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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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It would be ridiculous for Republicans to not expect primary shenanigans: in 2024, I expect vast swath of Democrats to coordinate in reregistering as Republicans and voting with Never-Trumpers for a particular non-Trump candidate in every state, or at least states which are key electoral states for the primary vote. Obviously, then, Democrats would gladly switch back to their own candidate for the general election. (Rush Limbaugh coordinated Republicans doing this in 2008, Operation Chaos, to force the Democrat superdelegates to pick between the first Black President and the first woman President).

What are ways that the Trump contingent could bring such a conspiracy to light without sounding like schizophrenic conspiracy theorists? And then how to combat such a scenario at the polls effectively?

in 2024, I expect vast swath of Democrats to coordinate in reregistering as Republicans and voting with Never-Trumpers for a particular non-Trump candidate in every state

It almost feels like you're laying the groundwork to cope with a Trump loss in the 2024 GOP primary. The Democrats would much rather run against Trump in 2024 than against DeSantis. Trump largely failed to advance his agenda in four years, he antagonized the Democrats into increased turnout, he offended everyone in the middle by trying to steal the 2020 election, and (crucially) he already demonstrated that Biden can beat him. DeSantis turned a swing state blood red, won it by twenty points in a cycle where Trump's nominees were failing left and right, demonstrated competent governance against COVID and hurricane disasters, and successfully prosecuted the culture war using the levers of executive power.

If you want further evidence that the Dems would rather run against Trump, look to their shenanigans in the 2020 cycle. They were supporting Trump's own nominees and fellow election denialists over more traditional GOP politicians. And it worked; Trump's guys generally lost.

I honestly think that Trump's running makes the 2024 cycle bad for Republicans regardless of the outcome. If Trump had stepped aside and let DeSantis (or anyone else, really) step into the spotlight it would have, at worst, made things like 2016 with 67 candidates on the debate stage, all angling to take out Joe Biden or whoever his handpicked successor is. As it stands now, the possibilities aren't good. First, while I don't think it's likely, Trump could take the nomination unopposed. This just makes it look like the GOP is doubling down on Trump and MAGA and, in light of the recent midterm fiasco, this doesn't look like a winning strategy. It doesn't help that the official platform is still whatever Trump wants it to be, and I doubt they'd be able to change it into something substantive at the convention without significant pushback from the man himself. Hell, if Trump can still get the GOP to kowtow to him after this it's only going to make him more cocky about his grip on the party, which will drive away even more voters. This isn't desirable.

The second possibility is that Trump wins the nomination despite a serious challenge from DeSantis (or someone else). At this point, it no longer looks like the party is kowtowing to Trump, but that isn't necessarily a better look—if even a guy like DeSantis who has been proclaimed by the media and all the smart money as the genius who will lead the Republican party into a new era can't win the nomination from Trump then it proves that it's still Trump's party in a much more salient way than simply handing him the nomination does, and it's likely to have the additional downside of driving away crestfallen DeSantis partisans who pinned their hopes on his winning the nomination.

The final possibility is that someone like DeSantis actually wins the nomination from Trump. This seems like the best scenario, and, indeed, probably is the best scenario, but it's still not really a good scenario. Sure, the party will have shown that it has moved on from Trump. The problem is that there are still a lot of Trump partisans out there; if there weren't, we wouldn't be talking about the possibility of Trump winning a competitive nomination. DeSantis has been holding his tongue about Trump for the past 2 years but once he's in a competitive race Trump will eat him alive if he doesn't fight back. If he's going to go after Trump he actually has to go after Trump without worrying about offending his (Trump's) base. And the obvious effect of this fight is that it's going to piss off a lot of Trump supporters and, nationwide, there seem to be a lot more Trump supporters at present than there are DeSantis supporters. In certain areas I see near-Eucharistic levels of devotion to Trump, and I doubt that these people will turn out for DeSantis in the kind of numbers he needs to win a national election after months of him badmouthing Trump and Trump badmouthing him. And I highly doubt Trump will graciously concede and give a speech supporting DeSantis at the convention. Trump will not go away peacefully.

