The End of Electability

As Trump’s jeopardy deepens, his primary lead grows.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to reporters after a campaign event on June 26, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The Republican frontrunner promised us a decision this week on whether he’ll show up to debate next Wednesday. He hasn’t announced it as I write this, but theories about what he might do are kicking around online.

I have a favorite among them.

One is that he’ll skip the event and counterprogram it by returning to The Site Formerly Known As Twitter after two years away for an interview with Tucker Carlson. Trump himself has raised this possibility with advisers, according to CNN. If it comes off, and if Carlson is willing to bite the hand that now feeds him, recent revelations in the news could make it enjoyably awkward for Twitter’s owner.

Another theory is that he’ll confound expectations and surprise everyone by turning up in Milwaukee after all. I like this scenario, and not just because it would give Chris Christie a chance to bloody his nose. Trump has refused to sign the idiotic loyalty pledge needed to qualify for the debate; if he shows up and demands a place on stage anyway, watching the preposterous cowards at the RNC capitulate and accommodate him by waiving the requirement would be gratifying.

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  1. Meggymish

    This makes me want to scream in frustration and rage. I can't comprehend how the current base of the party can be so... so... flaming STUPID. And that's about the kindest way I can put it. I can't believe how these troglodytes can still insist that no, really, Trump totally won in 2020, or no, really, he would have won if there hadn't been massive voter fraud. It drives me crazy to see people I used to respect STILL defending this... man. They have all lost their ever-loving minds. I don't think this fever of populist insanity will break until Trump faces the Supreme Judge, and possibly not even then.

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      Abridge683

      I think the folks who know how to manipulate the masses have found the technique to push the emotional buttons and by-pass the mind. Get people to hate, to be incredibly self-righteous, to see those with whom we disagree as somehow less than human and you're most of the way there.

      It's like calling someone a RINO. Almost every time I see it used it's to attack someone who, ten years ago, thought Reagan was The Guy. It's incredibly sad and makes me want to run away . . . exactly the behavior the manipulators desire.

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    Marion Coatsworth-Hay

    At this point, who might be more interested in Trump surrendering to arrest than watching the debate? Honestly, I'll probably do neither, but if someone were to strap me to a chair and hold my eyelids open with toothpicks and required me to choose, I'd certainly choose the debate. The guy's been indicted multiple times already. This will just be another circus.

    If the "news cycle" is dominated by Trump surrendering, I wonder who would be watching?

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    1. Meggymish

      All his biggest fans will watch, because they're in so deep to the sunk cost fallacy that they can't see the light of day. They'll be watching because of their hate for everyone in politics not named Trump. And they'll watch because it's a train wreck and they can't look away. Ugh.

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  3. Jack H Wolf

    "The wrinkle in all of this polling is that, just as Trump looks less likely than ever to win a general election, he looks more likely than ever to lock up the GOP nomination without a fight"

    Agree on the nomination, Nick. He is so far ahead of 2016 and the RNC now run by his supporters changed the rimary rules to add 12 winner takes all, which only works for DJT, that short of him dying, it is his nomination.

    Now, the second part I cant see proof. WHy is he likely to lose. In the current Trump vs Biden polls, Biden is up only +0.4% which is not enough to overcome the R advantage in the Electoral College which indicates that the Democrat needs to win the national popular vote by 2-4% being more than Hillary who won by 2.1 but perhaps less than Biden who won by 4.5. And remember that the highest margin in the three states that got Biden the win- AZ, GA, and WI was just 0.6 so that if his national vote dropped to say +3.8 and those states moved accordingly he would have lost. And that does not even factor that in both 2016 and 2020 the polls underestimated Trump. Biden was up +7 in the polls in 11/20 and his approvals were 10 points higher.
    Now, I dont know who will win as much can happen in 15 months, but unless Biden is at +5 in the polls I dont give him the likelihood of a victory. And I say that as somebody who will campaign and vote for Biden if Trump is the nominee.

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  4. Hartzlk

    "Trump’s only virtue is his ability to force ethical dilemmas on people that reveal who they truly are."

    Liked this line especially.

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    Gbr0wn

    You go to war with the party you have, not the one you wish you had

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      Abridge683

      I don't think it's a war. But it might be -- truth is certainly Trump's first casualty.

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  6. Halvor

    I recall over the years having arranged circumstances to provoke or invite a person to screw up, and then sitting back to see what happens. I'm not talking about playing chess. It's a stratagem that can be useful but hardly virtuous, and I don't feel good about it. How is forcing ethical dilemmas virtuous? You wouldn't do it to your children or life partners or friends, ok? As always, with the personal, there are political implications, and I don't think the stratagem is any more ethical there.

