CNN. Analysis of the 2024 Presidential Campaign: Donald J. Trump, his White House, and the Problem of the Political World with Post-Trump Correspondence
Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He published 24 books, including the first historical assessment of the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. There is more opinion on CNN.
It looks like former President Donald Trump is going to launch another bid for the White House. On Thursday, Trump told his followers to “get ready” for his return to the presidential campaign trail – and top aides have been eyeing November 14 as a potential launch date, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Trump, it seems, is hoping to be the first person since President Grover Cleveland to win two non-consecutive elections.
The news of another run by Trump would send shock waves through the political world. Donald Trump is the most controversial political leader in US history. And as we have seen with recent Supreme Court decisions like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – as well as the toxic rhetoric and support for conspiracy theories within the GOP – his presidency was enormously consequential.
But the 2024 election will be as much about Biden as it will be about Trump. While Biden can tout a successful legislative record that includes the Inflation Reduction Act and the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, he will go into 2024 with the baggage that plagues any incumbent. The issues that he has been struggling with include inflation and the aftermath of the withdrawal from Afghanistan which were four years ago. If he runs, Biden will no longer be campaigning to be the new boss – he is the boss.
The election debacle has been blamed on Republican voters, but there is no reason to think that will deter them from supporting Trump. While polls showed that he was chosen as the GOP’s candidate in 2020, he was still the top choice for the party’s base because of his bungled response to the Covid-19 case and his involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Even with unconventional candidates such as Herschel Walker and Dr. Mehmet Oz running for key Senate seats, polls show the GOP is in a good spot going into the election. Candidates in blue states are at risk because the Democrats are scrambling to defend several seats.
If the Republicans are able to retain control of the Senate and the House next week, they would be able to bring up their culture wars and economic talking points for the foreseeable future. And given the number of election-denying candidates in the midterms, a strong showing will likely create the tailwinds for the GOP to unite behind Trump. Although there has been copious speculation about the rise of other Trump-like Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, it’s likely they will look “liddle” once the former President formally reenters the political arena – as his formidable opponents learned in the 2016 Republican primaries.
It is worth pointing out that a win in the midterm would be great for Republican voters. The out-party is often more motivated and prepared for political battle than the party of the incumbent, which at some level is worn down by the realities of governance.
The Crisis in Trump’s 2020 Campaign: The Challenges of Running a Presidential Campaign and Avoiding Prosecuting the State of the Art
Should Trump announce his candidacy, the Department of Justice is weighing the possibility of appointing a special prosecutor to investigate his campaign’s attempts to overturn the election and his alleged handling of national security documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. But that’s unlikely to stop Trump; we’ve seen his relentless attacks on former special counsel Robert Mueller, who oversaw the Russia investigation. It will be hard to prosecute Trump once he is a candidate. Trump, a master of playing the victim, is sure to claim (as he has in the past) that any investigation is simply a politically motivated “witch hunt” intended to take him out of the running.
If Trump avoids prosecution, he’d surely unleash a fierce assault on the President, who could very well still be struggling with a shaky economy and divisions within his own party. If election deniers enter positions of power after the elections, Trump will use his loyalists to make sure that victory is his, if they are not punished. The fact that Trump was to this rodeo before will make him perfect the technique and rhetoric he used to become president. It’s possible that Trump could be put back in the spotlight thanks to the fact that Musk purchased the social networking site. (Trump, who founded Truth Social, where he has been active since he was banned from Twitter, has not publicly indicated that he will return).
The midterms have shown that the Democrats’ focus on the radical nature of the GOP and the dangers posed to democracy are not necessarily enough to rally voters. In Biden’s closing speech Wednesday, he mentioned the dangers but Democrats were struggling to maintain power.
Of course, the fact that Trump poses a very serious threat in 2024 doesn’t mean he will win. It is not clear if Trump can win over swing states after turning off many independents and Republicans. And as we have seen with President Barack Obama’s run against Mitt Romney in 2012, presidents who have faced tough reelection campaigns can still find a path to victory.
The divisions were certain to consume the House as well, as Representative Kevin McCarthy is trying to rally support behind his bid to be speaker of the House. Jason Miller, a strategist assisting Mr. Trump with his campaign announcement, warned Friday, speaking on Steve Bannon’s internet radio show, that Mr. McCarthy “must be much more declarative that he supports President Trump” in 2024.
