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New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu told CNN that he's [considering running for president] (https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/29/politics/chris-sununu-2024-president-cnntv/index.html). Although this isn't an announcement, I'd put Sununu's chances of running at >50% since the usual playbook is for suspected candidates to deny that they have any interest in the job at all right up until they make a formal announcement. For those unfamiliar, Chris Sununu is among a group of moderate Republican governors from liberal northeastern states, which group also includes Phil Scott of Vermont, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, and Larry Hogan of Maryland. Unlike the others, though, Sununu didn't waffle as much over support of Trump.
Will Sununu win the nomination?
Not a chance. While firmly anti-MAGA sentiment exists within the Republican party, it isn't wide enough or concentrated enough to have the necessary impact. If that sounds contradictory, that's because the unusual nature of our primary system makes it difficult for someone like Sununu to win. If his ideas were more widely popular then he'd be able to run a national campaign where he was competitive in every state, or at least most states. If his appeal were concentrated enough he could make enough of an impact in a few key states to gain an advantage. Sununu's base of support is in the Northeast, and it's hard to see him doing well outside of there and maybe the Upper Midwest or the West Coast, but those are stretches. He also might get some support from Independents and Democrats in states with open primaries if Biden is the nominee and there aren't any interesting downballot races, but I doubt this will have a significant effect. Even in the northeast, support outside of New Hampshire is far from certain. I live in Pennsylvania and I kind of doubt his chances here, even though this is probably one of his better states.
So then why do we care?
Because he's from New Hampshire, and while his lane isn't exactly a large one, it's still a mainstream one (i.e. he's not running as the fringe hippie or the tax protestor or the craziest motherfucker in the room). He also at least has a lane; at least John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennett were going for the sensible moderate at a time when there was no obvious frontrunner there. I'm not sure why people like Nikki Haley and Tom Steyer try to run for president. They aren't beloved enough personally for there to be a groundswell of popular support based on name alone, and they aren't really proposing anything significantly different from more established candidates. They also aren't horning in on a competitive lane. I digress, but my point is that being from New Hampshire wouldn't be enough if Sununu were merely a fringe candidate or a guy stepping into an overcrowded field. Additionally, it should be noted that Sununu isn't merely from New Hampshire but is an extremely popular governor from a political family that includes his father, who was also governor, and his brother, a former Senator.
So why is being from New Hampshire important? For those of you not familiar with the American presidential nomination system, New Hampshire plays an outsized role in the process, by virtue of being first. Okay, technically it's second but it's the first primary and ultimately more important than the Iowa Caucuses. Candidates who are able to win in New Hampshire don't always go on to win the nomination, but they do stick around long enough to make a difference in the primary. Let's look at every competitive primary since 1992 where the winner didn't get the nomination:
1992 Democratic: Paul Tsongas wins but ties Bill Clinton in the delegate count. Tsongas remained competitive until Clinton swept all of the Southern primaries on Super Tuesday, and dropped out of the race on March 19 after losing a couple non-Southern primaries to Clinton by wide margins. Jerry Brown would later rally but Tsongas was the clear second at the time he dropped out of the race.
1996 Republican: Pat Buchanan wins a surprising victory. Buchanan was (and still is) a fairly extreme right-winger who's taken a few unorthodox positions and is widely regarded as anti-semitic. Bob Dole was the expected front-runner but Buchanan and Steve Forbes gave him a run for his money, and made it a three-way race early. Dole eventually bounced back and won every subsequent primary (and Buchanan never won another one after New Hampshire, though he won the Missouri Caucus), but Buchanan was still the number two man, to the extent that a number two existed. This was a weird race in that Dole was a foregone conclusion and it was surprising that he had any real competition at all.
2000 Republican: John McCain was the "maverick" moderate (in places) alternative to George W. Bush's more traditional family values conservatism. Probably the closest analogy to Sununu (though McCain is much more conservative overall). McCain wins his home state of Arizona plus New Hampshire, Michigan, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The crux of his campaign came in South Carolina, where he aggressively campaigned in an attempt to show that he win in the heart of Bush Country, and for a while it looked like he could pull it off. He dropped out of the race March 9th after losing California, New York, Ohio, and other states he needed and were realistic for him to win. He was still the only credible challenger to Bush that year.
