White House Race- January 6, 2024

This is now the year where American voters will take part in the process that will elect a President for the 60th time in our history. Some voices on both sides say they fear it may be the last.

Personally, I think we will have a 61st free and fair election in 2028 but there is much on the line in 2024 that go beyond which party will hold the power to enact policies. It has long been said that our Presidential elections are akin to a mirror held up to America. For so many of us, we are not expecting to like what we see and have a sense of dread about the campaign ahead and perhaps especially for the post-campaign.

Just about a year from now, Congress will meet in Joint Session to certify the Electoral Results. There is likely to be protest from within the chambers and outside of the Capitol regardless of the outcome. The last three times Republicans were elected going back to the beginning of this century, some Democrat politicians tried to interrupt what had historically been a pretty perfunctory act and many of their partisans falsely claimed they were cheated out of a Presidential victory. Three years ago today, after a Democrat had won the job of President, a more organized and determined group of Republicans tried to prevent the votes from officially being counted. A large scale protest of supporters of the losing candidate, falsely claiming they had victory stolen from them turned into a violent assault on the Capitol which was ugly and even deadly.

In my view, an Insurrection was attempted but did not come close to succeeding. The institutions and guardrails of democracy held but we should never have gotten to that point. What happened was unprecedented, un-American, and should never be repeated. The defeated candidate who gave impetus to this dark day in American history is running again and if he loses a general election, few doubt that he would do anything to try to suppress a re-run of the violence. Even scarier perhaps is that if he wins, he vows to pardon those who are imprisoned for their violent actions against their government on January 6, 2021. If given another term as President, he would do whatever he could to try to change American democracy to suit his personal needs and desires. While I do not believe democracy itself would immediately die, there would be much to fear.

Thus, whatever else happens in 2024, my hope, and what should be the hope of all freedom loving Americans as well as all those around the world who look towards to the United States as a beacon of liberty, is that Donald Trump is stopped in his aims to become President again. This should happen via the United States Constitution. It definitely should not happen as the result of any violent action or plot. While Trump himself faces significant criminal culpability on many fronts this year, he has yet to be convicted of anything and may not be by Election Day. The people of the United States need to make sure Trump is kept out of the White House and that result needs to be clear and obvious. It will be far from certain if it were to theoretically result from the actions of a Court against a private citizen keeping him off the ballot or by the actions of anybody in a different branch of state government. He must be rejected not from the ballot but on the ballot. This will largely fall to the Democrats and their likely nominee, a politically vulnerable and weakened incumbent to do the job. Personally, I would prefer for it to happen earlier by the voters of the once Grand Old Party. I will have to do whatever small part I can as an individual citizen.

If there is still a contested Republican contest in March in my state of Illinois, the "Land of Lincoln", I will ask for a Republican ballot and make the most viable selection to try to stop Trump. That means I will probably vote for Nikki Haley. Unlike my past Republican Presidential primary votes twice each for George W. Bush and Mitt Romney and even a strategic vote cast for John Kasich in 2016, I will not feel proud about voting for Mrs. Haley and will have many reservations, but it will basically be the only realistic option I have. This is to assume she will even be an active candidate at that point in the primary calendar, and there is much doubt about that. For all I know, she could be trying to cut a deal and be Trump's running-mate by then. Four years ago, there were no active Republican candidates opposing Trump in the primary by the time Illinois voted so I for the first time in my life took the ballot of the other party (which was mostly about wanting to vote in a specific Cook County election.) I would have voted for Michael Bloomberg at that point in time but his candidacy was over by that point, so in the midst of a surreal week of the beginning of coronavirus shutdowns, I wrote in Mitt Romney. I could have to do so again, both this March and this November, but I hope to not have to.

 

As mentioned, this is the third anniversary of January 6th. In the immediate aftermath, even most sensible Republicans understood what happened and who was responsible. Most quickly changed their tune though once it was clear that a cult is very hard to de-program and political risks came along with not going along with the masses. Even as the Republican Party has suffered in off-year and mid-terms elections since, there is a gnawing resignation that Trump will be nominated again and for anybody inside or outside of office within the Republican Party, supporting him as a means to stopping Democrats is just something that must be done, regardless of one's private feelings or convictions. Those who truly believe in Trump will continue to excuse any possible thing he may ever say or do. They have either convinced themselves or are willing to lie to whomever that January 6th was somehow an "inside job" in which Trump and his supporters were the victims. The convicted criminals are thus "patriots" and the federal prisoners are "hostages" as Trump now constantly says. The conspiracy theories and revisionist history expressed online by MAGA-nation are nothing short of sickening in many respects. 