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    Abacaxi

    Re the Republican media bubble and the inability to comprehend how unpopular Trump is -- one of the things I've noticed with very online supporters of the stolen election belief is that their ultimate argument, after everything else gets batted away, is a simple disbelief that Biden -- that guy!! --- could possibly have received 81 million votes: an inverse version of Pauline Kael. What they don't seem to understand is that *their guy* made me -- a lifelong conservative with a bookshelf full of Hayek -- vote for a Democrat I don't even like. And I'm hardly the only one.

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      Abridge683

      I don't understand the Pauline Kael reference who I know as an influential film critic for "The New Yorker" back in the day.

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        Abacaxi

        After Nixon’s landslide re-election victory in 1972 she said “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they [Nixon's other supporters] are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.”

        In a pre-internet age this morphed into an urban myth that she’d said that she can’t believe he was re-elected because no one she knew voted for him.

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          Abridge683

          Thank you for taking the time to respond. The actual quote was thoughtful and definitely sounds like her. Another plus for the comments here on The Dispatch.

          Hope your end of summer is going well.

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            Abacaxi

            Thanks, how kind. This is one of the reasons I subscribe to the Dispatch (other than saving the world, journalism and the remainders of the conservative movement). Remember respectful, informative comments sections? They used to exist until the early 2010s. Megan McArdle's and Tyler Cowen's were among the best -- sometimes I'd learn more from the comments than from the post. I think they were killed by the advent of mobile internet and the dominance of social media platforms over blogs. Let's hope the Dispatch can help restore them.

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  8. Krbrady1919

    "Trump’s only virtue is his ability to force ethical dilemmas on people that reveal who they truly are."

    So basically, he's like Heath Ledger's Joker in "The Dark Night."

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    1. Davidhbrown

      Yes. This was the line that clarifies the situation we are in. Trump is therefore like a mirror in this way. He is showing what has likely always been under the surface. As a pastor this is called creating a “crisis of faith” in order to test and see where an area of our lives is trusting in God or not. Trump is showing many don’t hold to trusting in the principles of our Constitution, not in practice anyway. It’s Populism vs Principles. It’s like saying you’re a Christian but not revealing the law at work through your life because you are “spiritual” and not “religious”. We don’t live by the law any longer, but by the Spirit, but we do show what the law looks like through our lives. Republicans are showing their base loves power more than principles.

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    Sad Trombone

    If we are heading for an uber-Goldwater size blowout, is there any way for the Republican Party to be reconstituted? I'm depressed about Trump, but still feel myself hoping for an awakening by a critical mass of voters after the convention, Like Col. Nicholson in Bridge Over The River Kwai. If that doesn't happen, if the Trumpkins want a Fox News perpetual pity party instead of being competitive, what is the way forward for the remnant?

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      Trevor Reid

      Sadly after the Goldwater blowout of 1964, the Republicans nominated Nixon

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      Simon J. Dodd

      The way forward now is the same way it was in 2016: Out of the GOP and on to something new.

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      1. Jfan

        I will stay and fight. I'm not letting a fat, bankrupt adulterous unpatriotic liar push me around. I'm an American. Let him move.

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  10. Betsybowditch

    DeSantis is a total doofus:

    The advice on display [for debate prep], which included potential attack lines and debate tactics, could be somewhat condescending — reminding Mr. DeSantis, for example, that he should be “showing emotion” when discussing his wife and children. Other parts were perhaps too revealing: suggesting that the governor attack the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been gaining on him in the polls but had otherwise not been widely seen as a candidate on Mr. DeSantis’s level.

    The disclosure of the documents seemed to leave Mr. DeSantis in something of a no-win situation. Follow the advice too closely, and he risks walking into a political buzz saw, with his rivals painting him as overly rehearsed, inauthentic or beholden to political consultants. Ignoring it may be the likelier route — but could also leave Mr. DeSantis open to criticisms that he failed to meet expectations, for instance, by not taking down Mr. Ramaswamy.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/desantis-republican-debate-memo.html

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      Azlefty

      It's a no-win situation because he still insists on refusing to attack Trump, and indeed defending him. "Trump but not as old" apparently isn't very compelling. It really makes me wonder what motivates these people to think they can win. And if they don't think they can win, why bother continuing to fundraise and spend money on a campaign? Is it just about a grift?

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      1. Betsybowditch

        As conservatives say, "As long as you have other people's money to spend." When the funds dry up, DeSantis will be forced out.

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