2008 Democratic: Hillary Clinton won, but she was expected to win the nomination. She obviously didn't, but she hung in and the race was competitive up until the final primary in June.
2016 Democratic: Bernie Sanders actually was a fringe candidate, or at least he would have been if the Democratic Party hadn't cleared the field to ensure her nomination. Instead he wins New Hampshire and is able to stay into the race up until the convention, again making June primaries relevant.
2020 Democratic: Bernie Sanders narrowly wins the vote total, but ties Mayor Pete in the delegate count. Sanders will be the last credible candidate to drop out, exiting on April 8. Pete would leave ahead of Super Tuesday, but this wasn't so much because his campaign was doing poorly but was political gamesmanship in cooperation with Amy Klobuchar; both were running in the moderate lane and Pete was leading there for a while, but it became clear after South Carolina that Joe Biden was the moderate with the best shot of boxing out Sanders and Warren.
So in 30 years of primaries we have yet to see a New Hampshire winner who doesn't play a major role in the nomination. The state has a legitimizing effect that other states don't; Sununu winning New Hampshire won't be like Wesley Clark winning Oklahoma in 2004 or Marco Rubio winning Minnesota in 2016. Additionally, the schedule in 2024 is favorable to whoever wins New Hampshire. The New Hampshire primary is January 30, and there are no further primaries until Super Tuesday on March 5. Even if the media discounts Sununu's win as a fluke of his being the beloved native son, that's still more than a month where he is technically in the lead and can clearly establish himself as the moderate to beat.
The upshot of all of this is that it's bad for DeSantis. If Desantis decides to run, his bases of support are in Florida and other more moderate parts of the South, and in left-leaning states. If Sununu establishes himself as a legitimate candidate, he's going to siphon DeSantis votes from more moderate areas. This doesn't mean that Sununu is going to win these areas, but the vote split might be enough for Trump to come out ahead. And that's important due to the winner take all nature of a lot of the GOP primaries. And this is not merely splitting the moderate vote; Sununu's strategy would revolve around pointing out that while DeSantis isn't exactly Trump, he's far from moderate. Sununu hangs his hat on Republicans getting away from culture warring and back to responsible governance, and DeSantis made a name for himself by waging the culture war. Hence, to Sununu, DeSantis is simply a more refined version of Trump. Culture War without the tweets and incompetence. But if you want to get away from MAGA DeSantis won't do it. Additionally, I wrote a while back about how DeSantisn's real weakness is that at some point he's going to have to comment on the 2020 election and Jan 6—go full MAGA and he's just another Trump, say Biden was legitimately elected and alienate a large part of your electorate, equivocate and look like a coward. He'd already have Trump criticizing him if he doesn't offer anything other than an unequivocal endorsement of MASSIVE FRAUD. Now he could have Sununu on the other side using his equivocations as proof that he was still to beholden to MAGA and the MTGs of the world to be anything other than a Trump clone.
To get back to the calendar, it doesn't look great for DeSantis. On Super Tuesday, Alabama, South Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Utah are going to be Trump blowouts. DeSantis has a chance in Texas, North Carolina, and Tennessee, but it's going to be a two horse race with Trump that's going to be close. DeSantis would normally have a chance of winning California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont, and Virginia, but he'd have to contend with substantial support for Sununu, and Trump isn't exactly going to have a poor showing. He isn't going to get a blowout win in an important state until Florida votes on March 19, and by that time the momentum advantage of winning early isn't as pronounced. His situation up to that point is Trump getting blowouts in most of the states he wins while he's splitting votes with Trump or Trump and Sununu in states he wins. If Desantis could go into blue and purple states and blow Trump out of the water he could campaign on being able to attract voters outside of MAGA Country who will be necessary to win the
I honestly wish we would just get rid of “moderate” as a term. It’s just a relative term that describes anyone. Trumps “moderate”. His views on social spending, divorce, homosexuality are either leftist today or leftist yesterday.
