(Last) Sunday’s Discussion Question Revisited
Wherein I finally reveal my answer (spoiler: it is hardly surprising). And, also, wherein despite the goal of brevity, I fail at that goal.
One of the elements of US politics (really, electoral politics in general) begins with a simple reality: political power in a representative democracy comes via winning elections. Politicians want to win elections and reelection regardless of what other reasons they want to be in office (e.g., whether for policy goals because it is just fun being in office, or for corrupt goals). Likewise, voters want their team to win, because they have decided, for any number of reasons (some rational, some emotional, some identity-driven, and so forth) that their team winning is better for them than some other team winning.
This is especially true when there are only two teams of consequence that are competing. When there are only two teams, compromise becomes difficult, if not impossible, and changing teams means behaving traitorously. It is also vital to understand that if you only have two teams, then those teams are coalitions, not monoliths.
The deeper the polarization, the more each side will rationalize its own virtues as well as the vices of the other side. And also the more that some members of the coalition will be willing to tolerate, ignore, or even wish away, repugnant elements of other members of the team.
So, to me, the answer to my question, “Which of the declared (or, undeclared, if you like) do you think would be the Republican’s best chance to retake the White House? Please indicate why you pick the candidate you picked.” is pretty easy to answer.
The answer is Donald J. Trump.
If this is the case, and I think that it is, we end up in a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to polling about the primaries. While it is understandably the case that most OTB readers cannot fathom why 60-ish percent of GOP primary voters would vote for Trump is because he has the best chance to win.
To boil it all down: if winning is the paramount driver of electoral democracy, then it stands to reason that the candidate perceived to be the most likely to win for your side is the candidate you will support. If OTB readers can’t come up with a strong argument for why one of the other candidates is the GOP’s best chance to win in 2024 without conjuring a host of scenarios that force Trump’s exit, why should a GOP primary voter?
As much I would agree that Trump should be so repugnant that no one should want to vote for him, this isn’t how mass politics works.
He is the former president, making him more credible than the rest of the field. He won the EC once and came seriously close to doing it again a second time. If your political identity is “Republican” then the odds are that is enough for you to want him to be the nominee again. Especially when we remember that most voters do not pay that much attention to politics, and rely heavily on their partisan affiliation as their decision tool.
This is reinforced, heavily, by the following:
- For a Republican to vote for a Democrat is to vote for the political “enemy” and runs counter to their identity.
- For a Republican to vote for a Democrat is also to vote against many of their own policy convictions (both real and perceived).
- A Republican’s media diet probably tells them how great Trump is and how corrupt, feeble, and dangerous Biden is.
- Trump did deliver a conservative SCOTUS. And that Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The readership can tell me that really that was McConnell’s doing, or the Federalist Society’s, but the bottom line remains that if Hillary Clinton had been elected in 2016, the Court would now be heavily stacked on the liberal side, McConnell or no. They needed a GOP president to deliver those three seats.
- Other policy goals under Trump, including on taxes and regulation, specifically, were accomplished and another Biden term won’t help any of that. Ditto the immigration theater that Trump ably performed.
Please pay attention here: I agree that voting for Trump is a vote against democracy. I therefore agree that every voter in America ought to pick an alternative, especially in the primary where it is possible for Republicans to avoid numbers 1 and 2 above because those contests are R v. R.
But the pesky truth is, the calculation for Rs is: who is more likely to beat Biden? And the answer at the moment is Trump. That was the point of my question last week. Moreover, the motivation for most people who identify as R’s is to rationalize away Trump’s downside. It is just how this works, especially when there is no viable alternative that also results in their side winning.*
The core Republican goal is beating Biden and as long as Trump is seen as the main route to that outcome, a huge swath of Republican voters who really aren’t MAGAites are going to rationalize and rationalize hard as to why Trump is their guy.
This is just reality.
This is why I resist the “cult” framing, not because there aren’t plenty of people who respond to Trump that way,** but because the basic shape of the mass behavior we are seeing is easily explainable by other factors.
Further, and to my mind more importantly, there is a significant percentage of voters who find Trump’s pugnacious white nationalism, if not neo-fascist approach, to be appealing. That, to me, is far more significant, and analytically more accurate, than the cult talk. But it is also true that those people are only one part of his coalition.