That is the current political reality though. Joe Biden gave a big speech yesterday in Pennsylvania in which he made it clear he will run against Trump on very personal, visceral terms, including the attempted insurrection. Biden is correct about almost everything he says about Trump and I agree that this may be his best political card to play. Will it work though? Today, a statement by Mitt Romney, whom has never been a Trump apologist and who twice voted to convict him in the U.S. Senate, has generated some dismay, especially on the left. Senator Romney said that Americans have largely made up their minds about what happened three years ago and for better or worse have moved beyond it. Personally, I think America should not move beyond it, but I agree that the hopes of Biden fans and Democrats putting all their eggs in this basket is quite risky from a political sense. Democrats should have a candidate that inspires or is seen as someone who can unite the nation (which Biden accomplished to some regard in the 2020 campaign) or a record of accomplishment and ideas for the future that Americans support. That does not seem to be the case either. So, as has been talked about for months, Democrats will have to find some way to turn a general election away from being a referendum on the incumbent, which is typically the case, and more of a referendum on a very combustible and controversial challenger. Ironically enough, this challenger was once an incumbent himself and Democrats might have a tougher time prosecuting a case against his record in office at that time, which frankly many Americans, rightly or wrongly, prefer to the present, and more about what he would do if he were to become President. The main theme is that he would become a Hitler-like dictator..

Of course, if Republicans were to nominate someone else, that entire playbook goes out the window. At this point, a once crowded Republican field has already been vastly thinned and the candidacies of people like Mike Pence and Tim Scott seem like distant memories. While Vivek Ramaswamy is still out there amplifying some truly horrible things and Chris Christie is stubbornly refusing to bow out, even as he has now finally come around to admitting he was wrong to support Trump and is basically apologizing for it, only two remaining Republican candidates are considered viable.

They are Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. Haley is considered on the upswing, even as she deals with unforced political errors and meta-controversies, such as seemingly dismissing the Iowa Caucus while speaking to New Hampshire voters. She will almost certainly have to ask New Hampshire to "correct" Iowa, but she did so a few weeks too early, and thus it is no surprise DeSantis will try to get Iowans to use that against her. Trump will almost certainly win Iowa without much drama in just a bit over a week but if Haley were to surpass DeSantis for second place in the Hawkeye State that would pretty much spell doom for DeSantis's chances of remaining in the race. Ironically enough, this could be a mixed bag for Haley. According to some polls, she is very much within striking distance or a Chris Christie drop out of actually beating Trump in New Hampshire, but she probably also needs DeSantis to stick around and take votes from Trump. The reality is that the second choice of DeSantis backers is probably more likely to be Trump than the "globalist" Haley.

Haley and DeSantis may square off this Wednesday in a one on one debate on CNN in Iowa. That is Trump does not show up, which almost nobody expects him to. He has an event planned on Fox News for the exact same time. DeSantis and Haley are the only two candidates to qualify and they could be forced to really go after each other, which could be good news for Trump. The former President has been targeting Haley in a far more vocal way this past week which seems to confirm they now view her as his biggest intra-party challenge. That would indicate that they think DeSantis is already toast. Both former Governors held separate televised back to back Town Hall events on CNN this past week. For the most part, both got good reviews, though Haley continues to deal with the aftermath of needing to walk back her answer on the roots of the Civil War and slavery. Being put on the political defensive over something so stupid is her own fault. DeSantis was said to be stronger on the stump than he has been in the past and he is now at a point where he is being far more critical of Trump and running to his right. It seems to me like DeSantis is frustrated by the state of the campaign and with not a lot left to lose is gradually making his true feelings about Trump known. He said for instance that he does not believe Trump is actually Pro-Life on the issue of abortion. He also did not defend the January 6 rioters and seemed pretty dismissive of them, which is something sure to anger the die-hard Trump crown.

Haley has also been critical of Trump but is also trying to walk a tightrope in not offending his base too much. If the strategy fails, which is more likely than not, her campaign will be seen as a textbook example of what not to do. Nonetheless, as mentioned, I am in a position of having to vote for her simply because she is not Trump and is not DeSantis, whom I also believe is a bad example for the Republican Party I believe in. Haley is basically a phony and perhaps even a poor candidate, but if she were President, I think she would probably govern in a way that is satisfactory to me. She would try to do the things she says that I like and the things she says that I dislike, she probably does not really mean anyway. So, Go Nikki,,, whatever. Frankly, Christie deserves my primary vote more, but for that matter, Asa Hutchinson might deserve it even more than Christie. Neither are in the position of being the threat to Trump that Haley is though, even though in a few weeks, all of this might be moot anyway. I will say I am glad that Christie has been willing to humble himself for people like me who have long wanted him to admit he was wrong to endorse Trump in 2016 and that he made a mistake. Boy, did he ever.

Finally, for all the criticism that Haley has gotten over her Civil War/slavery gaffe, Trump is out there now today on the campaign trail in Iowa saying something about how the Civil War should not have even happened and that there could have been a negotiation of some sort. Whatever does that mean? Keep half the slaves only? Those Trump backers who disingenuously slammed Haley for her cowardly response are somehow going to be silent about Trump downplaying the Civil War and saying something to the effect of "we should not have even known who Abraham Lincoln was" if only a deal could have been cut. It is very similar though to what he says about Russia and Ukraine and just like that, it is 100 percent b.s.

Clearly, Trump has no understanding of history and no respect for the "Party of Lincoln." In just a few days, Republican voters can do something about it if they have the courage. I am not optimistic but at least some of us will do what needs to be done to try any possible avenue to ending the political career of Trump and "making the Republican Party great again."