ADVERTISEMENT

The Atlantic: America Is Not Ready for Trump's Second Term And he could win, fair and square.

z_ape

HB Heisman
Mar 8, 2010
8,843
7,326
113
Heartwarming.


---------------



The United States was unprepared for the scope of President Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election. By Election Day, Trump had spent months calling the election “rigged,” and historians and democracy experts warned of the damage that these false claims could make. But when the president stepped to a lectern in the White House late on Election Night and insisted he’d won, many Americans were taken aback. Much worse was still to come: Trump calling Georgia’s secretary of state, asking him to find 11,000 votes; attempting to weaponize the Justice Department; and instigating the failed January 6 insurrection.

Americans are ready now. If anything, they’re overprepared. Many members of the uneasy coalition of Democrats and former Republicans who oppose Trump are frantically focused on the danger of Trump and his GOP allies trying to steal the 2022 and especially 2024 elections. This is not without justification; many of Trump’s henchmen, meanwhile, are frantically focused on stealing it. But these watchdogs risk missing the graver danger: Trump could win this fair and square.

David A. Graham: Trump’s second term will be nothing like his first

Trump winning in 2016 was a serious wound to the American experiment. His clinging to power in 2020 poured salt in that wound. Trump losing in 2024 and trying to steal the election would be even more catastrophic. But a straightforward victory—a very real possibility—could be a mortal injury.

A Trump candidacy in 2024 is almost certain, and a nomination is probable. He has already done everything except declare his candidacy officially, flirting (unusually demurely for him) with an announcement in public statements. Some skeptics still think it’s a feint, but why wouldn’t he run if he can win? In 2016, Trump won only a plurality of GOP-primary voters, and faced nearly unanimous opposition within the Republican establishment. If anything, he’ll head into 2024 with the party far more unified around him, even though polling suggests more ambivalence among GOP voters.

A large group of Republicans are eyeing the 2024 race, but several have said they won’t run if Trump runs. Others, like Chris Christie, say they won’t defer to Trump, but Christie proved to be not even a speed bump for Trump in 2016. There’s no reason to think that has changed. On Saturday, Trump held a rally in Iowa featuring Senator Charles Grassley, an old-school Republican in both temperament and chronology—a symbol of Trump’s takeover of the party. Many Senate Republicans privately hope that Trump doesn’t run, but the more telling fact is that they won’t say so publicly. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who sharply castigated Trump after January 6, has since said he would “absolutely” back Trump if he’s the Republican nominee.

Could he win? Of course he could. It is unlikely—though not impossible!—that the current air of chaos and free fall around the Biden administration will continue for the next three years. (To see another example of a four-year train wreck, you’ve got to go all the way back to … the last president.) Biden also retains certain structural advantages. Incumbents have a built-in edge, and although the future course of the pandemic is unpredictable, the economy seems likely to improve, if slowly.

But the president’s approval rating has slipped definitively underwater, and the intensely polarized environment makes it hard for him to claw back favor once lost. Most worryingly for Democrats, Biden has lost favor with independent voters. Incumbency doesn’t seem to be quite the boost it once was; both Trump and Barack Obama saw their vote share slip as they ran for second terms. Besides, given the tight margins in several states, Trump wouldn’t need to gain much on Biden to beat him in a rematch.


This adds up to a decent shot at Trump winning in 2024—at least an Electoral College win, as in 2016, and perhaps even the popular-vote win that has twice eluded him. I wrote on the eve of the 2020 election that a second Trump term would be more dangerous than the first, but a second Trump term beginning in 2024 would go beyond that.

Some of the smartest arguments for not panicking about the future Trump threat have come from Ross Douthat, a conservative Trump critic, who argues that although Trump may indeed be an aspiring dictator, that matters little if he can’t execute. “Again and again his most alarmist critics have accurately analyzed his ruthless amorality but then overestimated his capacity to impose his will on subordinates and allies, let alone the country as a whole,” Douthat wrote recently.

But Douthat underestimates the changed institutional landscape that would greet Trump upon reentering office on January 20, 2025. Trump would likely have unified Republican control of the House and Senate. He would have a conservative majority on the Supreme Court—and the real possibility of naming Justice Stephen Breyer’s replacement. Trump did have a Republican Congress for the first two years of his term, but he didn’t know how to use it, and both chambers were led by Republicans who were deeply skeptical of Trump and his goals. Then-Speaker Paul Ryan didn’t do much to stop Trump, but he slowed him down, as did McConnell.

