have the advantage of incumbency, a good economy, and a massive war chest that he can build up without having to fight a primary. Biden also is going to benefit from the slow ongoing demographic shift in the US with increasing minority and college-educated white voters who all lean Democratic, and a decline in non-college-educated white voters who form the base of the Republican party. It is hard to imagine a Biden voter from 2020 deciding they will vote for Trump in 2024. A hobbled Trump will hurt the Republicans up and down the ballot. It is conceivable that Biden will win all the states he won in 2020, and pick up North Carolina and Florida, and make even Texas and Ohio competitive. Down ballot, Democrats could expect to win the House back, and might even pick up Senate seats in Texas and Florida while losing Joe Manchin’s seat in the Trump loyal state of West Virginia.
A Democratic takeover of Congress with Biden returning to the White House will lead to some major progressive changes. The Senate filibuster rule will be suspended. Expect a national law legalizing abortion, a new Voting Rights law, a huge jump in the minimum wage to at least 15 dollars per hour, and statehood for Washington DC, which would add two reliably Democratic Senators to the upper chamber.
It is even conceivable that a path to statehood may be offered to Puerto Rico, if the people living there wish to pursue it. Of course Ukraine will be aided till it achieves victory and joins the EU and NATO. This is all the stuff for Republican nightmares, but it is the inevitable outcome of the strange loyalty a large core of Republican voters have to the malignant narcissist and sociopath that was the last Republican President.