Without any doubt, I am opening up a can of worms by even mentioning the c-word. I beg everyone not to try and convince me that it is the right paradigm for analyzing this situation (especially, God help me, by cutting and pasting a definition of “cult”). If you think I am wrong, I can live with that (especially since, rather obviously, I think that is the wrong concept).*** While I understand the appeal, I don’t think it is the main key to understanding why we got Trump in the first place, nor the reason we might get him again (or someone like him again).
Finding supporters who say ridiculous things about Trump does not prove that this is why he can win, nor does pointing to MAGA rallies prove the point.**** MAGA is clearly part of the GOP coalition, but it simply does not explain the overall outcomes. Neither Mitch McConnell nor even Kevin McCarthy are MAGA, but they know they need MAGA for power. More likely than not, the GOP voters in your family, friend group, neighborhood, or workplace aren’t MAGA either, but they still want to beat Biden/the Democrats.
Any majority, or near-majority in the case of the contemporary GOP, is a coalition.***** The road to building that coalition is dictated by the prevailing rules of a given system. Our system allows for a substantial subset of the population to have an outsized role in forming the base of the party (and that base itself is a coalition, almost certainly, rather than a homogeneous monolith) in the primary. And even that primary process has a way of privileging certain segments of the coalition. For example, Iowa tends to privilege social conservatives in the GOP caucus while New Hampshire is a bit more libertarian-leaning. Both are also lily-white. I could drill down further, but this post is already way longer than intended. The point is that the entire structure of the process shapes the outcomes.
And once that process is done, the national Republican electorate is going to get behind the nominee, because they do not have, in a practical sense, a serious significant alternative. The coalition is complete at that point with maybe only some fringe members (widely and perhaps desperately defined) unwilling to go along.
This is how we got Trump. A large plurality of primary voters chose him in 2016 (not the majority, but enough). And then, along the lines of the logic outlined above, he was able to win the Electoral College because, despite his loss of the popular vote, there were still millions and millions of people who simply could not and would not vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Then he earned the title, President of the United States. That title alone meant he would be his party’s nominee in 2020, and it means his odds are awfully good in 2024.
Unless and until we have a system that allows for new coalitional options (i.e., a true multi-party system) then the potentiality of a Trump or similarly bad candidate to be nominated, and to win office, remains in place.
The bottom line consists of the following:
- People vote their political identity the vast majority of the time.
- Parties are coalitions and our system forces only two large coalitions with very little room to reconfigure them.
- Our system allows those large coalitions to be captured by a smaller subset, which in turn forces the entire group to then tack in the direction of that subset.
I know it is more satisfying to assert that they are all evil and we are all good, but it simply is not that simple. As I note in a footnote below, the problem is more than just Trump voters and if we really want the problem solved, we need to look at the broader problem, which is significantly about structure and how political coalitions are formed in the United States.
I have surpassed 2,000 words (and have hit six(!) footnotes), so I will stop here.******
(And now my best bet is to go do something away from the computer 😉
*Yes, a Republican who doesn’t like Trump can vote D (traitor), third party (loser), or abstain (which may help the D, so traitor again).
**As I have stated on many occasions, I agree that people who go to MAGA rallies behave in a way that comports with cultish behavior. I even agree that there is a cult of personality around Trump but would hasten to add that it is more a lay term than an analytical one. Indeed, most successful politicians could be described that way to one degree or another. FDR, JFK, and Reagan could all have been described as having had a “cult of personality” surrounding them, by way of rather obvious examples.
I still think the the psychological phenomenon we see at MAGA rallies is closer to identity-based fandom as with sports or other pop culture phenomena than it is to a religious cult. But that is a hypothesis for someone with more expertise than I in this area to explore.
***And rightness and wrongness of concept matters, but it gets to the heart of solutions. If Trump is just an anomalous Svengali who just so happens to be able to cast a spell on a segment of the population (which is what the “cult” frame suggests) then he is a unique problem that is solved when he is finally gone from the national stage, which will happen one way or the other. But if Trump is the result of flaws in the machinery of our democracy, and I think that he is, then there is a bigger, longer-term problem that needs to be solved.
