Trump Redux - Horowitz
Rób Horowitz, MINDSETTER™
Trump Redux - Horowitz
So far. Donald Trump’s fledgling campaign to regain the presidency in 2024 has a late Celebrity Apprentice feel or with apologies to "The King," a late Elvis feel. The rallies he held this fall in the lead-up to his announcement this past Tuesday did not generate the same excitement they used to among the Trump faithful. Just like you can only say “You’re Fired" on television to a B-level celebrity so many times before people turn the channel, leading people in chants of ‘Lock Her Up,’ but un-cleverly substituting Nancy Pelosi for Hillary Clinton, only goes so far.
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The announcement itself was criticized as "low energy" by many observers, a deliberate echo of the former president’s famous criticism of Jeb Bush in the 2016 campaign. More importantly, Trump had little or nothing new to say. As he failed to do in his losing 2020 election campaign, Trump presented no new ideas or new proposals that would give voters a compelling rationale for his candidacy—one that goes beyond ego gratification or avoiding indictment. In fact, according to various Trump insiders, the timing of his declaration of candidacy was more a function of his belief that his legal strategy would be boosted by being an active candidate than any smart, strategic political calculation.
In fact, announcing several weeks before the Georgia December 6 runoff—when Republican elected officials had pleaded with the former president to hold off, believing he would hurt Hershel Walker’s chances—defies political logic. Mr. Trump is already taking the lion’s share of the blame in Republican circles for their historically poor mid-term performance. With Walker –one more problematic Trump-picked candidate--more likely than not to lose on Dec.6th, the former president has positioned himself for additional blame. As Chris Christie told the Republican Jewish Coalition this week “We keep losing and losing and losing. And the fact of the matter is the reason we’re losing is because Donald Trump has put himself before everybody else.” This view of Trump, whose self-centered actions and unpopularity has now made an outsized contribution to the Republicans' losing the 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022 elections, is becoming the dominant one among other Republican politicians and large donors.
Even as legal strategy, Trump’s announcement turned out to have limited value. Two days after the former president’s declaration of candidacy, Attorney General Garland unveiled his decision to appoint a special counsel to oversee the federal criminal investigations of which Donald Trump is at least a subject, demonstrating that Mr. Trump’s new presidential campaign would not serve as a deterrent to the Department of Justice taking action. The attorney general’s selection of Jack Smith, a highly regarded career prosecutor with a reputation for quickly proceeding on cases, does not bode well for Mr. Trump.
While Trump’s 2024 campaign is off to a rocky start, it would be wildly premature to count him out. He retains the solid support of at least 1-out-of-3 Republican primary voters and is still favorably perceived by a substantial majority of Republicans. In what is shaping up to be a multi-candidate field, this can still be a winning hand for the nomination. Defeating Trump will probably require the emergence of a dominant challenger that can clear most of the rest of the field before too many primary contests are completed.
If Mr. Trump does manage to capture the nomination, he is in all likelihood the easiest possible candidate for the Democrats to defeat. Only 39% of midterm voters have a favorable opinion of the former president, while 58% have an unfavorable opinion. The emergence of more damaging revelations as a result of the federal and state investigations are a certainty and the prospect of at least one of the investigations resulting in an indictment is probable. There will be a sense among Trump supporters—no matter how persuasive the evidence is—that he is being treated unfairly. For the swing voters—moderates and independents-Mr. Trump needs to win a general election, however, more information emerging about January 6 or his mishandling of classified documents and/or an indictment will just harden their opposition to his candidacy.
From a purely partisan Democratic point of view, another Trump general election candidacy is a dream come true. He is the gift that keeps giving to the Democratic Party.
He is far too much of a threat to our democracy, though, to wish for that result. His campaign-even a losing one as is likely-- will still inject far too much additional poison and toxicity into our politics. Additionally, there is always the possibility he could regain the presidency; it is hard to envision a worse development for our nation.
As a result, I will be hoping for the unlikely prospect of Mr. Trump encountering such fierce resistance from a critical mass of Republicans that he abandons his candidacy. Short-of-that, I will be rooting for some other Republican presidential candidate to defeat him for the nomination—no matter how much harder that candidate would be to beat in the general election.