Im also certainly far right of trump on many things and he’s right some times. The big difference is he’s mean not that he’s super far right.
I guess part of my dislike of “moderate” is also a dislike of using terms of the left. And now being able to paint whoever they decide are too “right”
All or nothing. Moderate means being moderate on everything . being non-moderate on immigration means being far-right even if left-wing on other stuff
I was going to agree with you that one hard right opinion makes you describable as far right but there’s a 14% of the American population that’s quite anti gay that’s never coded right.
And moderate itself changes. Obama was moderate on homosexuality in 2008 and hard right in 2022.
You're substantially overestimating both the prevalence and salience of homophobia amongst African Americans. They're more likely to oppose gay marriage than white liberals but less likely than white conservatives. And, more importantly, it's just not an issue for them - a randomly selected black man may not have particularly liberal views on homosexuality, but it doesn't motivate his political actions.
And that's the core distinction - Bernie is far left despite being kind of squishy on immigration and racial justice because the economic positions he centers are far left. Trump may be "moderate" on a lot of issues, but he's far right because he ran and governed on a platform of nativism and inchoate populist rage.
Citation needed?
The closest thing I can find to relevant numbers would put them neck-and-neck, with support for same-sex marriage among US blacks at 51% and among Republicans at 47% (which might put white Republicans slightly higher), but that was five years ago and everyone's support is still rising rapidly. I guess this claim also depends on your criteria for "conservative"; e.g. "white evangelical" support was at 35%, below "black protestant", not just African-Americans as a whole.
Add in a little help from the Latino vote and it was enough to get California Prop 8 passed.
Of course, that was 15 years ago, and also rendered moot by later court decisions. Is it a strong issue for anybody anymore? I can't find any data for this one, but I almost never see anything like the sense of indignation from anti-gay believers that I've seen commonly among e.g. pro-life people, the other major group for whom "overturn Supreme Court precedent" became the only political option left. Even the conservatives who mock libertarian ideas about "victimless crimes" are almost unanimously talking about drug decriminalization etc. I do have to say almost never, because there's always someone (ISTR a screed or two by John C. Wright, and there were Jerry Falwell's ridiculous comments after Hurricane Katrina), but average homophobic internet commenters seem to go for "slippery slope towards some other actual harm" arguments at most, when talking about gay marriage qua gay marriage their hearts don't seem to be in it. This might be a contingent level of tolerance, since average homophobic people seem to be aware that they're being overwhelming trounced in the court of US public opinion, but at least while they're both being creamed the social conservatives seem to be unwilling to disown any libertarian conservatives over this issue.
The PEW survey you cited is a start. Here's another, more recent one: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/11/15/about-six-in-ten-americans-say-legalization-of-same-sex-marriage-is-good-for-society/
GOP: 55/43 against/for
Conservative GOP: 66/32 against/for
Black: 39/57 against/for
So a 14 point gap for African Americans vs the GOP as a whole and a 25 point gap compared to conservative Republicans, both of the latter being net negative. Conversely, there's a 23 point gap between them and Democrats. So yes, African Americans are more conservative on homosexuality than Democrats as a whole but less than Republicans.
I'm not going to try and read minds to determine whether or not people really mean what they say, but a) conservative politicians generally continue to oppose legalization of gay marriage b) black politicians generally do not c) at least some conservative politicians continue to actively and vocally oppose gay rights and present the toleration of homosexuality as a social threat.
This is motivated by a minority of religious conservatives, but I'd argue that points in favor of anti-gay sentiment as litmus for far right political alignment - more 'normal' conservatives might not think much of homosexuality and are happy to go along with their more proactive copartisans, but it doesn't motivate their politics and they're generally not enthused about burning political capital for it. Contrast that with where the Overton Window was on the matter 15 years ago - the 'moderate' position was civil unions and the broader question of cultural acceptance wasn't really on the table.
It's a shame I can only upvote this once; thank you.
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