Now Ryan is gone, and McConnell has demonstrated his flexibility. The internal Republican resistance to Trump has been winnowed away, leaving little more than Mitt Romney in the Senate and a handful of representatives in the House. Trump is in the midst of a quest to purge them, too, targeting Republicans who voted to impeach him. He’s already forced Ohio’s Anthony Gonzalez to drop his reelection bid, and he’s doing his best to take down Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

More pliable legislative and judicial branches would help Trump, but he would also have better control of the executive branch. He assembled his first administration from misfit toys and castoffs, staffers who would never have gotten such jobs in another presidency because they were too inexperienced, too incompetent, too abrasive, or too extreme. On his return, he’d do better. Those staffers are now seasoned and more able, and fewer veteran Republicans would remove themselves from consideration next time.

The government lost many able, conscientious civil servants during Trump’s presidency, but others calculated that they could weather four years. These people both kept the government functioning when political appointees couldn’t, and also pushed to ensure rule of law where Trump tried to erode it. (For their pains, they were labeled the “deep state.”) Many of these people would probably quit if Trump came back to power.

Those who fret about the fate of American democracy aren’t wrong to do so. They just may be focusing too much on the scenario in which Trump illegally seizes power, and not enough on the possibility of a duly elected second term. If Trump were to win fairly in 2024, he could and probably would subvert the rule of law and the democratic rule just as much as if he lost and tried to steal the election, but he’d do so from a place of greater legitimacy. The elected despot is a common type around the globe.

The rise and fall of the Trump presidency allowed some people to comfort themselves that although many things in American society are broken, a fundamental lodestar remains in place. In this story, Trump was unable to win the popular vote; he won only on a technicality of the Electoral College, and once voters saw him in action, they recoiled and tossed him out. Perhaps the 2024 election will reinforce that, or perhaps Trump won’t run, but it’s hard to have a lot of confidence in either of those scenarios. A Trump victory in 2024 would upend that story.

Many politicians are fond of an apocryphal remark by Winston Churchill: “Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.”

The possibility remains that they might try everything else and then opt for the wrong thing after all.
 
Last edited:
They're right, of course, and that is truly frightening for the future of our democratic republic, and the future of life on earth.
 
America will get what we deserve. And that probably isn't a good thing.

If republicans allow Trump to win the nomination, and the people vote him in. Then we deserve to see our country suffer a rapid fall from the top.

Likewise, if the Dems think Biden or Harris get re-elected, then you will see the repubs get very upset.

Long story short, we need new people in office who have the ability to lead and unite our country.

Unfortunately the politicians are to greedy to do what is best for the country and the people are to stupid to force them to do what is best for the country. All this equals more of the same:mad:
 
Any article discussing or suggesting Trump will run in 2024 or be the nominee in 2024 is just clickbait as far as I'm concerned. Trump running in 2024 is beyond a longshot. He tries to stay relevant now so he can continue to grift, but criminal charges will be filed against him in 2022 so there is no chance he will be a candidate in 2024.
 
  • Like
Reactions: cigaretteman
Any article discussing or suggesting Trump will run in 2024 or be the nominee in 2024 is just clickbait as far as I'm concerned. Trump running in 2024 is beyond a longshot. He tries to stay relevant now so he can continue to grift, but criminal charges will be filed against him in 2022 so there is no chance he will be a candidate in 2024.
I sincerely do hope you are right.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BelemNole
It's ironic that a party that has spent the last 40 years bitching about the breakdown of societal norms is working overtime to break down our democracy in just 2-4 years. And it's not an accident, they've written out an actual plan and everything.
 
brainless imbeciles like you that continue to support a criminal and damage our country.
The thing about him is that he really thinks he's clever. I'm not sure if it's funny or sad. Wont' be too long before he gets tired of taking a beating and runs off again.
 
I agree with the first part of this, I think he absolutely could run again, would likely win the nomination, and has a good chance to win.

I think he would meet more resistance from the Republican establishment than this author believes...if the Biden administration continues along its current path, the nomination of Trump is very likely the only thing that would give Democrats a lifeline in 2024. The Biden administration (and it's early so this can change) an abject failure so far on nearly every level. Running Trump is the ultimate gift to Democrats.