I harp on understanding and proper diagnosis of problems because that is the only way to get proper solutions.
****For example, Jordan Klepper very ably finds incredibly ridiculous MAGAites to put on The Daily Show. And yes, those people are real, but that’s not a good way to understand the GOP electoral en masse.
*****It is worth remembering that the GOP’s power in the federal government, including Trump’s 2016 win (which is the main reason he is the front-runner now) is disproportionate to their actual national support as a result of institutional factors (e.g., the EC, the Senate, and then, by extension, the Supreme Court).
******One last thought that does not fit neatly into the text: someone is going to say “it’s not the system, it’s the Republicans!” That itself needs a lot of unpacking, but I will say the following. The reality is that the far right (white nationalism) is the fringe of most concern in American politics at the moment, and that, moreover, there is a strain of white nationalism light (which sounds nicer, or perhaps sillier, than I intend) that is willing to tolerate the white nationalists in their coalition. So, yes, the rightward party is the one more likely to be captured by anti-democratic elements. But that doesn’t change my overall analysis at all. Indeed, it bolsters my general point that we should prefer a system that would isolate the white nationalists in their own party and make it hard for white nationalism light, or just conservative citizens in general, to form a coalition with them that is capable to ruling the country.
I generally agree with your 3 bottomline points.
With respect to Point 3, for me the question arises when a sea change or breaking point is reached. To me the election of Trump in 2016 was a harbinger of many bad things to come – and they did, and continue to come. The 2024 election may actually be the one that sets us on a path of a generation (decades) of darkness.
It’s not MAGA you need to worry about in 2024, but rather
MGAA [Make Groceries Affordable Again].
Their fault, nobody’s fault, Democrats control the strings and groceries are up, other essentials are up. But of course, Joe made a big fanfare of damaging oil and gas production in the US on his first day. Then the Ukraine war sanctions took a chunk of the global supply offline.
More importantly Ukrainian wheat, corn, etc, aren’t being produced. Russian potash, fertilizer, vital metals for EVs and solar panels aren’t on the market due to sanctions. This winter is when the lost Ukrainian production starts to not show up in global food markets.
The idea that winning is more important than absolute deal-breakers like (probable) felony convictions, indictments, judges calling him a rapist, breathtaking corruption and graft during his administration – is abhorrent.
I note that “most likely to be able to beat the opponent” is also how we got Biden. He seemed to be few people’s first (or even second) choice, but rolling the dice on a more preferred candidate and ending up with a second Trump administration was just too risky. It was far and away most important to win. The same thing still holds true for 2024. Much as someone might prefer Biden to step aside for a younger/more progressive/whatever candidate, it’s much much better to have a second Biden term than a second trump term
I’m having a hard time squaring this pragmatic idea that there are MAGA enablers who aren’t MAGA with your point…
Putting enemy in quotes here seems to be putting too fine a point on it. The Democrats have to be not only the enemy (or the other team in your far-too-generous team loyalty analogy), but they have to be evil and an existential threat to everything one holds dear to allow MAGA to forgive the deplorables they’ve gotten into bed with. As take further what @Tony We notes above, to put your team winning over every other moral consideration requires someone to figure out a way to claim their behavior isn’t abhorrent. No one ought to give GOP voters and pols any of that kind of comfort. Their choices are abhorrent GOP voters or principled traitor/loser (to borrow your anti-Trump framing). There is no principled GOP voter lane if our democracy is to survive Trumpism.
I think this is the key point. Many people will avert their eyes and hold their noses and sing “la la la I can’t hear you” in order to achieve such a huge, lasting win for the policies they favor. Under current law and practice, stacking SCOTUS with relatively young partisan tools outweighs all other possible goals, by a fair amount. (In addition, of course, to the faction that really does think Trump is the best President we’ve ever had…)
@DrDaveT: I picked Trump as the best Republican option as well last Sunday, but I’ll be curious to see if the Supreme Court remains a bigger motivator of Democratic votes than Republican votes, as it is currently.
Roe v. Wade is overturned. Now what? I predict fewer in the ‘vote R nominee because judges’ camp. There seem to be a quite a few voters who regret enabling both the intended and unintended consequences of a right wing court.
