Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Donald Trump Has Passed His Expiration Date
This post is a cobbling together of various points I’ve made on posts concerning Donald Trump’s effect on the midterm election.
Upfront, I want to say that I am not a Never-Trumper. I have voted for him twice, praised him during his presidency, defended him from unfair attacks, and will vote for him again if he is our nominee. I am also not an Always-Trumper. When reality hits you in the face, you must address it.
It goes without saying the results of this election were a letdown. All the indicators (economy, crime, direction of the country, etc.) were on our side, and we get this? This is the most mind-boggling midterm election of my lifetime. I don’t understand it. We are not seeing something. I hope this election is a reality check for all conservatives. Humility is the first step to correction.
Now Donald Trump is not the only factor for the negative results. This could be a generational change. The young socialists could finally be coming into power. Or perhaps abortion was that big a deal to people. But I think enough analysis is out there now to show that Trump did have a negative effect. His personally picked candidates generally lost, but more importantly the Democrats ran against Trump and nationalized Trump. He became the brand of the Party, he was the face of the Party, and his persona colored the electorate’s decision-making process.
The Trump negative effect was multi-faceted. Not only was he a drag as a person, but this helped the Dems by (1) fundraising and (2) constantly instilling the negative news of Jan 6th into the election dialogue, and (3) splitting off the Republicans and Independents that would have voted against the direction of the Biden administration. The Democrats certainly played games in our primaries to match up against Trump enthusiasts, and that apparently worked. But more importantly, by nationalizing Trump, they were able to offset Biden’s national negative likability. Trump’s aura hung over the election.
Every politician gets trashed by the other side. It’s a question of whether it sticks. No matter how hard they tried, it didn’t stick to Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, it sticks pretty easily, rightly or wrongly, to Trump. There are reasons why it sticks to Trump. For one, he comes across as an angry man, and angry men can be characterized in a negative way. Another, he’s a very polarizing person. He sets it up that way, like it or not. You’re either in with him or you’re not. Sure, you might like that, but it excludes, and that is not coalition building. Another is his post-2020 election histrionics. If he had been a gracious loser, he might have had a higher ceiling.
Before yesterday’s election, I said if he runs he’s either a 50 +1 candidate or a 50-1 candidate. It’s a flip of a coin on how things break. That was his history in 2016 and in 2020. It broke his way in 2016. It didn’t in 2020. And familiarity doesn’t change that dynamic. Everyone now has an opinion on Donald Trump. No one is changing their minds.
But after this election, I now see him at best as a 40-45% candidate. It’s clear he’s lost ground. Familiarity in politics, especially with politicians with idiosyncrasies, and Trump certainly has those, tends to bring a decline in popularity. In addition, Trump’s constant presence in the news has quickened the decline of his political capital.
Political capital goes down with familiarity. There’s a reason why most President’s approvals go down in second terms. Even Ronald Reagan’s did. The more familiar you are with a politician’s negatives, the less appealing he becomes. Trump has run out of positive capital and at this point, unless you’re a die-hard, the only reason to vote for him is to avoid the other guy.
There is an expiration date on politicians. This is less so for legislative politicians since they can blend back into the mass group of other legislators, but not so for the executive leaders, and especially the President of the United States or whether one wants to be President. Like it or not, and it may be unfortunate, Donald Trump has passed his expiration. I take no glee in it. I will vote for him again if he wins the primary, but I sure hope he doesn’t.
Published in Elections
Okay, establishment operatives and their dupes…
Bingo
If they truly were small in number, then anti-Trumpers would have not been able to undermine a red wave. You can’t have it both ways: oh, it’s a teensy-tiny number of anti-Trumpers, but somehow they managed to sabotage an entire election? Please….
The reality is much more simple: there were enough Trump enthusiasts to carry Trump’s candidates to victory in the primaries. There weren’t enough Trump enthusiasts to carry them to victory in a general election (with some exceptions due to location).
A thought in a related direction: What is the MAGA agenda without Trump?
If the answer is there is no such, then Trump has failed at a fundamental level.
I don’t believe that. I think there is an articulable MAGA agenda, and that doing so publicly and loudly is very important right now. Let Republican officeholders and candidates pledge themselves to that (a la Contract with America) rather than Trump. Give the party a rallying point that is not centered in Washington, in the Chamber of Commerce and the GOPe.