That said, the mechanisms aren't really in place for even significant Republican establishment figures to stop him. It would barely matter. I would all but guarantee that McConnell would greatly like to see him not run again, he understands the landscape. But if he can't stop him, he will fall mildly in line again.

I disagree with the latter part, as I have with most of the "death of the Republic" alarms that have been ringing since Trump's first term. I'm not really buying "No, but really this time it IS the end of our republic!"
 
  • Like
Reactions: hawkland14
But the president’s approval rating has slipped definitively underwater, and the intensely polarized environment makes it hard for him to claw back favor once lost. Most worryingly for Democrats, Biden has lost favor with independent voters. Incumbency doesn’t seem to be quite the boost it once was; both Trump and Barack Obama saw their vote share slip as they ran for second terms. Besides, given the tight margins in several states, Trump wouldn’t need to gain much on Biden to beat him in a rematch.

Wasn't the reason most independents went to Biden because they saw Trump as unfit for the job? I can't imagine he'll appear any more fit come 2024.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ThorneStockton
It's kind of funny... but a legitimately elected Trump is probably much less a big deal than one who was not. His biggest threat has been disruption of (useful) norms.
 
They're right, of course, and that is truly frightening for the future of our democratic republic, and the future of life on earth.

Any article discussing or suggesting Trump will run in 2024 or be the nominee in 2024 is just clickbait as far as I'm concerned. Trump running in 2024 is beyond a longshot. He tries to stay relevant now so he can continue to grift, but criminal charges will be filed against him in 2022 so there is no chance he will be a candidate in 2024.
I tend to agree with that. Trump may run but I just can't see how most independents would vote for trump. I think Jan 6th burnt that bridge. They may not like the job Biden is doing but no way are they letting Trump back in.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mattymoknows
I don't think Biden runs again, regardless if things get turned around in the next 3 years. I think he knows he is a one term president. The question then becomes, if things get turned around, do the democrats run with Harris? If they don't turn around, who do they run? I don't think Harris has a chance to win.
 
I don't think Biden runs again, regardless if things get turned around in the next 3 years. I think he knows he is a one term president. The question then becomes, if things get turned around, do the democrats run with Harris? If they don't turn around, who do they run? I don't think Harris has a chance to win.

Very well may be. It does look like he's cognitively declined and hopefully he understands that if it's the case. I agree Harris hasn't anything close to the "IT" factor and I have a hard time seeing her get the nod.
 
I don't think Biden runs again, regardless if things get turned around in the next 3 years. I think he knows he is a one term president. The question then becomes, if things get turned around, do the democrats run with Harris? If they don't turn around, who do they run? I don't think Harris has a chance to win.
I agree they can't run Harris she wasn't even popular when she was running for the presidential nomination against Biden there's just there's no way she should run.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SIXERS24
I agree they can't run Harris she wasn't even popular when she was running for the presidential nomination against Biden there's just there's no way she should run.
I honestly have no idea who the Dems should start putting out there as the face of the party. Biden was going to get the nomination this time around just because. They need to start finding some good, young leaders for this party.
 
Any article discussing or suggesting Trump will run in 2024 or be the nominee in 2024 is just clickbait as far as I'm concerned. Trump running in 2024 is beyond a longshot. He tries to stay relevant now so he can continue to grift, but criminal charges will be filed against him in 2022 so there is no chance he will be a candidate in 2024.
He's not going to be indicted or charged with anything. So, we'd better hope he's just trying to grift his base for donations. That, alone, is doing damage. He's going to do harm regardless of whether or not he runs for president.
 
Do you guys remember when this guy
220px-President_Barack_Obama.jpg


ran against this guy?
https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fthumbnails%2Fblog_965%2Fpt_965_2873_o.jpg%3Ft%3D1332509276



Little did we all know just how good we had it that election. I'd give anything to have that quality of a choice to make again.
 
But the president’s approval rating has slipped definitively underwater, and the intensely polarized environment makes it hard for him to claw back favor once lost. Most worryingly for Democrats, Biden has lost favor with independent voters. Incumbency doesn’t seem to be quite the boost it once was; both Trump and Barack Obama saw their vote share slip as they ran for second terms. Besides, given the tight margins in several states, Trump wouldn’t need to gain much on Biden to beat him in a rematch.