I’ll just repeat what I said last week: of course if Trump is in the running he will get the nomination (although I’m a tad less certain of that than most here). You can’t win if you don’t get the nomination. It’s a question almost not worth the discussion. But – he is unlikely to win. Not doomed to fail, but unlikely. So a much more interesting question is, “Are there any realistic circumstances where a Republican is more likely to win than Joe Biden?” There are, and that’s the question I chose to answer, as I explained at the time.
Dr. T, while you did exceed your 2,000 words (and possibly violated several statutes in the number of footnotes*), I appreciate the clear and to me concise analysis identifying the underlying issues and problems. Unlike many here, I don’t have any answers, because Luddite’s solution to these problems would only exacerbate our civil society’s issues.
*To quote that great philosopher Foghorn Leghorn, that’s a joke son, that’s a joke! While IANAL, as far as I can tell, no statutes were harmed in this and the previous chapter. Several sacred oxen were gored, but no statutes were actually harmed.
“ As much I would agree that Trump should be so repugnant that no one should want to vote for him, this isn’t how mass politics works.”
I get that people vote for their team, rationalize their choice, vote for the Supreme Court, etc.
But if there are a lot of non MAGA Republicans out there why did so few of them in solidly blue states like California vote 3rd party? Surly many of them understand how the electoral college works. I would be more optimistic about the future if 10 or 15% of Republicans in blue states voted Libertarian or whatever.
Instead they seem to be all in with Trump.
Separating this out:
1. Who is most likely to get the nomination?
2. Leaving the nomination aside, who is the candidate with the greatest chance to beat Biden ie. Who is the best Republican general election candidate?
In the previous thread, my answer was based on the second question, not the first.
And I’m surprised Steven chose Trump for an answer to this question.
To me, it seems obvious he is a very weak general election candidate. To the extent that the Republican base or Republicans generally think he is the best candidate, I think they are mistaken. Since, as Steven notes here, many Republicans will pull the lever for any Republican for reasons discussed in the OP, the question becomes about voters who aren’t in the tank for one side or the other, as well as those more extreme in-the-tank voters who might sit home instead of voting for their candidate’s party.
So someone other than Trump is likely to pick up moderate voters and independents but could also lose parts of the MAGA base. The extent to which this is a net positive or negative in terms of vote totals – especially in the critically competitive states, isn’t knowable at this point. My bias is that more moderate candidates tend to do better. Independents and swing voters, although small in terms of total numbers, are very often decisive in close elections.
@Tony W:
@Scott F.:
If the choice for President came down to Ron DeSantis and a completely horrendous Democrat who would appoint Democratic judges to replace Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, protect LGBTQ rights, advance the ball on climate change, etc., you’re saying you’d vote for DeSantis?
@James Joyner:
“If the choice for President came down to Ron DeSantis and a completely horrendous Democrat who would appoint Democratic judges to replace Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, protect LGBTQ rights, advance the ball on climate change, etc., you’re saying you’d vote for DeSantis?”
DeSantis — no, he is at least as bad as Trump, probably worse.
Someone like Nikki Haley or Asa Hutchinson, maybe. I’d need more details on why the Democrat is horrendous.
With edit out of context video and footage of anyone who beats him in a argument ending up on the cutting room floor.
A vote for a Democrat is a vote for Universal background checks ( Full Federal Gun Registry) and Mandatory Gun Buybacks (Complete Gun Confiscation using the registry). Democrats who claim otherwise are lying like they did with supporting traditional marriage over gay marriage.
@Moosebreath:
Let’s make it easy… she was a governor who rose to power by essentially rigging her election. While its clear that unsavory and most likely illegal things happened, the Democratic machine in her state was able to derail all investigations successfully. She also clearly engages in pay-to-play schemes and has used her political office to enrich herself and her inner circle. She also tends to steamroll progressives and can be very illiberal at times.
Essentially she’s very similar to Trump, just hasn’t attempted to steal a federal election, though you wouldn’t put it past her.