As a sort of aside, I think that the main battle line of this nomination is going to be the 2020 election. As a state government official whose election practices weren't questioned by anybody, he's had the luxury of being able to stay relatively mum on the subject. Sure, he can spout generalities about election security and such, but he can easily dodge questions about whether he actually thinks the election was stolen. In a primary battle he no longer has this luxury. Trump is bound to spend countless hours bemoaning the theft of the 2020 election, and such bemoaning is really off putting to anyone who isn't already on the Trump Train. If DeSantis agrees, or even equivocates on this (i.e. saying that certain things were suspicious) then he's completely sunk himself in the general election. At that point he's just another MAGA election denier regardless of what his other positions are. If he pushes back and affirmatively states that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president, then he's completely alienated himself from the MAGA faithful. This is more detrimental than most people realize—for what it's worth, the DeSantis supporters I know IRL aren't moderates but Trump supporters who think the election was stolen but happen to like DeSantis better and, more importantly, think he has a better chance of winning the general. Whether or not these people would continue to support him if he pivots hard anti-MAGA remains to be seen, and even if the hardcore MAGA-types don't represent a majority of GOP primary voters, their lack of participation could be enough to cost DeSantis in the general. It's worth remembering that Trump's rise was largely based on attracting the kind of non-voter who was looking for someone far outside the political mainstream, and it isn't clear whether these people will turn out to support a normal, boring Republican.

I totally agree with you that the best possible outcome is one in which Trump has an epiphany and stands aside for DeSantis, or failing that dies in his sleep of natural causes. But I'm not so bearish as you on the scenario where DeSantis challenges him and beats him.

DeSantis has been holding his tongue about Trump for the past 2 years but once he's in a competitive race Trump will eat him alive if he doesn't fight back. If he's going to go after Trump he actually has to go after Trump without worrying about offending his (Trump's) base.

I think there's a play where he respectfully criticizes Trump's failure to enact durable change while in office, and contrasts it with his own agendas in Florida. The kind of criticism of Trump that fails in the GOP primary is arguing that Trump's agenda is no good. What hasn't been tried is agreeing with Trump's agenda but arguing that another candidate will be better at executing the agenda. "Mr. President, you said you would build a wall along the entire Southern U.S. border, but only X miles were actually built. I will get it done. Look what I did with Disney, with racist indoctrination in schools, with forcing sanctuary state governors and sanctuary city mayors to declare states of emergency because I sent them a fraction of the illegal immigrants that Southern states have to deal with every day, etc. You signed an executive order to review the use of critical race theory in federal agencies. But Biden immediately revoked that order, so it accomplished nothing. By contrast, I passed a state law banning the teaching of critical race theory in school, and giving every parent the ability to enforce that law themselves with private lawsuits. No one can undo what I achieved there."

Trump is bound to spend countless hours bemoaning the theft of the 2020 election, and such bemoaning is really off putting to anyone who isn't already on the Trump Train. If DeSantis agrees, or even equivocates on this (i.e. saying that certain things were suspicious) then he's completely sunk himself in the general election. At that point he's just another MAGA election denier regardless of what his other positions are.

Again, I think there's a way to thread this needle by attacking Trump's effectiveness without weighing in on his claims directly. Criticize Trump for being victimized, for failing to produce evidence, and contrast with the election work DeSantis has done in Florida. "Mr. Trump didn't deliver. He never came up with the evidence to back up his claims. Governing means doing your homework. In Florida, when we got wind of XYZ elections issue, I did ABC to enforce blah blah blah. We got it done. Mr. Trump says he is a victim, that Mr. Biden robbed him. But the buck stops here. If I'm the nominee, I guarantee you that Biden will not be able to steal the election from me."

I think there's a play where he respectfully criticizes Trump's failure to enact durable change while in office, and contrasts it with his own agendas in Florida. The kind of criticism of Trump that fails in the GOP primary is arguing that Trump's agenda is no good. What hasn't been tried is agreeing with Trump's agenda but arguing that another candidate will be better at executing the agenda.

