A referendum on Trump in 2022?
Trump might throw Democrats a lifeline by announcing an early run for President.
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On with the show:
This morning, Charlie Sykes sent out a newsletter explaining why Joe Biden’s only hope for 2024 is that Donald Trump - arguably the one Republican he can beat if things continue on their current course - runs again. And if Trump announces his 2024 Presidential bid before the 2022 midterms, reminding Americans why they booted him from office in the first place and forcing Republicans to explain their position on the Beer Belly Putsch and the “stolen” election, so much the better.
Trump’s entry into the race would be… clarifying. It would remove any ambiguity about the stakes or the nature of the decision voters would face; and it would starkly remind voters of the binary choice that framed Biden’s 2020 victory.
Even with his dreadful numbers, Joe Biden still leads Donald Trump in hypothetical matchups. The NYT/Siena poll has the deeply unpopular president nevertheless leading Trump 44 percent to 41 percent. The Yahoo News/YouGov poll has him up 44 percent to 43 percent in a 2024 re-match.
Trump, I hardly need to remind you, has uniquely ghastly numbers that seem to be getting worse…
[…]
Biden himself likes to say, “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” With Trump in the race, Biden would no longer be running against the ghost of FDR, or a generic Republican. He wouldn’t be constantly compared with a mythical progressive pol who could magically enact sweeping spending plans in an evenly divided Congress.
The alternative would be Trump.
That fact alone would go a long way toward fixing some of Biden’s problems. Democrats, who are now wallowing in their season of acedia and self-loathing, would come home.
And lo and behold, look what the Washington Post is reporting:
For nearly a year, a kitchen cabinet of Donald Trump confidants have told the former president not to announce his 2024 comeback candidacy before the midterms, arguing that he could be a drag on 2022 candidates and would be blamed if Republicans underperformed.
But Trump has continued to regularly push for an early announcement in private meetings, as potential 2024 rivals become more aggressive amid signs of weakening support among his base. Now an increasing number of allies are urging him to follow his instincts as a way to shore up his standing in the party and drive turnout to help the GOP take over the House and Senate next year.
The former president is now eyeing a September announcement, according to two Trump advisers, who like some others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. One confidant put the odds at “70-30 he announces before the midterms.” And others said he may still decide to announce sooner than September.
[…]
“If Trump is going to run, the sooner he gets in and talks about winning the next election, the better,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who recently golfed with Trump in New Jersey. “It will refocus his attention — less grievance, more about the future.”
Graham has embraced an argument once dismissed inside much of the party, contending that Democrats are going to use Trump’s unpopularity among some voter groups to try to drive turnout no matter what he does. If he gets in the race soon, they argue, he will be better positioned to drive turnout on the Republican side in the midterms.
“You might as well get the benefit if you’re going to take the lashes too,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Trump pollster working for multiple Senate candidates this cycle. “If you want to energize the base and get the base out, no one does it better than Trump.”
Others have argued that Trump’s direct insertion into the midterm campaign will only play into Democratic plans to make the election a referendum on the extremism of Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” or MAGA, movement. Republicans believe they are on track for a banner midterm year, a result of massive dissatisfaction with inflation, President Biden’s job performance and the direction of the country.
A quick live look in at my reaction:
I’ve been savaging Democrats for cynically promoting extremist MAGA candidates whom they’d have an easier chance of beating in the midterms, risking the chance of them actually winning in what’s shaping up to me a GOP wave year.
So how can I be excited about Trump announcing his re-election campaign? Obviously, I don’t want him to get re-elected in 2024. And, as noted in the Post story, there’s a risk that his return to the spotlight (assuming he ever left it) might turn out the Republican base.
It’s really the timing of this possible announcement, not the announcement itself, that excites me. Right now, Democrats are likely to suffer a beatdown on a world-historical scale. Trump announcing his re-election may not be enough to turn the tide, but at least it’s something they can point to and say, “see? We’re not the worst option.”
It’s negative partisanship - hatred of the other team more than support for your own - and it’s the only thing that might get disaffected, divided Democrats to vote this fall.
As for how Republicans really feel about Trump announcing early, well, I want to take this quote from the Post story and make an honest woman out of it:
Trump’s decision to enter the race, some in the party fear, could scramble the dynamics in the final months of the House and Senate campaigns.
“Of all the selfish things he does every minute of every day, it would probably be the most,” said one prominent Republican strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment. “Everything we are doing that is not talking about the economy is going to be a disaster.”
Why, whatever gave this anonymous Republican strategist the idea that Donald Trump might be kind of selfish? The mind boggles.
I’ve been going down a YouTube rabbit hole about old TV station IDs and newscast intros lately. This one (which the uploaded says was from 1969-70, but others say was from 1972) really shows what it was like living in that tumultuous era:
ABC News was still a step behind CBS and NBC at this time, but it would catch up by the end of the decade.
Here’s a compilation of newscast intros from 1986. The CBC The National and NBC Nightly News ones (the latter with a theme by John Williams) provide a real nostalgia hit. As for Ceausescu-era Romania’s Telejurnal, well, I’m not sure how they got Dana Carvey’s Church Lady to write the music.