@James Joyner:
You may not believe me, but yes, I’m saying I would abstain. If my party had sunken to the point where we would nominate for POTUS someone who was as horrendously corrupt, inept, and vile as Trump while my party establishment couldn’t control him in the slightest, I would have to accept my party needed to lose for a few cycles in order to right itself.
@Paul L.: A. I never lied about supporting gay marriage. I was, in fact, an early adopter.
B. I am not in favor, I do not support, involuntary gun confiscation except in the instance of criminal conviction or mental illness. Both must be brought before a judge in some manner. I’m far more interested in waiting periods than background checks, but I think both are reasonable instruments to slow down the acquisition of a firearm by someone who is in the throes of passion. Fearmongering about “national registry” is precisely that.
Yes, there are some on the left who would go much further. However, the level at which we are radicalized partisans makes it very difficult to reach out and trust people who are on the “other side”. There is a ridiculous amount of hype and disaster thinking in the pro gun crowd. I think it’s probably driven by gun manufacturers who in turn are trying to drive sales.
I have voted third party rather than vote for a D candidate whom I thought was merely a bad candidate who had run a poor campaign. I think there is a measurable set of Republicans in the last presidential cycle who refused to vote for Trump, even while voting R down ticket. This implies that there are other R voters staying home altogether. And, Trump motivates D voters to turn out to vote against him.
All of these things make him a bad candidate for the general. All of them are at the margin, second-order effects to Steven’s thesis. But margins matter in this arena.
@Matt Bernius:
You are right, that is easy. There is no way I am voting for a person who rigs elections.
@Jay L Gischer:
The evil gun lobby you are citing does not push people to manufacture their own guns. But Democrats like my Governor/former AG Josh Shapiro are pushing to ban people from making their own guns/evil ghost guns. Strange how that works. Maybe the goal is total gun bans.
I’ll bet your hero Jordan Klepper would never allow anyone to record his interviews with them. He wouldn’t want to have a Katie Couric gun documentary situation where his bad faith tactics and editing were exposed.
@Paul L.: So do 3d printed guns make you nervous? Even just a little bit? They make me nervous. I don’t know that I ever want a loaded one in my hands. Much less in the hands of the irresponsible gun owners I’ve met.
Of course, it’s a godsend to criminals too.
I don’t know that I would support an outright ban of them, though. I would simply require a permit, easily available, that puts an id number on every gun. Pay the state 10 bucks per id number or something…
@Paul L.: I just checked and I didn’t use the word “evil ” to describe the gun manufacturers. I didn’t use the word “lobby” either. I am careful in the words I choose and it’s important to me. Please don’t put words in my mouth.
That said, remember how gun enthusiasts went on a big buying spree in late 2008 as it looked like the Democrats would control all three branches? I have one friend, a guy whom I completely trust to have guns. He’s a guy I’m glad to have teaching a gun course at a local range, in fact. He was convinced of this too: Nancy Pelosi was going to pass gun control legislation. So I made him a bet. We put 20 bucks on “there will be no federal gun control legislation in the next year to this date”. He paid up. There still hasn’t been.
I think it’s very, very likely that gun manufactures paid some grassroots marketing firms to at least amplify those fears if not stir them up completely so as to sell more guns. Very, very likely.
@Jay L Gischer:
“evil gun lobby” is a characterization from Democrat and gun control front groups used every time there is a public mass shooting to exploit.
I used “manufacture their own guns” instead of 3D printed guns as I don’t currently see them not working well without metal parts. I suspect that 3D printed guns will become more reliable and robust with advances in milling machines and stronger plastics.
“Smart guns” make me more nervous than 3D printed guns. I might consider a “smart gun” when all law enforcement is required to use one.
“I remember the Democrats would control all three branches”
The democrats were stuck on Obamacare with the party’s moderates and time ran out with the death of Ted Kennedy and the Democrats losing his seat that belonged to him .
Gun Control, Same sex marriage, Government funded Abortions up until 6 months after birth and full citizenship for illegals all vanished to the filibuster.
@Paul L.: You are talking to me. You aren’t talking to lobbyists. You aren’t talking to a front group. And I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t paraphrase me unfavorably. It’s how one has a polite conversation, after all.
@Paul L.:
“Government funded Abortions up until 6 months after birth”
You are clearly insane.