I’ll submit that the core of that agenda is visible right on its face: Unapologetic nationalism
America workers over Chinese workers
American energy over Saudi energy
American’s security over open borders and toadying to apologists for minority criminality
…and so on
It doesn’t take Trump to articulate that. It does take a Trump, a DeSantis, or more likely a whole lot of us working together to ram it down the throat of the DNC-MSM and the GOPe, as needed.
The only catch is that the Left will continue to attach it to Trump.
This doesn’t seem fair to me, Jean. Small becomes teensy-tiny. I did a bit of speculative quantification in my comment, which you omitted, estimating the anti-Trump proportion of Republicans at about 20% of the party, and the number who might withhold votes as perhaps 3-5% of the electorate. Maybe it’s smaller than this.
Here’s another scenario. Say that 5% of Republicans won’t vote for a pro-Trump candidate. That’s a small number, in the context of the party. The party is around 35% of the electorate, so this results in a loss of 1.75% of the vote. That matters in a close race.
So no, I wasn’t having it both ways. You didn’t do the math. I hope that you now see my point.
For now.
Ron DeSantis has proven that fighting the culture war gets you votes. He didn’t mess around with trying to moderate his positions for a mushy middle or the archetypal suburban wine mom. Nope. He fought hard against CRT, Trans-activism, and for other social issues — and won. BIGLY.
He is the “extremist” that the press tells everyone Trump is. But soon he will be painted as the super far right fascist extremist, and Trump the “good” Republican moderate. (And yes, on most issues, Trump was pretty danged moderate, and they hated him anyway.) The people who think that we should have DeSantis over Trump because DeSantis is nicer and not as extreme really aren’t thinking clearly and will probably flip on DeSantis if he runs in 2024. No! We’ll lose the independents if we nominate DeSantis!
They will be taught to view DeSantis as the extremist, and we will be lectured how he’s too far right to win the Presidency.
Bookmark this comment. We’ll revisit it in two years.
I just heard that Trump launched a huge screed on Twitter, particularly going after DeSantis. I’m not on Twitter so I can’t check it.
Trump also has this habit of attacking his own team in the middle of an election. I don’t know anything about that cat in Colorado who didn’t want Trump’s support, but it wouldn’t have hurt Trump to just keep his mouth shut.
And now he’s not only calling DeSantis “DeSanctimonious,” which DOESN’T fit, and making vague threats about what will happen to him if he runs.
Trump is a team of one. I will only vote for him if he’s the last man standing.
And yes, I feel the same about McCarthy, McConnell and all those goons.
Ok, I should have used your word “small”. But as for everything else, it’s pure speculation. You have no factual basis for your numbers. What we do know is that, with few exceptions (J. D. Vance being one), voters rejected Trump’s candidates despite all other trends being favorable to a red wave. In some very red areas, you can get away with that, but you can’t in most places. Also, a lot of positions are getting labeled “anti-Trump” that are not really “anti-Trump” per se – for example, I voted for Trump in 2020 and I like a lot of what his administration did. But I don’t want him as the nominee, though prior to his attacks on Ron DeSantis before the election I might have held my nose and voted for him anyway. So though I’m not pro-Trump, I’m not hard-core anti-Trump. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has these sorts of mixed attitudes about Trump. I just see him now as an anchor on winning elections, as I think was demonstrated on Tuesday. Competence matters, but Trump seemed to choose people either because they were celebrities or they were die-hard stolen-election true believers. We don’t need those kinds of picks. It’s time to cut the anchor loose.
Yeah one of my Trump-hating conservative friends was just posting about it on Facebook.
I wanted to tell her “Just ignore him!” The people who keep telling us to “move on from Trump!” seem unable to move on from Trump.
You know who benefits most from this silly feud? Democrats.
But my premise is basically “do not put all your eggs in the DeSantis basket.”
1. We still don’t know if he’ll run for President in 2024, and . . .
2. We need a back-up plan if he doesn’t, and . . .
3. He will be just as demonized as Trump if he does run.
You don’t know this to be true. First of all, he doesn’t draw the kind of ire that Trump does. Second, he is very clever at comebacks to those who try to attack him. Yes, we need a back of plan, but at the rate that Trump is moving, we may know sooner rather than later whether DeSantis will run. My hope is that DeSantis has someone to follow in his path in FL.
