| | | Atlantic on Trump and Biden
Late last month, my colleague David Frum wrote an article titled “ The Coming Biden Blowout,” in which he argued that the Republican Party is likely heading for electoral disaster once again. “Biden’s poll numbers are only so-so,” he acknowledged. “But a presidential election offers a stark and binary choice: This or that? Biden may fall short of some voters’ imagined ideal of a president, but in 2024, voters won’t be comparing the Democrat with that ideal. They will be comparing him with the Republican alternative.”
But Republicans, David argues, are doing everything wrong in this election cycle. A smarter plan, he posits, would have consisted of replacing Donald Trump with “somebody less obnoxious and impulsive” and offering plausible policy ideas on issues such as drugs, crime, and border enforcement. Instead, the party is doing the very opposite:
They are talking to their voters about Trump’s personal grievances and about boutique culture-war issues that their own base does not much care about, such as the state of Florida’s “ war on Disney.” At the same time, Republican leaders are confronting Democratic voters with extremist threats on issues they care intensely about: bans on abortion medication by mail, restrictions on the freedom of young women to travel across state lines, attacks on student voting rights, proposed big cuts to Medicaid and food stamps in the GOP debt-ceiling ransom demand.
Last week, David followed up on that essay by thinking through some of the unexpected “X factors” that could derail the “conventional wisdom” of Joe Biden being reelected. He reminds us that the 2016 election cycle was punctuated by two last-minute surprises—Trump’s Access Hollywood tape and FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that he was reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices. “One proved damaging; one did not,” David writes.
What are 2024’s possible X factors? Biden’s health could certainly be one, David notes. Only about a third of Americans are confident that Biden is up to the physical and mental tasks of the presidency, according to recent polling. And Trump, should he maintain his current position as the GOP front-runner, has X factors of his own—primarily legal ones. David writes:
Trump’s indictments have, thus far, generated a rally effect among his co-partisans, widening his lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to 30 points in the month after … But the emphasis here is on thus far. More indictments may be coming … As president, Trump could rely on some political cover because the sheer number of allegations of wrongdoing got jumbled together, confused people, and often canceled one another out. Whether accumulating indictments will now cancel out in the same way is not so clear—even less so if they turn into accumulating convictions, followed by sentences.
After David wrote that article, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll. It would be fair to wonder if this verdict could be its own potential X factor for Trump’s candidacy; as David noted in his story, an April 2023 poll showed that a quarter of Republicans want a nominee who isn’t distracted by his personal legal issues, and although that isn’t a majority, Trump doesn’t start this presidential contest with a large margin to spare. However, the New Hampshire audience for Trump’s CNN town hall following the Carroll verdict last week—which consisted of New Hampshire GOP and undecided voters—laughed and cheered at Trump’s performance, including his mockery of Carroll, suggesting that his base is still holding strong.
David is unconvinced that Trump’s primary-election supporters would necessarily be deterred by the Carroll verdict. “It’s a civil, not a criminal, action; Trump was found liable, not convicted,” David told me today. “But a jury finding of sexual abuse is now inscribed on the Trump record—and opponents can remind voters that another two dozen accusations never got their hearing in court. And still there’s more to come.”
Although David acknowledged that “we may never know” if the verdict will hurt Trump’s prospects in the primaries, he noted that this is largely because “Trump’s primary opponents are terrified to talk to voters about it.” As Trump’s legal battles continue to unfold, the general election may prove to be a different story.
“In 2016, we were talking about allegations against Trump,” David continued. “In 2020, he’d been impeached, but not removed. Now he’s indicted. He’s been found liable. Very possibly, by November 2024, he could be convicted and sentenced.” And with 18 months until Election Day, new X factors for any of the candidates could still surprise us. |
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