Some of the Republicans have supported Mr. Trump through silence or public support. While they long privately claimed to disdain Mr. Trump’s politics, they were fearful of crossing the party’s base.
Since then, many in the party are blaming Trump for Republican candidates’ lackluster performance at the ballot box, noting that the high-profile candidates he endorsed lost key, marquee races. Trump’s most notable losses span the country, from US Senate candidates Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Blake Masters in Arizona, to his choices for governor in battleground states such as Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post had both editorialized that Mr. Trump be thrown out of office. Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears of Virginia and Robin Vos, the powerful Assembly speaker in Wisconsin — both major Trump allies during and after his presidency — said Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s presidential nominee in 2024.
Republican moderates used the moment to bemoan the party’s plunge into conspiracy theories and divisive issues that light up the right-wing media. Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, called for a return to classic fiscal conservatism. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said during a radio interview that Mr. Trump was going to destroy the party in Georgia.
And Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who spoke at a Trump rally in Sioux City days before the election, said on Twitter that it was time to move on from Mr. Trump’s pet issue. “Quit talking abt 2020,” he wrote.
Revisiting the Trump Era: Dave Chappelle’s Dilemma about Kanye West and the Rise of the Wall
Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show” and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Follow him @DeanObeidallah. The opinions that are expressed by him are not those of anyone else. View more opinion on CNN.
Comedian Dave Chappelle is making headlines for his “Saturday Night Live” monologue in which he joked, among other topics, about Kanye West’s recent antisemitic comments.
Chappelle’s barbs on the subject included tongue-in-cheek advice on how West should have handled the resulting firestorm, and a quip about the decision by sneaker manufacturer Adidas to drop the rapper as a business partner.
But comments he made about former President Donald Trump deserve even more attention than the ones about Ye. And they should serve as a wake-up call for anyone who thinks the former President is going to quietly fade away.
Chappelle pivoted about halfway through his fifteen-minute opening monologue, remarking that he was watching the news and they were declaring the end of the Trump era. He merged his comedy with a simple truth that everyone who wants Trump out of politics needs to hear, that his base hasn’t come close to abandoning him.
“I’m just being honest with you, I live in Ohio amongst the poor whites,” he said, adding, “A lot of you don’t understand why Trump was so popular (and) … very loved.” Chappelle — who acknowledged in his monologue that he’s a Democrat — then delivered a comedic explanation for why Trump is adored by his followers.
He joked that Trump was an “honest liar” who told the unvarnished truth about a system set up to help the rich and powerful. He told how Trump admitted at a 2016 campaign debate that he knew the system was rigged.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/opinions/dave-chappelle-trump-base-snl-obeidallah/index.html
The 2024 Presidential Election: Why Donald Trump isn’t Going to the Red Wave, but Why Do He Follow the Authoritarian Playbook?
A New York Times/Siena College poll found in mid-October that 49% of Republican voters favored Trump as the party’s 2024 presidential nominee. His closest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, got 26% support. That poll was taken before the GOP came up short in the midterms.
If his base has overlooked all that, it’s hard to imagine that all his supporters will abandon him just because Republicans didn’t get the “red wave” they were expecting.
There is another reason that Trump will not go away. As historian and expert on autocracy Ruth Ben-Ghiat explained in a 2021 interview, Trump is an authoritarian leader who has developed a cult-like following. Trump has “followed the authoritarian playbook with propaganda, with corruption, with incitements to violence,” she said. The bond that Trump has with his supporters is unlike anything we are used to in American politics.
Ben-Ghiat wrote for The Economist last year and she said that Trump’s influence will not diminish until the institutions of democracy formally confirm his misdeeds. That is why in her view “it is so important to hold Mr. Trump accountable.”
But who knows if Trump will ever be “held accountable” and what the impact would be on his supporters if he ever were to be? Doing so may make his followers cling to him even more tightly — despite what millions of Americans, including even some Republican officeholders, may want.
Even though Trump is expected to announce his candidacy for presidency this week, I would bet that he won’t leave any time soon because the red wave his supporters had been waiting for hadn’t arrived.