Wasn't the reason most independents went to Biden because they saw Trump as unfit for the job? I can't imagine he'll appear any more fit come 2024.

Exactly. Biden could totally turn around his administration. It's early enough that if you can get some distance from taking some hits like Afghanistan, you could have a successful presidency. The problem is that:

a. Biden isn't some governor from Arkansas that suddenly finds themselves on the big stage and it takes a while to get their footing. He's already spent decades in DC, and eight years in the White House.

b. The problems are showing no signs so far of being corrected. Constant miscommunication, little availability, no interest in taking responsibility, incoherent messaging, zero interest in uniting sides, and a total inability or unwillingness to whip the party.

c. Looming crises remain...they've set a standard for COVID policy that denies the inevitable endemic nature of COVID, and inadvertently created a situation in which they can never declare victory. They should have been pushing toward normalcy and been able to crow that Biden got us out of masks, and our kids back in normal schooling, and just dared a Republican to throw COVID case numbers at them. Inflation is now expected to not abate in the near term, and focus has barely even to turned to the border in a real way yet.

I am somewhat dubious that things will get "straightened out" for this term, and it seems increasingly likely that the fatal flaw at the center is Biden himself, whether he was never suited for the job, or has just declined too much. And there's no apparent "shadow president" fulfilling a backstop role.

Barring a big turnaround, the mid-terms and 2024 are being handed to Republicans on a silver platter. Absolutely nothing about the Biden administration is polling positively right now, including his reconciliation bill, so even that "win" is unlikely to be worth the political capital.

And the only thing that the Republicans can do to mess it up is nominate Trump. Republicans know it, I guaran-damn-tee you McConnell prays for Trump to go away every night. But I don't know on the practical level, the way things are set up, what they can do about it. The more anti-Trump Republicans you throw into a primary, it helps him by dividing his opponents.

The only thing I think they might be able to do is totally clear the deck for DeSantis, and let him run on the premise of him being a more effective Trump than Trump at this point. Try to hope that DeSantis' far superior intellect and political instincts can take him down, if there's nobody else in the race to dilute Trump-skeptical voters. And I by no means am confident that would even work.
 
Do you guys remember when this guy
220px-President_Barack_Obama.jpg


ran against this guy?
https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fthumbnails%2Fblog_965%2Fpt_965_2873_o.jpg%3Ft%3D1332509276



Little did we all know just how good we had it that election. I'd give anything to have that quality of a choice to make again.

No. Because Hillary was right about everything. Americans didn't listen to her. Now here we are.

I'll never understand the Hillary hatred. I think it was something people thought you were supposed to do. The Orange Turd made her a target and that was it. Conservative media, TV, radio and print ran a 24 hour, 7 day a week, 30 day a month, 365 day a year barrage, combined with Russian effort, and internet media.
 
Strongly agree with this, and my preference lost.

Romney has proven to a sell out. He has gone fully partisan on issues that are politically oriented. The character he exhibits now is not unique to his current position.

That character would have been demonstrated had been elected president.

Besides, no more rich fcvk presidential candidates.
 
  • Like
Reactions: cigaretteman
Imagine being such a bad president that the country wants to GO BACK to Trump. Holy hell.
Not going to happen everybody realizes Donald Trump's a super f****** a****** with his Mitch McConnell and Mt G cronies people don't want that crap again
 
I'll never understand the Hillary hatred. I think it was something people thought you were supposed to do. The Orange Turd made her a target and that was it. Conservative media, TV, radio and print ran a 24 hour, 7 day a week, 30 day a month, 365 day a year barrage, combined with Russian effort, and internet media.
There was a decent sized Bernie "never Hillary" crowd that helped get Trump elected in 2016.
 
  • Like
Reactions: noleclone2
If we elect Trump in 2024, we deserve to fail as a nation, and we likely will. We would have done it to ourselves from a combination of greed and anti-intellectualism. If it happens, I actually think you will begin to see reverse immigration over the next several decades as US citizens that can based on money and education will simply move and become citizens of better nations, and the American experiment will have run full circle where people are immigrating away for better opportunity and freedom.
 
  • Like
Reactions: cigaretteman
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT