Pennsylvania Primary Hints at What Trump ’24 Might Look Like

He wouldn’t be the unpredictable insurgent like 2016.

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There’s real poetic justice in former President Donald Trump and his squad trying to kneecap Kathy Barnette ahead of Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Senate primary.

Trump warned in a statement that “many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted” meant she could “never” win in the general election. Did Barnette perhaps pay hush money to a sex worker to keep a dalliance secret? Maybe she had to pay $25 million to former students of a phony university who claimed fraud. Or she could have filed for bankruptcy four times, stiffed contractors, and been repeatedly fined for violating casino rules.

Sean Hannity, celebrity Trump remora, declared of Barnette: “There are so many questions she has never answered in many tweets that likely render her unelectable in Pennsylvania.” Like what? Was it a tweet saying that sexual assaults in the military were to be expected or one urging the Duchess of Cambridge to go topless on her honeymoon? Maybe a bunch of tweets obsessing over claims that Barack Obama was a secret Kenyan. Could it be a tweet that said rioters besieging the Capitol were “great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated”?

The super PAC dumping big money to prop up Trump’s candidate in the race, TV host Mehmet Oz, has dubbed Barnette “Crazy Kathy” for her past statements. Maybe she called women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals” or repeatedly insulted the family of an Army officer killed in Iraq.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Very excellent analysis from Mr. Stirewalt. Trump has become his own establishment. Kathy Barnette is showing us in a different way than Glenn Youngkin that Trump’s hold on the party is breaking - this time in a bad way. They’ll all be gunning to out-Trump Trump and we may live to see the day when Trump’s version of MAGA seems tame in comparison to what comes next.

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    David Eggleston

    Dr. Oz, the transcendental Swedenborgian Muslim. You can’t make this stuff up.

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    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    How many senate races did the Republicans lose in 2010 because they ignored the advice "pick electable candidates"?

    IDK, but Todd Akin could not be reached for comment.

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  4. Larry Hubbard

    What a line....Mascot instead of a manager.

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  5. Tony Reiter

    "low-energy trump"?

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  6. OrygunVic

    Of the multitude of paid commentary I can choose to subscribe, this is a fine example of why I’m willing to pay for The Dispatch! Chris - as is expected, your analysis and political insight is always great to read. I’m just waiting for the day you will comment on why Trump had decided NOT to run again. Please make it so!

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    BrettH

    Enjoyed the read, thanks Chris.

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    George.Skinner

    I suspect if either party offers up a relatively normal, competent, qualified candidate, the partisans are going to discover that their ability to push freakshow candidates is nowhere near what they think. 2016 was an epically weird contest, with a Democratic candidate who didn't generate much enthusiasm even among her base and Donald Trump. I think any Republican except Trump could've defeated HRC in a walk, and Trump probably couldn't have defeated any Democrat other than Clinton. In 2020, Trump was an incumbent and facing off against the only semi-normal candidate the Democrats could scrape up - a guy who'd repeatedly failed to make the cut as a presidential candidate for decades, and had otherwise wrapped up his political career.
    The base loves their weird ideologues, but most people end up holding their nose and vote for them simply because the alternative seems worse. Maybe it's time to borrow from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and let the partisans fight over electing a figurehead like Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the rest of us can have a real government that works quietly out of the klieg lights.

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    1. cb76

      "a relatively normal, competent, qualified candidate"

      I too wish for this mythical person. Two things though:

      A) Such a candidate tends to come off as "low energy" and has a hell of a time generating any buzz with primary voters; and/or

      B) By the time the media and the other campaigns get through with them, said candidate will tend to look much less sane, competent, or qualified than they did on paper.

      Keep hope alive, I guess, but this seems to be where things are trending.

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        George.Skinner

        Yeah - the base is selecting for the freaks in the primaries. There's been an arms race over the past 20 years for increasingly extreme and doctrinaire positions in the primaries, and the partisan bubbles they're living in via traditional and social media has undercut what ability they had to assess whether a candidate is really electable in the general election.
        I think the answer is going to be those rare candidates who possess great political talent and can charm the base without becoming toxic to the broader electorate. Obama and W. were both more talented politicians than any of the recent fields in 2016 and 2020; neither of them could touch Bill Clinton or Reagan. The biggest problem with those guys is that although they could win the base and the general, they also drove the base of their opponents insane.

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      Dusty

      "I think any Republican except Trump could've defeated HRC in a walk, and Trump probably couldn't have defeated any Democrat other than Clinton."

      Unfortunately, I don't think this is true. Remember, Clinton's strategy in 2016 was all about maintaining the "Blue Wall" in the Rust Belt - Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa. She lost all of those due primarily to a lot of blue collar white voters shifting from Obama to Trump. I don't think a Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have had the same success in penetrating that wall.

      Now, there's a lot of analysis now how many of those Rust Belt states are going to be red states soon and some reliably red Sun Belt states are going to be more blue (Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina specifically). So, perhaps this was always going to be a trend, but I think Trump expedited it.

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        George.Skinner

        Obama might've been bucking the trend, though - as a fairly exceptional candidate, he was able to attract voters who otherwise would've voted for the Republican.

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          Dusty

          2016 was the fist time PA, WI, and MI voted Republican since 1988. And since they all went back to Blue in 2020, and in looking at the vote discrepancies in PA between 2012 and 2016, I think Trump is what put the GOP over the top.

          Not to be redundant, but as stated elsewhere, Hillary received 60,000 fewer votes than Obama in PA but Trump received 300,000 more votes than Romney. And he won by 40,000. I can’t prove it in a hypothetical history, but I don’t think Ted Cruz accomplishes that.

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        Narwhal

        Clinton didn’t go to Wisconsin in the general election. Not once. If she had done a bus tour of those states, something like the one her husband did in 1992, then she may have won in 2016. She didn’t and she lost. Retail politics still matters.

        Also, she could have set up her campaign HQ anywhere and she chose Brooklyn. She chose an echo chamber. And it showed.

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          Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

          I think she liked the sound of 🅗🅘🅛🅛🅐🅡🅨 𝑯𝑰𝑳𝑳𝑨𝑹𝒀 hillary ʰᶦˡˡᵃʳʸ and, well, you get the picture.

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          Dusty

          Sure. I'm saying I think her campaign strategy would have worked fine against a traditional Republican. I don't think a Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz (I voted for Jeb in the 2016 primary, but apparently people think he's a bad example) would have won PA or MI or WI.

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          1. Anonymous

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      3. David R

        But they wouldn't have needed to switch as many blue collar voters, because early 2016 Rubio (let's not pretend Jeb would have been nominated in any scenario; his choice to run in 2016 when W's brother wasn't going to get anywhere near the nomination and he should have known this was foolish and only helped Trump, especially since he spent all of his campaign money attacking Rubio instead of Trump) wouldn't have driven off white-collar voters so thoroughly and likely would have accelerated the Hispanic move away from the Democrats that we're seeing now.

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          Dusty

          I don't know. Trump won PA in 2016 by 40,000 votes. He received 300,000 more votes than Romney did in 2012. Clinton only got 60,000 fewer votes than Obama did in 2012.

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    3. David R

      Heck, it's pretty clear the way presidential electors are chosen these days (and have been in most states since the 1800s) is a clear violation of the framers' intent (electors were supposed to be chosen by state legislators and be independent actors) and as such I'd argue should have been struck down as unconstitutional the first time a state tried to choose electors via popular vote.

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      1. Matt

        Uh, no.

        "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors"

        The 'intent' of the framers can be useful when the constitution is ambiguous, but it absolutely does not and should not take precedent over the clear meaning of the text. Whatever the framers 'intent', the constitution clearly states that the manner in which electors is appointed is a matter for the individual state legislatures to decide.

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    Narwhal

    We certainly live in interesting times.

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    Pat Riot

    But if there was no Donald Trump in 2015, then the candidate with the most money and the biggest name in the Republican mainstream absolutely would have won. Ted Cruz and others only challenged Jeb! because they are quasi-Trumplike.

    Today, Trump is like Jeb Bush in that *he* is now the mainstream, has the biggest name, the most money, and a proven track record of winning *and* uniting the party around him (as Mr. Stirewalt illustrates today, saying, "Trump has this xyz baggage" is *laughable* in today's GOP and his faults are *advantages* for a base that feeds off of mainstream anger.

    So unless a *more* disgusting, *more* corrupt, *more* appalling candidate comes along to move the GOP *further* into moral bankruptcy, Trump has no serious challengers for 2024.


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