That's a possibility that I didn't consider, but on the whole I think it's actually worse than the third possibility I outlined above. The possibility I outlined above of Trump loyalists dropping off is certainly mitigated, though probably not eliminated entirely. The real problem here is that by branding himself as a more effective purveyor of the Trump agenda he alienates himself from anyone who explicitly voted against the Trump agenda in the previous 3 elections. This is what I alluded to when I brought up the DeSantis supporters whom I know personally; they complained about Trump but they still voted for him and all his loser candidates (except maybe Mastriano). For the Republicans to win in 2024 they would have to flip either Pennsylvania or Michigan. Neither state has elected a Republican in a statewide election since Trump and Toomey in 2016. Regardless of what you think about his cognitive abilities post-stroke, John Fetterman is much further to the left than I would have previously thought possible for PA. Josh Shapiro's win makes this the first time since the '40s that one party has held the governor's seat for longer than 8 years consecutively. Flipping PA means convincing people who voted for Wolf, Casey, Biden, Shapiro, and Fetterman that it's worth taking a chance with the GOP. DeSantis made a name for himself by loosening up Florida's COVID restrictions, but Michigan just reelected Gretchen Whitmer by a large margin, whose COVID policies were, shall we say, a bit different. Lose both of these states out and it's lights out for the Republicans in 2024, regardless of how many other swing states they manage to flip. I doubt a message of "Trump policies but more effective" is the way to do this.

Again, I think there's a way to thread this needle by attacking Trump's effectiveness without weighing in on his claims directly.

If he's able to do this then he's also able to ignore the whole hornet's nest entirely and say nothing. But I doubt that will be the case. With Trump beating the election fraud drum a journalist is bound to ask him directly whether he thinks the election was stolen, and unless his answer is an unequivocal "No" his chances at winning the general are pretty much sunk. If he says what you suggest then any decent journalist would follow upo with something that doesn't allow for that kind of answer, like "Do you think Mr. Trump won Georgia?" or "Do you think there was any fraud in Pennsylvania?" or "Do you think Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election?" or "Would you have supported attempts to prevent certification of the election in the Senate?" then no one gives a shit about what evidence Trump had or what DeSantis did in Florida. Even saying "I can't comment on Pennsylvania because I wasn't supervising that election" is enough of a dodge that it looks like he's unwilling to say anything one way or the other. Theoretically he could equivocate during the primary and be more direct about it once he has the nomination locked up, but that's such an obvious move that the swing vote he needs to secure would see right through it. Trump already called him out on not admitting that he'd been vaccinated, so I have no doubt that he'd respond to any equivocation by hammering DeSantis relentlessly for it. The only chance I see DeSantis having is if he goes hard anti-Trump and anti-MAGA, but I wonder if he's too afraid of losing the hardcore base to have the stomach for it. But anything else and he has to spend the entire general election retracting everything he said during the primary, and that doesn't seem like a recipe for success.

The real problem here is that by branding himself as a more effective purveyor of the Trump agenda he alienates himself from anyone who explicitly voted against the Trump agenda in the previous 3 elections.

I mean have you seen DeSantis's very first campaign ad when he was running for governor? He is committed to the Trump agenda in broad strokes and there's no undoing it (although he can still play around the edges). And he has proven that he's electable in a swing state nonetheless.

Besides, what else would a GOP nominee run on? Back to the Romney playbook of calling to defund social security? Trump won where Romney lost in part because his agenda is more appealing to the electorate than the traditional GOP agenda.

For the Republicans to win in 2024 they would have to flip either Pennsylvania or Michigan.

This is a general argument that it's hard for a Republican to win, not a specific argument that Trump is better able to do it than DeSantis. Trump won those states in 2016, but he lost them in 2020 after they had seen what Trump is like in office.

With Trump beating the election fraud drum a journalist is bound to ask him directly whether he thinks the election was stolen, and unless his answer is an unequivocal "No" his chances at winning the general are pretty much sunk.

This is not that difficult, really. Responding to this journalist during the primary: "Trump says the election was stolen, and a lot of good people are in jail right now because they believed him. But he never came through. He never showed up with evidence, not with all the power of the executive branch at his disposal. His own Attorney General said he was wrong. The best he can do is complain that he was victimized by Joe Biden. Well, I'm a doer, not a complainer. My record shows that much. I promise you that Joe Biden will never steal an election from me." And then in the general, give the same answer but leave out the last three sentences. It's really easy to pivot from that question to hitting Trump for failing, for letting himself be victimized, for failing to even keep the support of his own cabinet. That kind of answer projects strength to the GOP without coming close to participating in Trump's election denialism.

Trump's whole winning shtick in 2016 was that he's a winner, that he knows how the game is played and can out-play the Democrats, that he'll be too busy winning to worry about their political correctness and BS. But now he's a loser and a complainer, and the best that he can argue is that Joe Biden victimized him, that he got swindled and played by Sleepy Joe, which undermines his whole shtick. It's totally doable to call him out for that without getting dragged into the object level of whether Trump was right in his complaints. It just takes a modicum of political talent, which DeSantis has.