Finally, if the tweet is as bad as I think, will NOT give him a pass. He’s not some 2-year old having a temper tantrum. There is far too much at stake. He’d better grow up fast.
They were Mitch McConnell withholding money, Lindsay Graham who floated a ridiculous bill to ban abortion entirely energizing the Dem base and fake Republicans like The Lincoln Project and likely many well placed operatives.
Yet. That’s my point. I’m making a prediction, and I predict today’s NeverTrumpers are tomorrow’s NeverDeSantises. Too extreme! Too mean! Mean tweets! Too far to the right!
Look at the reaction from allegedly conservative outlets when he went after Disney. The Establishment didn’t like that one bit.
Mine, too. I don’t want DeSantis to leave Florida — not because I don’t think he wouldn’t make a good President. He would. But then Florida’s hung out to dry, and I think we need him to show other Red State governors how to fight the Leviathan State.
I was balancing my checkbook — yeah, I’m a Luddite – and listening to Mark Levin in the background. He was saying that the media is pushing this and that Trump is taking the bait. Levin is not happy about it and neither am I. Levin says he doesn’t understand it. Maybe, just maybe, Trump realizes what he gave up for the country and how ungrateful the country is. There are stories that Trump will be indicted within the month, and that sack of used food Letitia James was reelected this week. She ran on the platform of destroying Trump. The pond scum we call NTs seem to be happy about that as well. I don’t blame Trump at all for being angry.
What wouldn’t be celebrated by Democrats is if Trump bowed out and Desantis took the lead.
I don’t blame him for being extremely angry. But I’m sick and tired of the tirades.
Q:Who employed the two grifters? Whose judgement was so defective that they actually paid those two?
A: Donald Trump.
Trump & his surrogates effectively depressed the GOP turnout for the 2020 Georgia Senate runoffs. This gave the Dems control of the Senate & led to the inflationary spend binge. You can thank Donald- he is responsible for his hires.
https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/04/22/who-stayed-home-more-in-georgias-senate-runoffs-rural-white-republicans
I would have liked to have a poster in the Oval Office where Trump would have seen it every day. It would read: “Never pass up a good chance to shut up!”
Immaterial. I am correct about the myth.
Your hatred of Trump is well-known so you’re only saying what I’d expect a Trump-hater to say. Big deal.
Failure can have multiple causes. The Republicans should have either have taken up Rick Scott’s agenda, or a different agenda they liked. However, Trumps egocentrism was one major contributor to the failure.
Gee, the Democrats made 2022 all about Trump. Spent money electing his candidates in the primaries. Ask yourself why.
Yeah, one of whom was one of Trump’s lawyers and spokesman. Trump could have disavowed them quickly; but he took his time. Many people reasonably thought they spoke for Trump.
You have a point. They managed to demonize Romney. Romney doesn’t have enough there there to demonize.
EDIT: Forget it. I’m done.
Trump doesn’t and never did draw any ire. It was all manufactured by the government and spread to receptive minds by the Press. The ire may be real, but Trump didn’t draw it, it was placed upon him.
If the CNN exit poll numbers are correct, the national breakdown was as follows:
R+ 13, Age 65+
R+ 11, Ages 45-64
D +2, Ages 30-44
D +28, Ages 18-29
Non-married women broke 68-31 for the Dems according to NBC’s exit poll.
I think that this election came down to a major turnout from younger women, and what motivated them most was the Dobbs decision.
Do you ever rebut a point-or do you only respond with name calling ? You either say anyone who disagrees with you is a Dem or Trump hater. Can you never muster a fact or argument?
Politicians are our servants- if they make mistakes we should hold them to account. Trump blew it in Georgia- he made other good calls but that was a disaster and done out of a tantrum. He bears significant responsibility for us being burdened with many of the policies of the Biden administration since the Dems got full control of the presidency & both houses of Congress in 2020. If you liked the American Rescue Plan ($1.9 T- mostly down the drain)- thank Trump. If you liked the Inflation Reduction Act-$738B- thank Trump. Each plan only netted 50 votes on the Senate.
He did. Its asinine, unhinged.
I’m done with him. Enough.